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.