Or maybe I just won't much more of the Series at all... I swear to you, this last 3 weeks has been the Most Commercial Advertising I've watched in years (god bless DVR and its powers, but for live sports events, it's real hard to justify Time Shifting), and I can't take any more. None. As we speak, I'm restraining myself from telling each and every one of you who watches ANY show on FOX's fall line-up that ISN'T The Simpsons to just go play in traffic, because the human gene pool does not need contamination from those who look at "The Swan" and think "Hey, that looks like it'll be pretty good."  Seriously, if you watch "The Swan" (even if you CLAIM it's cuz you think it's "hilarious" to watch the freaks), then please, just make a note to die as soon as possible.  Fans of "The OC" and "My Big Fat Stupid Boss" and "Rogue Billionaire" and the rest: you all still suck, but I'll permit you to live, permitting that you DO have some crippling accident that leaves you paralyzed from the waist down and unable to procreate.  Damn, I thought I said I was RESTRAINING myself from a FOX World Series Commercials Rant?  Well, trust me, I am... there's more pain that I've felt during the ad breaks than this; almost as much as I felt during the last four games of the ALCS, to be honest, and I won't bore you with it here....
 

And as I continue to be in an oddly ebullient mood even today, my good spirits look to be bolstered for at least the next week, cuz baseball might be over as far as I'm concerned, but today begins "Treehouse of Horror" Season, baby!  Between the Dayton and Cinci reruns, I'm confident I'll get to see all of the Simpsons Halloween Specials in the next five days, and you gotta know how much I love those things!  More than I love Halloween itself, actually...  fricking amateur night out at the bars; the only worse holiday is St. Patty's Day.

But I'll let that start annoying me this weekend. For now, my good spirits remain, and I figure I might as well get to the part where I expend my verbosity on getting your Wrestling Week Started in Style, right?  Right:

• We'll start with a look to tonight's RAW, where WWE MIGHT put a damper on my mood, but we won't be sure for another 10 hours or so...
   
  Because after Taboo Tuesday's little interlude, chances are that the top story reverts to being Randy Orton vs. Triple H; and although WWE may have, in high level meetings, convinced themselves that they've accomplished anything with regards to Project Orton in the last month, they really haven't.  The fabricated "Moment of Respect" with Ric Flair seemed to flop with fans, and merely gave them another excuse to boo Flair for the first time in the match (because he was showing respect for Orton, who fans have not yet decided THEY respect).  But y'all feel me on that already, right?  I know I've explained it about a billion times...
   
  Orton beating Flair and "earning his respect" seems a set-up for Orton catapulting back to the main event picture, this time, where he'll be safe and nobody will get cold feet and yank him out because they realize that he's going to lose the fan voting.  Interesting aspects of this COULD include a changing dynamic between Flair and HHH, if HHH decides to get upset at Flair's "show of respect."  How could it be interesting? Well, simple: if they go down that route, trust me, HHH will hear cheers for correcting Flair (the same way Flair heard boos for forcing the issue of Orton's "greatness" over the last few weeks), and if that happens, then maybe, just maybe, WWE will quit smoking whatever it is they are smoking, and just LISTEN TO THE FANS and get this story told right: with Flair dicking over HHH to side with Orton, with them both going heel, possibly with Batista joining them, leaving HHH as a solo babyface against a Orton-led heel Evolution faction.
   
  It works for a couple reasons: (1) for the love of god, if I hear that embarrassingly-awful Orton theme song one more time, I will start breaking things, and this would mean Orton could have back the Motorhead "Evolution" theme, and (2) having Flair prostrate himself to HHH kept him a tacit heel for a while, but now having him bow down before an "even less worthy" Orton should keep him from getting cheered too loudly, which I think WWE might want to do until such time as they can get Mick Foley back to do the long-anticipated Flair/Foley Legends Showdown feud.  But mostly, it's (3) that before Randy Orton can be a brand-carrying babyface, he needs to prove himself to fans, and these are the types of things that he can pull off best as a heel, where the booking is more important than the performance aspect in a lot of ways, and Orton's apparent mediocrity can be masked just by writing strong material for him.  Fans won't have to like him or connect with him; they'll just have to respect what he can do.  That's how heels can win people over; it's how HHH eventually made it, anyway, and I think after 3 months of displaying a lack of the "It Factor" or personality to win fans over as a babyface, it's the path we need to take with Randall Orton.
   
  But see, now I'm Fantasy Booking instead of RAW Previewing, dammit...  chalk it up to my Good Mood (gOOd mOOd?), I guess.  Point is: the prospect of Orton vs. HHH is kinda off-putting to me, but I'm seeing a POTENTIAL silver lining here.
   
  The reason why Orton's almost certain to be the next up is cuz Shawn Michaels will be written out (for at least a month, and possibly through year's end, depending on if doctor's find anything additional wrong with his knee; see Wednesday's Column for the full HBK Medical Report and Prognosis), and the other two possible contenders are Edge and Chris Benoit, who seem like they're in a perfect spot to feud with each other, rather than worrying about HHH in the short term.
   
  Actually, those two seem poised to become the Best Reason to Watch RAW through Survivor Series.  Depending on the disbursement of the tag team titles, Chris Benoit could, conceivably, do a gimmick where he single-handedly defends both tag titles, which would be pretty bad-ass.  Edge could even lay claim to his half of the belts, and do something similar, except that I'd book it so that Benoit would have to run out and lend a hand because he might not like Edge, but he doesn't want Edge losing "his" tag belts, or something.  You could slow things down and have them almost-get-along for a bit before going full-bore with the feud (though I'd think you want these two facing off by Survivor Series).  Or you could go the other route, just remove the tag belts from the equation (remember, La Resistance wrestled that match "under protest," which might come back to haunt Benoit), and have them begin their one-on-one feud immediately.  In any case, I'm digging Edge's pure prickishness, and although I may not drop to my knees for him the way many of you do, I rarely find fault in anything that comes out of Benoit, so I think this'll be gold.
   
  On the third line for RAW is another promising development, as Shelton Benjamin now holds the IC Title, but Chris Jericho and his uniquely teflon exterior probably won't be too hurt by the title loss.  Obviously, you can do a couple of things in terms of Jericho immediately demanding a rematch (since he was ill-prepared for Shelton due to the fan voting gimmick), which would be good stuff.  But there's also a very big part of me that thinks that something else Jericho needs to do is to remind us that in the last month, he's been screwed over by Evolution once or twice, and maybe use that as stepping stone to be a Back Up Plan in terms of feuding with HHH for the title.  Cuz it would sure beat the hell out of Orton's Density.  And it's not like Shelton wouldn't have PLENTY to occupy his time in the IC picture if Jericho powdered out; Batista's gonna be right there in the mix, and Christian might even be a better choice (given how outstanding they meshed together in the final stages of the elimination match last week on RAW) for a big-ass title feud for Shelton.  In a lot of ways, unless they're just gonna put the title back on Jericho immediately (or turn him heel immediately, which I increasingly think would be a mistake), there's no reason to force the face vs. face issue there; let Jericho free to move on up, and let Shelton establish himself against a True Heel like Christian.  I think this is gonna be a REALLY interesting situation to watch develop....
   
  What else we got after that?  Well, I guess looking at the above few paragraphs, and noticing how intertwined some of the stuff is, we might as well mention that Factional Warfare is something we might keep an eye on heading into Survivor Series.  If, pleasepleasplease, they don't rush ahead with Orton's solo push, then it'd be a simple matter to have the main issues on RAW all coalesce into one big-ass five-on-five match, as is the style of WWE's November PPV.  Maybe Evolution (maybe plus La Resistance?  or if there's time, I'd say plus Edge and one other guy, but I'd rather hold out on that till you can build it up a bit more) taking on a Benoit/Orton/Jericho/Edge/One Other Babyface team; that way you'd still have a couple of other matches you could run on the RAW side (Shelton vs. Christian, a women's match, maybe a tag match).
   
  A few other stories sure to eat up time tonight: me and my man-love for Tajiri dictates that YES, I wanted to see him and Rhyno break up and reprise their kick-ass ECW TV Title feud in WWE, but NO, I do NOT want it to happen until after they've actually ACCOMPLISHED SOMETHING AS A TEAM SO THE BREAK-UP MEANS SOMETHING. So maybe in retrospect, I hope last week's non-televised elimination of Tajiri for that match goes unmentioned and we get back to Rhyno and Tajiri being a kick-ass tag team for at least a few months here...  the women's division is ripe for a major shake-up; I don't think there's anyway you can continue with Stacy Keibler as a contender and she should go back to being eye-candy for another 6 months or so; I'd love to see WWE set us up with a face turn for either Molly or Gail, and either might be do-able after last week's RAW/PPV; I don't have time to fully explain right now, but although Gail'd be the "easy" choice, I wouldn't completely write Molly off as a possible fan favorite...  and lastly, buzzcut Eric Bischoff will probably be throwing his weight around and I'm assuming one of his main goals will be to make life tough for Eugene; maybe as such, Eugene/Regal somehow become the next mini-issue for Snitsky?  I dunno... but I think with Kane out till the Rumble, he'll need something to do until the Next Phase of this story kicks in with the TV Return of Matt Hardy, and last week's match with Eugene could be used as the basis for further stuff among those three. The alternative would be using Coach maybe, which isn't quite so enthralling, since we've done that on PPV already.  Anyway, point is: expect Eric Bischoff to be pissed off and bringing every ounce of douchebaggery he's got to the table tonight. He shan't be a happy camper.
   
  Oh, and we do this for The Rock every time RAW's in southern California... so perhaps it's appropriate to do it for Mick Foley on the occasion of a new book of his coming out tomorrow: I know of nothing concrete, but to get some hype in for the book, it wouldn't stun me to see Foley carted out for some cool little one-off appearance. Maybe, building on comments above, something with Flair and/or Orton (in my dream world, Mick would come out and declare something like "You two can have each other; Flair, you're no legend, and Orton, you're no legend killer" forcing them to team up and BOTH get booed for attacking Mick and forcing a Benoit or Jericho or Shelton or even an Al Snow to come to the rescue, thereby jumpstarting the New Heel Evolution scenario and giving Mick something he can sink his teeth into if he feel like returning for a more extended run around WM21 time; I would quite possibly be sporting -- metaphorical -- half-wood at that point).  Or maybe Mick's new kids book just gets mention in the crawler across the bottom of the screen and that's it.  I dunno. But SOME kind of Mick emphasis wouldn't be out of place tonight given the impending book release.
   
  So check out RAW tonight to see how WWE shuffles its deck heading into the Survivor Series PPV... or, as I always do, I can also encourage you to just spend your time doing whatever it is you do on Mondays, and just let OO cover you, wrestling-wise, with the Finest RAW Recap In The Land, which will be published here tomorrow. With me back at the helm again.  Hopefully, with my good mood still intact!
   
  
• Last week's SD! rating took a hit, dropping about a third of a point from the week before and delivering a 3.2 broadcast rating. Obviously, the deciding Game 7 in the NLCS was probably a huge factor there.
   
  Some other thoughts about the show:
   
  By and large, it was a good one; I think when it bottomed out, it didn't do so as badly as the week before (for instance, the Heidenriech bit this week was reasonably effective, I guess, if still kinda bleh, since all anybody wants is for Taker to get back and squash Little Johnny back to OVW).  Although by that token, when it peaked (with the strongly-told tale of Booker's face-turn and pinning of JBL) it still came up a bit short of the previous week's highlights (the kick-ass battle royal finish).  
   
  Just a very steady show, and one that also put the ducks on the pond for the upcoming few weeks.  I'm loving the idea of Booker T getting the WWE Title push, and hopefully TAKING the title, too; you remember everything I said about the Taker/JBL title feud and how it was dumb because the only good thing in the entire world about JBL having that damned thing is The Day He Loses It, and how giving Taker that win would be virtually meaningless?  Well, at the time I couched it as saying Eddie should be the one who eventually gets that title off JBL, but now I can also say that I wouldn't mind seeing a rehabilitated Babyface T get that job.  I think that'll be a nice little story to watch play out, and even if Booker winds up being a transitional champ (like to get the title onto Angle), it'll be a nice little final coup for him as people start talking about his possible retirement at the conclusion of his existing WWE contract. 
   
  Also pretty good: Chavo's return speech, which started out kinda cool (temperature-wise, I mean; the heat didn't show up till later) but which picked up by the end. Who'da thunk it? A Cruiserweight Feud that DOESN'T involve the CW Title! And speaking of Cool, Carlito continues to be perfectly booked, and continues to perform his character with an over-the-top enthusiasm that ALMOST threatens to make him a babyface, except that you can see the other shoe waiting to drop on this "John Cena Stabbing" storyline, and when it does, Carlito's "cool appeal" will get trumped by Cena's.  But you know what, unless Cena quits with the lame-ass poop and fag jokes and Gets Clever Again, I just might have to throw in with OO's Favorite Son, Carlito cOOl.  Perhaps he'll hold on to the US Title, and bOOker T will win the WWE Title, and truly, we will have evidence that OO is the place to be for Wrestling Coverage on the Internet!
   
  Anyway, nice overall outing by SD!; it was a really close call between it and RAW last week, but I think by virtue of leading into a PPV, I gave the slightest of mental edges to RAW's excellent heel push for Edge over SD!'s babyface push of Booker. Even though they pissed that momentum away the next night be inexplicably headlining with Orton/Flair, I think Edge still had the biggest, most newsworthy week, which puts RAW over the top.  Barely.  SD! continues to be EXTREMELY watchable, though, so I hope y'all are back on board by now...
   
  
• It's actually pretty interesting that I thought both RAW and SD! put on good (if not necessarily great) shows last week, cuz it turns out that apparently there was a lot of chaos and confusion surrounding the formats for the shows.  Or, at the very least, for RAW's...
   
  The switched-up tapings schedule (SD! on Sunday, RAW still live on Monday, then a PPV on Tuesday) started the problems, and delayed some of the attention that normally would have been given to RAW rewrites at the highest level. And then Vince McMahon was absent from the building until nearly showtime on Monday night for reasons I'm not sure of, meaning that there was another bottleneck on rewrites/approvals of the final format. Seemed to work out OK, though; I'm sure a lot of that is just the pre-planning that happened earlier in the week/weekend, but I guess also credit to that next level of lieutenants and what-not who I seem to have spent the last 2 weeks taking veiled shots at...  unless holding it all together was Pat Patterson's doing, in which case, I guess I'd unveil those shots!  
   
  Whatever: moral of the story is that tapings last week could have been a trainwreck, and they weren't.  At least, I didn't think so.  I liked both shows.
   
  
• I do believe Edge got married over the weekend, so congrats to him!
   
  His honeymoon will consist of working 4 nights a week for the foreseeable future, so here's hoping he was maybe thinking ahead and got some vacationing and sweet, sweet loving out of the way while he was sitting at home with his fiancée for 13 months back a while ago... cuz work beckons, my friend; RAW needs another heel, and heels don't take time off for newlywed snuggling, dammit!
   
  
• An interesting little story:
   
  Apparently, a Kurt Angle for Chris Benoit trade was floated past WWE higher-ups about 2 weeks ago.  The idea was presented by Paul Heyman, and apparently it had two main goals: (1) to set RAW up with a Shawn Michaels vs. Kurt Angle feud for WrestleMania 21, and (2) to get Angle out of the SD! locker room, where apparently the heat on him and his newly political ways is growing.
   
  And here's what I can tell you now: by the time I heard about this on Thursday, it was already a dead issue, shot down by Vince/Steph/et al, and I think rightly so.  Even before any uncertainty that might have arisen due to Shawn's need for knee surgery, I don't think it would have been a wise play.
   
  Here's my thinking:  for one, as tantalizing as HBK/Angle is (it's probably one of the most intriguing options for Shawn that he has NOT yet gotten to do since his return, actually), I don't think it's worth the minuses that the trade would bring along with it.  Here, mostly I'm thinking about the new Team Angle, and how if they didn't go along with Kurt, it'd basically be relegating Luther and Jindrak back to OVW (and for Jindrak, that'd be failed push #1093, and the guy'll be 40 before he catches on for good; and for Luther, hell, of WWE's new guys this year, I'm kinda liking what I see out of Luther, who is stronger promo-wise than I'd have guess and doesn't quite suck in the ring).  And if Team Angle DID go with Kurt in the trade, well, what's the point?  RAW already has an Evolution, they don't need two.  SD! DOES need one.  So that's one aspect to it...
   
  The other is this: I'd have actually traded Edge back to SD! if I was gonna trade anyone. Because what they'll need here soon is a heel, since JBL's gonna be waning and possibly sliding into a niche where he could be a very amusing tag/US title guy with his gimmick (but not stinking up the joint with 25 minute main event matches).  And Chris Benoit may be many things, but I don't know how effective he'd be as a heel; keep in mind as recently as 3 months ago, I WOULD have considered a heel turn for Benoit, but I've since cooled my jets on that, and think that after Edge, Shawn is actually the best choice for a guy to go villain since I think he knows more how to press the right buttons and when necessary play the chickenshit and all that.  All Benoit can do is kick ass and hope that somebody else doing his talking for him can trick fans into booing a bad-ass.
   
  So I think, although I gather that this story has started making the rounds elsewhere over the weekend and a lot of fans are pissed that it got vetoed, that WWE made the right call here.  I'm not saying there aren't trades I'd make or cross-brand matches I'd like to see or anything like that... I'm just saying that this one doesn't necessarily strike me as the one blockbuster that I'd prefer to make myself.
   
  
• Ummm, so TNA is gonna be getting a bit of a boost from FSN leading into the Victory Road PPV that takes place in 2 weeks...  they'll be getting prime time exposure on (I believe) TWO editions of the Best Damned Sports Show Period over the next couple weeks.
   
  The way it was explained to me? Well, kids, I hate to be a dickhead, but let's just say that unless your answer to the question "So how would you fix TNA?" was "Tom Arnold and midgets," you probably really won't be too enthralled by what TNA's got in store.  And keep in mind, I say that as a card-carrying member of Al Snow's Midgets Make Everything Funnier Club... it's just that, in this case, TNA needs a lot more than midgets to really energize me to care about the product they've been putting out there.
   
  I know the tapings for the Best Damned stuff are later this week, and if I think to ask about the air-dates for the shows, I'll pass those along for you, too, on Wednesday... but maybe just keep an eye out on your local Fox Sports affiliate in case it slips my mind.
   
  As for the PPV build-up and the weekly "Impact" show, you can also expect appearances by Kevin Nash and Scott Hall (either taped or live in the arena, I'm not sure which), but given how pointlessly silly Roddy Piper's appearances have been in the last month, I wouldn't really get too excited.  TNA is under the impression that having big names show up to do nothing will sell PPVs, I guess.  I dunno...  I'm not saying I could do any BETTER given the resources TNA has at its disposal, but I think I'd at least be trying to do things a little DIFFERENT. 
   
  I don't want to get into a whole big thing here, though, so let's just wrap it up by saying: TNA fans, keep an eye out for what passes for a "media blitz" the next few weeks. And anyone else who shares my basic temperament when it comes to b-level wrestling (be it TNA or Heat or whatever), don't worry, I'll try not to waste too much of your time or my breath ranting over that span, and will stick to the stuff we all find interesting.
   
  FIN.
   
  
• I don't know if I'll take the time to do it point-by-point on a Slow News Friday, but I do just want to say one quick thing in rebuttal to PyroFalkon's weekend column...
   
  Because he goes out of his way to note that there are more similarities between our viewpoints than differences, but taking those minor differences and whipping them up into one over-riding thesis, I think we come up with one singular MAJOR divergence of opinion.
   
  I took however many dozens of kilobytes to rant against the "dumbening" of the WWE product.  PF didn't necessarily dispute any aspect of the "dumbening," but rather took the stance that "OK, this IS happening like Rick says, but it's not really such an awful thing. WWE's in business to please the masses, not the internet, so they'll just keep it simple. So get used to it."
   
  I guess my re-rebuttal is simply the unspoken (but I'd thought UNDERSTOOD) element of my original column: that I, myself, do not accept pop culture's affection for mediocrity or its tolerance of the out-right awful.  And I don't think there's anything wrong with that.  I prefer that if I invest my time and energy into something, that it be truly good and clever and interesting, and I wish America At Large would grow a frontal lobe and join me in exercising judgment on your TV shows, your music, your movies, and all that.  I think I've said it before, and it SHOULD have been an understood precept of my "Dumb Ain't Cool" column: I do not suffer crap lightly.  Sorry, but 95% of people are idiots, and the result, to me, seems to be that 95% of pop culture is idiotic.  [And keep it to yourself, retarded participants in pop culture: I *know* that this stance relegates me to a life where my most loyal companionship will come from My Own Inflated Sense of Superiority. Just know that I don't consider that so awful, and am more than happy to leave you to drink deeply from the ocean of distressingly average and uninteresting people, places, and things that I once labeled in song as "Extra Medium." I may be compelled to pop in for a sip of it every now and again, but by and large, you folks can have it.]
  
  So while I grant that WWE is well within their rights to serve up whatever they want to serve up, I will NOT forfeit my right to point out when it's lazy, when it sucks, and when there is ample evidence to support a thesis that it DOESN'T HAVE TO. Because I may tolerate a bit more crap from wrestling than I do from sitcoms and pop music and stuff, just cuz of the long-standing appreciation I have for the form; but it's NOT a bottomless well of tolerance.  And there's really no reason for WWE to even be testing me, except for the fact that they clearly don't give a shit, since they are without competition at this time and expect that we'll all keep coming back for more.
   
  Except that's not QUITE true, now is it?  Not only was the pro wrestling product quite possibly the most entertaining it had even been during a window from 1997-2002, but that period also corresponded to a period of making money hand over fist because the product appealed to more than just some core wrestling audience of slack-jawed adolescents.  So not only do I retain my right to advocate for the days  of a slightly more "grown-up" wrestling product, one that doesn't insult our intelligence with its cookie-cutter simplicity, I'd suggest that WWE should, if nothing else, have a fetish of their own: FOR MAKING MONEY.  And for running house shows attended by more than 1500 fans, and for TV ratings that aren't less than half of what they were 5 years ago, and so on and so forth. WWE's stubbornness in pushing its own vision of a Sports Entertainment product hasn't just annoyed ME (or other internet jack-offs like me), it has -- regardless of idiotic internally-held WWE beliefs about TV network jumps and other stuff -- caused over half its audience to evaporate.  Piss some weirdo like me off? OK fine... but what happens when the weirdo apparently shares tastes with the mainstream for once in his sick, twisted life?  I'll tell you what:  WWE is SO lame that it can't even appeal to a stunted populace that actually thinks "The Swan" is a good idea for a TV show.  ZING~!  Game, Set, Match to The Rick~!
   
  Perhaps I jest and hyperbolize slightly.  But to summarize, I distill my rebuttal down to this: PyroFalkon's well-written piece suggests a tolerance of the product that I don't have.  His is the more reasonable, level-headed stance, and I thought he presented it eloquently; he's probably a nicer guy than me and easier to get along with and whatnot, too.  But me, I'm an asshole, and I won't apologize for calling a spade a spade; I won't just "get used to it," I'm gonna be a miserable SOB who sometimes feels the need to let everybody get a nice long look at his sandy vagina. I won't insist that you all learn from me (although that'd be cool), but I think if you're still reading me by this point, you pretty much have to deal with me.
   
  Or maybe you don't.  That's why I have other people writing here, too!  Pick up sides, whatever you want, I don't care!  Just keep on clicking your asses off, and I'm happy!
   
  
• And on that note, I'm outta here.  See you tomorrow with the RAW Recap.