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Instead of my usual toy column this month
(because it's the end of the year
and pretty much everything is being held back
until the major toy shows in early 2004,) I thought
why not get some things out of the way about 2003.
As always, comments are welcome at the address
above, just remove the nospam before the hotmail.
The year 2003 will be remembered for many things.
The loss of the space
shuttle Columbia, the invasion and subsequent
freeing of the people of Iraq from the hands of
Saddam Hussein, and the capture of Saddam just a
month ago.
The literary juggernaut of Harry
Potter put out its 5th book,
the longest in the series history. At this rate,
Rowling will have the books as long as Battlefield
Earth by the end of the series. World Wrestling
Entertainment put out a series of biographies of
It's wrestlers including Lita, Jerry Lawler, Hulk
Hogan and the one fans wanted for ages, "Stone
Cold" Steve Austin. Among the Internet wrestling
Community, Steve Austin's book is seen as third
best after Mick Foley's two books.
At the movies it was sequel city with a
Tomb Raider sequel, the
sequel of a sequel for Harry Potter, after an 8
year hiatus the Bad Boys, (z) returned in an
explosive sequel and so on. Marvel had three
entrants to the silver screen this year with
Daredevil, X2 X-Men United and The Hulk. Peter
Jackson finally showed us what happened to Gollum's
precious in the final movie of the Lord of the
Rings Trilogy: The Return of the King.
Reality TV had a blossoming year in 2003. Coming
out of the block CBS had
two versions of the Amazing Race as well as
Survivor and one Big Brother. NBC had the gross
out game show/Reality show Fear Factor, along with
Meet My Folks, Dog Eat Dog, Fame and Average Joe
on their schedule. ABC had The Bachelor, The
Bachelorette, Extreme Makeover, The Mole 2 and
Celebrity Mole. Fox had the Paris Hilton (more on
her later) vehicle The Simple Life, American Idol,
American Junior, World Idol, Paradise Hotel and
Temptation Island 2 (or was it 3). MTV, not to be
out done, had another season of The Osbornes along
with Newlyweds-Nick and Jessica (my god, that woman
is so insecure.) There were others on other
networks, but these are the ones that made
headlines this year.
2003 saw many stars come out to shine in
Hollywood. Orlando Bloom showed
that he was more than Elf Boy Legolas by taking a
role in the Pirates of the Caribbean opposite
Johnny Depp. Johnny made waves of his own in 2003
by telling a German magazine something that boiled
down to the fact that he hated the United States.
He later said it was taken out of context, and
that he loved the United States, but the damage
was done. If he loves the United States so much,
then why does he live in France? What a hypocrite.
Then there was Paris Hilton. She was a virtual
unknown to everyone in the world until that
GODDAMN sex video. Now everyone that has Internet
access knows about that video. Plus, she got her
own show on Fox (see above) about living with a
family in Arkansas. I don't care if other men say
she is hot; to me she is not because I could pop
her head open like a Pez dispenser. Also she's
just like every other blonde that is in Hollywood:
shallow, vapid and just dumb as a sack of rocks.
Get a job Paris and then I might reconsider my
attitude on you. I don't care if she had sex on
video so stop sending me spam about it everyday.
Porn is sex on video; so I'll go to an Adult video
store and get me some there for a whole lot less
than that damn Paris Hilton video. Plus porn has
some sort of plot, no matter how shallow it is.
Lastly, what would a column from me be without
mentioning something about
professional wrestling? 2003 started with one
major federation holding all the cards and that
was the WWE. Then a few months later NWA-TNA
(Total Nonstop Action) made their name, being lead
by Jeff Jerrett. The roster for NWA-TNA is made up
of wrestlers from the WWE such as D'Lo Brown as
well as wrestlers from ECW and WCW. Lastly in
mid-2003, Major League Wrestling (MLW) started up
in Florida with their roster being made up of
wrestlers mostly from the long dead Extreme
Championship Wrestling (ECW). Of the two new
start-ups, MLW and NWA-TNA, I see a bight future
in store for MLW if someone would just give them
a shot in syndication.
The WWE pulled out all the stops for
Wrestlemania this year giving
us a headlining match of Brock Lesnar and Kurt
Angle in which both men put on a match that was match of the year
quality. If you want to see a 6'4" 290lb man fly
from the top turnbuckle, by all means get with a
wrestling fan that has it on tape or DVD. Then
they decide to stroke the ego of HHH by allowing
him to form his own little group called Evolution.
They claim to be the pinnacle of professional
wrestling excellence. I'd believe that if I
thought the pinnacle of professional wrestling had
two guys who were taking so many steroids they
looked unnaturally muscled out and their sexual
organs have shrunk to the point that they cannot
have children, another who is just old enough to
legally drink alcohol in all 50 states in the
Union and finally one guy who's heyday was 30
years ago. Two weeks before the end of the year at
the last Pay-Per-View of the year, they give all
the major titles on Raw to Evolution. The writers
said later that they wanted to give the titles to
Evolution so that the faces (good guys) would have
something to fight for. I just want to say to the
writers, that is a load of BULL SHIT. Because you
were probably threatened with your jobs by Vince
through HHH if Evolution did not get all the
titles. I just want to make this one last comment
to Randy Orton of Evolution: If you want to call
yourself a Hardcore Legend, go talk to guys like
the Dudley Boyz, Spike Dudley, Tommy Dreamer, and
the man you spat on, Mick Foley. They innovated
the hardcore style of wrestling in ECW and could
probably beat the hardcore into you. You would not
last 5 minutes in a hardcore march with any or all
of them. Hell, you want to talk hardcore, Orton? Go
to Japan and see how those guys wrestle. I saw
Misato Tanaka take multiple chair shots to the
head and body from Mike Awesome and get up and
wrestle more and nearly beat Mike Awesome. If it
came to having to actually wrestle a match of the
major stars of Raw, Evolution, and the major stars
of Smackdown, you guys would not last. Angle,
Benoit, Lesnar and Cena would just plain out
wrestle you all because they have had the training
and experience and have to actually work for their
title shots instead of having titles handed to
them, like Evolution did.
That's all for me for 2003. I look forward to
what's going to happen in 2004.
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