unfitfinlay

Behind wanting to appear more mainstream and distancing oneself from derogatory perceptions? Umm, yes I do. There's a lot of reasons the 'E's the most successful wrestling company around, not wanting to be seen just as a wrestling show is the big one.

 

Besides, how often do you go up to someone and say "I'm a wrestling fan I am"? Most of us don't. Why would Vince want to scream at everyone "We're Wrestling! Wooo!" every five minutes?

But WWE IS wrestling to the vast majority of people. They aren't distancing themselves from derogatory perceptions because all those perceptions come from WWE. They are just making themselves look insecure and embarrassed about what they are, which is bizarre.

There's a big difference between Vince not shouting about being a wrestling show every five minutes and treating it like it's an unforgivable insult. Didn't they get a positive article on a mainstream website pulled a while back solely because it referred to them as a wrestling company a couple of times? Instead of the positive article they got a short editorial explaining the situation which made WWE look like petty, insecure turds. It's mental.

I had to go with Bowler.

His complete ineptitude and lack of self-awareness was just so surreal that it was fascinating to follow. It seemed to get more and more ridiculous as it went on as well, with him inventing wrestlers, Karaoke playing over the P.A for an entire show, and then him walking out of the next show because he wanted to fight the wrestlers. I'll say that again, the guy refused to run his OWN show! That isn't even getting into his fuckwittery on here, ignoring all the good, practical advice he was given, kicking off at people who were trying to help him, constantly bumping his threads to the point that Rick had to lock them, and generally acting like a complete nutter.

I feel bad for whoever was funding him (his parents?) as they must've lost a good bit of cash. Would've made a cracking documentary though.

Firstly the Jobcentre is not a law office and as such the staff are not trained in the legalities of national minimum wage etc.

I don't mean to be horrible, but, your attitude to work sounds terrible. You have to work long hours? So what it's real life. If you feel that shit then look for other work rather than signing on, I cannot see how anyone would rather sign on than be self supporting. Mind you, if your friends are in there and falsifying your information then they are just as bad for encouraging you, and they are also committing fraud.

To clarify, I wasn't going to go into the Job Centre to ask about the legality of not being paid minimum wage, I was going to ask for advice about whether I'd likely be sanctioned for refusing to work for below minimum wage. Secondly, my advisor didn't falsify anything. I'd written the six activities in my book like I was asked to but didn't realise it was supposed to three per week so four or five of them were in the first week. Instead of sanctioning me for it (which she could have done apparently) she explained what I'd done wrong, asked me for another couple of things I'd done that week and added them for me. I had actually done them all and more so it was hardly fraud.

I wasn't saying "My mates work at the Job Centre and let me away with everything!!!", I was trying to say that the staff have always been really helpful, as opposed to the staff at Baz's one. That could be because I've spoken to a few of them outside it, or it could just be a much better Job Centre. I'd never spoken to that particular advisor before that day, for example, but she still didn't fuck me over.

Where did I say that I'd rather sign on than be self supporting? I'm not talking about quitting and living off JSA for the rest of my life. If I wanted to do that, I wouldn't have applied for this job in the first place would I? I would've at least have walked out as soon as I realised that it wasn't the hours and pay that were advertised. I am looking for other work, but like Baz said, it's not exactly easy with these hours, I can't even search on my break at work because it's in the middle of nowhere and I don't get a signal on my phone.

But yeah, don't be going back to JC+ unless you absolutely, absolutely have to (although yours sounds infinitely less unpleasent than mine). Nothing local is going to pay less than you're already on (unless it's one of those self-employment scams), so go flip burgers for a couple of months and enjoy the extra hours in bed.

That's a good point. As nice as the staff have been in my Job Centre, I still hate going there and hate being unemployed in general. I'm applying to anything and everything I can find right now, as you said, it's not like I can be paid any less and travel alone would make anything better than what I have been doing.

At one time, the WCW champion was also recognized as the NWA champion,

 

Only one time. Ric Flair in 1991. When he fucked off to the WWF, WcW had Luger/Windham for the WcW title, the NWA crowned their next champion after over a year of fannying around via Masa Chono winning the G1 Climax in 1992. After Flair, the lineages were seperate forever.

Yep. The NWA didn't even strip Flair of the Title until a good few months after he'd signed for the WWF and well after WCW had already put their Title on Luger. Oh, and Fujinami won the NWA World Title from Flair but not the WCW World Title which makes it even clearer that the Titles were separate.

With the titles, The Us title is practically the same title just re-named each time, as WCW kept the US title on whilst the NWA just stopped recognizing it. After is was unified in WWE, they brought it back, announcing it was the same title just re-branded for the WWE.

Actually, the NWA never officially recognised a United States Champion. Their rules only prevented members from promoting their own singles World Champions so there were a few different NWA United States Champions going about at one point as Promoters figured it was the next best thing.

It's the same with the NWA World Tag Team Titles. The first champions to be recognised by the NWA were Williams and Gordy in 1992. Everything before that was JCP/WCW's version of the Titles.

Yes, but there are ways around it, such as paying commission only.

 

It's a factory job so they should be paying me minimum wage. Really I should've walked out as soon as they mentioned that it wasn't the job that was advertised. (more hours but much less pay per hour). I figured it was because I'm being paid through an agency but the girl who signed me off said I should still be getting minimum wage.

Agency or not, you should be on minimum wage. Fuck the Job Centre (if it's like my local branch, their advice will be along the lines of, "Not my problem"), go speak to CAB.

My job centre is okay actually. My mate used to work there so I know some of the advisors socially and the ones I don't have been pretty cool with me. One even added some stuff to my book o' lies when I hadn't filled it in right.

I decided to speak to the agency first but there doesn't seem to be any reps on backshift but one of the boys I work with was insisting that we were getting

Yes, but there are ways around it, such as paying commission only.

It's a factory job so they should be paying me minimum wage. Really I should've walked out as soon as they mentioned that it wasn't the job that was advertised. (more hours but much less pay per hour). I figured it was because I'm being paid through an agency but the girl who signed me off said I should still be getting minimum wage.

I'm going to go down to the Job Centre before work and ask their advice. Out of the thousands of people on my shift, I'm the only fucker from my town stupid enough to try and get there through public transport, and that was despite it being heavily promoted at the Job Centre.

I definitely need to get out of there. I had a microwavable curry last night (my day off), struggled to keep it down and then realized that it was the closest thing to a proper meal I've had since Sunday night. I've just been living off of cereal, toast and sandwiches because I just don't have the time to make/eat something big in the mornings or on break and if I eat something big at night I won't get to sleep in time to get up at four. I'm moving to back shift now for the next week so fuck knows how that's going to work.

I'm going to try and at least make it through the weekend since I get overtime on Sunday but I'm almost certain that I'm going to jack it in on Monday and just deal with the consequences.

I've been at my current job for four days and I'm already looking elsewhere.

 

Not because of money reasons, but because the hours are shit, and it's the worst run office I've ever been in.

Me too!

They've bumped the hours up at my job since I applied so I'm now working six days a week, with shift patterns and transport links that mean that I'm either up at four to get there for seven in the morning or finishing at eleven at night and getting home at two. I'm fucking exhausted already and there's no way I'm going to last it out.

The girl who signed me off JSA seemed to think I'd have a good case for quitting because they aren't paying me minimum wage but advised me to query it with my agency rep first, in case it was a mistake (it's not). I'm applying to anywhere and everywhere to find something else but I'm seriously considering just jacking it in now and just trying to live off the hardship fund if I do get sanctioned.

What was the story with the guy who was selling the cheap canvas prints on here (Dan Chilton?) ? Did he get banned for ripping people off or did he leave by choice? This missus is after some canvas' for the house & I wanted to take advantage.

Yeah, something like that. Monty Brown's done with wrestling for good know though. He wasn't a spring chicken in TNA, if I remember. He pops up on the signing circuit, though.TNA had a star on their hands there. Not a John Cena type, but definitely someone who could have been a big fish in the medium size pond they were at the time.

It'll be pro-rata surely? It'll be the equivalent of working something like 37.5 hours a week for

My Council is advertising for a lollypop man. 12 to 13K a year for ten hours a week with school holidays off.

Am I missing something? It's a wee bit of a hike for me, in a shitty area and would fuck up my college course a bit but, still, it's a liveable wage for doing practically fuck all. Seems mental given that Council is cutting back on pretty much everything else.

The thing is, that actually sounds like an angle I'd eat up if I'd been there. Sounds brilliant.

I agree. They don't want Lethal to go over or look inferior to Steen so fundamentally this is a sound idea to me. Steen as the heel thinks he's going to lose so instead causes all hell to break loose by spitting on the face's mother in the front row. This should lead to more heat on Steen as a heel and give Lethal even more reason to want to kick ass next time around. Only problem is the heat ended up on ROH rather than Steen because their fans think they are too good for keyfabe.

I bet if Shane Douglas had spat on Sandman's mum back in 1996 ECW this angle would have worked perfectly.

I don't agree with that.

ECW fans expected proper finishes as well. That's why they shat all over the very few times there were DQs.

It sounds like a decent TV angle but a really shit finish to the Main Event of a show. If they didn't want Lethal to go over or look inferior to Steen they shouldn't have booked the match in the first place or at least come up with something more creative than "Let's book a really big brawl and hope the crowd doesn't notice that the match doesn't end".

I only watched the first season of Walking Dead. I found it started well but got worse as the season went on. Does it get any better?

 

No, it's still shit. Has its moments, but it's very shit. If Jericho is even worse, I won't bother with it. Jericho didn't get a proper ending when it was cancelled either, did it?

I wouldn't really compare the two to be honest. They might both be about world changing events but that's pretty much it. Jericho is largely about a town trying to survive while being cut off from the rest of the world. The Walking Dead is about Zombies.

It got a proper ending in Season 2. The only problem is they kind of crammed about five seasons of stuff into those seven episodes so nothing really has a chance to sink in and it feels a bit rushed.

Season 1 is still class though.

Oddly enough I've been working my way through Breaking Bad as well. I tried watching it years ago and couldn't get into it but I'm glad I gave it another chance. It really is as good as people have said.

Has anyone read Larry Zbyszko's book?

It's pretty hilarious. He talks about how Flair refused to work with him in WCW in '92 (yes, 92) because he was worried Larry would make him look bad, and then how Flair jumped to the WWF with the WCW Title in '93 because he didn't like Bill Watts. Jim Ross also hated Watts according to Larry.

In one Chapter he talks about how smart he was to no show some events during his feud with Bruno because it gave him tons of leverage and he was able to demand huge amounts of money from the Promoters to make sure he'd show up. A few Chapters later he says that Main Eventers who no show are total scumbags who hurt everybody else on the show as well as the company itself.

Oddly enough there's really no mention of his personal life, which you'd think would be relevant if for no other reason than he was married to Verne Gagne's daughter.

Bit of a weird episode, I thought.

I enjoyed the stuff with the main three and Rory's Dad but the main plot seemed, well, crap. I just couldn't understand why people would take the Cubes into their homes, carry them about with them, etc? It isn't like they DID anything until they were triggered.

Also did I miss some dialogue about the other people on the ship being dead by the time the Doctor got there? It felt really odd that they were just left on the ship when it exploded.

Also (spoiler regarding the teaser for next week. Just in case someone didn't see it)

How come the WWF got away with changing Miss Kitty to The Kat while WCW had The Cat? Surely one letter isn't enough to avoid a lawsuit, especially since they used to love suing the shite out of each other

I would imagine it's (1) because "The Cat" is such a generic term that it'd be next to impossible to enforce a copyright claim on it (2) The Kat was clearly not trying to pass herself off as Ernest Miller in any way, shape or form so it isn't like fans were being misled (3) WCW simply didn't give a shit.

Did WCW really sue the WWF that much during the Monday Night Wars? I've got a vague, possibly false, memory of them counter suing during the Outsiders angle but other than that I can only remember the lawsuits going the other way?

Its called maternity leave lads, thats generally what happens regardless of your job (hooking = exception, in some cases preferred). Planned or not, she got preggas, then she got sacked. There arnt many jobs where that would be legal, and from what I know, it would be illegal to add it in to a contract clause on the grounds of discrimination. Yes, I know rules in WWE arn't the same as run of the mill jobs and yeah, I was more aiming towards the point that it 'may' have been accidental. She may have shagged a couple of lads in the space of a month, so what? It's not that uncommon is it? She was just 'possibly' unlucky.

 

Love sponge thing, wasn't he being a racist cunt? Wrestling has always been riddled with racism, she is clearly someone who couldn't take it, fair play (admittedly, I'm not 100% on what he said, but heard whispers that it wasn't friendly).

 

Simple fact is, I feel sorry for her. She got preg, lost her job, lost her kid and is branded with the Emotional 'mental' stick because she fought back against racism and got upset when she lost her kid. Also, it's illegal to fire someone on the grounds of mental health (emotional wellbeing) unless they are a risk to others. TNA had a point as she physically attacked someone, WWE knew the score and still signed her up.

If that's what happened, that's what I've been led to believe.

Bit in bold. He did make some racist comments AFTER she attacked him, which led to TNA cutting ties with him. Prior to that, he was trying (and failing) to make a point that he didn't think that the United States should be giving so much aid to other countries when it was suffering an economic crisis and millions were losing their jobs. Not a point I entirely agree with and he made it terribly (including writing "Fuck Hati" on Twitter) but certainly not overtly racist.

I feel sorry for her too. I just suspect that there's far more to this story than has been made public. As you say it'd be illegal for WWE to sack her for mental health problems as well as being a Public Relations nightmare. I don't think they'd be stupid enough to risk that unless they had a very good reason. Especially since they seemed to have some pretty major plans for her.

She wasn't actually fired by TNA incidentally. She quit after being turned down for a pay rise.

It's a fucking shame. I've always loved her, complete beast and looks the part. WWE need a few more non-model types in its lady roster just to mix it up a bit.

 

If she had been a dick and WWE couldn't work with her, fair play, but seeing as it's based around the fact she was pregnant and lost the child, it's ever so slightly harsh as fuck. The whole 'she shouldn't have got knocked up, she knew what WWE would be like' I have read elsewhere is the biggest pile of shite I have ever heard.

We don't know that though.

TNA thought she was a high emotional risk (and they had a point) and that was before she lost her child. It's a bit harsh to immediately jump to the conclusion that "WWE fired her for getting pregnant" when we've got no idea what has actually gone on behind the scenes. Personally, I thought something was up when Layla returned and took the Bella's out when everybody and their dog was reporting that it'd be Kharma, including Kharma herself on Twitter.

It is a shame though. I'm a fan of her in the ring and she could've added a different element to WWE, at least for a little while.

Have they really ignored him though? Because when I watched wrestling as a kid, long after him and his son had left, and also long before the internet I knew of him as the longest reigning (and possibly greatest) WWF Champion of all time. I can't remember why or how I knew that, but surely WWF put him over as the longest reigning champ, didn't they? Maybe WWF Magazine are the ones that put him over? I can't see why I'd have been of that opinion otherwise and my memory is a tad hazy.

I remember them at least strongly implying that Backlund was the longest reigning Champion when he first returned. I definitely thought that until I started buying one of the Apter Mags that published old results. I really don't remember WWE mentioning him much at all.

2) Stringing out the ridiculous Leonard & Penny relationship. It was just about possible to suspend disbelief to the point you could just about accept she might give him a sympathy shag, but the idea a lass who looks like that couldn't find a half decent bloke who didn't dress like a paedophile or speak in a whiny nasal drone anywhere in California is beyond silly, even for a sitcom.

I think that's the biggest problem really. Any show where the main storyline is "Will this Guy get this Girl" is going to have a limited shelf life because once you put them together, the story is over and everything you do after that is just treading water. Friends was the same in that respect: The main focal point was Ross and Rachel and once they were together the show just got louder and wackier in an attempt to hide the fact that they didn't really have anywhere else to go with it.

It's one positive about the British sitcom model of only doing a few, short, seasons so you don't burn through the story too quickly and overstay your welcome. Well GOOD British Sitcoms anyway, I am aware that Last of The Summer Wine was on for about a hundred years.

The whole show seems to be built around a wanky little smart-arse character that from what I've seen has no redeeming features (Sheldon). It's perfectly aimed at fanboy-types that have similar traits, who you normally find posting shit comments on IGN about why everything sucks.

I'd say most of the jokes are about Sheldon displaying symptoms of aspergers syndrome, which they don't/can't acknowledge because then the rest of the characters and the show creators themselves would come across as unbelievable bastards.

It's cliche to say but I liked the Big Bang Theory in the early seasons but it's become a bit of a parody of itself now. How I Met Your Mother is the same. I'm still happy to kill half an hour watching them but I can't see either of them going on much longer.

I'm up to Season 7 of Red Dwarf now. The drop off in quality after around Season Five is really quite astounding.

Is it new for the Forum to only be able to see one post on a subject. All the rest are in links at the bottom of the page.

Click on Options at the top right corner of the thread and select Standard Display mode. That should sort it.

Thanks to a liberal use of the fast-forward button and skipping some episodes entirely, I'm midway through season 4 of Heroes. I think I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown to be honest. How did this show last for so long? Season 3 - especially the latter half - seemed like it was never going to end. Around and around and around in circles with characters doing increasingly stupid things, turning heel/babyface often several times throughout the same episode and the overall plot moving at the pace of a dead snail.

I genuinely think that Tim Kring didn't have a clue what he was doing. As in he lucked into the job as show runner and went to work every day terrified that someone was going to figure it out.

From what I've read about the writing process every character in an episode was written by a different writer, which is why it's all a bit of a clusterfuck with no real direction and nothing makes the slightest bit of sense.

I think my favourite parts are: (Season 3/4 Spoilers if anyone still cares)

Weird.

I suppose it depends on the exact wording of the contract but surely that clause expired when the rest of the contract did? Even if it doesn't. I can't imagine that a contract forcing someone to give up their freedom of speech forever would hold up in court anyway.

TNA legal really are coming across like a bunch of shite arses. They might very well have fucked the entire lawsuit against WWE by knowingly lying about it (saying Flair was an employee after he'd been fired) so it wouldn't shock me if they've made a tit of this as well.