Are you Ready?

Double meaning for the title, as on the one hand are you ready for some Football?

Wait, no, I asked you if you are ready for the football?


Chris Farley as Bocephus

C Dogg | Myspace Video

Ok, good, cause Football is back, the lockout is over and things are gonna start moving, now on the grand scale doesn't really seem like much changed, all pretty much just moving numbers around to see who gets what, they aren't expanding the season or anything crazy like that, at least not yet. But it's good that that's all over with, and things can get started on the season, I can start thinking about getting the Fantasy Football league going and start trying to figure out who I'm gonna keep and who is gonna go in what round and all sorts of cool nerdy stuff like that.

But, you still got to answer the question, Are you ready?

Well, if you aren't really, you should be, cause Triple H is taking over the WWE tonight, Vince is gone, and Triple H is running the show. They are planning on crowning a new WWE Champion as The Miz is taking on Rey Mysterio, but apparently there is another guy running around still claiming to be the WWE Champion, in fact he showed up and crashed the WWE party at Comic-Con last week:

CM Punk also showed up at and Indy event over the weekend, but didn't have the belt with him for that one. Also despite the fact that Bill Simmons said that he was gonna have CM Punk on his podcast, apparently he ended up having no way to contact him cause, he is "no longer" a employee of WWE, and that was the only way he had to get a hold him. What does this all mean, well, I would think that WWE is just doing a good job at trying to sell the fact that CM Punk is "gone", but would they really allow him to show up and crash their comic-con panel carrying the WWE Title with him, I don't think so. So, will CM Punk show up tonight at RAW and interfere in the title match? Maybe, or maybe they just want you to think he will, so you keep turning in to see what will happen. Also, what becomes of Vince McMahon, will he really go out without a fight, doesn't sound like him, will he be on Raw tonight? Should be good.

Speaking on Comic-Con, there was something else that made a big splash at comic-con, for me anyway, and that of course was the first clip of the New Beavis and Butt-Head. Haven't seen it? Well, then take a look:

They still got it. This actually transitions nicely to my next topic. Many of my loyal followers have noticed that I have been doing a countdown to the 30th anniversary of MTV, I was doing a pretty good job at it at one point, kinda fell off recently, but then I realize, we are 1 week away, so got to step it back up. I left off with 1996 and the death of Tupac, and now time to move onto 1997, but before we do that, there was something that happened in 1996 with MTV, that I failed to mention. 1996 launch the debut on MTV Films, and while the Beavis and Butt-Head Movie was the first memorable movie they had, it wasn't the first. The first was a terrible movie called Joe's Apartment, which the idea was taken form a short film that MTV would show from time to time in the early 90s, take a look:

Yeah, someone had the great idea of expanding that into a movie starring Jerry O'Connell, and he somehow landed Rebecca Romijn, How? Anyway, around Christmas of 1996, MTV release Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, which was a quality film. Now in 1997, Mike Judge debuted a new show on Fox called King of the Hill, so probably because of the Beavis and Butt-head movie along with working on his new show, I guess he kinda got burned out with Beavis and Butt-Head, so he decided to kill them off:

So, Beavis and Butt-Head were gone, every once in a while they would show up somewhere. Fast forward 13 years, King of the Hill is over, Mike Judge had another show fail, make some movies that were so great, so he finally decided, what the hell? let's bring Beavis and Butt-Head back, so there you go, they are coming back in October, pretty awesome.

Alright, so what else was happening in 1997 on MTV, well, the year kinda started off similar to how it ended, the East Coast vs West Coast rap war was still going strong, 2Pac was dead, and in March things would even up. Notorious B.I.G. would be killed, once again noone has any idea what happened, noone was arrested or anything, unsolved, but it seems pretty clear that someone, if they were with death row or just huge fans or boys or whatever, wanted revenge and got it. The bizarre thing about the whole deal was that he was out promoting his new album, with after his first album was called Ready To Die, this next one was called Life After Death, well, that ended up being true, cause before it was released, he was dead. Didn't stop him from having some big hits though:

Then after his death, Puff Daddy, as I think he was known at the time, really capitalized on this whole, eventually releasing an album that featured a tribute to BIG:

Now, he ripped of the Police, ok fine, but it got kinda weird, when shortly before the MTV Video Music Awards Princess Diana died in a car accident, and for whatever reason, I guess someone thought it was a good idea for Puff Daddy and Sting to perform some kind of hybrid mixed version in tribute of BIG and Diana:

But, if you are gonna talk about the death of Princess Diana, you have to talk about Elton John remaking his song Candle In The Wind changing the lyrics to honor Princess Diana and not Marilyn Monroe. It went on to become the 2nd best selling single of all time, next to Bing Crosby's White Christmas, now there wasn't really a music video for it or anything, so it doesn't really relate to MTV all that much, but it was a big thing that happened in the Music world, so needed to be mentioned.

1997, was the beginning of the music that would shape the late 90s, now while Boy and Girl bands had kinda died out in the US, for whatever reason in Europe, they were still going strong and were getting stronger then ever, but in 1997, it was just starting to trickle over, first up, these British Ladies came along and took the US by storm:

and then somehow this next group was "Back" even though they had never been here before, still don't understand how the hell that worked:

Now, it should be noted that Total Request Live was still a year away from debuting, which was where these groups and the many more that would follow, would make there marks on MTV, the show that would evolve into TRL, which was called MTV Live debut along with MTV's new studio in Times Square, that show didn't really work, the host kinda sucked and it was too all over the place, people didn't get it, but then they changed it around to a countdown show, and it worked out.

1997 was a decent year for one hit wonders, and while I have already covered Hanson, this next group were clearly the winners of the one hit wonders for that year:

Although this guy probably had the coolest video of the one hit wonders:

Rock Music was kinda all over the place in 1997, Metallica was still doing their Load thing, but this time it was Re-Load:

Megadeth actually had probably their most successful mainstream album, along with their highest charting song:

Marilyn Manson was still doing his thing, terrifying and horrifying you, your mother and anyone else he and they wanted to:

But not to be outdone with creeping people out, Tool was back with some weird ass videos, including this one:

The Foo Fighters were still Fighting Foo with a new album and had a really cool video for their song Everlong:

U2 was back, but not better then ever, they went all Pop, and it wasn't good. They also had a somewhat unsuccessful tour and also had the unfortunate please of having a concert special that aired on NBC and got the worst primetime ratings of all time, until it was broken by the XFL. With all of that said, they had a couple videos:

"Punk" rock or whatever you want to call it was back, first The Offsring made their major label debut and follow up to Smash, with Ixnay on the Hombre and Gone Away:

Then later in the year, Green Day came back on the scene with Nimrod and Hitchin' a Ride:

The Mighty Mighty Bosstones had a huge year, having their biggest success with this song:

Wuss rock was still alive and well in 1997, this next group, I thought was just Seven Mary Three and that they had a new album out, but it wasn't it was Creed:

This next song I feel like was was too happy, especially for the actual content of the song and I think ended up in a ton of movies, commercials and trailers, or maybe it just seemed that way:

I'm not really sure where this next group falls, but they had a big hit this year and a cool video:

These next 2 groups would go on and have huge years in 1998, but they both had some success in 1997 and they while the first 1 kinda discovered the 2nd one, which not necessarily a good thing, they are now forever linked for better or worse:

Finally 1997 can not be discussed without talking about this next guy, not only did he have a huge movie with Men In Black, but after dumping DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince monocure, Will Smith broke out some Big Willy Style and got jiggy with it:

Well, there you go folks 1997 through the memories or the eyes and ears of a 15/16 year old.

One last thing, what the hell is going on the the Mosquitoes this year, those things are ruthless, despite wearing bug spray, I've been brutalized more then once so far this summer. Not cool bugs, not cool.