Macho Madness: The Randy Savage Collection.

Saw this sitting on the shelf for $10 at Wally World and decided to give it a try. What stood out were the matches not included. None from the 70's. Nothing about George "The Animal" Steel. The one where Savage crushed Ricky Steamboat's throat. When Honky Tonk Man hit Savage with the guitar and Elizabeth brought Hogan to the ring. The street fight with Bad News Brown. When Savage beat Jim Duggan for the King of the Ring. And the final WWF match with Crush.

I didn't watch much WCW at the time so I'm not aware of many of Macho Man's antics while there.

What really stood out was the team work of Matt Striker and Maria. They played off each other well, and did a good job reading the script. While it seemed that Maria was there mostly for show, she got in a few good jabs.

There is a match that really had my attention: WWF Champion Macho Man and Intercontinental Champion Bret Hart VS Ric Flair and Sean Michaels with Curt Hinnig and Sheri Martel. Thinking about the history of all these players up to that point, and then to today was just mind blowing.

Thinking back, Randy Savage should be considered one of the best Intercontinental Champions of all time. Like other great champions such as Sean Michaels and Honky Tonk Man, Savage cheated, got DQ'ed, counted out, and just plain pinned his opponents. This got a reaction from the crowed because the fans wanted to see the heel beaten and their hero the champion.

One final thought about Macho Madness: The Randy Savage Collection. For me there was a overall sadness to it. In the back of my mind the whole time was the death of Miss Elizabeth a few years ago and the death of Randy Poffo a few weeks earlier.

Fact checking can be such a bitch.

Here's a couple of stories you should get a kick out of.

Many many years ago I saw the movie 2010. Then a while later I watched 2001. That's just the way they played on my local channel. I noted that the Discovery looked quite a bit different. As many have noted the interior of the ship was changed up quite a bit in both movies. But I swear the exterior of the ship was drastically redesigned. I went to the Wikipedia articles and movie mistakes sites to see if anybody else had noted it. Nothing. I thought maybe I had caught something no one else had. There were a couple of other movies I had caught mistakes in that no one else had. Running away with that high, I decide to tell the world about the mistake made in a movie from over 25 years ago.

But first the research.

Boy did I ever save myself from a ton of stupidity. I took screen shot of the Discovery from both movie and compared them. Identical. I don't really know why I thought they were different. My best guess is that I originally watched 2010 and 2001 on a sixteen inch floor model TV on a analog broadcast signal. The quality left a lot to be desired. My research was done with DVDs on a 23 inch LCD flatscreen. (You should see the spelling suggestions for flatscreen. “Disgruntled?" Oddly appropriate.)

The next boo-boo was about a minute away from happening when I stopped myself. I used to have a navigation menu at the bottom of each page for Season 2011. To update it I had to open each page and paste in the new link. A major pain in the ass when doing it 10, 20, and 30 pages at a time. How could I make a single change to one file that updates them all? I eventually came upon the iframe tag. It displays the menu and I could update on the new page and it changes all the other pages. I go and add this in to all the current pages for Season 2011. With one minute to go before the big update, I finally test to see if the links still work and discover the horrible mistake I was about to make. It opened up the new page inside of the iframe. Not change the whole page like I expected. Panic set in. What do I do, I really wanted this menu, but not piss off the reader anymore than I already do. So It's gone, No more menu.

I've looked into other ways, but most wind up with the same effect. Javascripting is a way, but is extremely difficult for me to get right. Plus with java blockers in most browsers it won't show up. I know because I used to have used Google Analytics and it showed me nothing while my web host was much more forthcoming. Flash would solve it, except the time it takes to update the flash file it just about as long as it is to update 50 pages with copy/paste. And again with most people flash is blocked and doesn't work with iPhones and iPads.

Once again looking at the stats, no one bothers with the menu anyway. Most just look at the home page. The occasional victim...er... potential fan that finds a page through Google looks at what he finds, goes back and forth, then leaves.

This mistake slipped by for six months. Those button that I have on top of the home page and each page of Season 2011? Two were messed up. I never checked them. The one for 2011 was supposed to go to the first page of 2011. Instead it went to the home page. The button for Season 18 didn't work. I only found out because when I was copy/pasting the table over to a new page, the images got jostled. In order to get them realigned I had to look directly at the code. I saw that there was no link associated with the image to Season 18. So I had to go through over twenty pages to fix it. It was a few weeks later when I found the link was wrong for 2011. Went through the same process again

I tell these stories not just for laughs. I tell them as teachable moments. Learn from my mistakes. Don't make them again. A simple five minute fact check can save you from sticking your foot in your mouth. And athlete's tongue is no joke.

(Addendum a day late: Should have taken an extra five minutes to re-read this before it was posted, because spell check doesn't catch gamma.)

Ravy 2011 Pg. 30.

Press the button just to the left of the scroll wheel on you mouse. Your mouse has one, doesn't it? If not why not? Catch up to the 90's already.

Wait a minute, does a Mac mouse have a scroll wheel? I don't ever remember seeing one. Hold it, some don't even have buttons to press. Poopie.

I was going to talk more about the Daisukino sisters, ran out of time.

Horrible Bosses.

When you have a crappy dead end job while in the middle of a recession, it is easier to kill your boss and get away with it than find a new job. That's the conclusion reached by a trio of amigos. As the plan comes together, it falls apart when one of the intended victims makes a victim out of another intended victim. The situation is made worse when a guy that has watched every episode of Law and Order forgets to lawyer up when you have info that can send someone else's ass to prison and keep yours out.

Friend of mine said that Horrible Bosses would be in the dollar theater soon because when he saw it the theater was empty. When I saw it the theater was packed. Last week everybody was watching Transformers 4. I was quite impressed with the turn out for a week old movie. The audience was reacting quite well to it. I did to. I liked it. I laughed a lot. But, and there always is, it just seemed that the whole bit with the dentist was tacked on at the last minute. It was like after finishing the script, they were a half an hour short.

Aside from that, It was well scripted and the characters seem to have some chemistry. While the bosses were certainly over the top, they were believable because we've all had to work for some dipwad that we wish had a peanut allergy.

I have to be honest, dollar theater for Horrible Bosses.
What is it with cops in California with southern accents, this is the second or third time.

It's all water under the bridge.

This water has long since traveled down river. Drunk by a dear. Peed out by the dear. Sucked up into the intake of a bottling company. Bought and drunk by someone. Peed into a toilet and flushed into the sewer system that leads to a waste treatment plant. Dumped back into the river and through a hydroelectric dam. And possibly a beaver dam. It makes its way through a delta marsh and maybe even an oil spill. Gets caught up in the current of some gulf, bay, or cape. Washed out into the middle of the ocean were it supposed to settle. That is unless someone has paddled furiously to find this water. In his single minded haste he forgot to bring a glass or canteen, so he sucks up the water into his mouth. Then furiously paddles back through the oil spill, the gulf, the marsh, up the salmon ramp, past the treatment plant and bottling company, busts through the beaver dam, takes a second to pee and poop in the river. Comes back to the bridge to spew that water out at someone only to find that the bridge is all burned up and demolished. The guy that was supposed to get spewed upon, has long since traveled down the road of life.

My dad is a very wise man, and a very wise guy. He told me once when I was complaining about a some idiot that cut me in traffic last week “Son, do you want to be that guy you're bitching about standing next to bridge with a mouthful of water that maybe has been through the kidneys of a beaver that you just pissed off?”

Ravy 2011 Pg. 29.

Click

It's pronounced: "Die-skee-no." That silent "u" screws you up every time.

Here.

Those other wacky podcasts I listen to.

I don't listen to Bob and Tom live on the radio, I instead get their podcast. I generally don't have the time to when they're on. The podcast gives me the ability to hear the show at my own leisure. The real big advantage is that I can edit and save the bits that I like. Usually I wind up saving about ninety percent of the yearly CD releases within a few months. The downside is that it is a paid subscription, but I definitely get my money's worth.

Botchcast is one I get once in awhile. It's a wrestling oriented show. When the hosts talk about how a match was screwed up, the history leading to and the aftermath of a match, or a wrestler's general history, and other such thing I find very interesting. However It tends to be a what happened this week which is incredibly boring. We're on the net, we've long since read the Smackdown and Impact spoilers. One of the co-hosts has this bad habit of getting into some sophomoric ethic humor.

The Tech Guy is a technology themed live radio show. The odd bit is that I think podcast is what is on Leo's mind while doing the show. When I listen to it live on the radio, things tend to get cut up a lot differently than he plans on. The big problem I have is that it seems like the same show each week. What phone should I buy, I lost my pictures, what phone should I buy, I think I got a virus, what phone should I buy, Mac is great, what phone should I buy, my email has been hacked, what phone should I buy. Leo handles all this with the utmost patience, never talks over people, or down to them. He generally gets the problem solved or points people in the right direction. All the while making sure he gets in his advertisers.

Listening to Leo's show led me to this:

Otaku no Podcast. It's everything anime and Japanese related. It's very sporadic, but you get notes on the latest releases, websites of note, political news from Japan that affects the medium we all love, and the latest conventions coming to town. The major downsides is that the hosts tend to prattle on insistently for about two hours and rabbit trail into their own personal political opinions that really have nothing to do with the topic at hand.

The Nerdist. For me this one is hit or miss. Somedays it is a total bore fest and I hit the next button after only five minutes. Then there's Adam Corolla, Kevin Smith, Weird Al, and, Mike Birbiglia, Plus the hostfull shows can be quite funny. If you are not a fan of Dr. Who, you're going to wind up knowing a lot more of Dr. Who than even the BBC.

Ravy 2011 Pg. 28.

With the Daisukino Sisters I'm practicing a new style for me. It's a hybrid of the Sailor Moon RPG and early Final Fantasy. I need an easy to mass manufacture style for a comic series that I was going to start back in 2010, but never got around to it. Maybe next year. I'll know for sure, maybe, by December of this year.

Of course the Daisukino Sisters will have nothing to do with it.

Almost forgot: click here.

Transformers 3.

The real reason we went to the Moon? Because the Transformers got there first. Events from the Sixties set off a chain reaction of a long term Decepticon plan to revitalize the Transformer homeworld of Cybertron. After the Autobots are betrayed by Sentinel Prime and banished from the Earth, it is up to Sam Witwicky, his girlfriend, and a rag-tag band of former secret operatives to save everyone.

Two and a half hours? I hate to see what was left on the cutting room floor. Couldn't they have left out the bit with Optimus trying to give the Matrix to Sentinel? Or even the whole damn section of Sam trying to find a job?

There were lots of inconsistencies. Bumblebee saves Sam from Starscream and one minute later he's shown as a P.O.W. Or when Shockwave captures Optimus's trailer. Prime is going on and on about how he needs it. Four hours later He shows up in a jet pack. I guess it's the trailer. They don't explain it. I guess the writers must think that everybody watching must have bought the toy.

Logical transformation was thrown out. I read many articles about how the 3D model designers went to great length to make sure that how the robots looked in robot and vehicle form were proportionally correct. That's why Optimus is a conventional truck and not a cabover. That the change from robot to vehicle followed a logical pattern. Now we see Laserbeak go from printer, flatscreen, and chickbot.

One of the annoyances I had with the first movie was the recycling of lines from the first movie. This one was worse. We were getting plot elelments from the cartoon and comic books. This is the third time that Cybertron is brought to Earth. The second time the Autobot ship is destroyed while taking off. Starscream gets a bomb stuck in his eye and is blown up. And we we get a line from Spock. That's when I said out loud: “Oh my goddess, they just couldn't resist.”

Transformers Animated had fewer references to the original series than this one.

However, the best part? Ken Jeong has his pants off, and we aren't forced to see his wiener.

Matinée for Transformers 4.

Odd Month of Anniversaries.

June is a month that has all kinds of meanings for me.

It is the month I started and ended my Army career. Technically, I signed the paperwork in May, but I did the oath in June. Then I did the oath several more times over the next many months. And I did pick up my orders telling me to get the hell out and don't ever come back in May, but the clock ran out in June.

It is the month that Ravy Comics went online. That in itself is a very uninteresting and boring story. I got time, if you're here, then you do too. I had hoped to get on with Bob and George. I sent in a bunch of comics for review and it was taking so long to get a response I thought I had been rejected by being ignored.

I really really wanted to be published, so I did a little investigating and found out it wasn't as hard as it looked. A friend gave me a beta copy of Fontpage. Just by farting around with it I made something somewhat passable. I had just purchased the webspace and was in the middle of the final designs when I get an email back saying that Bob and George was possibly maybe, kinda sorta, on the fence. A couple a emails later we both agree that it was better we go our separate ways. I wish I could have have gotten the notoriety that would have come with BnG, but I think I made the right choice. Just think, if I had made it, I would have been one of two currently running comics.

Most controversial, June is the month I started blabbing about Rosenkreuzstilette. I think. You see most of the stuff I wrote was pre-blog. Looking at the articles themselves doesn't help because I never dated anything. Right-clicking properties doesn't help either because the created by date is the last time I transferred the file form one harddrive to another. The modified date is two days before that. Same thing with the images I used. The harddrive I found the game on has long since died. The receipt has long since been thrown away.

Luck was on my side. While digging through my Windows Museum. A place where I store all those copies of Windows 95, 98, ME, XP, Vista, and Seven. I found the copy I made of Rosenkreuzstilette to test out the English Patch. There are two versions of this patch: one for the digital download, and one that was for “original” C.D.s only. The Original CD version was released first. Only those who had bought an Original CD could use it. Me, and many other before figured out a workaround. By burning the Rosenkreuzstilette folder to CD. On that CD I made was the created by date of July 2009. Which means I had to been playing the game before then. Maybe May, or even April. But for the purposes of this monologue, June will suffice.

Even more controversial: June is the month my grandmother was born.

And the month her son, my father, was born.

Happy Birthday, America!

Ravy 2011 Pg. 27.

Click Here.

I wanted to use the line: "The one with the hands of an acoustic guitar..." But thought that was too obscure so I went with the less obscure wrestling reference.

Bad Teacher.

Elizabeth's dream of spending rich hubby's money for the rest of her life is thwarted and she must return to the only job she can do: finding another rich guy to sucker. Meanwhile she has to deal with the job of teaching a class and Elizabeth masterly handles this by showing videos all day long.

When she finds her next target, Elizabeth must also compete with sickeningly sweet coworker Amy. Elizabeth fights for her dream by trying to get the one thing she needs to get ahead: breast implants. She does this by doing what she does best: lie, cheat, and steal.

A turn around happens when it is found out a prize of over five thousand dollars is offered to the top teacher in the state. Elizabeth decides that it is time to get serious in teaching so she can show up the ever perky Amy and get the money she needs for the breasts she so desires. Of course when dealing with a group of kids that have been failed by their teacher, Elizabeth does what she does best: more lying, more cheating, and more stealing.

I went to see this at about 10:30 at night and was surprised to see the theater was packed. I was also surprised to see that Bad Teacher got fewer laughs than Green Lantern. (I think a bunch of us were distracted by the rather attractive female in tight-tights constantly making bathroom trips.) There were two parts I didn't like: first was showing a young kid with a boner. Then showing a guy splooging in his jeans.

After having watched "Hung"-over 2, I was happy to see some boobies. Even if they were fake. It was even pretty nice to see Cameron Diaz playing with them.

Now, if those three parts had been left out, this movie would had been about perfect for me. What made this movie very enjoyable for me in particular is that it was a gross out comedy without the grossness. They relied on verbal cues. Painting a picture in the mind of what is going on. Trust me, mental pictures can be far worse than the real thing.

I think I got my money's worth at full price.
To be honest, matinée for the very heavily rated R Bad Teacher.



(By the way that line at the very end of the trailer was changed.)