jdw

Dave worked at a newspaper nearly 30 years ago. He's been self employed for close to a quarter century. Dave probably wrote far differently for his newspaper stuff than he has over time since then. john

Historically self aware about it? I don't think so. Tend to think he just ignored comments about it. Currently? Not sure. One of the early SBNation posts he made was a trainwreck in writing: http://www.mmafighting.com/2012/10/28/3563...d-for-the-sport It's possible that Yahoo cleaned stuff up in terms of proofing and editing, while SBN doesn't. In turn, it's probably that Dave just doesn't know what a mess something like this is. I think we generally are use to it after reading the WON for 20-30 years. We also are use to sloppy conversational writing on message boards. But as a published work by a writer/reporter, it's a problem. John

On the other hand, the dancing girls bring back a lot of great 80s vibe memories.

"Following his third tour of duty in Vietnam, Sgt. Slaughter retired from service to pursue his life long dream of wrestling. After gaining the world championship belt and super stardom, the Sgt then moved onto rock star, monster truck tug of war champion and GI JOE. They just don't make them like they used to." Damn if the isn't a riot. John

One of the reasons I've come to argue that the trio (Bobby & Jim & Dennis/Stan) should go in together: they all played their roles so well. Also want to say again: Bobby was fantastic in the ring in the MX. He got heat, he was smart as hell in what he did, he brought both "cool shit" to the table but also tons of smart-solid work. One of the things that I love about watching Jim at ringside in something like that Clash match is how Jim wasn't about "getting me" over, but the Unit. Heat on him meant heat on the Unit. But he didn't just work Distraction Spots where he got to wack the face, but loads of them where he was the one distracting the ref so that Bobby & Dennis/Stan could double team or preventing a hot tag from being seen... etc. Or he'd do things to make the faces look good. He was a worker *with* the match, not making it totally Look At Me. There also was the role of the Ref, and the MX trio were terrific in making sure the ref was part of the match. Again, it wasn't Look At Me where the ref became part of the Storyline... but instead had to hit his que for Spots. Beautiful thing to watch. But Jim could do all the goofiness in the world at ringside and it wouldn't have meant a hill of beans if Bobby & Stan/Dennis, along with their opponents, couldn't work the match and their huge collection of spots. John

Agree with everyone on Dave's apology being as open and abject as you can make. Props for him making it. The editing issue is a problem if he gives one pass to a proofer shortly before publishing. The WON is a massive amount of writing to read, and it's easy for any of us to glaze over and miss stuff with going through it. You also get use to Dave's writing, and move along with it. What he really needs to do is shoot out sections as he finishes them. If he writes up a UFC PPV on a Sunday after the show, send it to the proofer when done. Dittos on a WWE PPV that's on Sunday - send it when the first pass through it is done. Get comments and corrects back, replace the original text / correct it, and then work on other parts. This is probably easier for others than Dave. I'm not sure if he's a big cut & paste guy. Don't know if he's a redline guy. Don't really think he's a "collaborative" guy when it comes to documents / work, like some of the rest of us are when passing around a draft for comments / corrections / additions. There also probably is a fair chunk of the big stuff in the WON that is polishing up on Monday / Tuesday that doesn't lend itself to shipping off to read until late. Just saying... it's not easy given how & when Dave writes, and 30 years of doing it his way (20 on the computer). Not easy for Dave, or anyone who were to be an editor every week. John

I don't know if I'd seen the 09/30/90 Jumbo & Taue vs Misawa vs. Kawada match at the point of making that comment since it wasn't something widely in circulation. They're different beasts, the AJPW guys go a lottttttttttttttttt longer in impressive fashion, but it doesn't have the great finishing emotion (title change, crowd insane over it, certain sense of Hase & Sasaki getting a "upset" over two higher ranked guys). Would be interesting to think more about that. The trick is seeing the NJPW match in more context, since the AJPW tag has enough of it on the yearbook to get a sense for. John

Okay... so Hogan is the GOAT. Whatever he did, be it promos and charisma and working the crowd to his entrance to the posing routine all combined drew the most for an epic length of time across two national promotions and one massive major territory while generating epic heat and completely changing the wrestling business from a territorial system to a national one. Best fucking worker of all-time, end of debate, end of discussion. I mean... seriously... that's the end result. Flair and Bret can take a flying fuck because they can't top Hogan. John

Not even remotely the case. Bobby Eaton gets a reaction because he is a charismatic in-ring heel. Cornette helped him by giving him the opportunity to work some memorable programs. But he was not a passive part of what got the MX over by any means. Cornette's job was to heat up the issue before the match. Eaton's job was to keep them hooked during the match. He did that quite well. It was the job of all the MX, including Cornette, to keep them hooked during the match. Jimbo was one of the very best managers at being a part of the match, without having to step all over the match. It truly was a three man team from the moment their music hit to the post match. There were some things that Cornette was more dominant in (pre-match and post match) than others. But even a short match like Clash I... he's very much part of a three man team, and not in the sense of someone being "The Fifth Beatle". I agree that Bobby gets reactions in the ring because he's a terrific in-ring heel as part of a terrific trio. Just don't want to short change Cornette's role in the arenas, which was strong. John

Ah... too bad the order is a bit off: 6. IWGP Jr Title: Pegasus Kid vs Jushin Liger 7. IWGP Tag Title: Keiji Mutoh & Masa Chono vs Hiroshi Hase & Kensuke Sasaki 8. IWGP Title: Riki Choshu vs Shinya Hashimoto I like the flow of Jr spot-a-thon then a tag that is spotty and dramatic and drive the crowd nuts then Top Guy vs Young Gun heavies come out to have an entirely different war. In that setting, taking some time to get going "works" - they had to follow two super exciting (especially down the stretch run) matches, so they built their war up. John

"I Me Mine" is a throw away song? At the time? Of course. They thought so little of it that they didn't do a studio version until they saw it was in the first cut of the movie, so they slapped together a recording in the new year. They thought so little of it that when redoing the album two decades later, they left the length at the Spector edit length rather than returning it to it's original shorter version. Granted, John and Paul didn't generally think much of most of George's songs. Even All Things Must Pass got a long working over, and they made some attempts at Apple to record it, but it pretty much went nowhere. I Me Mine didn't even get that: it was something that George was noddling on, attracted the attention of the director when putting the film together, and they felt the need to record it. That's a throw away. They put more effort into Only A Northern Song, which was a throwaway... and ridiculously more effort into Not Guilty, which was literally thrown away. Probably. On the other hand, that 1963-65 run was so huge, and assuming that the "next five albums" were a moderately slow decline, they would have been remembered as a huge band. It's also reasonable to think slow decline in success on given the item mentioned early: Yesterday was a soundtrack side 2 for them, not even thought of for a heavy push. But it *did* get a heavy push in the US, all the way to #1. So if they kept doing the same old stuff that made them successful, one would expect another Yesterday in them, possibly one that intentionally decided to put more effort into and push. Also, those last two singles that I listed for the Beatlemania era: "Ticket to Ride" / "Yes It Is" "Help!" / "I'm Down" This were pretty advanced relative to what they were doing in 1963. One could easily see them doing a With The Beatles / Beatles For Sale type of album in later 1965 (8-10 originals + 4-6 covers) along with a fresh semi-Double-A single (like "I Feel Fine" / "She's a Woman"), then going into 1966 to cash in with a 3rd movie and a soundtrack for it. Drop off the "We're bigger than Jesus" comment by John, given the ability of John and Paul as pop-song writers at the time, they probably could have had as succefull of a late 1965 into 1966 as the really did. It's possible that some of those songs might have come into being anyway: "In My Life" as John trying to do his own "Yesterday", "Michelle" wasn't a massive advancement for Paul, "Nowhere Man" continues the "I'll Cry Instead" and "I'm A Loser' and other downbeat songs that John did. Maybe they also come up with "Paperback Writer" as the single leading into the 3rd movie (like "Can't Buy Me Love" and "Ticket To Ride" before it... they tended to get really inspired for that single). But instead of the Real Beatles wanting to experiment (in more ways then one), the Mirror Beatles focus instead on raking in the cash... and at some point hit the wall as the rest of music passes them by... at some point. My guess is that there would have been enough there for people to think of them as "greats". But they never would be in a GOAT discussion, other than folks pointing to no band ever being bigger at their peak. I didn't want to touch that one with a ten foot pool, but since it's brought up... * I thought it was a heartfelt tribute to Clarence and Bruce's heart was in the right place. * I thought that Bruce made a mistake by putting it well into the last song of the night. The crowd was generally burned / tired at that point. It was a long concert, and say 10-15% had left after Born To Run / during Santa Claus. They had been on their feet for much of the encore, and frankly the two songs before it and the minute or two before the Main Set List and the Encores... a shit load of clapping, yelling, stomping and bouncing around DEEP into a show. We'd also had a number of "Clarence moments" earlier in the show, which the crowd responded to. So the tribute came, it was looooooooooong, it didn't really build but instead was a consistent vibe across the pictures, Bruce let it play out but generally indicated that we were expected to clap through the whole thing... it... Was the heart in the right place, but just not thought out. :/ Maybe it played AWESOME in other crowds, but in mine it should have been a 1/3rd or so as long and/or placed earlier in the show and/or had a build/momentum towards it where every second picture spurned the crowd on. Hence why I've ducked it. It's hard to write all that about a tribute to the Big Man. I also can't imagine what it would be like to have been in 5 different crowds where they all felt as tired, drained and almost ready to drop when the tribute came on... and feeling it was forced. :/ Bruce was different during the various legs of Born In The USA tour from what he had been in the Born To Run and Darkness tours. It's one of the great things of having those full concerts available now (along with assorted youtube clips) in addition to all the boots that have been around for years. You get to see Bruce evolve as a performer even in a decade. But of course Flair was "different" in some ways in 1989 from what he'd been in 1979. But we could still point to his Born To Run and Thunder Road and Badlands and Promised Land and Rosie and Jungleland spots, and agree that while there might be slight shadings over time (such as Ric perhaps not putting as much effort into setting up the figure for as consistently and strongly as in the past)... in the end, it's still the Figure Four, and Ric tended to overall work it the same way: * get kicked off in the ass a few times * get it on eventually * use the ropes for leverage * have the face reverse it and do even more damage to Ric than the F-4 did to the face The were flavorings in there: * sometimes the ref would see the rope leverage and break the hold * sometimes the face would put the F-4 on Ric and do even more damage than Ric's But that's kind of like Bruce doing the Piano-Only version of Thunder Road rather than the Full Band Version... or sometimes start with the Piano-Only version that transitions into the Full Band Version. Those of us that have seen him a fair amount and/or seen a fair amount of video and/or have some boots, we've all heard/seen those variations so they're not really all that different anymore: they're the general ways that Bruce does Thunder Road. I think when people count "concert length", they count the promos. Where the extra length came from was: * that long intermission between two Main Sets I could swear that the ones at the end of the BitUSA tour were 40 minutes, always between splitting between Thunder Road and Cover me. There are no splits of the Main Set into Two Main Sets. * encores It seemed like we had to clapp our ass off for longer back in the old day as the band went backstage to take a break. They also might have split up the encore multiple times, with a clap between each segment (rather than song) of the encore. I don't think Bruce was as big of a pain in the ass about this as other folks, but pretty sure it was longer than now. Now... he didn't seem off for more than a minute. It was really quick. And it was straight through: he didn't go back after Born To Run (which would have been a natural false finish break in the encores) only to come out and do two more songs. The show I went to was about 3:20 long. I suspect that if we range the length of the BitUSA shows, cut the intermission to just a "between songs clap" length, and then cut the space between Second Main Set and Encores down to the same clap length as I saw with no breaks in the Encores... I suspect that there weren't a ton of old shows going much longer than 3:20. This guy has done good analysis of long shows: 12/31/80: Uniondale: 3:42:33 (the legendary record) 10/02/85 Los Angeles: 3:39:18 (I was there!) 06/07/12 Milan: 3:38:31 (not quite the #2 people thought at the time) 06/17/12 Madrid: 3:45:32 (the new record) 07/31/12 Helsinki: 4:04:47 (the Bob Beamon of Bruce shows... + there also was the 33:16 "pre set") So the 3:20ish that I saw (which would probably drop into the 3:15+ range if analyzed) was a long show. If you read his post on the Milan show where he walks through other long shows, a heck of a lot of them have some in the past few years. Bruce is really going long. Setting that aside, I agree that Bruce has cut back on the old Triple H promo... which frankly he did a hell of a lot better than Trip. I miss having a good one of those a show, and some smaller ones as well. Very true. Pretty much the case since the Reunion Tour. Totally agree, and that was one of the points. The other point was that within the context of that section of the specific leg of that specific tour, Bruce does have structure to his shows. He has songs he does every night, and "spots" he does every night. Many of the non-repeat items actually are part of their own structure that happens every night, like Fan Selection. Which in turn means that the hardest of the hardcore Bruce fans who go to multiple shows during the tour can get bored or tired of the same old show. Tour-to-Tour? More variance, but there remains some common things. Decade-to-Decade? More change. But I also can't think of a great deal that was different in Born To Run than the first time I saw it live. He's older, the band is bigger, if I were to listen to an 80s version next to a 2012 version, maybe I'd pick out differences... but the "feel" of the performance is the same. So there is change, and he has his warhorses that pop the crowd. I think the problem that's hit in the Very Recent Modern Era is that we're seeing a lot more matches between the same people. It makes it easier to see the sameness. Let's say it's 1987 and what we in Los Angeles were getting of Flair: Inglewood, CA - Great Western Forum - December 29, 1986 Dusty Rhodes & NWA US Champion Nikita Koloff defeated NWA World Champion Ric Flair & NWA TV Champion Tully Blanchard Inglewood, CA - Great Western Forum - January 29, 1987 NWA US Champion Nikita Koloff defeated NWA World Champion Ric Flair via disqualification Inglewood, CA - Great Western Forum - March 19, 1987 NWA World Champion Ric Flair defeated Barry Windham Inglewood, CA - Great Western Forum - April 22, 1987 NWA World Champion Ric Flair defeated Brad Armstrong Inglewood, CA - Great Western Forum - July 6, 1987 NWA US Champion Nikita Koloff & the Road Warriors defeated NWA World Champion Ric Flair & Lex Luger & Arn Anderson in a steel cage match Inglewood, CA - Great Western Forum - September 23, 1987 NWA World Champion Ric Flair fought Ron Garvin to a no contest Inglewood, CA - Great Western Forum - November 16, 1987 Ric Flair & NWA US Champion Lex Luger defeated NWA World Champion Ron Garvin & UWF Heavyweight Champion Steve Williams Inglewood, CA - Great Western Forum - January 21, 1988 NWA World Champion Ric Flair defeated Michael Hayes I went post Starcade '87 to include the late December 1986 match, and then added the Jan 1988 match since we didn't get a December 1987 card. There's a variety of Flair Opponents. We don't get Ric facing the same challenger twice, and instead the double dips get pit into tag matches. The "variety" comes from Ric's opponents, and it probably makes it less easy to catch on that Ric is doing a lot of the same shit against everyone. Even if he is, you're happy with Barry kicking his ass like Nikita was. Is it different in the areas like the Mid Atlantic where Ric worked more often? They got to see full cycles of feuds between Ric and Barry or Ric and Garvin (along with the Jimmy Garvin match we didn't get). Perhaps the repetition sinks in more in that setting. Then we get to the point where Ric's PPV matches start happening, and more TV matches like the Clash, along with what you're seeing at the arena. It starts to stand out a bit more. Then you get to Us - batshit crazy collector fans. We just don't have Ric's matches from 1987, but those from 1986 and 1988 around it... and loads of other stuff. We have it from different promotions when he was touring, we have some handhelds, we have stuff from Japan. We have a lot. Which makes it even easier to see all his performances of Born To Run and Thunder Road and Badlands and Promised Land, etc. They're great spots... but one can see a fan getting tired at some point. John

Context would be useful. Not saying that I can think of any Funks match off the top of my head there I thought Dory was better, but Mike deserves the benefit of context. John

That's an entirely different discussion, and I'm not sure where it goes. For example... Setting aside the notion that The Beatles are or are not the GOAT, let's do this by the assumption that they are. If all they did was Beatlemania Beatles, would they be the GOAT? That would be at the very least be: Albums: Please Please Me With The Beatles Hard Days Night Beatles for Sale Help Singles: "Love Me Do" / "P.S. I Love You" "Please Please Me" / "Ask Me Why" "From Me to You" / "Thank You Girl" "She Loves You" / "I'll Get You" "I Want to Hold Your Hand" / "This Boy" "Can't Buy Me Love" / "You Can't Do That" "A Hard Day's Night" / "Things We Said Today" "I Feel Fine" / "She's a Woman" "Ticket to Ride" / "Yes It Is" "Help!" / "I'm Down" Now let's say they do another five albums trying to repeat generally that same stuff because it was, to that time, The Most Successful Music Ever. I mean... they sold more shit in 1963-65 than anyone with that stuff. Their two movies were massive hits. They're tours were off the charts. They even could churn out a few more ballads like And I Lover Her and Yesterday, dropping some as singles. Of course that probably would run it's course as everything does, so declining popularity but let's pretend the "quality" stays at that level. Does that get to GOAT? Or do The Beatles need the path through Rubber Soul, Revolver, Pepper, The White Album, the failure of the Get Back Sessions and the triumph of finishing their careers with side two of Abbey Road*? Do they need single only releases like "Day Tripper" / "We Can Work It Out", "Paperback Writer" / "Rain", "Penny Lane" / "Strawberry Fields Forever", "All You Need Is Love" / "Baby, You're a Rich Man", "Hello, Goodbye", "Lady Madonna" / "The Inner Light", "Hey Jude" / "Revolution", "Get Back" / "Don't Let Me Down", "The Ballad of John and Yoko" / "Old Brown Shoe", and the single version of "Let It Be"? That's not saying that all of that is Great Shit, and even a Beatles Fan like myself thinks that they released some utter shit, some boring stuff, and some stuff that's Very Effective Pop Singles But God I'm Tired Of Them like "Hello, Goodbye" that is good business but eh. I think the Beatles don't have a GOAT shot if they keep doing 1964-65 over and over again. Even with something like Yesterday buried on Help meaning that it was a type of song they could mine for big money that they hadn't to that point... there's only so much they could do with that for another five albums and slew of singles. They needed Rubber Soul to open themselves up a bit. They needed Revolver to take them in entirely different directions. They needed Pepper to move themselves beyond just "Damn They're Successful" to "Wait... are they the GOAT?" And then after that to not completely fall on their face across another close to 90 songs they released after Pepper. I think in most broader forms of entertainment / art / performance, being static, even at a high level, is... well... it's niche. You're not the Greatest Writer Of All Time, but instead the Greatest Crime Writer Of All Time. Perhaps pro wrestling is such a niche itself that it doesn't matter. John * with the exception of one throw away song record by three of them in January

Strange example of this... When solo, I like to sleep on the same side of the bed every freaking night. Like to lay on my side in a certain direction, like to have the bed side table on that side, etc. When I'm at my folks sleeping in the guest bedroom, I like to sleep on that same side as well. Even when that puts me on the side up against a wall, and to get up I need to roll over and head out from the opposite side. It's just how I've sleep for as long as I can remember. I'm mean... sleeping is important, it's hard enough to go to sleep (said by someone who has battled major insomnia at times in my life)... I don't need fucking with how I sleep, thank you. Except... My girlfriend sleeps on that same side of the bed. Ran across it the first night at her place, all those years ago. That other side... that's where I'll be sleeping, there wasn't even going to be a discussion about it, that's that. What's interesting... Is that when she's staying over at my place, by habit I set things up in advance for her to sleep on her natural side, and I shift my stuff over to the other side. It's so ingrained in my head that I almost don't even think about it at this point as I'm shifting stuff around: It's how "We" sleep, not how "I" sleep, so of course I'm going to move stuff around. Ironically, I sleep perfectly well over on that side at both her place and mine. Most of that is because I feel extremely comfortable and at peace drifting off with her next to me, which is a good sign when you feel that from the start with someone... but that's another side tangent... Point: There's some "same old shit" that we like a hell of a lot in our lives because it's what we know, like, do all the time and are comfortable with. We're fine how we are, don't want to fuck with it, piss off if you think it's boring. But that doesn't mean that the other side of the bed isn't it's comfortable and could be liked as well. John

Just trying to put into (far too many words) something that was bubbling around in my head while reading within days of each other: * the various Flair threads here * the Backstreets setlists and reviews of Bruce's last few shows on this leg of the tour As is probably clear, I'm mixed on the topic, and think both are valid. I've expressed a lot of times that (i) Flair was great, (ii) Flair was wildly effective as a performer, (iii) Flair wasn't perfect if you really gave it some thought, and (iv) I've seen so much Flair that he does bore the piss out of me most of the times now that I come across his stuff. People tend to focus a lot on my comments that are about (iii) and (iv), and the ones about (i) and (ii) get buried. I was struck that what tended to jump out at me in the reviews of Bruce were more of the (iii) and (iv) while I was enjoying the (i) and (ii). "Wait a minute... I kind of liked that Crowd Surfing spot, and so did the crowd. Fuck you!" Then eventually taking a step back to get that they've seen Bruce 10+ times on this tour, probably have watched a ton of youtube clips and other boots on top of that, it's the same old spot every show... "oh shit... this is uncomfortably like a lot of us feel about a lot of wrestling". Don't have an answer, even for myself as is clear. Suspect it's similar for a lot of us: we are okay with the "same old shit" on a lot of things in life, but others drive us crazy. Side comment next... John

The Dead would be tough for someone to come up with an equiv. Similar to say the Cohen Brothers or Ang Lee, who seem to not want to get locked into anyone genre and instead want to stretch themselves. That's not to say that there isn't similarity between Cohen Brother movies, and certainly their comedies tend to have more in common with each other than say a Sandler movie or a Vince Vaughn comedy. And one could find them between Lee movies if you're a student of them (I'm not). But for one director to have these be his major Oscar nominations: Sense and Sensibility Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Brokeback Mountain Life of Pi And around them do: The Ice Storm Ride with the Devil Hulk Lust, Caution Taking Woodstock We can kind of pretend that Quentin Tarantino does different genres and what not, but in the end they're QT movies that are homages / spoof / both of those genres that are every bit as much QT as the genre. Lee seems to be closer to wanting to do very different things, trying new things and avoiding getting bored. On the other, perhaps that's more common for directors as they're often "directors for hire" early on if they don't get superstardom. Look up the list of movies that Stephen Frears has done, and set aside the tv ones below it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Frears#Filmography One might try to draw a line between My Beautiful Laundrette and Prick Up Your Ears, but there's The Hit before them and Dangerous Liaisons shortly after them. The Grifters and High Fidelity, the standard Big Hollywood Production of Hero and the vastly more British Modern Historical Piece of The Queen. Wrestlers doing that? John

SNME was to air 11/24/90, after Summer Slam on 11/22. The next TV taping was 11/19/90 & 11/20/90 to begin airing on 12/8 & 12/9. Which is kind of interesting as the tapings for the SNME were also for Challenge that would air on the two weekends after SummerSlam, one of the full weekends after SNME. One would guess that on that weekend of 12/1 & 12/2 that they would have spliced in something about the Rockers winning it on SNME, including clips. As far as cutting it into a 90 minute SNME rather than a 60 minute Main Event, the match went It went 9:33, 9:50 and 5:38. It seems unlikely that they would cut the shorter third fall, unless they did some mid-fall editing magic to make the one spot go away. I don't think the WWF did that a lot. We probably could look at the first two falls and search for "SNME Commercial Break Moments", in other words where someone gets tossed to the floor and everyone else comes to something of a stop for a "We'll be right back" moment. In turn, the face tends to get worked over in the break, and the commercial break comes back a bit before comeback time. Since they often would take commercial breaks during even 10 minute SNME matches, they probably have a moment in at least one of the falls, if not both. Been a while since I watched it, and I don't think I was looking for spots where they might break it up. John

That sounds much more realistic. John

Or: "Cien Caras got virtually no support among ring rats in Mexico, with the feeling he was always was a family man who didn't show interest in the rats." John

I see both sides of it being a valid / not valid criticism. If Al Pacino only played Michael Corleone in movie after movie after movie from 1972 through 2012 in largely the same fashion, would we think: * Al's limited as an actor * after 20-40 movies, that Michael Corleone character might just be a bit boring... more than a bit That would be valid if someone felt that. "Ric Flair" is in the sense a "series character", similar to James Bond or J.R. Ewing or Zatoichi. Of course other wrestlers are as well. Some vary or evolve over time, even of performances that are close together. Others don't. Flair to me in his "prime" (not just in terms of work but as a running character) is probably pretty close to Stout's primary Nero Wolfe series characters: Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. After feeling his way around in fully developing the traits, voice, tone, etc of the characters over the first four books, Stout finally fully realizes everything in the 5th and 6th books (which is rather ironic given the settings of the books which fall outside of the oft repeated "norms" of the books... but that's another post). Wolfe and Goodwin then remain "fixed" in character from 1938-1975 in close to 70 novels and novellas. It's effective. The books sold well. Stout didn't write the twistiest of detective novels, nor the most creative, nor mine the depth of the human psyche as others did. But he was and is generally well respected within the genre, his books are still enjoyed, etc. Ric at some point became "locked in" as a character in his prime. It could flip if he was face, but he didn't face a lot after becoming the World Champ, and seems to have admitted to much rather play the heel. I think that does lend itself to, over time, being able to be bored and/or critical of Ric. I haven't gotten bored of Stout over the years because they hit the spot for me, but there are other similar characters that have. Reacher and Bosch for example are examples of low end main stream fictional characters that I found to be like pulling the last few books I read. Lord knows there have been plenty of TV shows that I've gotten bored with over the years, or annoyed with, because it's the same shit being stretched out week after week, year after year. I think we need accept that it is valid for someone to look at Ric and think that, and *not* be wrong. In turn, it's just as valid that someone could look at Ric and not be bored out of their skull by the same old shit all the fucking time for 20 years. After all... I like Goodwin and Wolfe, and they were doing largely the same old shit all the fucking time for *40* years and would have kept on doing it if the author hadn't dropped dead. John

And I tend to agree with the Sims related response. John

If that's Dave's story... that's really freaking odd. Again, given the amount of lucha coverage in the WON in the 80s (next to none) and pre-AAA (very little in 1990, bit more in 1991, then increasing with AAA)... it's really odd to ponder Dave having a network of Lucha Rats. Maybe he knew just one or two good Lucha Rat sources. John

Yep. If you see a comic several times on the comic equiv of a "tour", especially a leg of a tour since topical things can change over the course of several months, you're going to get a lot of similar/identical jokes. Where they've changed, you'll likely find something similar sliding into it's slot for pacing and arc purposes. If the comic happens to get taped for a special (movie in the olden days), you'll likely see stuff that you also say... in nearly the exact some way. Comic are pretty similar to song performers. They have their bits. Some work with the crowd, and are kept. Ones that don't are tossed. Comics probably turn over their performances more often then song performers, though. If we were to look at Bruce over the course of different E Street tours since the Reunion, you're going to find some key songs or cluster of songs that are almost always going to be played. He's stuck playing Born To Run, and usually Thunder Road. There's always going to be two or more songs from Darkness (most likely from the warhorses of Badlands, The Promised Land, & Darkness on the Edge of Town and bust also often from slightly deeper with Prove It All Night, Streets of Fire, Candy's Room, Adam Raised a Cain, etc.). Where as a comic will often toss out everything from last year's show once it's run it's course, and come up with new material for this year... or next year. They might do a similar story, say on fucking or marriage, but different in content and punchlines, etc. The other similarity about old school comics is that you could pop on their albums, here the same bit, and enjoy it like songs. I don't know how many times I played my old vinyl Richard Pryors albums but it was a shitload. I knew the bits by heart, but the still cracked me up. This is similar to knowing all of Promised Land and not being surprised by anything in it, but digging it still after the 100th listening or hearing it in concert more than a dozen times. John

I don't think Jumbo, Taue, Fuchi and Ogawa really hated Kikuchi. They just were annoyed by the little fucker, and stove to put him in his place. John

Dave didn't write a lot about lucha in the 80s and very early 90s, really only to start to write more as AAA opened up. Also don't know that he had a lot of sources among Lucha Rats. One would assume they would have had to be wrestling fans he came in contact with, and who called him up. I can't remember a *single* fan that Dave talked to at any lucha show that we went to (which wasn't an insignificant number) who happened to be a woman. The fans he talked to almost always were gringos going to the shows. The other people he talked to were the wrestlers. Maybe Dave had a network of Lucha Rats here in the US who banged lucha stars when they came to the US, were WON readers and sent Dave the info... "Does this make logic?" -Carlos Espada "But Carlos: the finish was a DQ!" -Steve Yohe I think something is lost in Alverez Translation. But what he heck... if Dave had a network of lucha rats, more power to him. One wishes perhaps instead in the 80s and early 90s that he'd instead developed a network of Lucha Fans and Lucha Reporters so that he had more coverage of Lucha in those years, since that would have been more historically valuable than the real names of some dudes under masks. John