(April, 2003: I created this document in 1999 and updated it over the next year. I considered leaving it as such, to stand as a time capsule from that era. But then there was the question of the links. I hate having stale links. So I figured I'd update the links and find new ones. As a nod to the passage of time, I decided to add comments like this one, standing slightly apart from the main text. In these asides, I'll put some updates.

So let's get back to the text.)

When people spread across the world experience something in common, when they gather together to compare reactions, fandom may result.

Scary, huh?

So here's my one-fiftieth of a dollar, with an observation or two and some links. Your mileage may vary. I don't always get with the program and use insider points of view, but there you are. I hope you find it worth the time it takes to load the page.
My subversive goal is to get the various fan groups to cross-pollenate. So maybe this'll become South Park fans' favorite Sandman page, and WCW fans' favorite place for American Gothic links..

But I notice some cultural bleed-through happening since I first posted this document. For instance, Neil Gaiman wrote a Babylon 5 episode, WCW's Bret Hart appeared on Mad TV and Gary Cole (Lucas Buck in American Gothic) starred in the B5 spinoff Crusade ...

Link	Notes	Rating A	Rating B
Xavier Doom's Slayground	"The lies are in here." Newsboard items are not all that new, but what the hey, there is current stuff to be found, plus voice balloon annotations on pics. But the big feature is historical stuff, the Halls of Shame.	808.92	1323.65
Prowrestling.Com	Lots of contributors, overlapping the ones who post to Wrestling Jungle (for one.)	383	1176.73
Speeches	A bunch of Raven speeches from WCW days. Nifty!	600	900
Solies' Vintage Wrestling Newsletter	Over 400 issues ...	721	762.71
SLANDER PAGES What About Raven	Basic bio of the Raven character.	481	732.71
2000 WCW PPV Results	"As of this writing (12/19/2000) I predict that WCW will most likely be no more, or bought out or merged, and this will most likely be the last time you see a full year of WCW PPV Results."	480	720
Official Chris Jericho Home Page	"So the final word in the whole sordid mess is this: Ralphus is gone because he doesn't deserve to associate with me and you people don't deserve to see him!! You both blew it big time and now you're going to have to deal with it!" Yup, the wrestler has a page. Even includes his appearances in comic books.	376	802.4
Vampiro will be patient in WCW	... and he was ... and now WCW's dead ...	360	675
Ric Flair Update	From back when Ric was under suspension for skipping a show.	386	475.42
What about Raven	Includes .WAV sound files.	387.2	450.125
Flair	Bio from '99 or so.	384	450
1wrestling	TURN OFF JAVASCRIPT BEFORE GOING! Slick interface, some news. The Daily Lariat is worth the price of admission.	336	452.72
wcw	Journey back to 1998 ....	385	350.21
CORPSE STEALER'S TAPE TRADING	Site of a guy who trades wrestling tapes. He's also part of a web ring, and this hooks you to that.	384	337.5
WCW Sign Archive	Compilation of signs actual fans held up.	240	360
DDT Digest	If you believe the hit counter, this place doesn't need any more visitors. Show recaps w/pic captures	325	243.55
WWF-era Raven interview	Chatty.	240	270
WIKKED RAVEN QUOTES	Includes WWF-era stuff.	320	180
Slam Sports Wrestling	Canadian newsletter, includes Bret Hart columns.	243	218.13
Syxx	Syxx has since moved on to be X-Pac in the WWF and then the NWA , but this page from his WCW days remains.	155.6	205.42
Dangerous Home Page	Kinda fun.	181.52	168.42
Ric Flair Ate My Balls	Lotsa pix of Naitch, with inserted voice balloons.	48.32	37.875

.. and I thought this was lame:

Link	Notes	Rating A	Rating B
Pro Wrestling Online's News and Rumors	Dang near empty, except for a couple email addresses.	26.6	-27.29

I call it assault ballet. As the ads say, it's where the big boys play. It's Ted Turner's franchise of what's gradually taking over cable TV.

Due to the way performers jump from federation to federation, many of the fellows I comment on here may not be in the WCW at the moment. But wait, and they may yet return.



(April 2003: WCW is dead, but many of the wrestlers still work, in the WWE (formerly WWF) and NWA.)

Garth Ennis wrote a scene in "Hellblazer" in which John Constantine, the hero, is stranded in sort of an afterlife desert. He walks alongside John Kennedy, who is holding the back of his head on with with his right hand. Lots of blood. In the all-caps mode of comic books, Kennedy speaks:


THE WIDESPREAD RUMOR, SPECULATION AND SLANDER THAT HAS OCCURRED SINCE THE INCIDENT IN DALLAS YOU REFER TO, HAS AT ITS CORE THE ASSUMPTION THAT THIS ADMINISTRATION WAS IN SOME WAY THE LAST HOPE FOR FAIRNESS AND DECENCY IN AMERICA.

IT IS THIS ASSUMPTION --MORE ACCURATELY, ACCUSATION THAT HAS KEPT ME IN A PERSONAL, SPIRITUAL AND SPATIAL LIMBO FOR OVER THIRTY YEARS ...

... AND I WOULD THEREFORE LIKE TO TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO DENY THIS ACCUSATION AS STRONGLY AS POSSIBLE.


Garth Ennis writes comic books, he does, he does.

I've visited each of the sites and rated it for loading speed, glossiness, lameness, crispness, oddity, multimedia and level of info. In the link table, highly informative sites have their titles in bold. The "Rating A" and "Rating B" numbers are calculated via arcane formulae by my unique and arbitrary system. It's done by computer, so you know it's gotta be accurate!

If you run into a link that's expired, please tell me!

(And, as an extra, here's some sites I ran into that I just hadda list somewhere!)

Link	Notes	Rating A	Rating B
Ravens Nest	He's a poet, not a wrestler!	25	22.525

Link	Notes	Rating A	Rating B
Garth Ennis	News n stuff, including coming issues of comics.	768	1125
Hellblazer Brasil	Even furriners who speak funny like Ennis' work on Hellblazer, I guess.	406.72	457.875
Bast 's Reviews	"I've more or less given up on reviewing, since th ..... OK, these are still the reviews for .."	254.2	276.3
Dreaming: The Neil Gaiman Page	General stuff, up to date.	160	150
Andy's Preacher Art	B&W images of a dozen or so pages from early in Preacher's run.	153.6	135

"Sandman" is a comic book series, now complete. It's all available in trade paperback and hardcover.

The whole thing was written by Neil Gaiman.

It won a national fantasy award, and I hear they changed the rules to keep that from ever happening again.

Among other characters we meet within these colored pages are Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Augustus, Robespierre, Marco Polo, Emperor Norton I, Cain, Abel, Death, Destiny ...

It even inspired that old Metallica song.

Of course you've heard of South Park by now.

It's the most anally-referential show on commercial television since Hill Street Blues. People at work say, "Oh, my kid loves that show!" It's rated TV-MA(L), the highest one can find on commercial television. So much for the TV rating system. Even the show's creators say it's not for children.

And talk about animation! It looks like bits of construction paper. But somehow, all the kids have a perfect deer-caught-in-the-headlights look. Imagine deeply worried Fisher-Price figures.

Whether it means to or not, it does address real issues and it betrays a down-home sensibility under the depravity. When Jesus wins his boxing match against Satan (who takes a dive), Kyle and Stan shout in unison, "Our savior!"

(This isn't the only fight the Nazarene gets into in South Park. In the non-televised "Spirit of Christmas," he goes after Santa.)

Once there was an immortal, called by some Dream of the Endless. He also went by the name Prince of Stories. But he had no story of his own. At best, he was at the edges of other people's stories, which were themselves on the edge of story.

So he moped. He moped so much, his sister threw a piece of bread at him. He realized that she held the secret to his dilemma. His sister was called Death.

But he couldn't just kill himself -- what sort of story would that make?

Happily for him, a new means of telling stories had evolved as he pondered, the comic book. With it, a new sort of heroic story came into being, the tale of the super hero.

So Dream had a venue and a place to find a nemesis. As a converse of the Western notion of human salvation outside of the world of time, Dream was to enter the world of time.

He started collecting characters from other canons of story, Puck from Faerie by way of Shakespeare, Loki from Norse myth (with a nod to Marvel Comics,) Lucifer (who learned piano) ...

And so he set into motion the events of his own demise and succession.

Some things already have sufficient organized fannage, so I'll just add a dab more.

And in other cases, not a heckuva lot of fandom is there to refer you to.

Raven seems to have posed the question, "How can a person adopt a violent public persona without looking like an idiot?"

So he puts his schtick up front, as he said in almost these words, "For those of you who came in late, I had an abusive childhood." For those of us who didn't come in late, he had video spots where he spouted poetry and such, about alienation and isolation. Actually, as poetry reading by pro wrestlers goes, it wasn't bad.

So that's why he beats people up, the line goes, but it also serves as his alibi for being in such a weird corner of showbiz.

But even this character who started out as a no-bullshit kinda guy can sell his pain like a pro.

He's finally wrestling again, in ECW. Last year as the last schtick when he was in WCW, his mother came and took him back. So we got see home videos of his loathsomely plush home life, with characters that include the ECW wrestler (coincidentally?) called Sandman.

He appears to have stopped whining, which he used to do quite a bit.


(April 2003: He continues to be my favorite wrestler. He went bact to WWF/WWE for a while, but now he's on NWA/TNA. A quintessential Raven moment came recently after a match with Sandman. His face was caked with blood, and he was sitting like a kid in the ring, screaming "I WANT MY TITLE SHOT!")

Take a dash of Harpo, a LOT of Curly, a bit of Redford's looks and add a relatively benign case of Tourette's Syndrome, and you get Ric Flair, the Nature Boy.

He's great at selling whatever other people are dishing out. He can take a slap in the face and make it look like it sent him a few dozen feet, up and over the ropes upside-down, onto the arena floor.

For a while he was allegedly running WCW -- that's the story, since he beat Bischoff. If I were in that position for more-or-less real, the way I'd make Hogan suffer would be to have him wrestle every night, even when it's not broadcast. Twice a night. So you start with Hogan vs. Wrath, then Hogan vs. Meng ....

Then he turned heel. So he insults the fans and ducks fights. When this guy's good, he's good -- but when he's bad, he's great.


I'd thought of linking Flair to references to tricksters, but that's not really him. I settled on Jericho instead.

I've got a notion for a TV sitcom for Flair and Piper. Working title: Senior Circuit. Naturally, they're ex-wrestlers, but Flair's using his talents for insurance fraud. "I don't know how he got there -- I was driving slowly, and he just popped in front of the car!"

The NWO was another faction within WCW, but one that turned into a marketing windfall. I think you can still buy the t-shirts, if you feel the need.

The real purpose of the New World Order was not to keep Hogan from having to Sting or Luger, it was to keep Hogan from having to fight Kevin Nash, Scott Norton or even Bagwell.

For a while, the Wolfpac was behaving nicely and posing as being against the Hogan branch of the NWO. The Wolfpac even got Luger and Sting to join.

But all that fizzled away completely.

Then for a while, the collection of Horace, Vincent, Scott Norton, Bryan Adams and Stevey Ray were pretty entertaining.

More recently, they attempted to reform. Then Jeff Jarrett splintered off and there hasn't been talk about the NWO for several months.


(April 2003: After taking over the WCW, but prior to changing to the WWE, the WWF attempted to resurrect the NWO. It went on for a bit, until most of the main guys got injured.)

In terms of naked devotion to self-promotion, the only industry that seems to compare with pro wrestling is the televangelism biz.

All their broadcast shows are plugs for the pay-per-views. And they structure their plot arcs to peak at the $30 pay-per-views. After the weekend pay-per-view, perhaps the next Monday and Wednesday shows dwell on it, then start things rolling for the next month's pay-per-view.

Oh, and let's not forget the 1-900 number ...

Being Goth looks like it'd be real fun, for maybe a half hour, tops.

Much of it is based on the glorification of the vampire myth. The idea is to grab some of the cachet of oppressed minority groups of past or present, but without actually paying any dues.
But on the other hand, at least it does encourage reading and even civility. .

Oh, I'm sure any wrestler can hurt people, but some of those reactions to pain are just precious in their contrivance.

Hulk Hogan rolls over in the fetal position and works his lower legs in a fluttery way, like a Tex Avery cartoon of a short-legged character hustling along and then tipped over on its face.

Ric Flair can take a small blow and stagger for days.

On the net, there are a billion South Park pages. Here are a few I've run into.

Link	Notes	Rating A	Rating B
Just South of South Park	Concentrates on icons, even for Mac!	384	562.5
Awesome South Park	Basic big page w/semi-official items for sale.	384	562.5
South Park	Hey, here's a different sort of South Park page altogether! Okay, that's misleading... What if I mentioned bikers?	502.72	382.875
Big Gay Al's Big Gay Southpark HomePage	As a buddy of mine in the Air Force used to say, "It takes balls to be a fairy!" Al, get rid of the scrolling banner, hokay? I know it's hard to compete with Geocities' innate tackiness, but jeez ...	263.4	200.46
Beef-Cake	Combines three SP pages.	160	225.25
South Park Chamber of Commerce - Colorado	Evidently there's a REAL "South Park"??	157.1	101.575
Script of South Park written by Dave Burchill	A fan writes up his vision of the South Park kids going to a WWF show.	157.1	76.575
Nose Pickin' Fun!	South Park fan BBS.	120	90

Link	Notes	Rating A	Rating B
Dark Side of the Net Dark and Gothic Comics	Links.	577	687.71
Those Wiccan Waccos	Is there a fnord in your fnuture?	647.252	509.9065
Of Goths of The Darqness	Better than I expected from somebody who spells "dark" with a "q" ... Personal observations and lots of links.	480	500
Under the Sleeping Moon the Wheel of Goth	Tons of links to "What is Goth?" pages.	480	500
Vampire goth fetish etc... Address List	Snail mail addresses, and one or two links.	240	451.8
Me, Simone, and a bottle of goth repellent	Well, does it work?	201.88	180.8455
What Exactly IS "Goth"	Another proclamation of gothness.	225	150
GothdeCoder '98	Insert Goth Code and this decodes it.	127.1	69.075
Death and Sandman Images	Lots and lots of pics.	81	42.71
Helter Skelter	A club review, redone as a term paper.	38.4	45
you can't make me... no one can	A blogger's definition of Goth.	32	9

.. and I thought this was lame:

Link	Notes	Rating A	Rating B
Goth Art	"Whereever there is sadness, there is goth." ... "We are an artistic people." -- "Being a Goth means you have actual thoughts, actual feelings." -- Where's Eric Cartman when you need him?	7.4	0.21

I like the pacing of the stories better in the WCW. I like its format of announcers, and that they bicker.

I don't like some over-the-top WWF stuff that interferes with the willful suspension of disbelief. The use of flamethrowers, for instance. If one is so annoyed at somebody else that one wants to use a potentially deadly weapon, why not just a gun? They're a lot easier to obtain that flamethrowers .... I hope.

I like the way that WCW tries to appeal to everybody from little kids to grandparents. WWF seems to target itself to adolescents. And so you get all that cheesy crap with the Undertaker and such. Not to mention how his followers mark their brows with the roadmap symbol for "picnic grounds" ...

And I am so tired of seeing ANY McMahon on camera!

Pro wrestling brutally lampoons the American industry of celebrity.

Ever wrestler has music that plays when he enters. Few wrestlers seem able to speak in tones below shouting.

One guy, who calls himself "Sting," didn't even wrestle or speak for a year and a half! I started calling him the world's highest-paid mime. He would drop from arena ceilings via a rope and threaten people with a baseball bat.

For that period, he grabbed wholesale from the movie, "The Crow," even to the point of having narration by a young girl's voice.

Then he started talking again and it kinda broke the spell.

In the spring of 2000, Vampiro seemed to try to revive that spookiness, doing a program with Sting that culminated in a semi-flaming dive of about 30 feet.

If you'll recall the argument over that "Piss Christ" bit of art ...

Yes, it was obscene! A statue of a guy being tortured to death? And to use a term Jesse Helms was throwing around at the time, the crucifix is quite the homoerotic sculpture.

However, isn't that the real power of the crucifix, to shock the viewer with the obscenity of humankind's --especially organized humankind's --actions against anybody powerless who tries to speak the truth?

(Not to mention, it's a great way for the Church to terrorize children into belief!)

... and the amazing thing is that this very complex message was funded by the U.S. Government! Is this an enlightened age, or what?

This guy is very funny -- almost as funny as he seems to think he is.

He started in WCW as a blonde haired good guy, Jericho the Lionheart. But then he started reading his own press releases, and his ego grew to legendary proportions.

After all, being a role model to millions of Jerichoholics is a big responsibility! His security guard, Ralphus, looks to be the Larry "Bud" Melman of the late 1990s.

His theme music should be Sheena Easton's "Strut."

Now he's over in WWF, sometimes calling himself Y2J.

You can't make a convincing picture of modern life anymore, because too much of modern life is copyrighted, mostly in the form of corporate icons.

You can't film a realistic "Day In the Life of Danny Average," because nobody can afford the royalties.

I wonder how long it'll be before someone decides to try out the theory that if you cover a horrific act with commercial icons, it becomes invisible to the broadcast newsies.

Perhaps an element of being a self-enclosed world?

Or maybe each piece of fandom is a lens upon the real world -- a lens with a personality?

Link	Notes	Rating A	Rating B
Nick Searcy	Deputy Ben's page!	384	562.5
American Gothic Second Season	Fan fiction.	384	450
Virtual Trinity	Gary Cole played Sheriff Buck (and starred in B5's "Crusade" ...)	360	405
American Gothic - The Virtual Second Season	Yup, fans came up with some episodes for season two.	406.72	345.375
Sci-Fi Channel: American Gothic	The official site for its new home network. It plays a "Someone's at the door" sound at you every time you turn around.	339	316.41
American Gothic Press Conference	"On July 23, 1995, CBS sponsored an American Gothic press conference at Universal Studios following a showing of the pilot episode for television critics. Shaun Cassidy, Sam Raimi, Robert Palm, and Gary Cole were available to answer audience questions."	240	360

I'm intrigued by traveling shows, like carnivals and the religious tent shows as in the movie "Leap of Faith." (The one with Steve Martin.)

Other traveling money machines exist -- trade shows, industry shows, even Precious Moments conventions. I wonder what road show conventions are like. Religious types trying out stage gimmicks alongside arena rockers ...

Attending a WCW event in person is a whole different world. Gone is all the gossiping while the stuff in the ring happens. I kept wanting to turn off the mute on the TV.

So there we were, live, responding to a pre-recorded "Are you ready, New York?" on a big TV screen. Happily, I was able to get home afterward quickly enough to see the replay on TNT. That way I didn't have to miss the simple joy of the announcer as he blurted, "Mongo lives!"

"Profit" was a short-lived show that was on Fox a couple years ago. It was a merciless lampoon of ambition, corporate culture and television itself. Jim Profit would have eaten Dilbert's pointy-haired boss by 8:15 on a Monday morning. And what made it all that more delicious is that he told us what he was going to do before he did it!

If the series hadn't been canceled, he would have risen to the top of the corporate world. Not bad for a fellow who sleeps naked in a cardboard box, eh?

Wow, do I miss it.


Salon has a great article and this graphic.

Link	Notes	Rating A	Rating B
Fish Wishes Profit Page	A spiffy-looking site. The most info I've been able to locate.	966.2	1444.505
SALON Monster in a Box	My fave article.	366	751.26
(Unofficial) Profit Home	Evidently a work in progress when the series was cancelled.	481	512.71
TV series Profit	British person relates the last (lost) episodes ...	385	575.21
Adrian Pasdar Tribute Site - PROFIT	From 2001.	384	562.5
profit	French language site.	384	450
Sami Sihvonen - Jim Profit	Another non-English page.	256	150
Profit	The jumptheshark.com page.	120	90

Okay, I support women's rights to engage in any sport, including wrestling, but I have no desire to watch women hurt each other. That's just the kind of sick, twisted fellow I am.

As to the Nitro Girls -- well, I suppose it's admirable that WCW provides jobs for choreographers with Attention Deficit Disorder. Do I feel like seeing a five minute "profile" of a Nitro girl when I want to see wrestling? No ...

Also, I don't give a fig for WCW Motorsports. Why should I care? Are they shouting at each other? Can we see 'em squirm? No? Then why bother? It's as gratuitous as Gene Scott's horses.

And stun guns. Only one NWO guy found a place to buy one? Very silly and gratuitous.

"Lemme tell you what 'Reservoir Dogs' is really about ..."

Hitman is a genuine DC comic, set in Gotham City, home of Batman. (Oh, have I mentioned Garth Ennis has done some Batman?) Hitman's even puked on Batguy's boots.

Tommy Monahan is Hitman, a paid killer who's gotten telepathy. This helps him in his work.

John McCrea is the penciler, and he does a great job. (I don't think this is the same John McCrea of the band Cake.)

And let us not forget the howlingly great cover with:

Enter Nightfist!       
HE WILL HIT YOU WITH HIS FIST!!

"American Gothic" is a show that was originally on CBS and is now on the "Sci Fi" Network.

It's officially part of the horror genre, subsection Southern US, but at its best it's a dialogue between Good and Evil.

The small town of Trinity is run by Sheriff Lucas Buck. No, he's not your average Southern Lawman. Take a young Clint Eastwood and turn him bad. Bad to supernatural extremes.

The other main player is Caleb Temple, a ten year old kid who turns out to be Lucas' son. His dead sister hangs out with him at times, as an angel.

So the battle is largely for Caleb's future.

If you'll recall the argument over Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" ...

Yes, it was obscene! A statue of a guy being tortured to death?

However, isn't that the real power of the crucifix, to shock the viewer with the obscenity of humankind's --especially organized humankind's --actions against anybody powerless who tries to speak the truth?

(Not to mention, it's a great way for the Church to terrorize children into belief!)

... and the amazing thing is that this very complex message was funded by the U.S. Government! Is this an enlightened age, or what?

Odd fellow. Imagine a couch potato with a really stiff back and a lot of couch potato habits. But somehow, he can do some great maneuvers.

Now that WCW's trying to keep to a G rating, it's no wonder this beer-guzzling cigarette smoker left.

He's great for filling time, 'cuz the Metallica song gets played in its entirety whenever he shows up.


(April 2003: He's been on NWA-TNA as Sandman, but since he doesn't have the Metallica tune to enter by, half his gimmick's gone.)

As the ring commentators argue and describe the match in front of us, about half the chatter is to push the next pay-per-view


There seems to be a tradition of having what seem like practice matches before a PPV, often to reinforce the perception of animosity between the foes.

And after a PPV, there's often a sequel fight that serves as an aftermath. I'm guessing that once they've figured out the pair's moves, why waste the choreography on only one venue?

It's my choice for the Pulitzer Prize.

It lobs a well-deserved turd at all those other "non-denominational" holiday specials. With any luck, it'll become an annual event, and I look forward to seeing it out-score them in the December ratings.

It also raises the point that the sacredness of certain religious symbols is tied to their gross-out factor.

And I love the final scene, with Jesus alone, singing, "Happy birthday to me.."

The audience features people who hold up signs like

"I ENJOY WRESTLING!"

"LARRY 3:16"

"HOGAN FEARS ROGAINE"

Or, while ranting in alleged mortally-offended outrage, a loudmouth starts quoting directly from the Mickey Mouse Club.

Or ...

"It's hard to get ahold of Duggan."

               "That's 'cuz he's over three hundred pounds and he's not all there."

Pro wrestling swipes shamelessly from other parts of pop culture. The WCW has a "Sting," a (white) "Public Enemy" and Lex Luger. They have "3 Count," a boy band who have a song about watching Britney Spears on MTV ...

Each wrestler has his own entry music -- heck some of the suits have entry music.

"Dicks" is one of the most crowdedly weird black and white comic this side of Mark Alan Stamaty's Washingtoon. As with Hitman, John McCrea does the art.

It's the story of two complete screwups from Belfast.

Morpheus always seemed to be a patron for tricksters. By Sandman's telling of it, Morpheus unleashed Loki, Puck and Lucifer into the world.

Link	Notes	Rating A	Rating B
Mad Magazine, Cover to Cover	See what one woman with a scanner can do!	768	1125
Will Elder's Page	Has a pic of the Mad meistro with Jerry Garcia. Even mentions that Terry Gilliam worked with him and Kurtzman on HELP!	406.72	457.875
Mad Magazine: A Media Literacy Primer for the Boomer Generation	I first started paying attention to the news 'cuz of Mad Magazine. I guess I wasn't the only one.	301	412.71
Mad Magazine	Official site.	48	45

When I first ran into Dusty Rhodes, "The American Dream," he was off camera, working the microphone. From his florid commentary, I initially thought he was black, 'cuz he sounded a lot like George Clinton. (Probably all those "mother ship" references.)

Then I saw the dude. Immense, with a huge, egg-shaped head. Circular spectacles and a tiny mouth almost lost in the middle of that huge melon. He looked like a character from EC-era Mad Magazine.

Since then, he's gone to ECW and wrestled again. I miss his commentary.

It's a John Hughes movie, a sequel to "Big."

An Eight-Year-Old boy who gets picked on all the time suddenly gets given the body of a weight lifter.

So he starts acting like Ellen Barkin in "Switch." "Look at this body! Isn't this great?"

Meet Marcus Bagwell, aka "Buff."

He also acts like a bully much of the time, but can be intimidated convincingly.

Serve with salt pork.

(April 2003: I used to describe the takeover of WCW by WWF as "They bought the whole thing, lock, stock and Bagwell.")

Yes, B5 has lots of stuff said about it on the Web and Net already.

I think it's a B5 Usenet venue where I first heard the notion of "Don't post any plot ideas here, lest J.M.S. accidentally run into them!"

Regardless of that, here's what I wanted to happen in Babylon 5: Ivanova becomes Empress Susan I of the Earth Alliance.

Okay, now the main show is officially over. But it was fun while it lasted. And there were plenty of hooks for sequels.

Link	Notes	Rating A	Rating B
CRUSADE GUIDEBOOK (THE SEQUEL TO BABYLON-5)	Associated with "SciFi Ranger." An interesting essay, "The Babylon 5 That Never Was," is a great example of fan thought.	772.2	1142.335
The Lurker's Guide	This is so complete and universally accepted, I count it as official.	604	613.34
Babylon 5 Encyclopedia	Thumbnails of B5 characters and places, including episodes they show up in.	512	375
Babylon 5 - All you need to know	Evidently, this IS by a rocket scientist.. Or at least somebody who knows rocket scientists ...	481	387.71
Welcome to The Station	"The official Babylon 5 flan club."	385	462.71
JMS Posts for May, 1997	Posts from B5's creator. Worth it, if only for this: " Sci-Fi vs. SF...the former is flash-n-dazzle, monsters eating people, ID4, lots of action and not much thought. SF is Blade Runner, the first Alien movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Seconds, Charley, others. Science Fiction means it examines the impact of technology on people, or in some way extrapolates to the future in new and interesting or innovative ways."	420	420
Babylon Project Crusade	More Crusade coverage.	301	412.71
Babylon 5	Fan page -- mostly links.	193	162.71
Babylon 5 UK News	Old UK site.	97	192.71
Babylon 5 Red Sector	No, not the B5 fanclub for Marxists, this is a site for the roleplaying game.	151	137.71
the Abyss: Welcome to Babylon 5	Nothing special.	102.4	75
Galactic Gateway	Lyta Alexander and Kosh have their own domain in real life. Yikes! There's a South Park-ish drawing of Patricia!	69.1	76.995
Superdeformed Babylon 5	In an era long ago, I began to load this page ... Now that all the thumbnails to link to all the other sites have finally completed, I am older, if not wiser.	9.6	12.625

Raven also seems to get into being hurt, but the champion of that, in my book, is Stevie Richards. Where Raven wears shirts like Sandman
ones, Stevie Richards sports Stryper cutoffs.

And let's not forget Diamond Dallas Page, the best at getting beat up this side of Jim Rockford.

Roddy Piper is great when you hit him on the head. He goes all rubbery, and you can almost see the birds circling his head.

"Why is it that everything today has involved things either going in or coming out of my ass?"

Take early Archie Bunker, add Louie Anderson, shrink to eight years old and subtract the empathy. He's a whiny, spoiled brat. Fans love him.

I still haven't figured out where his accent comes from. He pronounces "here" as "hyah", "authority" as "authoritah" ...

Scott Hall is, well, the perfect thug. He's one of the few wrestlers who works in shorts but doesn't wax his body hair.

He has among the silliest moves when hurt.

He was the dude who ended Goldberg's winning streak with what they claim was an electric stun gun.


Fan reportage has it that he's sort of a quiet guy in real life..

The second place I heard the "Don't make any suggestions, 'cuz HE might be listening!" was in a Terry Pratchett newsgroup.

I wonder if this makes an author feel excluded from all the fun commentary.

"I'm sorry, but I won't read anything except through an agent."

Hmmm ... When will people begin posting to UseNet via agents?

Well, Neil's written a lot of non-Sandman stuff, and I'm less a fan of much of it. I mean, it's all pretty good, but it just doesn't grab me in the same way.

Also, Sandman is a complete thing now, so we can regard it as a single object to talk about.

Simple, eh?

Yes, professional wrestling is fixed. Only the youngest fans don't know this.

But so is almost every movie you've ever seen. And every ballet.

It's as if the Three Stooges had sixty members.

It's cartoon violence accompanied with gossip.

Literally? Well ...

It's my favorite interpretation.

That's what's so great about Sandman --like all the great story cycles of the past, a lot of the fun is in the interpretation. I think this is going to be around for a long time.

Here's a quote I just read, from Lewis Hyde's new book, Trickster Makes This World:

"There is no way to suppress change, the story says, not even in heaven; there only a choice between a way of living that allows constant, if gradual, alterations and a way of living that combines great control and cataclysmic upheavals. Those who panic and bind the trickster choose the latter path. It would be better to learn to play with him, better especially to develop styles (cultural, spiritual, artistic) that allow some commerce with accident, and some acceptance of the changes contingency will always engender."

(Of course, this is in reference to another (or is it?) tale concerning Loki bringing about Ragnarok.)

Kenny dies just about every episode. But don't worry, you can't hear what he's saying, anyway!

In one -- the one where he's hit by the Mir space station -- he rises from the grave, but be not afraid, for a statue falls upon him. And then a plane crashes onto the statue.

The cumulative effect is damned eerie.


(April 2003: In a later season, they killed off Kenny for good. Then there was a many-episode story arc where Cartman mistook Kenny's ashes for chocolate milk powder and drank him. Kenny's soul inhabited Cartman, burting forth every so often.

Then finally, Kenny came back. Now he doesn't die every episode.)