To be honest, I wish more people would aspire to that bare minimum level of intellectual curiosity.  
 

And whether I'm dumb for not being aware of that, or whether the rest of America is dumb FOR knowing it, I just go back to my previous comment: the world would be a better place if people just tried to follow my lead when it comes to basic awareness and intellectual curiosity. A world where, OK, it's good to know that the verdict was "not guilty," but a world where if you spent even one fucking minute watching SUVs driving on highways leading up to the verdict, you are declared legally braindead and jettisoned directly into the sun. Why is Michael Jackson's caravan worthy of an hour's worth of non-stop news coverage? Because some people (I hope none of you) are DUMB ENOUGH TO WATCH IT. Those people must either be retrained or eliminated. 

Wouldn't that be a much happier and more tolerable place in which to live? Where there are more people who actually know Donald Rumsfeld's job title than people who can name the winner of the latest "Survivor? Where there are more people who keep abreast of and have informed opinions about stem cell research, middle east conflict, and this asinine attempt to teach creationism in public schools than people who have seen the new Star Wars six times, have turned "Dancing With the Stars" into a hit TV show for ABC, or take their cues of morality and good citizenship from self-righteous, windbaggy bimbos like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

Also, anybody who has ever one referred to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as "Bradgelina" without also (1) rolling his/her eyeballs, (2) making a "shooting myself in the head with a finger-gun" motion, or (3) simulating a dismissive three-stroke act of masturbation (preferably accompanied by an eye-ball roll, if you're truly an Expert Commentator On The Retardation Of Pop Culture) is obligated to to cram a rusty railroad spike into his/her ear until death occurs.

The Dumbening of America, people: I WILL NOT STAND FOR IT. Neither should you. Remember: I'm Rick Scaia, and I'll finally be age-eligible for the Presidency in 2012!

Until then, I'll keep adding to my already-copious Unelectability by pontificating at length about the dubious hobby that is pro wrestling: 

• We start with a bit about Monday's RAW...
   
  And after about a week-and-a-half where I'm told I was seemingly-giddy to the point of it being almost out-of-character, I'm feeling like I might be back to my old self here. Because WWE was back to its old self. And the two of us: our old selves don't see eye to eye on a lot.
   
  Monday's show was an almost baffling display of half-assery. As I said in yesterday's recap, I refuse to be the kind of ill-informed dickweed who compares RAW to the previous night's ECW PPV. But that said, it's also foolish to deny that WWE had more eyeballs than usual on Sunday night for the ECW PPV, and that some of those eyeballs probably came around looking on Monday night to see what was going on. Shouldn't they have wanted to impress those people?
   
  And in saying that: I'm *not* suggesting impressing them with an "ECW-style" product. Again: that sort of thing is the mating call of the Wild North American Horned Jackoff. What I am suggesting is that RAW be the best RAW it could be. Like it was just 7 days before. When it managed to start strong, maintain your interest throughout, and then also ended strong. Simple, compelling episodic TV. Not a hard thing to do, really. Maybe not as easy as slinging smokes and porn at the Kwik-E-Mart, but with a modicum of creativity and intelligence, it's something that should be quite do-able. It ain't brain surgery or rocket science, dammit.
   
  Instead, this week, we got the strong finish and an intriguing ending... but sandwiched in between was one of the most stultifyingly boring, frustrating, and at time, outright-bad 90 minutes I could conceive of given the previous week's strong lead-in. WWE had to try really hard to come up with that much crap, I'm convinced of that.
   
  I mean, there were so many options; so many so that in Monday's column, I said there might almost be "too much show" for WWE to address everything... and instead, there was so little show that WWE choices for format/pacing meant that at one point, there was nearly a half-hour straight of absolutely unwatchable garbage.
   
  Just off the top of my head: it's inexcusable to not be introducing every single draft pick in the first segment of every show unless you have a VERY good dramatic reason not to. RAW: did not have a good dramatic reason. In fact, their dramatic reason was a load of total horse manure, and Triple H's "I'm going out there in the main event promo to confront whoever this is so that they don't ruin my Hell in the Cell match" logic was one of RAW's many "brick through the TV" elements. Except: I don't destroy my own property, and am not really a violent man. So let's call it a "brick to the head of the WWE Creative Team" moment.
   
  Kurt Angle is too good to not use him for the whole show, if you got him. So put him out there in Segment #1, introduce him, introduce his desire to prove himself as RAW's Top Guy. And THEN, if Kurt says that, it makes perfect sense if HHH wants to interrupt Kurt's appearance (instead of pre-interrupting it for no logical reason other than he's an egomaniac who can't fathom not being the impetus of all storyline advancement). They do their thing, Kurt makes his challenge to Batista, HHH counters by saying he can challenge Batista all he wants, but HHH is gonna be the champ after Vengeance, and before you know it, they've eaten up 12 minutes and set the stage for interesting things to happen.
   
  From there, the show moves on. You do a thing where Batista arrives at the arena to find out that Angle challenged him. You do backstage bits where Batista arrives in his lockerroom to find HHH sitting around (I still don't get why they shook hands last week, but if they're gonna be civil, then fucking USE THAT), telling Dave that "Hey, I know you just got here, but Kurt Angle's been drafted to RAW and he's already running his mouth about you. He wants to take the World Title from you, and says he'll do it just, like, that. And I don't care, do what you gotta do with Kurt, because at Vengeance, it's gonna be ME who takes that World Title from you.... yadda yadda yadda." Dave says "thanks, but I got a match tonight, so get lost." Then you do another backstage bit later, this time with Angle crashing Dave's lockerroom right before his match... and you can have them do an exchange where Kurt gets under Batista's skin a bit; but before it can get violent, Batista does his calm, cool, collected thing and leaves for his match. Batista's match is just a semi-main event squash (hey, in MY booking for RAW, neither the Viscera nor the Kane squash would happen, so I'm allowed ONE of those, aren't I?) against Maven or something. But after Batista wins, Angle swoops in and attacks. But when Batista starts regaining the edge, HHH swoops in and attacks. The two are kicking the shit out of Batista when here comes SHAWN MICHAELS to the rescue. Together, Batista and Michaels fight off Angle/HHH. And then you do the thing where Michaels challenges Angle to a match at Vengeance... but then for the capper on the segment, you have Batista rip the mic out of HBK's hands, mid-sentence, and he challenges Angle to a match right here, next week, to pay him back for tonight's sneak attack. 
   
  Right there: you take all things HHH, Batista, Angle, and Shawn, and you spread them out over the course of the show, spanning probably about 20-25 minutes of TV time and 4 segments. There would be NO HHH/Batista video package in this scheme of things. There would be limited HHH, and he'd be acting logically and within parameters of the storyline, instead of as an uber-character who seems to possess the ability to self-book his own segments. In short, there'd be a lot less Suck, but you'd get to the SAME EXACT PLACE in the end.
   
  Also: how in the blue hell do you not follow-through/pay-off on Victoria's new character? Viscera out, Victoria in. That's easy as pie. I know WWE's pissed off that We Were Right, and They Were Wrong when it came to what kinds of chicks fans want to cheer for, but c'mon: just because nobody buys Spaz as a real legit wrestler is no excuse to rob us of the one half-way interesting female character on your whole show.
   
  And I'd change the Kane/Edge/Lita thing to somehow either make Kane look like a badder-ass (either by upping the level of his competition, or by limiting his violence to some backstage angle) before doing the plonktastic wedding announcement. Hey, I'm not here to rewrite the show exactly how I'd like it: I'm here to tell you that there were WAY better ways to write the show so it ended up in the same place that WWE wanted it.
   
  Other than that: in addition to the HHH/Batista package being gone and axing Viscera entirely, the Diva Search thing is also either out or shaved down, and Chris Master can do his boring ass bullshit on Heat. Then everything else plays out exactly the same, just maybe in a slightly different order.
   
  Since Angle/HHH now open the show, you move Stone Cold Court and Shelton/Hassan to the mid-show anchor spot and probably expand the match length just a bit, too. And then you make Cena/Jericho vs. Christian/Tomko your main event, and you build it up better than they did: you still do Jericho's "Hey, Bischoff, watch what I do out there" speech, but you also need to put Christian and Cena to use earlier on the show with promos or a backstage skit. Why you wouldn't use those two guys more effectively is beyond me. And then the climax of the show is Cena pinning Tomko, but Jericho turning heel. You can either fade-to-black on Jericho fondling the WWE belt, or you can even have him do a quick bit of mic work to indicate that he wants a shot at said belt before the end of the show.... either way, if you're gonna turn Jericho heel (which I'm not so sure I agree with, but whatever), then you make it a big deal: you make it the main event, and you make it a cliffhanger, so people will tune in next week to hear WHY Jericho did this and to see what the repercussions are (which is also when Bischoff would announce the change to the three-way match). 
   
  See: it's not hard. There is a version of Monday's show that accomplishes exactly the same things as WWE's version, it just does them without inspiring viewers to FF for vast stretches of time.
   
  I realize that retro-booking RAW doesn't really count as "analysis," but I think if you read between the lines, you'll see exactly where I had my gripes and where there were things that I liked. And plus, you know my fetish for being the guy who doesn't just identify a problem: he also proposes the solution. Well, consider my solution thusly proposed.
   
  And if you need more explicit details and on-topic analysis from Monday's show, well, that's what yesterday's excellent OO RAW Recap is for, now isn't it? You should check it out.
   
  
• Monday's RAW scored a 4.0 cable rating, which finally puts RAW back near it's usual average after three straight sub-par weeks.
   
  In the interest of Full Disclosure: RAW actually steadily gained viewers throughout hour one, and then maintained a very large audience for almost all of Hour Two before peaking in the over-run. Which means that all my talk about 90 "easily FF-able" and "flip-away-from-able" minutes in the middle of the show loses some steam, eh?
   
  Maybe so. Maybe it's just another case of me preferring excellence, and America at large being more than happy to lap up mediocrity. Lord knows there's enough other evidence of that phenomenon. And if so, I'm the mutt, and you are normal, I guess.
   
  But I also don't think I'm too far off-base. Because it's not like RAW scored a big number: it was just a return to the average. It's not like the ratings snowballed for 2-hours: they just held pretty steady once plateauing. And it's not like there aren't other mitigating factors to explain a possible ratings rebound, either.
   
  For one: no NBA basketball for the first Monday in 3 weeks. That was almost surely a drain on RAW's ratings in the key young male demographic. And for two: like I said above, interest may have been elevated by the ECW PPV, which is projected to topple Royal Rumble as WWE's #2 PPV of the year so far. If checking out the ECW PPV made people more interested in checking out RAW, then it's POSSIBLE that some of those people WERE thinking in terms of "I wonder if ECW will show up again tonight" or something, and just stuck with the 2 hour show in hopes of something cool finally happening.
   
  I dunno for sure what to say. I figure maybe we'll know more NEXT week about whether or not fans liked Monday's show enough to come back for more.... but till then, I thought I'd be upfront and at least let you know that my analysis of RAW's mid-show shittiness does not, on the surface, jibe with RAW's ratings. Oh well....
   
  
• A TON of readers, wanting to boost my spirits or give me a reason to care a bit more about next Monday's RAW suggested something that I had not thought of:
   
  That next week's Edge/Lita wedding would be a PERFECT excuse for Trish Stratus to come back to TV to be a deliciously bitchy thorn in Lita's side.
   
  They raise an excellent point. That WOULD so totally be Trish's MO.
   
  Problem is: can RAW be trusted to handle Babyface Trish properly? I'd hope so: I'd hope there's enough evidence from the past year to show them EXACTLY what needs to be done here. And I'd hope that Trish would continue to be trusted with the same basic level of "Final Edit" that she's been lucky enough to have over most of her segments since she proved herself Smarter Than The Average Bear during the Love Rhombus.
   
  And yet: anytime there is so much Suck condensed into one place, I'm still nervous that it could rub off on somebody who has spent so long acting as Kryptonite to the Suck.
   
  Mostly: I'm worried that if Trish were to return next week, it'd somehow result in her getting more involved in Kane/Edge's issue, instead of just staying focused solely on Lita. Bottom line: there is NO WAY that Trish and Kane, given their past, should be on the same page any time soon. Hell, there should be a one year moratorium before they are even allowed to be in the same BOOK together. Bullshit like Lita and Snitsky making peace suffices (I guess) for retarded camp; but that's just the kind of thing Trish needs to stay away from. 
   
  The best play, if you ask me, is also a simple one... surely, they'll turn the Wedding into a soul-crushingly lame and over-wrought 20 minute segment next week, and following the template of the Kane/Lita wedding, there will probably be 2 or 3 "run-ins." The last one should be Kane, and it should be ultra-violent. 
   
  But one of the earlier ones should be Trish; no need for the ricockulous lingerie from her last wedding crashing, as the white would be even more incongruous than usual. If Trish wants to dress humorously for the occasion, I'd suggest Lita's Slutty Top. You know the one. Because (a) then I wouldn't have to feel guilty about ogling the contents of said top like I do when said contents belong to RAW's Biggest Skank, and (b) it'd be a cheap joke line to do a "fuck you" to Lita about the level of class and decorum that is appropriate at her wedding. But wardrobe isn't even the point: the point is that Trish's patter should just be, "Oh, Lita, hon, you're getting married, and you didn't even let me throw you a Bridal Shower? Don't you remember the fun you had last year when I threw you a baby shower?" You could even punctuate that with Video Footage, except said footage would only serve to remind us that, for reasons indefensible, Molly, Gail, and Jazz no longer have jobs. Then you do some more Grade-A mocking by Trish: basically THE EXACT SAME MATERIAL she used when she was a heel (no watering down, no pandering to the audience, just displaying the sheer force of being both Funny and Right, the same was she did last year when Lita was ostensibly a babyface0.. And then, Trish should leave Edge and Lita sputtering indignantly, get a big pop for her troubles, and not be heard from again as the rest of the Crap goes down.
   
  Then from there, you pick up Lita vs. Trish down the line, keeping it separate from Kane vs. Edge, and make sure that Trish does a Lone Wolf thing. Because nothing would tear my heart out more than for Trish to have to be doing buddy skits with Stacy or Maria or Spaz or the rest of those dimbulbs. She should still be cocky and independent and fetchingly-bitchy, and WWE should trust that we'll love her all the more for it, since she's the first broad in the history of WWE to really back it all up. If they don't do that, they're morons.
   
  Then again: this is the same company that's bringing you Diva Search 2005, so we know what kinds of girls parmesan their pizzas. The kind who think "lap dancing" is a "talent" instead of an "activity that can be competently performed by any non-paraplegic." Nee haw.
   
  But anyway: thanks to everybody who tried to buck my spirits up by putting me in the mood for some Trish. Here's hoping that (a) Trish is feeling well enough to make coming back to TV a plausibility (if she can't be physical, it might be best for her to stay away till she can, otherwise, it would raise the question of why the women's champ is here, but not wrestling... and if you go down that path, then you get ammo for the dolts in the front office who would like to eliminate the women's belt entirely), and that if (a) then (b) that WWE doesn't find some way to really fuck it up.
   
  
• The future of ECW continues to be a hot topic. One of the more convoluted theories I've been reading about in E-mail the past two days has SmackDown! turning into ECW.
   
  And all I can say is: can I have some of what you're drinking?
   
  WWE is already handcuffed enough as it is by UPN... if you think UPN is the place where ECW could exist -- and exist in a form that you and I would enjoy and that would be siginificantly different from the current WWE product -- you can't be living in the same universe as the rest of us.
   
  To me, any talk of a "return of ECW" that does not take into account letting ECW be the REAL ECW should be dismissed immediately. Not because WWE wouldn't do it (on the contrary, they might be willing to try anything if there's a buck in it), but because even if they did, it'd fail and ECW would have to lay fallow for another 4 years before we wash the bad taste out of our mouths and are willing to try again.
   
  Look: could you or I or anybody "fantasy book" a way for ECW to "take over" SmackDown!? Sure... it could be as simple a storyline as all of SD!'s top stars being lotteried over to RAW, and Teddy Long simply not having the tradebait necessary to get them back. Meantime, RAW keeps sending over guys like Benoit, or Tajiri, or whoever, who have ECW experience... and all of a sudden, Teddy Long is short on star power, and Evil Genius Paul Heyman shows up on his doorstep with a proposal: Teddy might be short on stars, but he's long on talent, if only he knew how to showcase it.  So Teddy starts accepting Heyman's help, and SD! starts morphing into ECW... and yee haw, by the fall, on the night when WWE moves to Friday nights, all of a sudden, it's Extreme Championship Wrestling on UPN! ECW on Fridays! On a network in the Viacom Family! It worked so well the first time! Somebody get Cyrus on Speed Dial, since he'll have to become Les Moonves' Personal Assistant or something, who keeps those wild and wooly kids in check so they don't get UPN fined! It'd be beautiful!
   
  Or maybe not.... you see why going down this road doesn't necessarily excite me. It leads you to the exact same place that resulted in ECW becoming far less interesting... which should not be the goal of any ECW revival. A revival should shoot for ECW Circa 1997, not Circa 2000.
   
  And hell, that thing about SD! drafting only ECW-worthy talents might be out the window if the name for this week's draftee that I was hearing on Monday evening is correct. I've again Spoiler-Protected myself, but if it's who I heard 2 days ago, then you can forget about SD! turning into ECW. But I'll either have to wait till tomorrow to find out... or maybe just see if SpoilerGrrrrl Erin Anderson ruins it for me before hand, since she knows who I thought it might be.
   
  Point is: don't go scheming up plots for ECW on UPN. Might WWE try to take some of the elements of ECW and use those to bolster SD!'s roster? Sure, especially since we already know some of the luchadors are expected to land there over the summer and into the fall (already Kid Kash, Psicosis, and Super Crazy worked TV tapings this week), before the NBC/Universal deal kicks in and WWE gets the Telemundo show. But as far as bringing the REAL ECW Ethic to SD!? It just doesn't seem plausible...
   
  
• Now, that said: yes, ECW will live on in some capacity. Preliminary buzz becomes preliminary estimates and basically: WWE is expecting this PPV to have done huge business. And rightly so, since it's the hands-down best PPV in at least 15 months.
   
  But that "some capacity" is much more likely to be expanded home video releases, increased profile on the 24/7 on-demand channel, more publications (including, in the latest word I'm getting, either a book or series of books, which would either be historical in nature or bios of ECW stars with stories to tell), more toys/action figures/collectibles as well as merchandize (again: somebody wants to get me Tazz's FTW baseball jersey, that's one I'd actually wear proudly), a possible video game license, and stuff like that.
   
  To that end, it sounds like Joey Styles is locked in to a WWE contract to do announce work on various projects (home video and 24/7), which is a good thing.
   
  Beyond that: hey, I'd settle for just bi-annual PPVs from ECW, probably. One around summertime like we just had (maybe "Heat Wave" in future years) and then November to Remember later in the year. Maybe mini-tours (8-10 shows, max) commensurate with each PPV to hit all the old ECW markets, too... but a full time, year-round, TV product for ECW? Again: if it was done right, without handcuffs, that'd be great... but since I don't see that happening in the current WWE structure, I'd rather have LESS ECW, but have it be good, than fantasize about there being MORE ECW, but having it be crap.
   
  At best, what I'd suggest is that guys like the Dudleys and Tazz are used to keep the ECW banner flying (on SD! and on RAW) for the other 10 months of the year, just kinda keeping the name out there, selling the merchandise/etc.... but I can't see them ever fully seceding from WWE to create a viable (and authentic) full-time ECW brand.
   
  But on this: I'd be ever so happy to be proven wrong.
   
  
• Also about the ECW PPV: many wrote in telling me I was wrong for crediting Awesome/Tanaka with being an "unscheduled surprise match." They said that WWE did officially announce it at some point late Friday or early Saturday.
   
  Well, to me, they might as well have announced it in Mandarin, since once I published the ECW Preview on Friday, I was pretty much on an internet/wrestling black-out till after the PPV on Sunday, due to a trip to Cincinnati. So that was news to me.... and hell: I liked it better that way, anyway. When Awesome showed up out of the blue, I was shocked, and immediately started salivating over who his opponent might be. When it turned out to be Tanaka, that was, in and of itself, a sweet little moment. And then the match itself was incredible, too... but not knowing made it just a touch sweeter.
   
  Sorry if I misspoke, though. It was honest-to-god ignorance! Nothing even resembling an excuse from me on this one!
   
  
• And while we're still basking in the afterglow of one "off-brand" PPV for a company that doesn't have a TV, we've got another one of the same coming up this weekend...
   
  TNA's "Slammiversary" is Sunday, and marks the company's 3rd anniversary. Thus, the lame title. Seriously: the "Slammiversary" ad came on right after "One Night Stand" on Sunday, and two of my friends burst out in laughter at the title... I guess I'd already been desensitized to it, or something?
   
  But the title's not the important thing. Nor is the lack of a TV show the important thing. The important thing is whether or not TV can put together a compelling three hours of action... and they are working hard to do just that.
   
  Not only do they have the "in-house" talent (the headline match will be a five-man King of the Mountain match for AJ Styles NWA Title), but they are looking to the indies and overseas for flesh things out to make the show seem special. I'm not sure how the negotiations to bring a few puroresu stars in have gone, but I do know that they've locked in ROH's Samoa Joe for a match.... Joe's been ROH's champion for something like a year and a half, if I recall, and is widely regarded as a Pretty Big Deal (there have even been rumors of him talking to WWE), although I was a bit underwhelmed the one time I saw him in person at ROH's Dayton debut, and haven't yet been wowed on the handful of tapes I've seen since then.
   
  But still: TNA's gonna be making this a multi-promotional affair, which is a bit of a rarity and a cool thing for them to do.
   
  And although TNA's loss of TV has resulted in a loss of me being totally aware of TNA's current events, the same cannot be said for OO's Pinch Hitting TNA Expert, Jason Longshore, who will have significantly more detailed information about the Slammiversary card in a PPV Preview that we'll publish here at OO on Friday. Not sure, but I think Jason might also be trying to get together the same crew of Forums Regulars (and TNA fans) to help him out, too, which would be cool.
   
  Check it out later this week....
   
  
• I think that's about all I got today. I need to preserve my strength (and my patience), since chances are I'll have to do the fucking SmackDown! Recap on Friday... and normally, I only have one Good Recap Per Week in me, and RAW sure took me to the limit already. But for you fine people? I'll boot and rally if I have to.
   
  So one way or the other, be it recap or column, I'll see you Friday. Later on....