Time for a trip through the pop culture universe…
Mickey Rourke to appear at Wrestlemania 25: From everything I have heard from my sources it is official that Mickey Rourke will face Chris Jericho (formerly known as “Lionheart” Chris Jericho and “Y2J” Chris Jericho, real name Chris Irvine, and no I did not have to look any of that information up) at Wrestlemania 25. This will mark the second appearance of an Oscar nominated performer at Wrestlemania (the other of course being Dame Judi Dench’s appearance in a Barbed Wire Deathmatch at Wrestlemania 19).
There are a lot of things that strike me about this and none of them are good. First off, for Mickey Rourke this will essentially derail any comeback hopes that he imagines. As much as I love wrestling this is a real step down and you just can’t figure out how it makes sense. It also shows just how twisted the wrestling business is. Vince McMahon hated the movie when it came out because it showed in vivid detail the dark side of the business and how it takes performers, turns them into stars and leaves them as poor shells of their former self. He didn’t want anything to do with it. Now that it can make him some money and a few additional pay per view buys he will welcome it with open arms.
My biggest issue though is I don’t know how the match will work. Not the physical nature of the match; I think the two of them could put together a decent match. Rourke trained as a wrestler for the role, looked realistic in the ring, and Jericho works a style that should translate to an entertaining match. The problem is that Jericho is a bad guy right now but I expect the crowd (filled with hard core fans) to cheer him over the movie star encroaching on their turf. The celebrity is supposed to be the hero in these situations and I expect Rourke to be booed like mad (unless of course he has Marisa Tomei in character as a stripper as his valet. Then he’ll be the babyface.)
Children with unpopular names more likely to be delinquents: I saw this article on Yahoo today and I have to state that this is the most poorly worded scientific study that I have ever seen. Mainly in that they have confused “unpopular” with “unique”. Essentially what they did is they looked at the rates of occurrence of certain names in the population and correlated that with juvenile delinquency rates. What they found was that those names out on the Long Tail had higher delinquency rates than those in the front end.
Now I’ll assume that they did the math correctly and accounted for the fact that of course the bigger samples will look more like the average just due to their size. What really bothers me is that they called them unpopular names and tried to justify their results based on the fact that “the children may not like their names” or that “they may be picked on”. This seems ludicrous especially given that one of the names chosen as an unpopular example was Alec. There was no work done to connect the name with popular conceptions so unpopular is the wrong term since it implies a social stigma. In reality, what this shows is what was discussed in Freakonomics: that people of lower income levels tend to give their children uncommon names and that people of lower income levels tend to have higher delinquency rates.
See, I told you I should have been a sociologist.
Wednesday Night Music Club: Sigh. I could spend all day listening to Beth Orton. And then to see her in a cowboy hat just makes my heart go all aflutter.
Mickey Rourke to appear at Wrestlemania 25: From everything I have heard from my sources it is official that Mickey Rourke will face Chris Jericho (formerly known as “Lionheart” Chris Jericho and “Y2J” Chris Jericho, real name Chris Irvine, and no I did not have to look any of that information up) at Wrestlemania 25. This will mark the second appearance of an Oscar nominated performer at Wrestlemania (the other of course being Dame Judi Dench’s appearance in a Barbed Wire Deathmatch at Wrestlemania 19).
There are a lot of things that strike me about this and none of them are good. First off, for Mickey Rourke this will essentially derail any comeback hopes that he imagines. As much as I love wrestling this is a real step down and you just can’t figure out how it makes sense. It also shows just how twisted the wrestling business is. Vince McMahon hated the movie when it came out because it showed in vivid detail the dark side of the business and how it takes performers, turns them into stars and leaves them as poor shells of their former self. He didn’t want anything to do with it. Now that it can make him some money and a few additional pay per view buys he will welcome it with open arms.
My biggest issue though is I don’t know how the match will work. Not the physical nature of the match; I think the two of them could put together a decent match. Rourke trained as a wrestler for the role, looked realistic in the ring, and Jericho works a style that should translate to an entertaining match. The problem is that Jericho is a bad guy right now but I expect the crowd (filled with hard core fans) to cheer him over the movie star encroaching on their turf. The celebrity is supposed to be the hero in these situations and I expect Rourke to be booed like mad (unless of course he has Marisa Tomei in character as a stripper as his valet. Then he’ll be the babyface.)
Children with unpopular names more likely to be delinquents: I saw this article on Yahoo today and I have to state that this is the most poorly worded scientific study that I have ever seen. Mainly in that they have confused “unpopular” with “unique”. Essentially what they did is they looked at the rates of occurrence of certain names in the population and correlated that with juvenile delinquency rates. What they found was that those names out on the Long Tail had higher delinquency rates than those in the front end.
Now I’ll assume that they did the math correctly and accounted for the fact that of course the bigger samples will look more like the average just due to their size. What really bothers me is that they called them unpopular names and tried to justify their results based on the fact that “the children may not like their names” or that “they may be picked on”. This seems ludicrous especially given that one of the names chosen as an unpopular example was Alec. There was no work done to connect the name with popular conceptions so unpopular is the wrong term since it implies a social stigma. In reality, what this shows is what was discussed in Freakonomics: that people of lower income levels tend to give their children uncommon names and that people of lower income levels tend to have higher delinquency rates.
See, I told you I should have been a sociologist.
Wednesday Night Music Club: Sigh. I could spend all day listening to Beth Orton. And then to see her in a cowboy hat just makes my heart go all aflutter.
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