A Breakdown in the Discourse: Police Teeth's Real Size Monster Series, 12 Years Later

Do you remember the spreadsheet that you wrote up way back in 1993?

Nobody ever says that changed my life, nobody says "that inspired me"

Now i'm happy to make a living but there's one thing that my boss will never know

There is a mountain of difference 'tween a good day of work and a record or a show

- "Bob Stinson Will Have His Revenge on Ferndale"

In a fit of nostalgia and missing my friends, i threw on Police Teeth's 2009 slab, Real Size Monster Series, on the drive to work the other morning. It was released in February of that year, so it recently just passed its twelfth anniversary, which means i missed the chance to do a ten-year retrospective on it by two years. Which is appropriate, since "just a couple years too late" is probably a good summary for their music, their six-year run as a band, and pretty much the entire grip of loud-ass freewheeling rock 'n' roll bands they associated with. Man, there was a time there when i really thought Police Teeth would be the band that saved us all--not that i really knew what i meant by that, but it had something to do with their unique blend of PacNW Wipers-meets-Superchunk style riffs, their blue-collar everyman roots, and their brutally acerbic laughing-in-the-face-of-despair lyrics. Oh, and our shared amusement at the inherent ridiculousness of the music business.

Back in 2009 my own band was pushing a similarly themed work, a record built on concepts of fame vs. infamy and the desperate depths people could sink to while chasing the twin dragons of fame & fortune. A friend had invested his own money in putting our disc out on his record label and a promo campaign to push it on the populace, and we felt obligated to do everything obnoxious in our power to hype it, lest our buddy lose his ass (which he probably did). Of course, the amount of hustle one can afford in between work days can only take you so far -- touring two weeks out of the year on vacation days is no way to build an audience. But we still felt an obligation to try, because outside of the monetary investment, well, that's just what you do when you're in a band, right?

My musical generation is one that came of age in the wake of the 1980s Alternative Nation and the Great Nirvana Explosion of 1991/92. It was a time when Warner Brothers gave Faith No More three albums to grow into their own skin, and then threw money at Mr. Bungle because they were related. Shit, Warner threw money at The Boredoms. A Japanese noise band that utilized neither melody nor English. What? bands like Jawbox and Shudder to Think(!) got major label deals because the record companies were chucking water balloons full of cash at any group with weird haircuts and a girl bassist, trying to unearth the next Kurt Cobain. So yeah, it didn't seem out of the question that a willfully obtuse noise-rock band from Wisconsin could grab a wider audience between 8-hour shifts. 

Young and dumb, what can you do.

Hugs Via Satellite: PRF Virtual Thundersnow 2021

Banner by Christopher Williams

I've been trying to get a handle on my thoughts and feelings about how PRF Virtual Thundersnow went down and went over with our PRF family. By any metric, it was a hit: we put together a great mish-mash of musical performances and videos made by our friends, with lots of random nonsense sprinkled into the mix (Japanese rabbit cartoons? Local Escanaba news features about Dobber's Pasties? Sure, let's go nuts), and everything was received warmly, with heart emojis and friendly laughter. On Saturday the Twitch channel for Thundersnow registered almost 600 individual viewers (even assuming on the low end that everyone at some point streamed from multiple sources, that still exceeds the 150-to-200-person average of your standard in-person Thundersnow). New friends were made as several bands and artists made their PRF debuts. It was a good time.

But also, it wasn't Thundersnow. As the next morning reared its head and Dixie and i sloughed off our blankets in anticipation of yet another cookie-cutter pandemic work week, the reminders of that were clear. No Monday morning brunch trip to the Swedish Pantry. No stop at Dobber's to fill up a cooler with pasties to take home to Milwaukee. No three-and-a-half-hour road trip back home. Just the grey promise of cubicle walls. We really should have taken a day to decompress. 

Don't get me wrong -- the weekend was lovely, and it was great to see everyone's faces, even if they were in a weekend-long Zoom meeting or on the Twitch feed. But it also served as a stark reminder that it's been almost a year since the last time i hugged someone that wasn't my wife. 

A One-Sheet for Zeroed Hero's Love Letters to a Mannequin

Y'all, I've got a bone to pick with the late-stage rock and roll world of the early 21st century, and it can be summarized as thus: for a music genre ostensibly born out of poor, working-class country and blues, we as a culture sure seem to focus on artists about as far removed from “working class” as possible, don't we? It seems like somewhere in every rock and roll “success” story these days, the rags before the riches are a curtain hiding some sort of Wonderful Wizard/Svengali/what have you holding the purse strings. How compelling is the musical journey of a young country songstress when daddy buys out a share of the record label that signs her (sorry, Taylor)? It's easy to spend years honing your craft when your modeling industry magnate papa's got the safety net strung (am I right, dude from The Strokes?). I propose that we jettison those nonsense narratives and cushy, coddled rock stars and focus on the real rock and roll success stories out there – that we drop these “heroes” and lift up the supposed “zeroes” who are doing the real heavy lifting out there in the musical world. As luck would have it, I'm writing this because I've got some for ya, and – hey, what a coincidence! – they're Madison, Wisconsin's Zeroed Hero.

Let's get the full disclosure out of the way – the main dudes of Zeroed Hero, Dean Kesler and Chris Franczek, go back with me almost 30 years now. We played ridiculous classic rock covers in high school, as you do when you grow up in a tiny farming town like Who Cares, WI, worshipping the dudes on the cover of Guitar World. (We had those first three Black Crowes singles on lock, yo.) So I feel like I have a unique perspective in telling the story of these two rock and roll lifers. Yeah, “lifers” is the term I'd use, even though most of those lives have been taken up by the supposedly un-rocking pursuits of family and boring-ass day jobs. I'm making a point here. See, “real life” in the traditional sense doesn't leave a lot of room for dreams of rock 'n' roll stardom, so whatever time does get dedicated to music has to be for the love of the game—and these two love the game like few others. As adulthood became marriages, kids, careers, and the grind, the dream of putting out an album took hold and sat just under their skin like an invisible rash that festered for years. Finally, once a series of personal losses skinned Kesler's soul raw, that rash finally exposed, our heroes could finally scratch.

Love Letters to a Mannequin sprung from a series of journals written by Kesler as letters addressed to those who had left, made corporeal with riffs informed by the hard rock that's fueled both Kesler and Franczek since those farmboy days. In a world obsessed with genre-splicing and overly-hip categorizing, Mannequin focuses squarely on populist, blue-collar guitars and hooks. This isn't indie rock, alterna-bluegrass, alt-folk, or post-black-metal ska-core – the opening chords of “Precipice” proudly announce that this is straight-up, 70s/90s-styled, no-bullshit hard rock. It's technically a debut album, but these songs betray some long years honing some serious chops. Backed on record by guitarist Dain Di Mattia and Paul Kennedy keeping the beat, tracks like the driving “The Physics of You” crackle with energy and maturity far beyond your typical debut, with moody but triumphant lyrics to match. For all the pain that kickstarted this self-funded, completely DIY project (take that, “Kickstarter” bands!), the thrill of creation by far overshadows the angst. (The live band boasts scene vets Steve Truesdell on guitar, keyboardist Alison “Little Margie” Margaret, and drummer Tony Kille.)

And that's the real triumph here. In a world that foolishly gauges artistic success in dollars, cents, and units moved, isn't the existence of art in and of itself the real success? For every one of those conveniently bankrolled rock stars, there are thousands of supposed nobodys out there clawing through the grind of ordinary, everyday life in order to fuel something extraordinary, something fueled by love and the pure desire to create and to friggin' rock. Love Letters to a Mannequin is just another kickass, well-executed independent hard rock disc, and dammit, that's what makes it special. If that's not the definition of zero as hero, I don't know what is. Blue-collar rock 'n' roll for anyone and everyone...courtesy your friendly neighborhood Zeroed Hero. 

"I never claimed to be different, I only said I was bored"

Image by Wikipedia user goongunther (cc)

Those that know me know that I count Faith No More among my favorite bands of all time, neck-and-neck with Brainiac for the Universal Championship. Angel Dust, my all-time favorite album, took the tiny little room in my brain that contained my concept of what was possible in rock music, and blew its walls to hell with its unapologetic rejection of the mainstream’s expectations for a follow up to their breakthrough album, The Real Thing. “Oh, you liked ‘Epic?’ Then you’re gonna hate this!” they exclaimed, unleashing a glorious mish-mash of an album that was simultaneously ugly, beautiful, confounding and exhilarating. Angel Dust remains a unique species of untamed beast to this day; to listen to it now and remember that there was a time when something this original could exist on a major label is almost mind-bending in retrospect.

But before there was the purposeful, counter-intuitive originality of Angel Dust, there was the pure dog-in-a-science-lab “we have no idea what we’re doing” punk/funk/metal/goth mish-mash of the early Faith No More releases, We Care A Lot and Introduce Yourself, two gloriously raw see-what-sticks splatters of meat on a day-glo kitchen wall. And before Mike Patton lent his vocals to FNM’s breakthrough hits and emerged as one of rock’s best-ever vocalists, the fevered originality of the band was personified in a bouncing ball of manic beach bum energy named Chuck Mosley.

Even after falling in love with The Real Thing, going back to discover the Chuck albums in my teen years elicited a solid “huh?” when sliding the tapes into my double-cassette stereo. There’s certainly a degree of charm in any set of first albums from a band that congealed its vision with later releases—think Pretty Hate Machine, Bleach, Smack Bunny Baby, or any other slabs of protomatter that only hinted at the stars that would blaze bright with later, fully-realized energy. But with Faith No More, the difference between Chuck and Patton cast the band’s evolution in stark relief. While Patton entered the band with a fully-formed, calculated mastery over his dynamic range, Chuck Mosley’s vocals on We Care A Lot and Introduce Yourself were haphazard, off-kilter, and untamed. Whereas Patton has often copped to approaching lyric writing as an exercise in sculpting phrases based on how they sound, Mosley was less focused and more sincere, vomiting heart and soul onto tape via his endearingly out-of-key howl. No time to nail that melody on the head, gang—someone’s trying to charge Chuck 95 cents for a transfer, maaaan.     

Fortunately, back in my younger days we all were more apt to give new, weird music multiple spins to let it sink in and process, to decide whether or not it was our thing, and Introduce Yourself grew on me like a tapeworm. To be real, it carried a lot of similarities with The Real Thing: where TRT featured the metallic dirge "Zombie Eaters," complete with melodramatic synth-and-vocal intro, Introduce Yourself's "The Crab Song" followed the same formula. And it's hard to argue against the connective tissue linking "Epic" with Mosley's signature performance on "We Care A Lot," a song that existed in a pupal stage on the Mordam Records album of the same name before getting reworked for the major label IY. In all honesty, the primary barrier to a true appreciation of FNM's first two records is acquiring an appreciation for Chuck. Once Chuck Mosley clicks with ya, the rest is neon gravy.  

To be sure, there are hits and misses on both albums--they're by no means flawless works. The original version of the song "We Care A Lot" drags compared to its update on Introduce Yourself, and a few of the songs on the first album have instrumental stretches that sound less like musical breaks than places where Mosley couldn't think of any lyrics. Roddy Bottum's keyboards have always enjoyed a healthy dollop of 80s symphonic cheese; on We Care A Lot, they're dramatically goth almost to the point of parody. But when it all works together, like on the theatrical classic "As The Worm Turns" or the nihilistically triumphant "Mark Bowen," those traits are a strength instead of a hinderance.

And that's what's beautiful about Faith No More with Chuck Mosley on vocals: with music this daringly original, unevenness is to be not only expected, but welcomed, because when it works, goddamn, it works. By 1985, Faith No More had gone through a litany of vocalists and a few other lineup changes, and it's not hard to imagine that the revolving door introduced a myriad of ideas and stylistic influences that the band was trying to mix into a final, cohesive stew. Once upon a time, it was expected that a band might need to take an album or two in order to develop and find their groove; in this age of shortened attention spans and increased access to anyone and everyone's catalog online, there's less patience for artist development or evolution.

This is the life lesson i took from bands like Faith No More and Brainiac (whose lead singer, the dearly departed Tim Taylor, once told me "we just try to come up with stuff that's original sounding more than anything"). Sure, there's something to be said for genre exercise -- there's a consistency and prolificity to be had in sticking to a formula, and it's produced some great bands. But it's in taking chances where the real thrill of songwriting lies for me. Sure, not everything attempted pays off, and lots of ideas get trashed, but those moments when you stumble across something that is 100% unapologetically unique to the personalities involved? That's magic.

Chuck Mosley died last week at the age of 57, and his passing makes the world a less weird, less unique place. But at the same time, the world is much weirder for him having been in it--not just for the music he left behind, but for the weirdos he inspired to be the most outlandishly unique versions of themselves, no matter how unvarnished, unfiltered, or even out of tune. No musician should tire of their uniqueness.

HEY!
WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT?
HUH?!

Oh nothing, just wondering what it is you're doing...
Why it is you're doing that whatever it is you're doing
Oh yeah?
WHY? WHY?
I dunno
It just doesn't seem like something you'd be doing
I mean, you of all people, ha!
Know what I mean?

Yeah I know it's been bugging you since the day I was born, huh?
I asked my friend Anne about it
I said
"ANNE, ANNE, ANNE, what am I supposed to do, huh?
It's been bugging them since the day that I was born."

She said, "Do whatever the hell you want to do!
Now is the time where you can do anything!
Everything you do, anything is still gonna turn out great
I mean, you've got the world at your feet."




P.S. One of the last recordings Chuck Mosley worked on is embedded below. Check it out.

WWE Network World Tour: Survivor Series 1997

BONUS 20TH ANNIVERSARY COVERAGE!

The Undertaker dropped the WWF World Title to Bret "Hitman" Hart at SummerSlam '97, thanks to an assist from special referee Shawn Michaels, who swung a chair in Bret's direction and hit 'Taker instead, forcing Michaels to count the pin for his sworn enemy. It was a moment that kicked off a fresh chapter in the ongoing feud between the two men, as babyfaces and heels blurred alignments all throughout the WWF. It was the "gang warfare" era of the World Wrestling Federation, as groups like the Nation of Domination, the Hispanic Los Boriquas, and the biker-styled Disciples of Apocalypse tore through the WWF's midcard and each other. And at the top of the company were Bret Hart's reformed Hart Foundation, now consisting of not only Hart and his tag parter, Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart, but also his brother Owen, the British Bulldog, and briefly Brian Pillman before his untimely death in October 1997. They were reviled anti-American heels at first, until they began waging a full-scale war with D-Generation X, the new stable consisting of Michaels, his buddy "Triple H" Hunter Hearst Helmsley, Chyna, and their bodyguard, the returning "Ravishing" Rick Rude.

Alignments began to blur for a few reasons. First, as Michaels and Helmsley's behavior became increasingly sophomoric and crude, their in-ring behavior began to include more blatant rulebreaking, which alienated the fans that still respected competitors that tried to win the right way. (That said, DX was building a loyal fan base of horny teenaged Beavis & Butt-Head fans from the first time the Hitman called them "degenerates" in the first place.) Meanwhile, reality was creeping in to the on-screen kayfabe world of the WWF for perhaps the first time. With the explosion of the Internet in the mid-90s, wrestling fans banded together online and smartened each other up to the backstage mechanics of the carnival on a level not previously seen. As the Monday Night War with WCW escalated during 1996 and 1997, Internet wrestling fans followed every rumored contract negotiation, every leaked piece of backstage drama, with relish. Finding out how the sausage was made was every bit as interesting as consuming the product, and it began to enhance the "smart fan's" enjoyment of the business.

So when it was rumored that Bret Hart was about to be let out of his 20-year WWF contract to jump ship to WCW, the Hart/DX feud gained a fresh, unique wrinkle. WCW had been poaching WWF talent like crazy, and the nWo storyline had set the wrestling world on its ear, destroying the WWF in the ratings on a weekly basis based on, well, the former WWF stars Kevin "Diesel" Nash, Scott "Razor Ramon" Hall, and "Hollywood" Hulk Hogan taking over the power structure in the WWF's rival company. It was widely perceived that the reeling WWF wouldn't be able to recover if their longest-tenured star, Bret Hart, were to jump ship. As rumors flew online, it became evident that the looming Survivor Series showdown between Hart and the now-European Champion Shawn Michaels (who had defeated the Bulldog for the title) would be Bret's last WWF Title defense and last match in the company. Thus, fans became divided--several accusing the Hitman of selling out (despite the simple fact that Vince McMahon couldn't afford his contract anymore), and some choosing to cheer and thank the Hitman for his years of service. By November 9, those fans were beginning to take over as Michaels and DX behaved more and more like heels. (All this despite the anti-American, pro-Canadian act the Harts were playing out during the Spring and Summer.)

With the fans divided and Bret's fate, along with the fate of the WWF World Title, in the air--would Hart drop the title to Shawn? Would he successfully defend the belt, then relinquish it on Raw the next night?--the WWF descended on Montreal, Quebec, for a Pay Per View event built around gang violence, but with an emphasis on the drama surrounding the two individuals who would square off in the main event.

(I tried really hard to just start in with WrestleMania XIV after the last recap, but it became painfully obvious that it would be impossible without using this show to point out how radically the landscape of the WWF had shifted between 'Manias. Plus, this is maybe the second-most infamous PPV in wrestling history aside from Over the Edge '99--frown--so it's hard not to spend time on it, especially with its 20th anniversary looming. So here we go.)

Lardo calls it quits in thrilling Cactus Club Debut

Back in my college days, my friend Josh stumbled across a random, inconspicuous slice of vinyl buried in the library of WRST in Oshkosh, the college radio station where we were tag teaming an overnight freeform shift and looking for random odd finds in the back room to take a gamble on at 3:30 in the morning. On this night, Josh found a humble, beat-up sleeve labeled “The Cardboards: Greatest Hits Volume Two,” and the back cover photo of four awkward looking nerds futzing with a bunch of cables somehow convinced him to throw it on. What we had discovered was a lost, nearly forgotten DEVO-esque new wave punk group from Pittsburgh that managed to get this five-song EP released before falling apart and disappearing into obscurity. The discovery of something so randomly awesome and unheralded hit us over the head with way more force than anything the labels and magazines were trying to jam into our earholes at the time, and it could be argued that the Cardboards had as much or more an impact on our first bands as Sonic Youth or any of the other Alternative Nation poster children of the time. Of course, now that we're a couple decades deep into the Internet Era, a cursory Google search will pull up plenty of information about the Cardboards, but without that one eye-catching flip through the record sleeves buried deep in a college radio library, we wouldn't have known to even search their name.

But even today, in the era of blogs and PR firms spamming our eyes and ears with the latest career-minded trend-hoppers looking to get their Kickstarter funded, it can be those short-lived, hot-burning obscurities that still pack the biggest punch and excite music lovers the most. It's almost cliché at this point to say that there are more bands out there than ever, and for every Hep New Thing that catches fire through some combination of luck and timing, there are a hundred bands that are just as good or better that flame out before anyone cares to notice the self-released, unsold stacks of vinyl collecting mold on their merch tables.

Which bring us to Chicago's Lardo. A part-time concern formed in 2013 by serial band-starter Brian Pennington (Radiant Republic, MegaMaul) and Nick Minor, Lardo is a thrillingly virtuosic no-wave informed post-punk trio layering bit-crushed, synthesized guitar heroics over a bare-bones rhythm section straight out of 1990s Touch & Go Records. Their recently-released debut, Gunmetal Eyes, is a minimalist mindfuck of dark, scary noise-rock as creepy as it is exciting, as sparse as it is heavy. It's an incredibly unique and messed-up work that deserves loads of attention. It would be a phenomenal opening statement in what you'd normally think would be a future full of possibility, but Lardo played what may well be their last show ever at the Cactus Club on Saturday in front of a room full of stoked and swaying attendees.

The band ran through Gunmetal Eyes in its entirety during their runaway train of a set, barely pausing for a breath as they ran nearly every one of the record's ten tracks together. Minor, standing stone-still, stoically delivered cynically snarky vocals (“Everyday's the same/Things are gonna change/I can play this game/'Cuz things are gonna change” from “Another Day in the Life”) while Pennington violently flailed all over stage left, repeatedly slamming his body into the wall while laying down dizzyingly bendy guitar lines in between fixing the pedals he kept accidentally unplugging. It was an exhilarating juxtaposition, although it probably wouldn't be lying to say that all the attention in the room was focused on the shredder with the synthetic-sounding licks. That undivided attention came from a fairly full room full of excited, flailing headbangers, many of whom came up from Chicago to see their local heroes call it quits (come back soon, everyone!).

So now does Lardo fade into memory? As is the case in so many bands that die before their time, real life is butting in, as Pennington is moving to North Carolina for the usual work/family reasons. But he hasn't closed the door on Lardo, reminding a few of us at Cactus that there's no telling the future. After all, the internet has made long-distance practice and file-sharing more rule than exception for some. In the meantime, who knows, maybe a copy of Gunmetal Eyes ends up in some kid's hands in a discount bin or college radio library somewhere in a few years, completely unheralded, and that kid gets their mind blown into next week and immediately starts a band so they can get their guitar to sound as fucked up as Lardo's. I bet the Cardboards would approve, wherever they are.

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the bill, three other bands stepped up to the plate to deliver excellent sets along with Lardo—most notably Chicago's The Terrible News, a brand new noise-rock outfit playing their second show. Their brand of bluesy Steve-Albini-and-The-Bad-Seeds skronk absolutely leveled the Cactus faithful, including a downright punishing version of Cher's “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” that was equal parts beautiful and downright ugly. The show was bookended by local favorite Heavy Hand, playing a few new tracks including a new singalong winner about malfunctioning Big Muff pedals (“This Big Muff is fucked up/And all our shit is broken!”), and Gauss, who brought an interesting Elephant 6 take to their brand of noise (although maybe that was just the trumpet). Hopefully every one of these bands gets the time to develop a full discography before one of their members gets dragged to Missoula for work or some shit.

WWE Network World Tour: WrestleMania 13

Wrestling historians tend to point to WrestleMania XIV as the beginning of the "Attitude Era:" that oft-romanticized period of unprecedented profitability for the then-World Wrestling Federation during which competition with WCW pushed Vince McMahon & co. into new, more adult-oriented (read: high school male-oriented) creative arenas. Most wrestling fans prefer to remember the Attitude Era as a time when raunchier storylines were accompanied by a marked increase in hardcore wrestling styles and a continued uptick in in-ring workrate that began with the ascension of Bret Hart during the "New Generation" era of roughly 1993-1998. (They either prefer to ignore the rampant sexism and outright misogyny or insist that it wasn't a big deal because of the target demographic, but inches upon inches could be written about the more problematic aspects of having "Attitude.") But let's be real here--the Attitude Era started long before "Stone Cold" Steve Austin's ascendancy to the WWF World Title. By March 1997, there were plenty of cuss words and middle fingers being thrown around...to say nothing about the pistol "Loose Cannon" Brian Pillman threatened Austin with in an infamous segment of a late 1996 episode of Raw:



So if we're going to use a WrestleMania as a signpost to the beginning of the official "Attitude Era," i suggest we use the moment where Steve Austin, the next face of the company, transitioned from the despised villain that broke into his former friends' homes to the authority-cursing antihero whose hell-raising antics caused more audience glee than consternation--the WrestleMania 13 Double-Turn. (If nothing else, this 'Mania was the turning point that caused the ramp-up to what was probably the real beginning of the Attitude Era: the Montreal Screwjob at Survivor Series '97, which, if you're actually reading this and don't know what that is, demands your attention be directed to this phenomenal Radiolab episode.)

Man, have i been waiting for this one. Not for the main event--the WWF World Title picture in Spring 1997 was a complete mess and that it shook out into Undertaker vs. Sycho Sid was pretty unfortunate...but it did free up Bret Hart and the rapidly ascending (and already super-popular despite his status as a "heel") Austin to settle their burgeoning blood feud with one of my favorite 'Mania matches ever: their semi-main event submission match.

OK, here's the story: Shawn Michaels held the title he won at WrestleMania 12 all the way until the 1996 Survivor Series, where he lost the title to Sid after the big man cleaned Michaels' clock with a TV camera. Shawn won it back at the Royal Rumble in January '97 by delivering a taste of Sid's own medicine courtesy another camera, but before the February pay-per-view, Michaels ended up vacating the title. The reasons why are left to the speculative lens of history; the storyline involved a knee injury and Shawn's need to "find his smile again," while more nefarious theories point to Michaels choosing to forfeit the title rather than lose it back to Bret Hart in a scheduled rematch at WrestleMania 13. 



So regardless, the title was vacant and thus, a four-way elimination match was booked at In Your House: Final Four featuring Vader, Undertaker, and the final two Royal Rumble competitors, Steve Austin and Bret Hart. Austin won the Rumble under controversial circumstances that prolonged what was already a growing feud between Hart and him, and at Final Four, as the Hitman eliminated Austin en route to winning the match and his fourth WWF World Title, Austin refused to let it go. (Somewhere in here Austin's guaranteed title match at WrestleMania was conveniently forgotten about--probably because he got a shot at Final Four? I guess?) The next night on Raw, Bret defended his new title against Sycho Sid and Austin interfered, leading to Sid's victory for the title and a fresh layer to the grudge between Austin and Hart. If that wasn't enough, after Undertaker/Sid and Hart/Austin were set for WrestleMania, a cage match for the title was booked for the March 17 Raw between Hart and Sid, which could have affected which match actually ended up being for the title. After Sid won again due to interference from the Undertaker, Bret launched into an expletive-laced tirade as he complained about the WWF being out to "screw" him.



So...got all that? Shawn Michaels gives up the title and goes bye-bye for a spell, the title changes hands twice in 24 hours, and Bret's growing frustration with the company, which started during the build to WrestleMania 12, was boiling over as more and more people were slowly beginning to cheer for established "bad guys" like Austin. How can you argue with that buildup? Hell, you almost don't even need the undercard--although, who's gonna argue with Rocky Maivia vs. The Sultan? Wait--don't answer that. Let's just watch the damn show.