Link roundup

1. From an article at Grantland about WWE wrestlers not having union protection:

Jesse Ventura tried to organize a union in the 1980s6 but, according to the New York Times, "found it hard to find wrestlers willing to join him." When he later sued the WWF to reclaim royalties he thought were owed him (Ventura eventually won a more than $800,000 judgment), it was revealed in the proceedings that Hulk Hogan ratted out his union scheme to Vince McMahon. It's hard to imagine a more blatant example of a top star protecting his status by sabotaging collective action.

2. Two interesting articles by Walter Russell Mead: politics in Thailand (which has an Office of Prevention and Suppression of Information Technology Crimes); China's trouble in Burma.

3. NPR:

It's 1940. The Nazis have taken Copenhagen. They are literally marching through the streets, and physicist Niels Bohr has just hours, maybe minutes, to make two Nobel Prize medals disappear.

These medals are made of 23-karat gold. They are heavy to handle, and being shiny and inscribed, they are noticeable. The Nazis have declared no gold shall leave Germany, but two Nobel laureates, one of Jewish descent, the other an opponent of the National Socialists, have quietly sent their medals to Bohr's Institute of Theoretical Physics, for protection. Their act is probably a capital offense — if the Gestapo can find the evidence.

Read on. Via.

4. And speaking of science, "Daniel Shechtman, who has won the chemistry Nobel for discovering quasicrystals, was initially lambasted for 'bringing disgrace' on his research group." "He recalled how Linus Pauling, a colossus of science and a double Nobel laureate, mounted a frightening 'crusade; against him."

WWE champions infographic/poster

WWE champions infographic by Shahed Syed available in high-res here, and on sale as a poster here.

Link roundup

1. From an article on declining websites: Gawker's "traffic has dropped 75 percent this year." (Is this true?)



2. First sentence in a depressing article at Grantland: "Ric Flair has been physically attacked by at least three of his four wives."



3. New preorders at the BBTS: the very cool (and expensive) Batman by Hot Toys, Ms. Marvel Tonner doll, Thanos on throne.

Link roundup

1. Michael Lewis's latest, outstanding article on the financial apocalypse focuses on Germany. It's 17 pages but well worth your time. Here's a sample paragraph:

This preternatural love of rules, almost for their own sake, punctuates German finance as it does German life. As it happens, a story had just broken that a division of a German insurance company called Munich Re, back in June 2007, or just before the crash, had sponsored a party for its best producers that offered not just chicken dinners and nearest-to-the-pin golf competitions but a blowout with prostitutes in a public bath. In finance, high or low, this sort of thing is of course not unusual. What was striking was how organized the German event was. The company tied white and yellow and red armbands to the prostitutes to indicate which ones were available to which men. After each sexual encounter the prostitute received a stamp on her arm, to indicate how often she had been used. The Germans didn’t want just hookers: they wanted hookers with rules.

OK, here's one more:

This is what makes the German case so peculiar. If they had been merely the only big, developed nation with decent financial morals, they would present one sort of picture, of simple rectitude. But they had done something far more peculiar: during the boom German bankers had gone out of their way to get dirty. They lent money to American subprime borrowers, to Irish real-estate barons, to Icelandic banking tycoons to do things that no German would ever do. The German losses are still being toted up, but at last count they stand at $21 billion in the Icelandic banks, $100 billion in Irish banks, $60 billion in various U.S. subprime-backed bonds, and some yet-to-be-determined amount in Greek bonds. The only financial disaster in the last decade German bankers appear to have missed was investing with Bernie Madoff. (Perhaps the only advantage to the German financial system of having no Jews.) In their own country, however, these seemingly crazed bankers behaved with restraint. The German people did not allow them to behave otherwise. It was another case of clean on the outside, dirty on the inside. The German banks that wanted to get a little dirty needed to go abroad to do it.

2. Kristin Tercek's having an art sale.



3. NPR's top 100 science fiction and fantasy novels.



4. Grantland continues to better than I had hoped. Two great articles today: Whether the Blue Jays are cheating; Whether John Cena has it within him to become a WWE villain, and how that change would impact WWE's earnings. (I'd love to see a chart showing how much traffic ESPN has lost to Grantland. I never even visit ESPN.com anymore.)

CM Punk vs. a young John Cena fan on Jimmy Kimmel

Jimmy Kimmel arranged for CM Punk to confront a young John Cena fan.

Last night's episode of Raw

Last night's episode of Raw was the first time I really enjoyed the WWE since Lesnar quit. (Ladies, my wife, who didn't grow up watching wrestling, loved it too.)

It's one wild stunt after another in this match between Sin Cara and Evan Bourne (you can skip the first three minutes):



And here's one of CM Punk's compelling speeches, in which he rips the WWE and Vince McMahon and The Rock:



And the earlier battle of words with Shawn Michaels (there to promote his new show for the Outdoor Network). CM Punk absolutely dominates the arena:

Link roundup

1. Apparently no one knows how long lobsters can live, or how large they can get. Via.

2. From David Shoemaker's latest excellent article about the WWE:

The dynamic here is important: Orton looks like a champion, and has the potential to be this era's transcendent star, but hasn't put it all together. Christian looks like he should be cheering from the eighth row and so doesn't have the unequivocal support of the WWE front office that Orton enjoys, despite the fact that the audience loves him. Orton was imported to the Friday Night Smackdown brand to be its top star, so Christian, despite his incumbency, was turned heel to make room. The Internet, it should be said, hates Orton and loves Christian; live crowds have tended to be more appropriately disposed. It will probably be a great match, not least for Christian's entertaining crowd-baiting heel shtick (being so recently on the side of the angels, he has to work hard to get booed, and he works very, very hard), but also because both guys can absolutely go and have shown great chemistry in recent weeks.

3. "The little town of Juzcar in Spain has been painted blue for the Smurf movie." (It looks pretty good, actually.)

Link roundup

1. One of Drew Magary's readers talks about meeting Randy Savage:

We were met backstage by some WWF people who were leading us into the locker room area, and we were brought to Randy to say hello. There were a bunch of other wrestlers around, which was really cool but there was one problem: the good guys were hanging out and being cordial to the bad guys! Seeing good guys like Brett Hart sharing laughs with bad guys like Jake "The Snake" Roberts was almost traumatic to see; like seeing your Dad french kiss your aunt. It simply wasn't supposed to happen.

I was sad, scared and confused. I gathered up the courage to ask why the Good Guys were friends with the Bad Guys. Randy said, "We're not. We're just tricking them. You'll see."

After this, a WWF rep was showing us some other areas of the backstage. I don't remember what we saw, but I know when we circled back to the area where Randy was, all of the wrestlers I had seen before were back in character. Bad guys were yelling at Good Guys about how they were going to kick their butt and Good Guys were holding each other back from attacking the bad guys.

This. Was. Awesome. It IS real! Of course it is!

Randy didn't know me too well, but he cared enough about a young fan and professional wrestling to keep the illusion and innocence alive.

2. Crooked forest. Via.

3. If you've experienced problems commenting, there's apparently a problem affecting some users. (It'll be pretty sad if Blogger stops being reliable - - that's really all it has going for it.)

Link roundup

1. Long article summarizing Randy Savage's career with a truly disturbing claim about his treatment of Miss Elizabeth.

2. Really interesting Tumblr page interface.

3. Floating lanterns. Via.

Plush Randy the Macho Man (plus more)

Plush Randy the Macho Man by K&B creations, who has various plush characters on sale at Etsy.

Here he is being very funny on Arsenio Hall in 1992:



Via.

Relatedly: An overview of Ms. Elizabeth's life.

Wrestling magazine covers

Great collection of wrestling magazine covers (some are very bloody).

Link roundup

1. Excellent overview of the Undertaker's WWE career, including this:

In 2006 The Undertaker was feuding with Randy Orton and his proxy (and father), '80s fixture "Cowboy" Bob Orton. (The Orton-'Taker match at WrestleMania 21, incidentally, was the first to use The Undertaker's undefeated streak as part of the storyline. After last night, his streak now stands at 19 matches.) In one match, an aggrieved 'Taker took it to Orton père, bloodying him badly. Later, off screen, Calaway found out that Bob had once tested positive for hepatitis and that nobody had thought to mention it to him before the two shared a bloodbath. Calaway was justifiably incensed, and the elder Orton was soon sent packing.

2. Jim Shooter has been posting one great anecdote after another. For example:

The San Diego Comic Con used to do this thing where artists would do drawings on stage, and then auction them off to raise money for the con. I remember Jack Katz had set a minimum bid on his of $200, and somebody actually paid $200 for it. Then the auctioneer gets this wonderful, huge drawing of Captain America that Jack had been drawing live on stage, and the auctioneer looks at it and says, “Am I bid $5?” I was so offended; it just cut me like a knife. He, like a lot of fans, didn’t like Jack’s work at that point, and that was his honest assessment of what somebody might pay for this.

And another:

The road that led to Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars actually began when Kenner Toys licensed the DC Universe for a boys’ action figure line. Their competitor, Mattel, already had their He-Man action figure line, which was doing very well, but wanted to hedge the bet in case comic book character action figures became the rage. So, they came to Marvel to talk about licensing our characters. One thing they demanded of us was an “event,” a special publication or series to help launch the toy line. I offered an idea that was suggested by a dozen or so correspondents -- usually younger ones -- in the fan mail every day: one big, epic story with all (or many) of the heroes and villains in it. Everyone agreed.

We went through a number of ideas for names for the toy line and series. Mattel’s focus group tests indicated that kids reacted positively to the words “wars” and “secret.” Okay.

Mattel had a number of other requirements. Doctor Doom, they said, looked too medieval. His armor would have to be made more high-tech. So would Iron Man’s, because their focus groups indicated that kids reacted positively...etc. Okay.

3. In 2010, 186 restaurants in Florida were cited for mislabeling their fish. Via.

*Buy Secret Wars toys at eBay.

Mesmerizing wrestling finishing move

This wrestler's finishing move is hypnotizing his opponents, and then breakdancing (poorly). It's apparently Combat Zone Wrestler The Osirian Portal. (His poor opponents sure have to pretend to be mesmerized for an awfully long time.) Via.

*Buy WWE: Satan's Prison - The Anthology of the Elimination Chamber at Amazon.

Giant female wrestler takes over news broadcast

It's like the return of Terry Tate, office linebacker, but even better - - watch Isis the 6'9" wrestler help with the weather report, and slap some sense into the staff.

Link roundup

1. Fascinating look at the life of prowrestler Ravishing Rick Rude.

2. From a lengthy review of the game Darksiders, this meditation on the original Legend of Zelda game:

Zelda is not a game in the spirit of Adventure, even though it contains bats, swords, keys, castles, and, eventually, chickens. Its main deviation from Adventure is that the vast majority of the player participation part is in trying to discover what they are supposed to be doing, and where things are. Zelda, if anything, and possibly somewhat ironically, is the console’s best attempt at the Adventure genre, as beaten to death by Roberta Williams et al. You start on a screen, there is a hole. You navigate into the hole. You are given a thing. The thing is used to stab. Never are you given the kind of information you might logically need to progress, such as ‘someone sells a candle, it shoots the fire, senor leenk, perhaps some booshes will burn?’ No, that never happens. What you have, instead, is a world built with layer after layer of proudly standing contradictions. If a set of statues appear to be inert, then, eventually, on some screen, one of them will start to move if you stand near it. Presumably, when it moves, it reveals stairs, though, I can’t recall if every statue that came alive was guarding stairs or if it was just a couple of them, and therefore, the other stood as a kind of weak and ambiguous hint that, if you want a statue to move, it might. If, from that, you learn that, sometimes, stairs may be hiding under something that is not stairs, then you are smarter than me. The first time you had access to a bomb it seemed like an awkard weapon. How would you know that the 4th tile from the left on some clifface could be a door?

We now make assumptions about bombs and walls, and, granted, in those days, there was a lexicon of bizarre icons that we documented as we explored the NES. Balloons could be worth points, they could also be fragile. If you had a balloon, then you needed to protect it. If the enemy had a balloon, it was a weak point. If a balloon was unattended, you need to capture it. The entry for balloon in the encyclopedia of gaming was one of the easier, less obtuse examples, and it was still somewhat of a mystery. The entry for bomb took up page after page, and ranged from a specific key that opened a very particular place, to a dangerous thing not to be touched, to a tool that could backfire on you, to any number of other uses. In wrecking crew, bombs not only didn’t break anything, they interfered with your attempts to break things. Bombs could even be worth points and have no function at all. A bomb, really, could be anything. It’s not that the Zeldas bomb is internally inconsistent, just that, now, we know what bombs are for. They’re for feeding to triceratops, and widening cracks. A bomb, now, is defined to within an inch of its life in the mythology of the zelda context, which, as mentioned before, does not really exist.

3. Cool animated gif of the monolith from 2001.

*Buy 2001 posters at Amazon.

Undertaker/Lesnar staredown

The Undertaker was interviewed after Brock Lesnar's MMA loss on Saturday and had a quick staredown with Lesnar.

Link roundup

1. Great article on Owen Hart's wrestling career. It includes a list of wrestlers that died in the ring.

2. If Alfred was Batman.

3. New York's drinking water is filled with tiny shrimp. (I do not want to know whether that's true of Los Angeles, also.)

Link roundup

1. The latest, excellent installment of Deadspin's Dead Wrestler of the Week column.

2. Gawker's working overtime humiliating the director of Apple's app store.

3. "Do you feel like your cell phone's text message bill is getting higher every month? You're not alone. By some accounts, text messages cost more per megabyte to send than do messages from outer space to Earth. But you can email and Instant Message texts to phones for free. Here's how."

Meet the Shockmaster

Chris Sims accurately describes the Shockmaster's introduction as the greatest introduction of a wrestler ever. Wikipedia explains:

After departing from the WWF, Ottman would find himself the center of the most embarrassing moment in wrestling history. World Championship Wrestling (WCW) had recently signed Ottman, and he was to make his debut in a match alongside Sting, Dustin Rhodes, and Davey Boy Smith. He would be their mystery partner in the upcoming eight-man tag match against the heel team composed of Sid Vicious, Big Van Vader, and Harlem Heat at Fall Brawl.

On "A Flair for the Gold", (an interview segment hosted by Ric Flair) in front of a live audience at Clash of the Champions XXIV, Sting and Smith were confronted by Sid and Harlem Heat, demanding to know the identity of their new partner. Sting exclaimed , "All I can say is, he is going to "shock" the world, because he is none other than... The Shockmaster!!" The camera zoomed in on a particular section of the set where two torches set off a small pyrotechnics explosion in front of a sheetrock wall. Ottman was supposed to make a dramatic entrance by crashing through the wall. His new costume consisted of a Star Wars Stormtrooper helmet painted silver and covered in glitter, a pair of jeans, and a long black vest. Instead, in perhaps the most humiliating moment in wrestling history, Ottman tripped over a piece of lumber that was framing the set, causing his helmet to fall off and slide across the floor. As he scrambled to put the helmet back on and get to his feet, Flair audibly exclaimed "Oh, God!". Ottman stood menacingly for a moment in an attempt to salvage the disaster, during which Smith could be heard saying that he "fell flat on his fucking arse!". Dusty Rhodes later revealed on an episode of WWE 24/7's Legends of Wrestling that the piece of lumber previously wasn't there during a successful practice run and it was later put there by David Crockett without informing Ottman.

Ottman walked up to Sid and Harlem Heat, all of whom were visibly struggling to contain their laughter. The interview, which was actually voiced by Ole Anderson, only got worse as Anderson started giggling at the beginning and mistakenly called Sid 'Stid' at one stage. Despite zero crowd reaction and leaving the announcers speechless, WCW decided to continue with the feud.

World Wrestling Entertainment, which now owns all rights to WCW and its video library, has described The Shockmaster's debut as "one of the most unintentionally funny moments in sports-entertainment history," and "a debacle many still consider one of the worst gaffs in the history of sports-entertainment." While Ottman was displeased with the turn of events, he now finds humor in the incident.

And speaking of Chris Sims's encyclopedic knowledge of impossible to believe characters, meet Spider-Man foe Banjo, "a super-powered hillbilly mutated by radioactive waste."

*Buy Stormtrooper helmets at Amazon.

Young Batman (link roundup)

Young Batman apparently photographed by Jonathan May (NSFW). Via these sites.

And a few more links:

1. Rippling place settings act out a scene from American Beauty. Via.

2. Fascinating look at the career of wrestling's The Ultimate Warrior. Specifically, whether he was replaced by an impostor. Sample paragraph:

And so the Ultimate Warrior was back, picking up where he left off. Or was he? If this new man wasn't the old Ultimate Warrior, then who was he? Kerry Von Erich? Jim Powers? Some unknown 6-foot-2 muscleman? After all, the WWF has pulled similar switches over the years. The Killer Bees' whole gimmick was based on their masquerading as one another; there was the Dave/Earl Hebner switcharoo at WrestleMania III; the Undertaker (Mark Calloway) was replaced for a stretch by Brian Lee (known lovingly to fans as "the Underfaker"); Jim Ross brought imposter versions of Diesel and Razor Ramon to RAW after Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, the men who originally played the roles, defected to WCW in 1996.

3. Great write-ups of A.I. (which I hated), and Eyes Wide Shut (which I actually liked). Via.

*Previously: Cheerful images from Kubrick flicks.

*Buy A.I. toys at eBay.