Catching Up

I'm chilling at home watching some Law & Order: CI, and I finally did the dishes last night, so I have an opportunity to write a blog post and catch up on some events in my life and outside of it that I haven't commented on. Not a whole hell of a lot is happening in my life. There's a shift of lifestyle that I've had to adjust to, now that my credit card balances spiraled so far out of control that I had to enter a debt consolidation program and cut out my credit cards entirely. My lunches are consisting of homemade sandwiches almost every day, and if I don't find a part-time job soon I'll be forced to really start cutting some luxuries out of my life. But I strangely don't see the whole situation as that big of a deal. Lots of people are trying to get by daily on a lot less money than me, due to car payments and trying to raise children and other expenses that I don't have to worry about. So I'll be fine. I've survived much worse shit than this.

Here are some current event topics that I wanted to make blog posts about but never got around to it:

The Psycho-Pussy Phenomenon. Within a couple of weeks of each other, former NFL QB Steve McNair and boxer Arturo Gatti were murdered by their respective lovers. (McNair's wasn't his wife, and Gatti's death by purse strap strangulation was ruled a suicide by the cops in Brazil where he was murdered, just for the record.) But I pause one second to gather my thoughts on why men who can get any piece of ass they want instead go for young and mentally instable ass, and next thing I know Jason Whitlock has a column out saying the exact same thing (via Deadspin, although I'm not writing an article here, so I don't know why the fuck I'm bothering giving credit for where I saw the column). Whitlock says basically what I was thinking when I first heard about both cases, which is, why in hell would an athlete with money and some fame choose to shack up with young women who don't know what they want in life because they haven't lived long enough, not to mention might be psycho? Having sex with hot, young chicks, that's understandable (although it would have been nice for McNair to decide he wanted a divorce before having sex with hot, young chicks, but in a way that's none of our business). But McNair had an entirely separate life away from his home living with the nut that shot him, going on vacations with her and everything, as if she's mature enough to make your second wife at the age of 20, and Gatti made some 23-year-old stripper his wife. Both men were in their late 30s, and mark my words, both were going to throw the girls aside in ten or fifteen years once they got too old for their tastes. I don't have a problem with that. But you never make one of those young girls your life partner. You're asking for nothing for trouble when you take a hot flame and try to mold her into a housewife. And I can't even get into the press coverage of the McNair story because it was so ridiculous. He was painted as this warrior and great family man who had this tragic thing happen to him. You know who doesn't have tragic things happen to them? Guys who don't fuck little girls and then cheat on them while sleeping in the same house with them and guns are lying around. Try to avoid those loosely connected situations, and still be alive today. See how easy that works?

RIP, Freak. Speaking of sexually confused people, the world's most famous pedophile, Michael Jackson, passed on, and honestly, my second reaction (the first, like everyone else, was "OMFG!1!! MICHAEL JACKSON DIED!!!1!!") was, "I hope he's happy wherever he is." Talk about a guy who didn't like the skin he was in from a very early age. It's hard for me to imagine what being Michael Jackson must have felt like. I like to think I'm the foremost authority on not liking yourself very much, but I've never tried to go from a black man to a white woman, I've never tried to get my nose surgically reduced so much that it looks like a cheese wedge, and I've never desired to fuck little white boys as a way to reclaim my lost childhood. This guy was in so much pain, I can't even fathom it. Only those closest to him could possibly know what went through that guy's skull on a daily basis, and we'll have to wait a year or two for the tell-all books to start coming out. And for what it's worth, I don't think there's a valid reason for fucking little white boys, and it's despicable any way you slice it, but I'm just guessing he did it because it was a way for him to live out his lost childhood; perhaps little white boys were the purest, most innocent form of humanity to him, moreso than little girls or grown humans. But I really hope more than anything that his spirit finds a way to be happy now that it's freed from his body. Someone making as much money as he did, showing his talent as effortlessly as he did should have had so much more fun during his time on Earth, yet no one seemed more tortured in his own skin than Michael Jackson. It was time for him to get off this planet, when you think about it. He didn't die too soon. If anything he died too late, before his desires and psychological issues led him to suck off little boys and ruin their lives forever. Oh, and I've been told that Michael's daddy is a damn fool, but since I've never once paid attention to anything he's said, I can't confirm that.

Support Your Local Indy Fed. About six weeks ago, while walking home from the Metra train on the last Saturday night that I had to work before I started my new shift of M-F, I noticed a small white cardboard sign shoved into the ground that said "Pro Wrestling Tonight," with an arrow pointing across the street at a lonely-looking truck company office. I was thrilled and confused at the same time, thrilled because who knew there was a venue in my neighborhood large enough to hold wrestling matches, and confused because, well, where could this venue possibly be?? I'm telling you, that truck company office is a one-flat storefront, so I knew it couldn't be in there...could it? I went home and decided to search around the internet for any wrestling events on the West Side of Chicago, and thanks to the upcoming events tab at this website, I was able to locate the address and next event of an indy league called the UWC. The address was exactly where that truck company office is. The next show was the very next Saturday after I saw that sign. The cost was $5. I decided to attend. It wasn't worth the $5. First, finding the venue was a trip because as I said, that innocent little office didn't appear to be where the event could be taking place. Well, if you walk along the side wall of that little office, you have to go back about two city blocks to where most of the trucks are parked, but eventually you come upon a building with a row of offices lined up in a way so that it resembles a row of trailers in a trailer park. I frightened the shit out of this 40-year-old white woman who clutched her purse as I approached her and asked was there a wrestling match taking place around here somewhere. "OH, yes," she cheerfully answered, relieved that I wasn't there to rape her, "right through that door." This trailer-park looking place was also a one-flat, so I was still wondering how there was a wrestling match happening here. "Is this the way to the wrestling?" I asked a fat white girl in black jeans. "Yeah," she answered sarcastically, "did my t-shirt give it away?" She turned to show me the UWC t-shirt she was wearing, which was impossible for me to see since I was walking behind her, so yes, cumbucket, the t-shirt that I couldn't see gave it away. Through a corridor, I came upon a small room that had a front wall with framed wrestling magazine covers and pictures of guys that you've heard of and therefore wouldn't be in attendance this evening. Then, around the wall, the rest of the room was empty except for a concession area to the left with food that I wouldn't be ordering and t-shirts and lucha masks that I wouldn't be purchasing. A middle-aged Latina woman took my money at the door at the front of the room, and I stepped through into a larger room resembling a section of a warehouse with about 50 or 60 flimsy folding chairs set up in rows and a rickety ring against the far wall that looked like it would fall apart if someone breathed on it. One wall had a small opening at the bottom resembling a mouse hole. The smell was strong, like people had been sweating and grunting in there for many days before I ever showed up. Less than half the chairs were occupied. I was the only brotha in attendance, although there was a black guy doing very annoying play-by-play over the house mike, and there were a couple of black guys wrestling during the show, and the one and only referee they had was black. I had to sit on two of the chairs at once because I didn't trust just one of them to support my weight. One single small camera on a tripod stood to the right of the ring filming the night's activities. Of the first three matches, one of them featured a wrestler in wrestler's gear--you know, trunks and pads and wrestling boots. Everyone else seemed to be in their street clothes or workout pants with no shirt on. The 350-lb. brotha who came out in a camouflage hoodie almost lost his gym shorts during his match, but thankfully for all of us he had shiny red trunks underneath covering everything up. All five matches were as painfully amateurish as you'd expect, with lots of blown spots and moments that left you wondering why some of these guys were even being allowed in the ring. During intermission, I asked the referee, who was outside on his smoke break, how often they have shows. "Every three weeks," he replied, then looked me up and down like a piece of meat and added, "But we do have training every Saturday!" Hell to the naw, I replied, or something resembling that. For the main event, the champ, a large white dude in a mask, stood in the middle of the ring while his manager and white-trash skank valet issued an open challenge, meaning they charged $5 for a show in which the title match had no advertised challenger. Five minutes before this, two heavy Latina women showed up and sat right behind me, and when the champ came out for the open challenge, they both immediately started booing him and shouting him down, so based on nothing more than this, I assumed that the man answering the challenge would be Hispanic, and he probably just showed up to the "arena" and dropped those two women off in his 1984 Chevy Caprice. I was right. Some fat dude named Will E. Bling ran out and fought with the champ for about five minutes before the champ's manager and entourage jumped into the ring and attacked Will, laying him and some other Latino who charged into the ring out with chairshots. The women howled in anger and shouted words too salty even for this blog, as if this were an actual mugging in the street. They were as entertaining as any wrestlers on the show. The next show after that, according to that Chicago wrestling website, was going to have nine matches but was going to cost $7 for admission. I almost swallowed my tongue when I read that. I didn't go back. That's not to say that I wouldn't someday check it out again just for the cheesy atmosphere, and also because I feel good supporting an indy fed that clearly needs the support, and also because if I ever got the guts to ask if they need an extra announcer or something, I may wind up breaking into the wrestling business after spending my entire life fantasizing about it. But I can't ever see myself in the ring despite my size. Too many bad things can happen trusting an amateur to protect you while you try moves that you're just not coordinated enough to do.

Chicago Sports In The Spotlight. It's fun to see our major league pro sports teams step up and go for the jugular instead of always waiting back and hoping things turn around on their own. The Bulls, despite their horrible draft picks a couple of months ago (Taj Gibson? What, we don't have enough mentally challenged spazzes loitering underneath the basket?), still have a chance to clear salary off their books and jump into the free agent pool after next season. That's the only way they're ever going to get Derrick Rose a supporting cast that can contend for a title, and they know it. Drafting turds every year isn't going to cut it. It may not look like it, but they are putting themselves in the best position to succeed. The Bears are about to fire up their first season with Jay Cutler as their quarterback, and I still can't believe they had the balls to pull off that trade. Cutler is without question one of the seven best QBs in the damn game, and we went out and got him. I'm not perfect with predictions, but I'm not always wrong, either. Prediction: Cutler will throw for 3,500 yards and 25 TDs. Prediction: WR Earl Bennett, who couldn't do much of anything last year for the Bears with Kyle Orton at QB but set records playing with Cutler in college at Vanderbilt, will go for 1,000 yards receiving. Prediction: The Bears will win the NFC Central and will have a really good run through the playoffs, falling just short of the Super Bowl. Prediction: The Denver Broncos, who traded Cutler here for Orton and some draft picks, will suck. Hard. And how about the White Sox going after former Cy Young Award winning pitcher Jake Peavy? I never would have thought the Sox would move that far forward to get an ace for their rotation, but giving up four pitching prospects was not too stiff for GM Ken Williams. Good for him. They don't trade aces every day in baseball, so huzzah for going after one and getting him. It's a strange deal considering Peavy is on the disabled list, and I didn't know you could trade guys on the DL, but I guess when you want someone that bad, you don't care if he's temporarily sidelined. Around the same time the Bears will be gearing up to start the season a month from now, Peavy should be getting set to lead the Sox into the last month and go after a pennant. I'm really, really looking forward to September. Makes me wish I was a sports columnist, because there would be no shortage of topics right now.

And Speaking Of Writing...While looking for part-time jobs, I came across a website called Examiner.com that was looking for columnists, but they wouldn't say how much they would pay. I applied anyway because I hoped that I could write for them and make some extra money, but I never expected that it would pay a lot because if it did, they would say upfront what kind of money they were offering. Well, I got the gig, and I am now the Chicago Long Distance Relationships Examiner. Sure enough, the pay is virtually nothing. They appear to give me a whole penny every time my page is viewed. There's no actual salary for my labor, so page views is the only way I will make any cash. Plus, they won't send me any money until my account grows past $25. At this rate, that will happen around 2013. Oh well. At least I will have a catalogue of writing that I can send a future employer if I want to get into freelance writing, and that catalogue won't have profanity or diatribes about wanting to murder ex-lovers.

Finally, How's The Missus? My fiancee is still searching for work, although she's having success doing volunteer work for nonprofit organizations, which could easily lead into paid labor if she impresses the right people. She visited here twice this summer, and the second time she was able to attend my dinner at ESPNZone that I won at the Sports Spelling Bee. We did it on Saturday, July 4, because I wanted my whole family there with me, and they agreed to be there with me on that day. I was very proud to have everyone there, including my fiancee. I looked over the scene a couple times--all nine of us, including my aunt's family and my uncle's family, except for my uncle's oldest son--and I imagined that this is what it will look like if all of them come down to Memphis for the wedding. It was a little emotional. It sounds strange, but I miss being the center of my family's attention. This happened all the time when I was a child. I'd have a play at school, or a part in some sort of assembly, or they would take me to dinner for some sort of academic achievement. And it was an occasion for my folks to tell me how proud they were of me and how much joy they took in my accomplishments. And the fact is, I ain't accomplished much since I grew up. I still don't want a celebratory dinner for getting my Associates degree because that's something that I shouldn't have done when I was fucking 33 years old. That should have been taken care of twelve years ago, but I was so immature that I avoided college at all costs. I don't think I should be celebrated for something that I put off so damn long. Anyway, my fiancee also went with me to the Sox game that I won tickets for, and that was really fun. They weren't just regular old tickets, they were tickets to something called the Jim Beam Club, and that got us free food, free drinks, free dessert, and a seat one level up from the ground right behind home plate. At one point I got up from all the food and headed out the door to go down to field level because I assumed that I had to go into the actual stands to buy a scorecard. (I like to keep score of the game.) The lady at the door informed me that no, I don't have to leave the Jim Beam Club to get a scorecard, they have them right there at the door. I gladly whipped out a dollar to pay for the scorecard, delighted that I didn't have to go searching for one. She told me the scorecards were complimentary. I then started wondering how I could break the news to my fiancee that I wasn't EVER LEAVING THIS PLACE. To top it off, it was Fireworks Night, and the Sox won, so you couldn't have made it a better night. The only down part about my fiancee's second visit was that I used most of my vacation time on her first visit, so I was going to work, coming home, eating the supper she prepared, and promptly falling asleep. So yeah, we didn't mess around a whole lot. We're both still getting used to each other on some levels. We're shy people by nature, so it's a battle to make that first move. I believe she thinks it's incumbent on me to be more forward since I have more experience, but I'm just not that guy. And she's definitely not that gal. I have a feeling we'll get more comfortable once she moves up here permanently. But after three and a half years of long-distance dating, we still are getting to know each other.

But hey, no excuses. I'll just have to get it together and do better next time. After all, I am the Chicago Long Distance Relationships Examiner. I'm a fucking expert! Right?

Hello? Anybody home??

He's Done It Again

http://jimcornette.com/Commentary.html

Jim Cornette, a long-time manager in the wrestling business, has written another all-time great commentary piece (blog post, do I dare call it?), this time about the history of "hardcore" wrestling and the damage it has done to the industry. I actually expected to hate the piece due to my neverending love and respect for the old Extreme Championship Wrestling, or ECW, of the 1990s. But after reading the article, I see the harm done by having those kinds of matches night after night. I should just find a way to link to Cornette's web site so that every time he writes a new commentary, it automatically shows up on my blog.

BTW, I'll have another blog post about me and my fiancee in the next day or two. I'm sure you 3 people still reading my blog just cannot wait.

When Bad Comedy Writers Attack Good Wrestling Shows

http://www.jimcornette.com/Commentary.html (link taken from f4wonline.com)

The above link is for anyone who has ever wondered what the difference is between good, sensible, intelligent booking in pro wrestling and nonsensical, garbage, bullshit "writing" that seems to have permeated the industry nowadays. In his article "The 'Write' Stuff," Jim Cornette, who has been in the wrestling industry for almost 30 years, breaks down why the comedy writers who populate the "WWE Universe" are ultimately much more harmful than good for the business. For hardcore fans, and even for casual observers who have watched something on a WWE telecast that isn't entertaining and has nothing to do with wrestling and wondered why the hell they put such crap on TV, this is a must-read.

A quick update on me: Not much going on. I'm looking forward to a bowling event for Sick-A-Cell this Saturday at Lakewood Bowl in Richton Park, IL. I'll be in lots of pain afterwards because I'm old, but that's ok. If anyone's interested, it's $20, which gets you two games, shoes, pizza, and a raffle ticket for prizes that usually are pretty cool. Last year, they gave away an iPod. It starts at 6P, so drop on by. In other news, my job is eliminating 2nd shift, so by June 1st I will be back waking up early in the morning and going to work 9 to 5 like normal people. I got used to 2nd shift, so I will miss certain aspects of it, mostly waking up whenever the fuck I felt like it. But I will be happy to watch prime-time television once again, especially baseball and football games, and my fiancee will be thrilled to speak to me earlier than 11:15P most nights. Finally, speaking of wrestling, I caved in and ordered WrestleMania 25 a few weeks ago after waffling back and forth. I won't say it was a horrible show, but I will say that I got the feeling even before I ordered that this may be the last big show I pay for because wrestling is on the decline without a bright light on the horizon, and this card didn't do anything to change my mind about that. The best match was between two guys over 40 (Shawn Michaels and the Undertaker), and of the two men that won the double main event, one can't wrestle but is on top because he's sexy and sells a ton of merchandise (John Cena), and the other is fucking WWE owner Vince McMahon's daughter (Triple H). Yeah, I don't think I'll be back for any more PPVs anytime soon.

And To Prove That I'm Not A Total Scrooge...

...A heartwarming story about a Samoan Savage and his Christmas Myracle. Happy Holidays all!

http://sacbee.com/topstories/story/1496331.html

(From the Wrestling Observer/Figure 4 Weekly website)

The Strangest Thing I've Ever Seen In A Wrestling Ring

All I'll say is, it's from Japan, so maybe that explains its weirdness. But I ain't never seen anything like this before.

http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/tajiri/video/x2cg2f_tajiri-yinling-vs-rg-the-great-muta_extreme

And while I'm at it, here's perhaps my favorite all-time Wrestlemania match. That pop for the first wrestler that comes out has got to be the loudest I've ever heard. If I were there live, I would have lost my hearing.

http://www.dailymotion.com/visited/jeffmartin48/video/x306ie_wwf-wrestlemania-xseven-stone-cold_extreme

http://www.dailymotion.com/visited/jeffmartin48/video/x306la_wwf-wrestlemania-xseven-stone-cold_extreme

That's It, I'm Moving To Brazil

What if I were to tell you that all three of the remaining presidential candidates would speak on a pro wrestling show? And not to denounce pro wrestling, but to actually speak to wrestling fans, as if they've suddenly become an important constituency? If you don't believe that they would do something like that, then click on this Youtube posting of all three speeches this past Monday on WWE Raw. Then, join me in dry-heaving and mourning the death of decency in this country. I mean, seriously. Remember the uproar when Slick Willie Clinton blew his, um, own horn on Arsenio? Isn't this a billion times worse? There are so many things wrong with courting the wrestling industry, as if they're the bastion of goodness, and then all three go and do it, not just one. An abbreviated list of things that each candidate should question about WWE is here in this excellent blog post by former WWE writer Seth Mates. And believe me, that's just the beginning. But that's where America has collapsed to, where the candidates will fish for votes anywhere they can find them. There has never been a candidate before that spoke to wrestling fans, and there's a reason for that. I really find it in its own way disgusting and filthy. It reminds me of a saying that describes what I felt like after discovering that "Karen" was a dirty whore and I was screwing her: Don't roll in the mud with pigs, you both get dirty, and the pig likes it. Vince McMahon and the WWE are the pigs, and they were creaming their pants at the sight of the next President of the United States rolling in the mud with them. What's next, the Adult Video Awards convention?

Man, am I glad I'm not registered to vote.

The Benoit Tragedy--When Words Can't Do Justice

I haven't been struggling trying to figure out what I was going to say on my blog about the Chris Benoit situation because I don't have much to say. The information provided hasn't answered the question of why, and beyond that, what else is there to talk about? Yes, it's horrific, yes, it's another black eye for pro wrestling, and yes, it's a damn shame that a wife and innocent child were victims. From what I've read on the internet all week, any other commentary outside of that has been speculative, inflammatory, inaccurate, and probably should never have been said.

The Chris Benoit situation, for those who may not know, is this: From what I've read, to the best of my knowledge, 17-year veteran pro wrestler Chris Benoit did not make it to a wrestling pay-per-view show last Sunday night due to what WWE was claiming was a "family emergency," then Benoit, his wife (a former wrestling valet who divorced her wrestler husband while he was feuding with Benoit and went on to marry Benoit) and their son were found dead in their suburban Atlanta home. WWE aired a three-hour retrospective about Benoit Monday night; the next day details were released by the Atlanta police that indicated Benoit for reasons nobody knows strangled his wife with a cord, choked out his son, and then hung himself in his weight room. No suicide notes or any other indicators why Chris did this were left behind, just a Bible next to his wife and one left next to his son. WWE has taken on flak since then for airing a glowing tribute Monday to a guy who killed his family. I can't even comment on that because there's no way I can tell who knew what about Benoit's death when, and even if WWE and its Chairman Vince McMahon knew, it would be hard for me to come down on them for acknowledging one of its greatest in-ring performers because, again, no one knows for sure why he did this, and I can't decide if ignoring him and never mentioning his name on a wrestling broadcast again would be the right thing to do. Maybe, maybe not.

What I do want to talk about is the talking heads that have yapped about this thing all week. McMahon is still running scared from the feds taking him to trial for steroid possession and distribution in the 1990s (he beat the rap), so his main talking point on shows has been that Benoit was just a "monster" and that steroids and roid rage couldn't have had anything to do with this because the WWE has a wellness policy and Benoit passed his most recent test. Yeah, I'm sure the WWE steroid test is really difficult to beat. The fact is, McMahon has absolutely no idea if this was a roid rage incident and he was just trying to clear his name and the WWE before the info about roids being found in Benoit's home came out. I find that disgusting. Instead of saying that we have to wait for the whole truth to be uncovered, McMahon is busy covering his ass. The general commentary hasn't been much more intelligible. Some people are informed, but a lot, like the Fox News jokers, aren't, and almost everything they say comes out sounding like they still think pro wrestling is in its own bubble insulated from the outside world and that's why this horrific scene could occur, never mind that there's no evidence this has anything to do with wrestling. In fact, that was one of my first thoughts when I heard the news--how hard will the mainstream work to make a homicide-suicide by a pro wrestler look like it's wrestling's fault? They already hate wrestling, looking down on it as if only low-class individuals watch it, ignoring the high ratings every single week which indicate it's a widely popular program in any and all demographics. I was afraid they would try to paint this as something only a wrestler or a maniac could do, and that's been the case in some instances.

Or maybe I'm just hoping some excuse can come out to explain the unexplainable. Maybe I'm such a big Benoit fan that I can't believe he could do this without some sort of outside force causing him to snap and not realize what he was doing. I don't own a lot of wrestling DVDs because most of them out there are WWE products and I really hate putting money in the pockets of that pud McMahon. But the first one I ever bought a couple of years ago was "Hard Knocks," the Chris Benoit life story. He was that great to me. Every match he wrestled was hard-fought, stiff, and looked like it hurt him and the man he was working with. He put his body through hell every time out, and watching him talk about his career, you could tell it was what he loved to do and what he thought he was put here to do. The reason that resonated with me was because it reminded me of sports stars and the intensity and hard work they put themselves through to be at their peak physical best, and I respected the hell out of that. And so did the fans. Whether he was playing a good guy or a bad guy, Benoit had a section of every arena standing and applauding every time he hit the ring because they appreciated the fact that someone was going to get their ass kicked tonight. Believe it or not, there's not a great deal of wrestlers who inspire that feeling when they walk to the ring because so many of them are so light-hitting because they're afraid of hurting themselves or their opponents. Benoit wasn't concerned with that. He was concerned with having a match that looked and felt real, and it didn't go unnoticed by those of us who want to see guys display top-notch physical talent.

With that, here's one more theory of what could have made Chris do this other than just an animalistic drive to destroy himself, his family, and his legacy in one weekend. Like every other wrestler who wanted to put on a hardcore, realistic match every time out, Benoit over the years took many shots to and drops on his head. Since WWE--or, in fairness, any other wrestling federation--is loathe to give guys breaks or thorough physical exams, there's no telling how many concussions Benoit may have suffered over the years. He may never have reported any of them, either, since he wanted to be a tough guy and didn't want to be seen as weak for asking to be taken off a show due to headaches. Well, there was an ex-NFL player named Andre Waters who a few months ago killed himself due to feeling helpless from the neurological damage suffered from his numerous concussions. He was 43, but his brain had aged as if it was 73 from all the damage. The work to discover telltale signs of this damage to his brain was put in motion in part from the efforts of Chris Nowinski, a Harvard graduate and a man not yet 30 years old who was a WWE Superstar for a couple of years before quitting due to concussions. He is now pushing for former NFL players to get their heads examined, so to speak, so that they can see if they have issues with their brains and get treatment before it's too late. Nowinski wants to have the brain of Chris Benoit on his table to examine if there are the same symptoms of damage that were there in Andre Waters' brain, the same symptoms that led Waters to commit suicide. Last I read, Nowinski had thus far been rebuffed in his efforts to acquire Benoit's noodle. But if he gets that brain and finds that same kind of damage, at least there may be a small sense of closure and an answer to the question of why. And maybe McMahon will quit running around the country calling Benoit a monster, and maybe some sort of institutionalized health care will be instated by the WWE before McMahon can create more monsters.

Yes, I'm Still Alive (For Now)

The issue with not doing stupid things with my life and making bad decisions is that I don't feel the need to do frequent blog updates. There's just not much drama to talk about. In addition, I'm able to get the everyday mundane things out of my system by having a great girlfriend who actually listens to me. Not all of my past posts were reports on the latest crazy escapade I got tied up in. Some were just regular old gripes about the shit that all of us go through, and I am able to vent that out every other night on the phone now. In other words, there's really nothing to talk about on this post either. I just hadn't been here in almost a month, and I wanted to write something.

I did watch WrestleMania a few weeks ago at my uncle's house, and it was very interesting because the older I get, the more in-depth I get into the politics of pro wrestling and who gets pushed to the front of the line and why. So I really watched this event with an eye towards what the future is supposed to look like in wrestling and what was going to happen at WrestleMania to advance in that direction. As a result, nothing that happened surprised me very much, except maybe the older ECW guys winning their match with the "New Breed" of stars (I just knew they would bury the older guys once and for all, but then they would have to find a new direction for the New Breed during the weekly TV shows, and it's easier to keep them fighting with the old guys). There was a lot of publicity about the match in which WWE Chairman Vince McMahon put a guy against the chosen guy of mogul Donald Trump, with the losing "billionaire" getting his head shaved. I even heard some folks convinced that Trump would be the loser because McMahon had too big of an ego to let his head get shaved. Well, what kind of ego do you think Trump had? And how could anyone with half a brain think that Trump would ever get involved in this whole scenario unless he was going to come out on top? When you see a huge celebrity involved in pro wrestling who you never would think would be involved, 99% of the time that celebrity will come out looking like a Mensa member because that's how you convince them to get involved--by promising them that they will come out looking smarter and sharper than the "rasslers." Plus, as much as I hate McMahon and what he's done to wrestling, I had no doubt from the beginning that he would let his head get shaved for the good of the business and to deliver the payoff for those who specifically paid the $50 to order WrestleMania to see McMahon or Trump get their head shaved as promised. To deliver a screwjob ending where neither got shaved would have been a horrible business decision and would have alienated any number of customers, so someone was going to have to deliver that payoff, and McMahon was the logical choice. On top of everything else, he was the bad guy, and traditionally the Big Match in wrestling scripts where things will be settled Once And For All goes to the good guy.

My job continues to create new guidelines and rules daily in an attempt to royally piss me off. The latest is to make us take our morning break and lunch separately because some people were abusing the ability to combine them and taking off an hour before quitting time. Well, the nature of our job makes it very hard to get up and take a break early in the morning because most of our work comes via FedEx and DHL and UPS early in the morning, and it doesn't slow down until maybe 12:30 or 1:00P. I mean, you can leave, but that's always made the people working with you look at you askew because they are working as hard as they can to get the mail processed in a timely manner, and there you are walking away. That's what made me combine my break and lunch, because it's been implied since I've started working there that to leave before your morning assignments are done is disrespectful to your colleagues. We all get yelled at if we have accounts that sent mail to us overnight and paid extra for it and the mail doesn't get done before that account's cut-off time. In addition, it's very hard to find something to eat in a half-hour in downtown Chicago unless you like swallowing food whole without chewing. We can't even bring lunch back to our desks because some fool got jelly or some substance like jelly on a piece of mail and when the image lab tried to make copies of that mail, the image machine got gummed up. So it's beneficial to everyone if we're able to combine our breaks and lunches. I actually haven't split mine up yet, even though it's been a couple of weeks since the mandate came down. I'm waiting for someone to have a problem with what time I take my lunch so that I can ask them why it's an issue. But our area is a bit of a mess right now, because our usual team leader is on maternity leave, and often we either have a team lead for the day who isn't very experienced and doesn't have time to worry about what time people are taking lunch, or don't have a team lead at all. This is an example of why it's so funny that for the last six months, I've been a member of the Q-Board Team, a group that gathers the production and error numbers and holds a monthly meeting with the entire floor talking about those numbers and what we can do to improve. Imagine, crazy, nutjob me, a responsible member of a J.P. Morgan Chase committee. If only they read this blog...but anyhow, I've still got some wild hairs, and if something happens or is mandated that I don't agree with, I have a hard time going along with the company line. In some worlds, the word for that is "asshole." But I'm sorry, if you're going to give me an instruction that doesn't make sense to me, and you don't give a good reason, I'm going to challenge it. That's not the way to go about moving up the corporate ladder, but I have a feeling that my attitude will be very important in other areas of life, and that's worth more to me. I'm smart enough to give the impression to those that matter that I'm going along with the plan. But sometimes taking my own path is the only option, such as a couple of months ago, when I had to be the watchdog who questioned a new method introduced that was incorrect. If there aren't assholes around like me to question things, we all could be doing our jobs wrong.

My health has been a bit of a problem lately. A few weeks ago, I woke up one morning and there was a sharp pain in my right knee, right on the top of my kneecap, like someone snuck in overnight and whacked it with a steel pipe. This coincided with a bad snap of weather, complete with rain, snow, and temperatures in the 30s and 40s. It got worse and worse, almost made me miss work, then went away after maybe a week and a half. I was supposed to go bowling with my family a couple of weekends ago, but at the beginning of the week, I woke up with a sharp pain in my left knee, at the top of the kneecap, like someone snuck in overnight and whacked it with a steel pipe. "Jacob" was in town for the Geek Convention, er, I mean our annual baseball fantasy draft, so this happened after three nights of dinner with Jacob and his friend, and I wondered if I had just been a little too active and twisted something. The weather was getting worse again as well. Also, the night before, I had a 1-lb. burger at Bennigan's, so perhaps it was a gout attack in my knee joint triggered by the mountain of undercooked ground beef. In any event, despite consuming several Aleve Gelcaps in the days leading up to the bowling outing, I decided to do the smart thing and not bowl, which saddened me because I bowl so wildly and out of control that some folks were really looking forward to seeing me. I hated to disappoint those who had not seen someone lift the ball higher than their head on his backswing before. I still attended and had a great time, though. But the thing with my knees was very strange. I don't want to go to a doctor now to find out what the deal was, because the pain is gone and the doc may not have any idea either. I have it narrowed down to accidental twisting that didn't affect me until the knee stiffened up overnight; changes in the weather affecting my joints; gout attack from something I ate; or someone came in during the night and whacked me.

Of course, the whacking thing is not viable, but perhaps someone out there (besides my exes) really does want to hurt me. Last Wednesday, I got a phone call on my home phone, from a name I didn't recognize, so I let my answering machine take it. My outgoing message doesn't say my name, and the message didn't refer to me by name. The message said, verbatim: "Told you nigger. I'm a chop your head off. Punk." No one has threatened me in any way before, so I'm 99% sure it's a case of mistaken identity and this guy would like to chop some other nigger's head off. Nonetheless, I've had my head on a swivel the last week. Hopefully, it won't be on a stick soon. The sad part is, my girlfriend pointed out, some dude out there is about to get his head cut off and doesn't know it. I'm just amazed that this shithead wasn't bright enough to block his phone number from popping up on caller ID before he started calling wrong phone numbers throwing out threats. Since my loved ones received the same e-mail of this moron's name and phone number, if I come up missing, the police will know where to start immediately. And that's no one's fault but his. If you're going to be a criminal, you really should have a criminal mind.

Another Wrestler Gone In A Flash

Completely unprovoked, I watched a Bam Bam Bigelow pro wrestling match I have on tape against Taz Wednesday just because it's one of my favorite matches. I missed watching Bigelow wrestle, because he was a good 350 or 360 pounds but moved around the ring with freakish agility while still fighting a stiff style that made every move seem like it hurt like hell, which it probably did. Bigelow was found dead in his home this morning in Florida at the age of 45. The medical reports are not available yet, but it almost doesn't matter. An enormous number of pro wrestlers, by nature of their occupation, feel the need to take enough painkillers to make every horse in the Kentucky Derby drop dead. With no evidence whatsoever, I assume Bigelow was no different. It catches up to you eventually. Maybe not after a year, maybe not after a few years, but eventually your body adds up all the things wrong with it that you don't know about because pain, which warns your body that something is wrong, is not being felt due to the numbing medicine you're piling into your system. The funny thing is, if Bigelow had died ten years ago, before literally dozens of wrestlers started dying suddenly at very young ages, some folks could have looked at his size and tossed off some aside about trying to be an athlete at his weight catching up to him. Believe me, it wasn't his fucking weight that killed him. It wasn't weight that killed the 210-lb. Eddie Guerrero in his early 40s, the 235-lb. Curt Hennig in his early 40s, the 280-lb. (mostly muscle) Mike Hegstrand (Road Warrior Hawk) in his early 40s, the 230-lb. Chris Candido in his 30s...I could go on forever. But it's easy for me to rail against painkillers because I never had the balls to go for the brass ring and pursue a career as a wrestler. If I had, who knows what measures I would go through to maintain my "spot" and keep living my dream. But I have a feeling that if those in charge of wrestling would have a heart and provide health care for their employees instead of calling them "independent contractors" and turning their backs on them, better alternatives could be provided than 20 soma pills and a bottle of vodka.

Is It A Revolution If It's Financed By The Dictator?

(Lots of nerdy pro wrestling terms and shit in this post, so please skip now. You have been warned.)

In the mid-1990s, the same two big-time pro wrestling organizations, WWE (then WWF) and WCW, were stinking up the joint with bad wrestling, lack of imagination, and general blandness, and believe me, I have the video tapes to prove it. But Paul Heyman, a former WCW manager who got fired/ran for his life from the stifling atmosphere, started Eastern Championship Wrestling, one of dozens of little "independent" promotions that exist in this country as a sort of proving ground for fledgling wrestlers trying to get to the big time. And because Heyman doesn't like doing things by the book, he started writing scripts for his promotion that were cutting-edge and out-of-the-box, like letting his wrestlers drink and smoke on the way to the ring as a way of getting the characters over with the fans, or having a wrestler suspect his girlfriend/valet of cheating only to have him and the viewers find out that she was fucking another female valet. And because wrestling fans were looking for something, anything, to watch that wouldn't put them to sleep, this promotion became very popular through word-of-mouth and through this new creation called the internet. Heyman them ramped up the violence and edginess and selection of metal and grunge music as a way of setting the theme and changed the name of the promotion to Extreme Championship Wrestling. And ECW went on to capture many hardcore fans because it was in-your-face, take-no-prisoners, "politically incorrect--and damn proud of it!", as one of their commercials used to scream. But all of this attitude was combined with some of the best wrestling in the world, and what that created was a place that longtime fans of workrate and innovation in the ring, like me, had to gravitate towards, like a magnet, or else we felt like we were missing out on something special. I watched several ECW events live at friends' houses (and I have all of their pay-per-view efforts on tape), and it was always a loud, raucous affair, with most of us howling at the unreal moves executed in the ring by wrestlers who could hone their craft without anal-retentive bigwigs looking down their noses going, "Tsk tsk, those 30-minute matches with all the acrobatic moves will never make people watch, you have to have tanned, jacked-up movie stars like Hulk Hogan or The Rock, or else you'll never make it." I was addicted to the point where I didn't watch the Big Two, WWE or WCW, for about a year out of boredom with their products. If it wasn't ECW, I wasn't interested.

Unfortunately, little independent promotions don't make enough money to keep those talented wrestlers around. And slowly, almost all of the guys and girls that made ECW what it was left to go work for one of the Big Two because they could make much more money there. At the same time, both of the Big Two started incorporating elements of edginess and raunch that basically stole the thunder of that innovative style from ECW and put it on a bigger, worldwide stage, and as a result, ECW couldn't grow its audience, couldn't create revenue, and eventually had to fold in early 2001. That same year, WCW also folded, and the only promotion left standing was WWE, owned by the notorious Vince McMahon, who hated the success that WCW and ECW briefly had against him so much that he brought in the key talent from both of those leagues, scripted them to unify as The Alliance, and proceeded to have his WWE Superstars destroy them in matches around the world the rest of the year. Eventually he got bored and cut a lot of those guys from the roster after having them lose at Survivor Series in late 2001.

Now, McMahon didn't just bring in a bunch of guys from WCW and ECW and have his announcers say, "Here's some new guys who used to be popular elsewhere, and now they want to take over WWE." No, he bought the intellectual rights to WCW and ECW after they folded. So, instead of rebuilding one or both of those brands and recreating that alternative to WWE that wrestling fans craved, he basically killed off any notion that those leagues were ever any match for WWE, and tried to kill the leagues' credibility in the process. A funny thing kept happening, though: Any time someone wrestled in WWE who used to work in ECW, in arenas across the country, the vocal section of hardcore ECW fans would yell out, "ECW! ECW! ECW!" And for someone with McMahon's ego, this had to be the most irritating thing. How could people still yell for a bankrupt company whose biggest announced crowd ever was about 3,000 (WWE claims that WrestleMania III in Pontiac, MI, in 1986 drew 93,173) and who never had anywhere near the glitz and glamor and Hollywood-like atmosphere of the great WWE? The reason, of course, was that ECW captured the heart, determination, and desire that the everyday "dude" relates to, and WWE, with its roided-up monsters and no-talent wannabes who made teenage girls squeal, does not and never will capture.

So McMahon hired Paul Heyman, founder of ECW, to write for his company and make some of that magic happen for WWE. Nope, not gonna work. Not when most of Heyman's cutting-edge stuff can't be approved for McMahon's sponsor-heavy network television shows. Then he sent Heyman home, just paid him to sit at home so that no other benefactor could give Heyman the capital necessary to do his thing and embarrass Vince again. Then he let him have one pay-per-view show last year, "ECW One Night Stand," where Heyman could satisfy some of that vocal audience thirsting for an alternative while Vince could try to grab some of those hardcore fans and sway them to watch his product. The show was everything one would expect an ECW show to be--except for the rumored $300 ringside seats and the storyline where the WWE guys storm the ring to try to teach the ECW guys a lesson on who's boss. I watched it with my uncle. It was the only wrestling I watched at someone else's house in the past year. It was the only wrestling that felt like an event that I wanted to catch, and I'm sure a lot of other folks felt that way.

Tonight, "ECW One Night Stand"--part deux; I guess it's a hell of a one-night stand if you feel the need to return--is airing on pay-per-view. I am not watching. I saw the first, and it was great, and I don't need to see it again. You can't top the original. But that's not all that's happening in the world of hardcore. Somehow, McMahon convinced Sci-Fi Network to air a weekly ECW show starting this Tuesday night. Now, how do you think he managed to do that? By showing old ECW footage and scaring the shit out of Sci-Fi execs? Nah, I think he showed them the ratings for his weekly WWE cable show, "Raw," which has been near the top of cable ratings every year of its 14-year existence, and said he could deliver those ratings for this "new" vision of ECW. Heyman has been giving interviews left and right to various media sources touting this "new" vision of ECW, how it's going to be "everything ECW was before, and a whole lot more." But whatever this "new" vision is, it will have to be very very toned down for the new network; very very toned down for WWE's sponsors since WWE, by owning ECW, is now responsible if ECW offends anyone's delicate senses; very very toned down for WWE's stockholders...in short, watered down and diluted to the point of ineffectiveness. And I think that's exactly what McMahon wants. He wants to paint a new picture of ECW in everyone's minds that ultimately will call to mind not success against all odds, not rebelling in the face of what's expected out of a promotion, but mockery and foolishness, and by putting his hands all over this "new" vision of ECW, I predict that's what he will do. You cannot continue to yell out "Join the hardcore revolution!" when the organization you're trying to revolt against owns your ass. This is like Ice-T putting out "Cop Killa Pt. 2" under a new record label owned by the LAPD. No matter what, you just know that the message will be muffled, and therefore slowly silenced.

Interesting Week

I actually got out of the house again last weekend. I went to a Ring of Honor wrestling event in Chicago Ridge last Saturday. The night before, I met my friend "Drew" and his girlfriend downtown and took the Metra to his house in Park Forest, IL. Usually we stay up all night and play poker with Drew's mother and brother, and "Ronnie" if he decides to come there. We did play poker Sunday, but not Friday or Saturday because Drew's mother was comped a room at Trump Casino and she, his brother, and his brother's family were spending Friday night there. So Drew, his girlfriend, and I had dinner Friday night at Buffalo Wild Wings, then I won $100 playing online poker at Drew's house. Saturday Drew and I got Burger King, and let me tell you, I never appreciated BK more because there were two of them near my old job and I could go to either of them right now since my school is near my old job, but they both closed. And I can't eat McDonald's because that shit is just toxic. If my stomach can handle White Castle and Taco Bell and all the other junk food I eat, it should tell you something that it can't handle Mickey D's.

Then Saturday evening, Ronnie continued to try to impress his current girlfriend by telling the guys going to the wrestling match (me, Drew, and his brother) to wait until he got to Drew's house so that he could drive us the 40 minutes to the match even though he wasn't going, then he and his girlfriend would perhaps go to Navy Pier and wait the three hours for the event to end, then pick us up and go somewhere for dinner. There was no reason for him to do that other than he was trying to show his girl what a magnanimous guy he is. If the pussy wasn't there I guarantee he never would have made that offer because there was nothing in it for him. As it turned out, Drew called him to come pick us up when the steel cage was being constructed for the main event because we figured it should be about 15 minutes for the cage plus about 20 minutes for the match. But Ronnie arrived fairly quickly, and there were problems with the cage, so when he got there, the main event had not even started yet. Ronnie made the mature decision to not wait for us and took off for Mokena, which is near Park Forest. I can say he wouldn't have been that much of an asshole if he didn't already know that Drew's brother had driven to the wrestling match by himself and therefore could drive us back to Park Forest, but I'm not 100% certain. We met Ronnie and his girl coincidentally at the same Buffalo Wild Wings, had a late dinner, and made plans to get together the next day.

Ronnie and I used to be in a bowling league together, and we're very competitive when we bowl against each other, not yelling at each other competitive, but silently concentrating on the game like it was a PBA Tour event. Since he will never admit that I am a better bowler, he never asks me to go bowling with him unless he's feeling like he has to build his self-esteem, and having this new girlfriend certainly qualifies, so at his suggestion, Sunday evening he, his girlfriend, Drew, Drew's girlfriend, and I all went bowling. The last time we went bowling was before I met "Karen" or "Sarah," so almost two years ago. And Ronnie had another advantage: He knows that I generally don't do as well bowling with a house ball and shoes as opposed to my own bowling ball and shoes, which were back at home on the North Side of Chicago, a good hour plus away not counting traffic. He was going to leave it up to me to bitch about not having my gear and look like I was a wuss. But I went anyway. I had not bowled myself since late last year, so I started very rusty, and as a result, Ronnie actually beat me the first two games. I even offered to bet him the second game, since I finished the first game pretty well, but he declined. But after the second game, feeling full of himself, he waited until I had pried off the rental shoes before announcing, "Okay Dre, it's time for you and me, one on one, the main event, what everyone came to see." He then bet some money on himself, but he bet with Drew, not with me. I wasn't about to put money against him after losing the first two games. But I should have, because I forgot how tight his asshole gets when there's money involved and the score is close late in the game. I beat him 150-99.

The night wasn't over, of course, because Ronnie would not let me win a contest against him in front of his girlfriend. That was the point of going bowling, not to have fun, but to show his white girl that he was the bigger nigger. So despite everyone being tired, we went to Drew's house to play an '80s trivia game, which he won by one question over me after I had a big lead. And I guarantee you, if I would have won that game, a long night of poker would have followed, anything to prove that he was better than me. But finally, after the game was over around 3A, everyone left. I got about 4 and a half seconds of sleep before Drew's crazy-sounding alarm went off, and we hopped on the Metra, he to go to work and me to go home. And boy, was I sore. Just imagine two 340-lb. black guys heaving bowling balls as hard as you can, competing in a silly tug-of-war, the latest in a ten-year rivalry. I would've soaked in my tub when I got home, but I was too tired to run the damn water.

I was on track for a regular week of night school when I was met by the head of the English department Thursday on my way to math class. Just like last year when he surprised me by telling me that I had won a scholarship for an essay I wrote, he surprised me again by telling me that the teachers union banquet where I would have received my award last year was canceled at that time because the union was on strike and had more important things to worry about, but now the banquet was the next day, Friday, and would I like to come and stand up and be announced? I said sure. So I made a trip to Greektown yesterday, at a restaurant called the Parthenon. I had a great meal, several courses of authentic Greek cuisine, gyros, rack of lamb, Greek salad...I was stuffed. And when the announcement was made for my award after several other students had received theirs, I guess the people involved with the scholarship did not want me to come to the stage and receive nothing, since they already awarded me the $500 prize last year, so they had another envelope ready for me this time, with a check for an extra $100. Fucking awesome! As with the first check, I was honored and stunned, and I couldn't thank them enough.

That doesn't solve my problem of what I'm going to do with myself this summer though. I'm still wrestling with my sensible option of moving back with my uncle and not having to pay so much in rent, but sacrificing my independence, my less-than-sensible option of staying here in Chicago and continuing to look for work, and my "OH MY GOD, ARE YOU FUCKING HIGH?!?" option of packing up and moving to another part of the country that I've never even visited just as a change of scenery, since I can't get a job or get laid in Chicago. I have to make a decision soon, as my unemployment runs out in July. But no matter what, receiving this award from school and receiving the compliments I've received about my blog (hey Keish!) means that I will continue to write and continue to go to school and work towards a degree some day. I may have low self-esteem, but apparently I can write my ass off.