By Shane McKinkley, Torch specialist

"Yeah my friends are as strangers
And strangers as friends
And I feel like I'm lost in a lie"

-"Switch" by The Cure

I do feel like "I'm lost in a lie" with this WrestleMania buildup. While it's their product and they can do whatever they want with it, in some ways I feel somewhat miffed that I'm supposed to be buying this tepid drivel.

For the 500th episode of Smackdown, you would have thought that WWE would have shown past Smack footage from the years. At the end of the show you wouldn't have thought that you were watching the 500th episode. What fans got instead was a mini "Saturday Night Main Event" hyping up WrestleMania, but instead of celebrities and other entertaining bits, we got Vickie soap opera drama (ugh) and more "12 Rounds" hype (double ugh) (credit to tvsa.co.za for pic).

If you were a fan who hasn't checked out WWE in awhile, there was nothing here that would impress you to buy WrestleMania. Same old, same old.

You might have heard that many wrestlers defend the WWE characters and storylines as "comic book type," designed for the kiddies. While it is true that a WWE storyline should never go into adult storylines like Batman's "The Killing Joke," "Watchmen," or Spider-man's "Maximum Carnage," that doesn't mean that they're means that they are free to serve up boring drivel. One can take a look at Marvel's recent "Civil War" storyline as being a work of art. By contrast, the WrestleMania storylines are tepid and seemingly out of steam.

For as much whining and complaining as wrestling fans do about storylines, comic book fans have it much, much worse. I can attest that as a kid I stopped reading Spider-man comic books by the time the "Maximum Clonage" storyline came into place.

Trips comes out and manages to deliver every cliche you think could fit into a promo. As mentioned before, it just seems that a lot of these feuds are suffering from poor pacing. We can't foresee the future, but it seems like all of the big time stuff is over and now we're just coasting to Texas.

It's evident in the Trips vs. Orton feud and the Jeff vs. Matt feud. It's hard to believe that they've got two more weeks to fill. Unless something else big happens in the next two weeks, it looks from this standpoint that there's nothing else to these storylines.

"Orton is the disease. I'm the cure." Two things: It reminded me of the tagline to that Stallone movie "Cobra." It also reminded me of the band "The Cure." Speaking about music bands, can AC/DC take a page from the Super Bowl halftime show and splice four songs into one. I would love to see them doing the national anthem. Pretty sad that I can quote AC/DC lyrics from memory better than I can the bill of rights (credit to futurebrain.free.fr for pic).

Kozlov even came out like a jobber. Kozlov tries hard in the ring, but it looks like he's becoming the next Khali. A Kozlov kiss cam might be in the works. Or a move during the draft.

Let me get this straight: we're supposed to care about whether Vickie loves Edge or Show. This "Days of our Lives" baloney would have been fine if it was Edge vs. Show at the Great American Bash or something. Cena? World Championship? WrestleMania? Stay tuned. Or not.

I do admit that seeing MVP win the United States championship back made me smile. During MVP's punishment, it showed that people still care about MVP. If they didn't, he would have become a jobber by now or got fired.

Was pretty fun in watching HBK and Kane work. HBK might be the most important wrestler WWE has because he can make good matches great.

Jeff does cute spots with a chair and Kendrick eats a loss. I can't help but feel that this Jeff vs. Matt feud feels like "Plan B" (Plan A involved Christian and Edge). It's hard to accept that Matt was trying to kill Jeff since Survivor Series.

Show and Edge yell at each other. High point of their bantering was Edge screaming, "Don't spit on me." Vickie came out and I turned off the TV (credit to 4.bp.blogspot.com for pic).

It's not very often that I won't even bother watching the rest of the show. But knowing how gutless WWE programming is, I knew that nothing was going to happen. I hope that bored housewives all over the world are in love with this Vickie storyline. Frankly it just bores me to tears.

SMACKDOWN'S Verdict: In The Middle Of Absurdity

Email is mckinley.torch@gmail.com.

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