1. From an article on declining websites: Gawker's "traffic has dropped 75 percent this year." (Is this true?)



2. First sentence in a depressing article at Grantland: "Ric Flair has been physically attacked by at least three of his four wives."



3. New preorders at the BBTS: the very cool (and expensive) Batman by Hot Toys, Ms. Marvel Tonner doll, Thanos on throne.

READ MORE - Link roundup

1. Michael Lewis's latest, outstanding article on the financial apocalypse focuses on Germany. It's 17 pages but well worth your time. Here's a sample paragraph:

This preternatural love of rules, almost for their own sake, punctuates German finance as it does German life. As it happens, a story had just broken that a division of a German insurance company called Munich Re, back in June 2007, or just before the crash, had sponsored a party for its best producers that offered not just chicken dinners and nearest-to-the-pin golf competitions but a blowout with prostitutes in a public bath. In finance, high or low, this sort of thing is of course not unusual. What was striking was how organized the German event was. The company tied white and yellow and red armbands to the prostitutes to indicate which ones were available to which men. After each sexual encounter the prostitute received a stamp on her arm, to indicate how often she had been used. The Germans didn’t want just hookers: they wanted hookers with rules.

OK, here's one more:

This is what makes the German case so peculiar. If they had been merely the only big, developed nation with decent financial morals, they would present one sort of picture, of simple rectitude. But they had done something far more peculiar: during the boom German bankers had gone out of their way to get dirty. They lent money to American subprime borrowers, to Irish real-estate barons, to Icelandic banking tycoons to do things that no German would ever do. The German losses are still being toted up, but at last count they stand at $21 billion in the Icelandic banks, $100 billion in Irish banks, $60 billion in various U.S. subprime-backed bonds, and some yet-to-be-determined amount in Greek bonds. The only financial disaster in the last decade German bankers appear to have missed was investing with Bernie Madoff. (Perhaps the only advantage to the German financial system of having no Jews.) In their own country, however, these seemingly crazed bankers behaved with restraint. The German people did not allow them to behave otherwise. It was another case of clean on the outside, dirty on the inside. The German banks that wanted to get a little dirty needed to go abroad to do it.

2. Kristin Tercek's having an art sale.



3. NPR's top 100 science fiction and fantasy novels.



4. Grantland continues to better than I had hoped. Two great articles today: Whether the Blue Jays are cheating; Whether John Cena has it within him to become a WWE villain, and how that change would impact WWE's earnings. (I'd love to see a chart showing how much traffic ESPN has lost to Grantland. I never even visit ESPN.com anymore.)

READ MORE - Link roundup

Jimmy Kimmel arranged for CM Punk to confront a young John Cena fan.

READ MORE - CM Punk vs. a young John Cena fan on Jimmy Kimmel

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:

READ MORE - Last night's episode of Raw

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.)

READ MORE - 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.)

READ MORE - 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.

READ MORE - Link roundup

Plush Randy the Macho Man by K&B creations, who has various plush characters on sale at Etsy.

Here he is being very funny on Arsenio Hall in 1992:



Via.

Relatedly: An overview of Ms. Elizabeth's life.

READ MORE - Plush Randy the Macho Man (plus more)

Great collection of wrestling magazine covers (some are very bloody).

READ MORE - Wrestling magazine covers

1. Excellent overview of the Undertaker's WWE career, including this:

In 2006 The Undertaker was feuding with Randy Orton and his proxy (and father), '80s fixture "Cowboy" Bob Orton. (The Orton-'Taker match at WrestleMania 21, incidentally, was the first to use The Undertaker's undefeated streak as part of the storyline. After last night, his streak now stands at 19 matches.) In one match, an aggrieved 'Taker took it to Orton père, bloodying him badly. Later, off screen, Calaway found out that Bob had once tested positive for hepatitis and that nobody had thought to mention it to him before the two shared a bloodbath. Calaway was justifiably incensed, and the elder Orton was soon sent packing.

2. Jim Shooter has been posting one great anecdote after another. For example:

The San Diego Comic Con used to do this thing where artists would do drawings on stage, and then auction them off to raise money for the con. I remember Jack Katz had set a minimum bid on his of $200, and somebody actually paid $200 for it. Then the auctioneer gets this wonderful, huge drawing of Captain America that Jack had been drawing live on stage, and the auctioneer looks at it and says, “Am I bid $5?” I was so offended; it just cut me like a knife. He, like a lot of fans, didn’t like Jack’s work at that point, and that was his honest assessment of what somebody might pay for this.

And another:

The road that led to Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars actually began when Kenner Toys licensed the DC Universe for a boys’ action figure line. Their competitor, Mattel, already had their He-Man action figure line, which was doing very well, but wanted to hedge the bet in case comic book character action figures became the rage. So, they came to Marvel to talk about licensing our characters. One thing they demanded of us was an “event,” a special publication or series to help launch the toy line. I offered an idea that was suggested by a dozen or so correspondents -- usually younger ones -- in the fan mail every day: one big, epic story with all (or many) of the heroes and villains in it. Everyone agreed.

We went through a number of ideas for names for the toy line and series. Mattel’s focus group tests indicated that kids reacted positively to the words “wars” and “secret.” Okay.

Mattel had a number of other requirements. Doctor Doom, they said, looked too medieval. His armor would have to be made more high-tech. So would Iron Man’s, because their focus groups indicated that kids reacted positively...etc. Okay.

3. In 2010, 186 restaurants in Florida were cited for mislabeling their fish. Via.

*Buy Secret Wars toys at eBay.

READ MORE - Link roundup