Note to self: Never tell Jeremy when you’re actually back online, therefore extending your vacation to a time when you actually have something truly substantial to write.

But that’s not entirely true. I do have a couple of ideas that I’m mulling around in my head as we speak, I’m just not entirely sure how they’ll flesh out just yet. They’re a lot like my old nWWWo work (not the random thoughts columns but the actually more creative bits) and I’ll definitely have one hacked out by the end of the weekend in time for Monday (which is when I said I’d be back by all along).

But where have I been all this time? Simply put, I’ve been moving. Yes, I admit that I’ve been hyping me finally getting my ass out of rez for a number of months now (mainly thanks to a few people who combined to make my last few months in rez really shitty.) I now officially have a place to call my own. It’s nothing too special, a two-bedroom apartment (my roommate moves in when the school year starts up again) with very low ceilings. I’m still trying to kill off all of the bugs currently living here (the past tenants weren’t huge on vermin control) but hell, I was able to kill off everything living/growing in my old bathroom at home bathroom after 7 years of having my sisters use it, so cleaning up this place should be no problem at all. It then took about a week and a half to get a connection to the Net. It’s one hell of a shock going back to a dial-up after 3 years of RezNet. It really is. I’m rapidly getting used to it though so it’s no problem.

Here’s what’s happening in the wrestling world. This paragraph will pretty much contain all of the news going on, and I think just about all of it came from the Observer site. I’m making this clear now because this update may ramble for a bit (there are a few things I want to say and this is as ideal a forum as any to say them) so if all you want is wrestling news, here it is. Smackdown tied its lowest rating ever (for a non-holiday weekend) with a 3.7 rating on Thursday night. Competition was pretty weak (the Survivor special drew about 8 ratings points lower then an average episode) so all the WWF has to blame are themselves. Speaking of the WWF blaming themselves, in the conference call announcing the official demise of the XFL, that’s pretty much what Vince McMahon did. In response to that, WWFE stock jumped over $1.00 yesterday. How pathetic is it when the only substantial jump in your stock price since the announcement of the formation of the XFL is that the XFL is being cancelled.

As for my thoughts on the death of the XFL (like I said, from here on in it’s all opinion), it really isn’t that surprising, but is really is kind of unfortunate. Had the original predictions been more realistic there would have been a far greater chance of the league succeeding beyond one year. A combined rating estimate of 6-7 (as opposed to 10-11) still wouldn’t have been met, but the league wouldn’t have been regarded as nearly as large of a failure. At the same time, as has been said by numerous sportswriters all around, you can’t build any loyalty to a team over the course of one season. Anybody who paid to attend this year was either a humoungous football fan or equally likely, somebody really curious about the product. That’s not a horrible demographic but at the same time, it’s those people that you have to convince to want to come back and watch another season. The XFL couldn’t even get people to watch a second game in most cases, let alone another season.

This all segues back into wrestling with the pending relaunch of WCW. If this flops, the WWF will be extremely up shit creek. The only way they can get it to work is by ensuring that every single WWF fan (and as many of the old WCW fans as they can possibly convince to return to the product) watches the debut of the new WCW. The program has to be absolutely flawless, giving them a couple of weeks to establish storylines. From there people will most likely be hooked and the product can be built upon. If WCW suffers the same kind of ratings drop that the XFL saw from week to week, then it will be dead six weeks into the relaunch. It may still continue for a while longer but for all intents and purposes, it will be dead.

I want to take a quick time out from my column and just issue a Thank You to John Petrie. John and I wrote together for the nWWWo for about a year or so and I’ve always considered John to be the best Monday Night recapper, bar none. I agreed with most of what he said, and I’m not entirely sure if I respected somebodies opinion on TV more than his (not PPV’s mind you, but just straight programming). His recaps were always entertaining as all hell, and was one of the few things I looked forward to seeing in my mailbox each week. John decided to give up the recaps last week, and I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank him for 4 years of something amusing to read.

The current WWF storylines make almost no sense to me at all. Paul Heymann has been a breath of fresh air in some respects, but he’s also brought all of the flaws with him that he had when he booked ECW. The single most glaring problem that surfaced in ECW (especially from 1998 until March 2001) was that feuds simply went on too long and were either never given a proper blowoff, and were given a wholly unsatisfactory blowoff. RVD-Jerry Lynn, Tajiri-Super Crazy, Rhino-Sandman are clear examples of feuds that just went on too long and were unable to sustain interest. This is quite clearly appearing in the WWF now. In this day and age it’s fairly ridiculous to have feuds last for more than two PPV’s. It’s not entirely unthinkable (hell, even Hulk Hogan-Earthquake took 9 months to blow off) due to the length of feuds in the past, but that was with far less TV time per week and only 4 PPV’s a year. Fans just aren’t particularly interested in seeing another Kurt Angle-Chris Benoit match, no matter how technically sound it’s sure to be. Nobody particularly wanted to see a 2nd Jericho-Regal match but it happened anyways. Ratings are showing that people just aren’t interested in seeing an Austin-Undertaker match (and why the hell haven’t those tag titles been dropped yet? It’s been two weeks...) at the next PPV but that’s the course that’s been decided and dammit, it’ll be followed through. If Austin-Taker is the plan for most of the summer (as has been rumoured) the WWF is in deep trouble. The Helmsley face turn has to happen and happen soon or people just won’t care about it when it happens.

And can somebody please explain t me why exactly Eddie Guerrero is suddenly teaming up with the Hardyz. The only way I can see this storyline properly playing out (well, properly meaning in order to satisfy me) is to have Lita fall for Eddy and break up with Matt. It makes no sense at all but damn it would give Eddy his heat back in a hurry.

True fact: I haven’t had a drop of alcohol in the 2 ½ weeks since my last update. I’ve also had absolutely no disposable cash due to the move. Don’t worry though, it’s summertime so the action will pick up soon enough.

And as one final sidenote: I rented Almost Famous and watched it tonight. Goddamm does that movie ever kick 650 different kinds of ass or so. I have absolutely no clue how the Academy managed to not give Frances McDormand the nod for best supporting actress and why they didn’t even nominate AF for Best Picture is beyond me. It shouldn’t have won (I still believe that Traffic should have won) but AF was a much, much, much better movie then Erin Brockovich.

I’m off to bed. Spending my entire week looking for a job is damn tiring. Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there (and to those who just have plenty of maternalistic instincts). Like I said above, I’ll have something new for Monday, and I should be back to my normal updating schedule of Wednesday’s and Saturday’s if all stays well through the summer.

Jon Richardson