SURVIVAL: intro

The world is crumbling again. We are lucky to have had Y2K, 9/11, and now economic collapse to give us so many great times of end times. I will be posting brief three or four sentence tips for survival in the impending struggle for Americans, because we won't have all the fat shit in our bellies we're used to. I mean, it won't be like our kids are fashioning toys out of lead wire scraps from the illegal dump, but still, it's gonna be lean times for our bloated ass egos and malnourished yet expanded stomachs.

12-Pack Review: SDW 03/02/02

BEER ONE: It’s a hot Southern night in the part of the South that ain’t Southern anymore, Virginia, nears Charlottesville, where I put my head down every night and have, by one twist or another, put my roots down; I guess ‘cause it’s not so far from the tree my fucked-up little acorn fell off of (all my kinfolk are an hour’s drive away on backroads), and far enough where I’m not gonna have to almost kill myself cleaning my grandpa’s chimney or painting his tin roof every weekend. So I started this Tournament of Independents, hoping to get hipped to all kinds of great shit. One guy, some kid Nate, hit me up and offered Steel Domain Wrestling for the taking. The thing I loved about his deal was he didn’t have two VCRs for dubbing tapes, so he’d mail me the tape, and then I could mail him back his tape and whatever else I felt like mailing him. I love that. Wrestling nerds are a persnickety lot, demanding priority shipping, demanding tracking info, demanding match listings, demanding all sorts of shit that really don’t need to be demanded. I mean, we’re exchanging fuckin’ professional wrestling here, not agricultural secrets for developing nations. Goddamn. Anyways, the young Nate hooked me up mightily, and had that nonchalance of the trade that I look for in a trading partner, not because I abuse his naiveté, but because I’m a simple man. My word is my bond, but sometimes my bond is slow to execute from my word because I’ve got a full-time job that sucks the fuckin’ life out of me, I’ve got a wife and kid at home who deserve and demand my full love and attention, I’ve got lots of side projects going on, the least of which is my website, I’ve got a drinking problem, and on top of all that, when all that is said and done, for those rare moments during the week, not day, with nothing to do, I am lazy as a goddamned hippie in the mountains of east Kentucky. But anyways, Nate hooked me up with Minnesota’s answer to quality independent wrestling – Steel Domain Wrestling. Being from Virginia, where our indys run on public access and have shittier production values than scat flicks, I expected the worst from a TV output (I am watching two episodes of their TV, which was one card they held, featuring motherfuckin’ Jerry Lynn). But good goddamn, I watched the first two episodes not part of the card I’m reviewing, and it was great. They even had Sick Nick Mondo on there. And Curt Hennig. You see, I can respect the mixture of easily recognizable veterans with well-known indy stars with your local talent. That’s how the fuck you get people over. I’ll never understand why indy bookers always book 17 of the same 32 guys on every show, giving people the same fuckin’ shit they’ve seen a hundred times before. I mean, I love a Christopher Daniels vs. Low-Ki match as much as the next guy, but doesn’t it lose some meaning when it gets redone all around the fuckin’ country. People love the indy superstars like Ki and Daniels, deservedly enough, so mix them up with some locals, to push the locals as great, and to give them a fuckin’ in-ring lesson against some guys who are more well-traveled than them. I mean, goddamn, wrestling is so fuckin’ predictable half the time. I loved that time Jim Cornette showed up at the ECW Arena with Jerry Lawler to fuck up Tommy Dreamer, because Cornette cut these promos in front of a WWF backdrop saying, “Remember when you didn’t know what was gonna happen?” And that’s what the fuck it’s all about. Fuck being smart. Fuck knowing the details of backstage power struggles and shenanigans. I want to fuckin’ be swerved, regularly and consistently, to where I can’t wait to see what’s next. That’s the fuckin’ goddamned mark of promoting. Too many “writers” and “commissioners” and “owners” and shit nowadays. Not just on the cable television, but on your local indy. Some scrawny white guy with a weird voice should never be in the ring at a wrestling show, unless he’s about to interview a heel and get intimidated. Period.

BEER TWO: The SDW intro is full of metal music and carnage-laden highlights. So I drink to the glorious mixture of the two things that helped me through adolescence – heavy metal and wrasslin’. The first match is Travis Lee, a former SDW tag champion, and obviously the heel, vs. Matt Burns, who gets attacked as he turns his back during the introductions. Well, holy fuckin’ shit, right off the bat, Matt Burns turns the tables and does a sick bump off the top rope outside the ring. This is the first fuckin’ match? Damn, let me drink Old Milwaukee for Matt Burns, whether anybody ever ends up hearing about him or not. Lee throws Burns into the ringpost, and Burns does a very interesting bump from that. Matt Burns is my new favorite babyface, immediately, in five minutes, no shit. Both of these guys have good physiques and good looks. Obviously, amateur wrestling is alive and well in Minnesota, and those guys end up getting into pro wrestling. Nothing is more indy than wrestling shows with basketball goals folded up into the ceiling visible in the background. And to top that off, Travis Lee sells his hurt nutsack after getting cornered, not only after the move, but later as he takes over and stomps his fallen face opposition, he grabs his groin in pain. Great work guys. You can jerk the curtain anytime, as far as I’m concerned. My one problem is that Travis Lee’s trunks seem to keep finding their way into his ass crack to give the impression he’s wearing a semi-thong. That ain’t cool.

BEER THREE: When a guy is stuck on the top rope, and his opponent goes up, in 2002, I automatically expect the hurricanrana. However, Burns goes with the more old school superplex, followed by a moonsault for the victory. Then Lenny Lane, decked out in black sweats, an odd look from the guy I’ve expected to represent my homophobic nightmares for the last few years, comes out and beats down Burns and talks some shit. Lenny Lane in baggy black sweats looks like a pizza delivery guy waiting to get off work and play some video games while doing nitrous charges and bong hits. Hey, the station this is playing on, a UHF channel, has a banner in the back of the gym. That means they actually support this shit, or that SDW is hooking them up with free advertising at shows. Either way, chicken or egg, it all tastes good fried. Kamikaze Ken Anderson comes out to confront Lenny Lane, and KKA is bigger than Lane, and smooth on the mic as well. The great thing is the crowd hates Lane. There is nothing worse than indy crowds who pop for famous wrestlers, whether heel or face. You should always hate the guy talking shit about you, never befriend a guy making fun of you, ever. He’ll make you drink rubbing alcohol while you’re real fucked-up by telling you it’s vodka. Trust me, I’ve seen it happen too many times. Slick Mick is your commentator, and he calls all girls “lovely”. Adrian Lynch and his “lovely” partner, Rain, are gonna go up against Horace the Psychopath and his lovely accomplice, “Lacey”. When I was in high school, there was this chick Stacey that I could’ve fucked at a dance in a VFW Hall, very much like that scene in Dazed and Confused where the two loser seventh graders break up the making out of the cool seventh grader, but this cat Little John, who’s dad and my dad used to smoke weed and drink Jim Beam and watch the Redskins every Sunday together, he came into the back make-out room and busted up my party. Years later, she was dating my boy Hlad Cess, and they were having problems, and she lived near me and I was giving her a ride home from Hlad’s house, and she was all on my jock in the car, trying to talk me into taking her down to the end of the road where the reservoir was and putting it to her old school style. She was in a hippie phase, wearing those colorful skirts properly contrasted by white t-shirts containing big titties with no bra. That is the best hippie style ever. Fuck backless shirts, white t-shirts are the shit, because it always could rain. Hey, that’s my angle. You see, Stacey got on this hippie kick, and she wanted to be called Rain. I couldn’t dig it, being naturally named Raven. You change your name, you’re running from your destiny. She was destined to be a Stacey, not a Rain, and I was meant to be a Raven, so I didn’t fuck her. I did suck on her titties and get a blowjob though. And now we have the opposition interview with Horace the Psychopath and Lacey. Lacey looks good, but she talks bad. She’s better than anybody on Tough Enough though. Horace the Psychopath, I don’t know, I’m not sure if I like him or not. He’s weird and all, but he seems like he might be a Marilyn Manson fan and not an Alice Cooper fan. That means a lot to me. Alice Cooper did “Caught in a Dream”. Marilyn Manson did Jenna Jameson. I would rather make a song like that than fuck a whore like that. You make a song like that, and the whores follow. You fuck a whore like that, and it doesn’t improve your songwriting whatsoever. Anyways, Horace the Psychopath & Lacey vs. Adrian Lynch & Rain is on like herringbone. The women are outside on one side, the men on the other. Violence abounds. I think I like Horace, goofy face paint aside. He’s no Matt Burns, but he serves his purpose. Guys who wrestle in hospital shirts who are not Morgus the Maniac suck anyhow. Ahh, NATIONAL GUARD is on the wall, meaning this is an armory show. Somebody should do a best of Armories compilation, as the armory is the longtime supporter of wrestling. My dad claims to have seen Abdullah the Butcher splatter Blackjack Mulligan’s blood two rows deep in the Farmville Armory before. I have Tuesdays off now, due to my shitty boss who cut us to four days a week without warning, and I went down to get a weedeater from my dad last Tuesday, and I was hanging out just because, that’s the type of thing that makes sense down there. Anyways, my dad was talking about some dude and described him as looking “like Rip Hawk”. My dad, from his growing up days, is all about Rip Hawk & Swede Hanson. His favorite memory is when he lived behind the Cumberland Diner with my grandma and all her family, he pumped gas at the Cumberland Diner, and one time a Cadillac rolled up and it was Swede Hanson & Rip Hawk and my dad got autographs and they stayed and ate at the diner and all kinds of shit.

BEER FOUR: Mostly it’s been the men, which leads me to believe the women are saving up for a catfight style battle rather than some quality wrasslin’ action. Ahh, here goes the double tag. Lacey has a fat ass, bounces off the ropes will show you that rather quickly. Rain looks a lot better in the ring than she did interviewing. Of course, she’s wearing leather pants. Lynch pulls Lacey’s hair, showing his heelness, and giving Rain the chance to take over the match. Your referee is an Italian stereotype. The thing about the Steel Domain wrestlers is all these guys seem to be full-sized guys. Future superstars, like every indy from here to Shitsville promises you. They have talent and the big bodies that powerful homosexuals like Vince Russo and Pat Patterson love. This bodes well for Steel Domain Wrestling. Horace bit Lynch’s nuts. The women wrestle in the ring while the men set up chairshots outside the ring. Horace and Lacey win while I didn’t pay attention. Lacey, with pink and black skintight outfit that doesn’t shine like spandex but settles like sweatpants, she won my heart. Now Adrian Lynch starts to beat down his woman, to make him more heel than ever. Horace saves Rain, thus fucking up the whole dichotomy of the match we just saw. I hate womanly angles. Next out is Lenny Lane. I’ve always been a big Lenny Lane fan, even before he was mimicking Chris Jericho in a homosexual manner for WCW.

BEER FIVE: Haha. The crowd chants “Y2J” at Lane. I’m very impressed with the professionalism of Steel Domain, from the ring announcer, to the workers, to the commentators, all of it. Stupid ass Ken Anderson, the Kamikaze, the former starting quarterback for the Cincinnati Bengals the last year their helmet had BENGALS on it instead of the tiger-stripes popularized by zubaz and the Ickey Shuffle, stupid ass Ken Anderson turned his back before the bell and got knocked the fuck out. Lenny Lane has been busted open early on. I love a former WCW star wrestling indys not afraid to get red for his high dollar paycheck. I drink to you Mr. Lane. Lenny is getting outsmarted by Anderson, slides in and out of the ring, then a baseball slide into Lane’s back while he jawjacks with fans. This is great. Well fuck, the commentators just mentioned the internet. I hate internet fans. I’m gonna go throw some beer back up. Excellent bump by Anderson into some guy in the first row. Ahh yes, an ad for World’s Wildest Police Videos. That means you are dealing with quality television stations right there. I am a mark for the goddamned hold the guy up in the air for like half a minute suplex. I, however, am not a mark for the unavoidable “all the blood rushing to the head” comment the announcer will automatically make. Another nice touch, Lenny Lane is wearing his hair down, no ponytail or pigtails. Lenny has LANIAC on the ass of his trunks; that would make Jimmy Valiant proud. The font’s kind of gay though. Ow, Ken Anderson just fell head first onto the floor. I’ve seen two sick bumps off cornerpost shots on this tape, and that’s impressive. Mostly, guys just run into it with their hands up, then fall. Wait a second, we have the fall on the ropes up high by the heel. Wack ass hurricanrana is turned into a powerbomb. Lane wins.

BEER SIX: The second TV show from this live card starts up. I’m not sure who Ed Hellier is, but he wears an ugly sleeveless sweater over his button-down shirt. Mortimer Plumtree, a manager in a neck brace, comes out to talk shit. That’s what managers do. He represents Magnus Maximus. Of course, there’s an open contract, and, of course, Jerry Lynn is the opponent for the Steel Domain title. Out of Announcer/Manager/Local Heel/Jerry Lynn – the shortest guy is Lynn. I will drink to the fact that Lynn always comes out of the back, whether ECW or WWF or SDW, with the devil’s horns sign with his hands. Evil rules, especially when evil is the babyface. A sadomasochist homo named Kujo goes up against Mike Mercury. Kujo is basically your small-time Rick Steiner. Ahh, this rocks, because it’s UHF, and the picture fuzzes, and because the heel is from Green Bay, Wisconsin. When football feuds translate to wrestling, I’m happy. Kujo is Rick Steiner mixed with Rhyno mixed with Living In St. Paul Minnesota, with his hair dyed blonde. You ever put a Figure Four on somebody? That shit hurts. And oddly enough, it hurts to roll over as well. I’m talking stupid shit, because I’m drunk, and I’m still typing thoughts out loud. You are a fuckin’ retard to read this shit. BUT LATER! I TYPE STUPID SHIT ABOUT JERRY LYNN! Wow, Kujo spit on his opponent. Thank God, this match is over and Kujo spits on the other guy for the second time this match. This was easily the shittiest match I’ve watched yet.

BEER SEVEN: I did a lot of thinking, and talking with my wife during this match. Talking with women is like doing job interviews, you hate them but they have a nice fat paycheck awaiting you if you do alright and lie correctly. Of course, the type of paycheck a woman drops on you is way better than a boss’ paycheck, but don’t tell my boss, because I’m about one quality shit-talkin’ session away from fucking his wife. There’s a guy called Scotty Zappa, and that’s fine and dandy he’s a wrestler. But he’s wrestling a guy named Sam Hayne. Repeat that – Sam Hayne. I am automatically rooting for him, without seeing his face. Sam Hayne is a big guy with bad tattoos, a modified Psichosis mask, blowing fire, and 666 on the sleeves of his trunks. Therefore, fuck Scotty Zappa. Did I mention the pentagram on Hayne’s chest trunks and his upside down crosses on the legs of his trunks? Your announcer does a great job of imitating more famous announcer vocal inflections.

BEER EIGHT: Sam Hayne choked that fool, so I drank bizeer, biyotch. Sam Hayne with the tope. A guy in a mask with a pentagram on his chest part of wrestling attire is okay by me. Hail Satan motherfuckers. Well glory be, Zappa got a two-count with a fistdrop. Just the fact he did a fistdrop makes me stoked. Did I mention I was drunker than shit? Nothing worse than having to double check the bad spelling of yourself while trying to write some shit. My goddamned alphabet is slurred. The thing is, you probably don’t care and think I’m trying to brag on myself or some shit. Well, fuck you. By the way, Scotty Zappa won. A guy named Sam Hayne should never lose. Now, Zappa is teasing revenge against Mortimer Plumtree, but Sam Hayne cold kicks the green mist. Cold kicks it. The bell is ringing like crazy, Zappa is rubbing his eyes, and the heels kick and DDT their way back to the locker room. Out comes Jerry Lynn for the main event, against Magnus Maximus. Magnus is a big dude, even bigger than P.N. News. Jerry Lynn rocks. I don’t know who will win, but I hope they do it before I pass out on the front porch. There’s no alarm on the front porch. I’m drunk enough to go home to somebody’s house and pretend like nothing happened, even though it all happened, at once and at evil. Who the fuck cares about making the most money? You do what you can to put a smile on your immediate family’s pace. If they can’t smile, then go out as a team with other guys super-scientifically intelligent like myself.
Anyways, some other sucker comes in to interview her boy, and she catches me, asking about the National Honor Society thang. You see, my boy Louis had already bolted. The fifth grade school housed me for two years, it was creepy. The back room downstairs was always nothing, as was the drainage room from the outdoor entry by the bottom back. The Louis dream, he was inside me but he seemed cool so I kept dreaming. He fucked me up. Magnus hits Lynn with the belt, and goes for the count, but Lynn kicks out. God Bless wrestling.

BEER NINE: They did a wack reversal right as I opened that beer. Jerry Lynn throws more devil’s signs than Richard Dawson. Well fuck, that’s the end of the card. And so that’s it. I didn’t drink shit off that beer before the devil changed his tune.

S14: NCAA Tournament's Top Returning Scorers - Elite Eight Sunday

I didn't even watch no games last night, as other shit was going on. But man, if we end up with four #1 seeds in the Final Four, that's gonna suck. Nothing is more boring than the tourney following the seedings. I was tilling a bunch of shit in my yard this morning, so I didn't make my self-imposed deadline of tip-off for today (even though maybe four people even have been seeing this shit), and stupid Memphis is already crushing Texas. Well, here's today's top fourteen returning scorers...
#1: Chris Douglas-Roberts (Memphis guard, 151 previous NCAA tournament points)
#2: Stephen Curry (Davidson guard, 133 previous points) - Kid has gone nuts and made a name for himself well beyond what he would've ever gotten. But what do you do? Does he come back? Why would anyone from Davidson leave early for the NBA? Does the NBA even want an undersized two guard?
#3: A.J. Abrams (Texas guard, 131 previous points) - I was gonna write about how tough it was going to be for him and Augustin alone to do battle with Memphis' endless bench, but I waited too long and that shit's already come to fruition.
#4: Brandon Rush (Kansas guard, 113 previous points)
#5: Mario Chalmers (Kansas guard, 108 previous points)
#6: Antonio Anderson (Memphis guard, 99 previous points)
#7: Russell Robinson (Kansas guard, 96 previous points)
#8: Robert Dozier (Memphis forward, 78 previous points)
#9: Joey Dorsey (Memphis forward, 74 previous points)
#10: D.J. Augustin (Texas guard, 66 previous points)
#11: Darrell Arthur (Kansas forward, 63 previous points)
#12: Derrick Rose (Memphis guard, 61 previous points) - Rookie of the year.
#13: Jason Richards (Davidson guard, 59 previous points) - My favorite thing about this year's tournament is how this kid, who might've not done anything post-college, now will get to play in the D-League or Israeli league or in Turkey or Italy or some shit, all because of the exposure of Davidson's run. I really hope they beat Kansas, because it'll give me something to root for in the Final Four, and it'll also make stupid Kansas be gone.
#14: Andre Allen (Memphis guard, 53 previous points)

S14: NCAA Tournament's Top Returning Scorers - Elite Eight Saturday

Didn't even really watch any games last night because by the time I got home it was only the late games on and who the fuck cares about #1 seeds blowing motherfuckers out? I watched a documentary on Henry Darger instead. Henry Darger is a really interesting dude who was a quiet janitor in Chicago and when he died they found a 15,000 page novel he had written about people enslaving children but seven sisters rose up and engineered a rebellion and saved humanity. The story of Henry Darger is about a thousand times better than the documentary was. It had me passed out on the couch in no time. And I don't know who Dakota Fanning's parents are, but they need to stop letting that kid do such creepy shit. Anyways, here's todays top scorers coming into the two regional finals...
#1: Tyler Hansbrough (North Carolina forward, 175 previous NCAA tournament points) - My man D-Mo explained it to me best as to why Hansbrough is so easy to mock... he looks like a trout coming to the top of the water all the time.
#2: Darren Collison (UCLA guard, 122 previous points) - Collison fouled out early Thursday night and gave me hope that the Hilltoppers could fulfill my dream of a WKU/Davidson final (although I never checked my bracket to see if that was even feasible beyond fantasy). I do not care for UCLA much, and now that someone pointed out to me their stupid golden C on their jerseys, I like them even less. I can't really think of much reason to ever root for a Xavier team, but I guess I will tonight.
#3: Luc Richard Mbah a Moute (UCLA guard/forward, 99 previous points) - Been a fairly non-existent contributor for the most part these first three games, which brings up an interesting point. It seems like we are almost to the end, but in actuality, these teams have played three games and will need to play three more to win the title, and three way tougher games than the previous three. Anyways, that little aside took up any actual commentary I might've wanted to make here. Man, I hope UCLA doesn't advance.
#4: Ty Lawson (North Carolina guard, 93 previous points) - With Lawson seemingly up-to-100% again, it's hard to imagine UNC being stopped. I heard some schmuck on the radio playa hating them, saying they hadn't beaten anybody in the first two rounds and were bound for downfall. Fuck that dude. I also find it odd how I'm actively rooting for UNC now. I used to hate them. I think living near UVA has tarnished my zealotry for Cavalier basketball, who apparently lost about $150,000 by participating in the initial College Basketball Invitational, which nobody has heard of.
#5: Josh Shipp (UCLA guard/forward, 93 previous points)
#6: Josh Duncan (Xavier forward, 90 previous points) - Duncan's been Xavier's fire this tourney, and he has that look of someone who's aged beyond his years by harsh experiences, the type of guy who has the easy potential to be gully as fuck, but starts out with that goofy happy-go-lucky attitude.
#7: Wayne Ellington (North Carolina guard, 83 previous points) - Ellington has been their leading scorer this year in the tournament. Really, with just Hansbrough, Lawson, and Ellington, UNC would be tough to beat, but they actually have their standard revolving cast of high school blue-chippers to complement those three. It kinda sucks to be a fan of anyone else in the ACC.
#8: Juan Palacios (Louisville forward, 72 previous points) - I like Palacios, mostly because I like black Hispanic athletes, so long as they don't play baseball. Black Hispanics in baseball is too prevalent, but in other sports I like to imagine they're secret communists looking to infiltrate America from inside the sports entertainment machine, yet our opposing powers of easy pussy and flashy clothes are too strong for them to resist, and they end up being the type of former communist who owns chinchilla hatwear.
#9: Kevin Love (UCLA center, 68 previous points) - Love is their freshman sensation, but he looks like a fucking zombie. I have enjoyed pretending to myself he talks like Solomon Grundy as he goes up for bumbly oversized whiteboy dunks.
#10: Drew Lavendar (Xavier guard, 62 previous points)
#11: Deon Thompson (North Carolina forward, 61 previous points) - See revolving cast comment from #7. Thompson's a big part of that.
#12: Earl Clark (Louisville guard/forward, 60 previous points) - In the couple of times I've seen Louisville play, Clark has been the one guy they have who all of a sudden will just take over the game. That's something lacking in Pitino's standard "I've got ten guys who I can mix and match at will" gameplan. There's little desire for gamebreakers to go play in such an offensive maelstrom.
#13: Edgar Sosa (Louisville guard, 59 previous points) - He's only gotten 12 points this season though. Sosa has to be a disappointment this year for Louisville, as he hasn't been the point guard they thought he was going to be, and he's not really contributing much this tournament. I think he fouled out with like 2 points the other night, and I saw at least the last two fouls and both were stupid.
#14: Danny Green (North Carolina guard/forward, 58 previous points) - I can't believe I'm rooting for UNC. I think if Louisville had any other color than that dark red, I could get behind them. It comes down to completely superficial reasoning like that at this point in the tournament, once every team you care about is eliminated. The UNC/Louisville game has the potential to be crazy though. The ACC championship between UNC/Clemson I listened to on the radio at work and was the most entertaining game I've ever heard on the radio before. I will have the satellite radio tuned into this one for the same potential reasons.

12-Pack Review: SSW 05/11/02

BEER ONE: Well, off goes the beginning of the 12-Pack Wrasslin’ Tape Review Tournament of Indies. Here’s how it will work, I do 12-pack reviews of different American independent wrestling groups, and each pair match up. Whichever out of each pair make me drink more beer, moves on. The first promotion to go under the scrutiny is Southern States Wrestling, run by Beau James, out of Tennessee. The particular show I have is the Mark Curtis Memorial. Memorial wrestling shows are all the rage, second only to light heavyweight tournaments. The guy (Southern Fried Brent) who hooked me up with this tape wasn’t supposed to copy the fans Q&A at the beginning, but he did. I’m thankful for it. To me, wrestling is small-town, ladies with bleached blonde hair holding their kids, longhaired stoners in black t-shirts at the matches with their fat uncle who is foreman at some factory. These things, to me, being raised a rural Southern fucker, are what the fuck wrestling is; and this is why I have trouble digesting the polished crap that is World Wrestling Enteration. I guess since this is not actually part of the wrestling show, I should fast forward, so as to not ruin the fairness of the competition between promotions. But fuck fair. There’s cross-eyed old ladies, and guys with goatees and black t-shirts, and old dudes in button-down shirts eating potato salad. Some kid is talking about why he loves wrestling and in the background, Jimmy Valiant is in a monogrammed leather jacket talking up some lady. Fuckin’ beautiful. Says the teenager, “Southern States Wrestling…Kingsport, Tennessee…what could be better?” Goddamn, goddamn, goddamn. This is great. I’m not fast forwarding fuck. Old eastern Tennessee legends that I don’t recognize with cauliflower ears talking about riots from the past. “Nature Boy” Buddy Landel is talking like a fuckin’ recovering alcoholic. “Just like the roots of country music is bluegrass, the roots of professional wrestling is in east Tennessee,” says the Nature Boy. He is one hundred percent preacher, even when drunk, the sign of a quality preacher. He needs to convert to dark hair and sunglasses though, because no successful preacher ever kicked it with dye jobbed hair and red eyes. Jimmy Valiant, even an old washed-up goat farmer, is cooler than 97% of the people on Earth. I drink to his little anecdote there.

BEER TWO: Wow, George South is wearing the swank evil graphic pro-God black t-shirt that you usually only find in Mexico. But apparently, that shit is alive and well in the Smoky Mountains as well. Beau James, I know you’re out there somewhere, and eventually you will read this. Keep up the fuckin’ great work, man. You are passionate, and you are true, and what you are doing is for a breed of people who still enjoy believing and computers and insider sheets and lack of kayfabe haven’t, as Jerry Clower would say, educated them beyond their intelligence. Smart fans aren’t much fun, and are usually too fuckin’ high-falutin’ to get a chili dog and Dr. Pepper at the concession stand. Our first match is El Hijo Del George South & Kid Apollo vs. the New York Assassin & Jason King. I’m not sure who is who, but one kid looks about thirteen and has a tribal tattoo on his lower back that, when on chicks, makes me want to engage in anal sex. It doesn’t work with fresh-faced young men, though. Ahh, he must be Kid Apollo, as his partner has some swank big-ass GSJ on his ass, for George South Junior. And I’m betting the big guy with grease in his hair is the New York Assassin. I love how New Yorkers are always evil bastards in the South. The best was when Leroy Brown was just a simple country boy in Mid-Atlantic, wrestling in overalls, and he was a face. Then, all he did, was go urban and start dying his beard golden blond and talking a little black pride shit and he was pure rudo, doing some great programs with Jimmy Valiant and Ricky Steamboat. As the babyface, I even remember him working an angle with a U.S. champ Ric Flair. Man, those were some great days for wrestling back then. George South Jr. is dressed like a luchador without a mask, sort of a redneck Super Crazy. Wrestlers should always get monograms on their boots so we can figure out who is who in the opening matches. Kid Apollo, despite his goofy name and bad tattoo that confuses me sexually, the motherfucker can get up in the air. This big guy, the New York Assassin I assume, he is one scary motherfucker. He’s got teeth sticking out and this goofy Of Mice and Men grin on his face. I would book that motherfucker in heel situations in small-city and large-town gyms till my money ran out or my ring broke. He would piss off the old people, I’m sure of it. The problem with indy openers is that they lack fluidity a lot of times, but that’s why they’re openers; they have to learn that shit. El Hijo Del George South has a long ways to go to be his daddy, and he’s throwing in lucha moves that make no sense. He won with a very shaky rana. Your announcer looks like the bald guy who played cops all the time in the ‘70s, he was on Sheriff Lobo and Stacey Keach’s top cop in the Cheech & Chong flicks. That makes me happy. Shit like that still exists in places like Kingsport, TN, and Waynesboro, VA, and Henderson, NC, and places like that. It is why I am proud to be from the South, because shit hasn’t changed, it just modified. They’re doing a ten-bell salute for dead people.

BEER THREE: Now a guy comes out in a black t-shirt and jeans and sings the National Anthem. He’s pretty good. The best National Anthem at an indy show ever was this NWA Virginia show I went to where some redneck on step 5 of Alcoholics Anonymous was wearing a suit and played the anthem on an electric guitar. Again, Southern perfection. Now we have a man in a mask called Iron Cross, and we have the motherfuckin’ man, Roger Anderson. All of a sudden, we have announcers. Roger Anderson is a big motherfucker, and if I had a shitload of money to waste on an indy, the first three dudes I’d call up would be Anderson, his partner Frank “The Tank” Parker, and Preston Quinn. The Iron Cross is billed as being from the Kingdom of Heaven, and he’s the babyface. Cross is basically wearing a Mil Mascaras mask with a Jesus cross added to the sides, and a little bit of extra flames off the eyeball pieces. Both guys are wearing regular old school brief-style trunks. That’s some shit you’d never see in the WWF. What makes an indy guy head and shoulders above others on a show like this is selling. Lots of guys the last few years have learned the moves in rings in strip mall gyms here and there. But few understand how to sell a fuckin’ move. “Ruthless” Roger Anderson sells like a champ; and that’s why, even with his six-pack a day physique, he is very watchable. Again, two things that make this perfectly Southern indy – the doors are open to let the heat out, I’m guessing, and cars are whizzing by, and Roger Anderson claims the Anderson family as his roots. I think if I was to actually take the time to figure it out, about half the wrestling cards I’ve been to have featured somebody who’s supposedly part of the Anderson family, whether it be Arn, C.W., Roger, Ole, Jackie, Pat, and I’m sure there are more. Being an Anderson means you are “double tough” and you will take shorts when necessary because you’re like that. And you’ll work on your opponent’s arm. It’s in your blood. The fans automatically respect you, but don’t trust you. Fuckin’ perfection. You can’t put shit like that on a t-shirt and sell it to kids. I don’t think I mentioned that I’m broke and drinking all the loose beers in my fridge tonight. The first three were all Old Milwaukees, but I’m sucking this one back as The Iron Cross beats Roger Anderson with the Lou Thesz Press. It’s always nice to see the Thesz Press win a match. Now we’ve got “Wild Child” Andy Douglas, the good-looking young face, in full Hardy mode, going up against the Mighty Yankee, a big guy in a one-strap Super Destroyer style black singlet, and solid black mask. He is managed by Misty Steinbrenner. Andy Douglas is wearing a heavy metal style studded belt straight from the flea market. I will drink to a guy wearing a belt like that beating down the Mighty Yankee. Fuckin’ Yankees. Douglas is not bad, having the Hardy Boyz stylish good looks combined with some high-flying talent, to give the local fans a taste of something they see on their TV every Monday night. Ahh, the old ref kicking the heels hands off the ropes for some reason and causing a roll-up for a two-count. What is the reasoning behind the ref doing that? I’ve never understood. Shouldn’t he be calling for the break? Goddamn shattering the illusion of reality.

BEER FOUR: Well, there were no more Old Mils in the fridge, but I found three PBRs in there. So that’s what I’m drinking now, you bitches. I love the foot on the second ropes while applying the reverse chinlock and the face, though he can’t see it, feels the bodyweight shift and starts kicking like a stuck pig when the feet go on the ropes. I will drink to the beauty of that, the type of thing that sports entertainment doesn’t have time to show me in between P.O.D. videos and backstage shenanigans and chicanery. Wow, the Mighty Yankee wins my heart with an enthusiastic swinging neckbreaker and the quick cover, complete with leg-hooking and tight-pulling. GODDAMN! It’s Jimmy Valiant, old and tattooed and doing his constant shake. The guy looks like some sort of wild street preacher nowadays. There is no human being more stylish than James “Jimmy” Valiant. Right now, I can’t remember what his son’s name is, but I know it’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever heard somebody be named. The heel, George South, comes out with John 3:16 on the back of his jacket. There’s a lot of God in southern indys. And if I was to ever convert, I would want a black jacket with three white stars going down each arm and “JOHN 3:16” on the back of it. Really, I would. I’d probably get some fringe on my jacket, too, though. George South is going for cheap heat, threatening to smack people in the crowd and all, while the ref and Jimmy wait patiently. George finally enters the ring and does the stalking point, gets his jacket half off, stops, starts jaw-jacking with the crowd, steps halfway out the ring, comes back in, jacket still on both arms but only one shoulder. Then he pulls it back, but still on his arms, hits the other side of the ring, starts the same bit. Back out the ring halfway on a third side, he jumps down and points and talks shit now. It’s great. And I love guys with long hair that are going bald. One of my biggest hopes, before I dreaded my hair, was going bald while having long hair. Fuck cutting that shit off, because nothing is wilder than that shit hanging with a bald spot. The bald guy ponytail is kinda gay and professorial looking, but letting it hang with the bald spot rocks like Black Oak Arkansas. We’ve finally got a bell, and South is out the ring quick, jacket still half off and arguing. We’re ten minutes in and South’s jacket is still not off. Now we’ve got some old school legends of east Tennessee wrestling that I’ve never heard of coming to ringside with canes and the such, to force George South into the ring for good. Super Mario, Bruiser Graham, Jim White, and others. This rocks. I don’t know any of the guys, but South stalling, Valiant getting hot for action, old guys being on hand, it all added up and came together. This is what wrestling is about. Valiant pulls his beard into a rubber band, and I have beard envy. A legends lumberjack match. Jimmy Valiant has the best tattoos in all of wrestling. He should be running a carnival. Valiant and South do an amateur grappling tease, South rolls out and gets the cane from the old guy, Jim White. I would like George South more if he still had the red trunks with the Confederate flag covering the whole ass-side of them, and then put the JOHN 3:16 over top the Confederate flag. That might make me go to Church, but then again, only if they let me drink and had a wrestling match. Remind me to tell you about the Christian wrestling in nowhere North Carolina that me and Boomer stumbled upon one day.

BEER FIVE: Someone should tell the announcer to only say “double tough” maybe three times the whole night. When he calls everybody in every match “double-tough”, it makes me think they’re all pussies. Valiant wins with a sleeper into a push into the turnbuckles followed up by a roll-up. I guess the calcium deposits in his elbow that Pro Wrestling Illustrated used to tell me about in their Scouting Report have gone away with his old age and the elbow drop isn’t as double tough as it used to be. Tracey Smothers is in the ring, obviously a heel, as he is hugging a guy who looks like he’s about to play golf after half a day of selling insurance. Smothers’ manager is a guy called the Duke of New York. I never knew Tennessee and New York had such beef. A fat lady is about to charge Mr. New York, so Tracey Smothers steps forward to look bigger than most people. Such is the fragile line wrestling used to walk, trying to make people so pissed they would freak out, but not so much that they would riot. It’s a business, and pissed off people pay to see retribution, but riots really kill the profit margin. Unless you’re in Puerto Rico. Tracey Smothers is so great. He’s going up against John Noble tonight, and according to the announcers, Smothers will have his hands full. And, of course, before the match even starts, Smothers accuses his opponent of pulling his hair and trunks. Smothers kills me as a heel, he’s great. Noble has a great physique, though is a small guy. Don’t any washed-up college football players get into wrestling anymore? Fuckin’ arena league football, ruining everything. I will now drink beer every time the announcer guy says, “double tough”. So I just drank. “He’s learned a lot of the moves that the Japanese uses,” says the color man. Double tough drink. I love the glazed look that a former TV star gives, when playing a heel, at the smart guy in the crowd who jumps up wearing the worker’s previous gimmick heel t-shirt. It’s a pause, wondering, “do I make fun of this guy who has obviously obsessed over me, or turn it on somebody else?” I’ve always been one for making fun of the guy. Remind me to tell you about the time Julio Dinero came out and got face-to-face with me and made fun of me to the satisfaction of teenagers wearing ECW replica belts that they paid too much money for. Back in my day, we took some cardboard, spray-painted it black, wrapped a piece of wood shingle in aluminum foil, and glued that to the cardboard. That was our fuckin’ belt. If we wanted to get all international, we’d rubber cement some maps from National Geographics on the outer flaps or some shits. We’d wear that shit to the bus stop, daring some other kid to try and take that shit. Many a kid got his teeth chipped by a DDT onto some gravel back in the day, I can guarantee you that. And they think all this backyard wrestling bullshit is new. Paul Bearer is wearing a red t-shirt and sitting in the front row.

BEER SIX: I think maybe I need to masturbate more when the sweat on the top of the PBR can that’s been sitting on the floor by my feet for the last twenty minutes looks sexy. Or then again, maybe beer commercials are fucked-up and manipulating my sub-consciousness. Smothers nails a wicked DDT, but Noble kicks out at two. Missile dropkick by Noble, kick out by Smothers, to the top rope for a cross bodyblock by Noble, that Smothers rolled over, with his feet landing on the second rope, still a kick out. The announcers have been counting down the time, every half a minute or so, since the time limit is almost up. Smothers calls for the Duke of New York to hold Noble against the ropes, here comes the big fist. NO WAY! Noble ducks, and Smothers hits his own manager. Then as he looks down from the ring at his fallen co-conspirator, Noble schoolboys him for the win. Of course, they hug for homophobic heat from the crowd afterwards, to show there’s no hard feelings. Pro wrasslin’…I love this sport! Now, we‘ve got Buddy Landel as a heel, with his rough figure hidden under a white t-shirt for the time being, attacking Cody Michaels before the bell. Oddly enough, your good guy is in a black t-shirt, and your bad guy is in a white t-shirt. Cody Michaels looks pretty good. Supposedly, Michaels and Mark Curtis were friends from Pittsburgh, which means Michaels probably went to wrasslin’ school with Shane Douglas and Mick Foley and that guy who ripped some football player’s eyeball out and stomped on it. Double tough drink! All the refs have been wearing bowties in honor of Mark Curtis, aka Brian Hildebrand, and this guy in this match even has the suspenders. Buddy Landel is terrible, but Michaels gives up to the Figure 4. He won’t let go, so Jimmy Valiant, now in his standard zubaz pants, black t-shirt, and black fanny-pack, comes out with a chair, one of those little school non-folding plastic types. Then Landel talks some shit by the old lady in the wheelchair sitting in the aisle. It just ain’t a wrasslin’ show without somebody in a wheelchair. Remind me to tell you the story about my sister getting a bruise on her knee from a flying chair bouncing off a wheelchair at an indy show in North Carolina. Watching more fans do the Q&A with little kids in the background fighting each other, I am reminded why life is good. Fuck being smart, fuck college degrees, and fuck assigned seats with metal barricades. I want big tits in my mouth and grease in an old tin can on the back panel of the oven and… Never mind. Hearing guys talk about the Mark Curtis Memorial makes me sad, as this is an actual memorial, not some capture some money off the memory of somebody. The Mark Curtis Memorial has connotations of cook-outs and trading stories and guys getting too drunk and ending up crying over his memory type things going on. I can dig it. Apparently, this is two shows together in one day. God Bless Beau James. He is double tough. Watching a guy like Super Mario say some words after getting a plaque, it makes me sad. Wrestling has lost its regional heroes, and its fraternity. It’s all become a giant ladder towards prostituting your passion to do dumb shit on TV and get fat paychecks. It’s like the last week when somebody told me about how busy this website was, and how it’d be great if I made money off it. And I don’t think I agree with that. Why prostitute a passion of mine for money, even if it doesn’t start out that way? Usually, in the course of prostitution, the pimp will allow you to do something you enjoy doing for money, then dangle double the money in front of you for you to sort of compromise your morals. And you do it. Fuck that. I hope this site is always money-less and I am the broke motherfucker that I am forever, at least when it comes to doing what I love. Why sell it out? That just endorses a system where another sad sack goes broke so I can go rich. It’s about passion. I don’t think Super Mario or Beau James ever got rich off of pro wrestling, but they did it anyways, because they couldn’t not do it. I don’t know if I can trust that a Kurt Angle or The Rock feels that way. And if I can’t truss it, then fuck it. But that’s just me, and I’m just one God Manifest on this little Heavenly planet spinning the wrong way towards self-destruction. Or something. Old wrestlers love polo shirts. I have problems with Landel coming back out to accept a plaque, and being cool, a few matches after getting run off as a heel. These are the little things that have gotten grey and my black-and-white mind hates it. If you are a heel, you should be fighting people in the parking lot, even if you’re old and Christian. You know, my neighbor, who built his fuckin’ house right on the road, so that I got to make sure they ain’t on their porch when I piss off my porch at night, he has this ‘70s model blue Ford pick-up truck. And on the side is glittery letters that say “BEAU JAMES”. Why the fuck is that?

BEER SEVEN: Well, the PBRs are gone, so now I dug out two bottles of Miller High Life, the Champagne of Beers. So let’s have a champagne jam. I do wish that bitch sitting on the moon on the label would go ahead and pull that red dress up a little and show some leg. All wrestlers wear gold watches, that is apparent. It matches their hair. Wow, Miller is one shitty beer. Now, here we go. It’s Brandi Alexander vs. Brandi Wine. I saw Brandi Wine live one time, and let me tell you, she has an ass on her. Looks like her tits are weirdly shaped bigger now; she must be a dancer somewhere. Ever since ECW went big, and then WWF co-opted their violence towards strippers, indy wrasslin’ women have had to wear the worst outfits. Brandi Wine…mmmm. Her ass is still banging, with the proper amount of curve hanging out her go-go shorts. I love that extra curving piece of ass that big-assed chicks have. Skinny chicks should realize that they’re not sexy. I also love the fact that lots of indy women wear short shorts trunks, but have pantyhose on underneath. That’s a great style. I would like to have sex with Brandi Wine. All wrestling cards should have actual wrestling women, with big asses. Molly Holly is the hottest bitch in the WWF, and they make it an angle to make fun of her. Big dicked men love big asses, it’s a proven fact. I love the jiggle of a big ass. Brandi Alexander has that jiggle. God Bless America, where middle-aged halfway ugly chicks with nice hair can wear bright pink outfits and confuse me into wanting sex with them. Yes, Brandi Wine has definitely had a tit job since I saw her at Solid Gold Championship Wrestling. And she’s from Greensboro. That’s not too far for a lap dance. Next match is Brian Overbay & Ray Idol vs. Chic White & The Tennessee Equalizer. I’m guessing the big fucker is the Equalizer. Ray Idol is the black guy in shiny red pants. Overbay looks like a bartender. Chic White looks like a hillbilly stoner with repressed homosexual tendencies, which is cool. I’m all for repressing that shit myself. Fuck freedom; it’s confusing. Chic White comes complete with jailhouse tattoos on his thigh, which means, and I know this, that he had to test out his homemade tattoo gun on himself before he charged somebody packs of cigarettes for a Speedy Gonzales tattoo. The Tennessee Equalizer, Chic White, and Brian Overbay look like a pack of Gypsy’s Jokers. Or Pagans. They look like they’d beat me with a 2x4 until they saw my rebel flag tattoo, then I’d be cool, and we’d all share painkillers, crank, and liquor bottles. The best thing about Chic White is he took his first name from a great porn mag. Some damned wack-ass double Irish whip reversal smash the bad guys into each other center ring, with the faces following up with double schoolboys shit for the finale. It sucked, but the guys looked great and scary. Hey, it’s the Franchise, Shane Douglas, out of shape and still wearing his ECW garb and yelling “Cut the fuckin’ music!” I thought this was family wrestling. Someone should really do a comp of somebody like Shane, his every match for half a year, going from the extremes of Major League Wrestling to XPW to Southern States in Kingsport, Tennessee. It’d be a great video, because he’d do the same cheap heat shit, and the crowd would be vastly different and react entirely opposite every time. Somebody do that shit and let me know about it. Wow, Shane Douglas looks disturbing in the face, very decadent. How much coke do you think Shane Douglas did with Chris Candido for them to think it would be cool to get those Triple Threat tattoos? Weird music is playing for a while, but finally a guitar solo kicks in, and out comes Tim Horner. It’s country music; it’s Tennessee; it’s Tim Horner. What more could you want? You see, Shane Douglas talked like some educated out-of-towner. But Horner, he talks like the people in the crowd, so he’s down. Multi-national sports entertainment can’t do that. Regional wrestling needs to come back, at least in some part.

BEER EIGHT: A guy like Tim Horner who stays in great shape to keep up his appearance for wrestling bookings into his golden days, I can respect that. Shane Douglas gets some cheap heat by arguing with the mini-Paul Bearer in the red t-shirt in the front row. Shane Douglas is basically a watered down less able to wrestle in Puerto Rico Tully Blanchard. Hahaha, Douglas leaves the building. That’s great. Utilizing his surroundings to the fullest; this from… DOUBLE TOUGH DRINK! Shane has a middle finger battle with some dude/chick with a long rattail in a Boogie’s Wrestling Camp t-shirt in the front row. White Lightning is a much better nickname than The Franchise. Tim Horner is throwing some terrible punches. Great ref bump, absolutely beautiful Greg Valentine style face plant by the skinny ref. Douglas pulls out a chain, knocks out Horner, raps the chain around Horner’s hand, then falls down. As the ref comes to, Shane groggily points to Horner’s hand. Shaen wins by DQ in a wonderful twist to an old school favorite, the chain in the boot deal. I will drink to that swerve. The Duke of New York is back. K.C. Thunder & Steve Flynn, with the Duke, go up against Beau James & The War Machine in a streetfight. Holy shit, this rocks. The thing about indy wrestling is, you hear wrestling nerds talk about how out-of-shape a guy like Beau James is, and he is. But goddamn, fuck the Vince McMahon/Pat Patterson encouraged physique, because Beau’s punches look like Philo Beddo knocking out cops or punk bitches in a meat factory. They look for real though. Steve Flynn goes head first into the ring post, which I hope means he blades. I think I’m gonna cut down a razor blade and start blading at work from time to time. That would be dope to roll down into the boss’s office, blood flowing down the left side of my face, and cut a promo like, “Damn boss, that panel saw you got in the warehouse just got all crooked and a piece of wood flew up into my forehead. Can I go home early?” And sell the fuckin’ angle all the way out to the car, just in case somebody’s looking out the window as you leave. Hell, sell it all the way out the parking lot, just in case. Better safe than sorry. And that’s what I hate about today’s wrestling, non-selling motherfuckers. It’s sorry. Fuck it all. I want fat rednecks beating the shit out of each other for old people, not gay strippers prancing around and missing punches by a mile for suburban retards with credit cards and Undertaker t-shirts. Beau James bleeds. When the first man who blades is the promoter, I am content. Unless he does that shit to make himself look more like Robert Gibson suffering than anybody else. But I’d like to think that ain’t the case. P.J. Sharpe, the face manager in the pink jacket and the Thirsten Howell III style sailor’s hat, chases off The Duke of New York. Then Beau James throws a fireball at Steve Flynn. I love the fireballs. Now, War Machine and Beau James are trying to break Thunder’s arm, knocking the refs down, turning heel as shit, all of a sudden. You gotta love it; four referees are knocked out.

BEER NINE: Well, the Millers are gone. Now I’ve got a Red Stripe that I found underneath the bag of organic white potatoes from the Scottsville Farmers’ Market. They’ve got a stretcher that says KINGSPORT LIFESAVING CREW underneath. Sell the angle. Fuck yeah, sell the angle. Holy shit, Terry Taylor pulled out the old red-and-black glitter robe for the main event, against Rickey Harrison, who is way into Van Hagar. He wears their shirt, and he comes out to their theme music. This automatically makes me root for the Red Rooster. Terry Taylor is old, yet way bigger than his opponent. Where the fuck did all the big guys go to? Everything is lightweights or juniors or cruiserweights or all the shit they call it nowadays. Can’t a bigger fucker get into wrestling and be good? Hey, Sandy Scott is your referee. I remember when he levied a fine against Sgt. Slaughter and Don Kernodle for cheating against Ricky Steamboat and Jay Youngblood. Jamaican people must be stupid, because Red Stripe tastes like a whore’s wore out ass. Sleeperhold by the wrestler on the drywall hanger who grew up digging the Rock-n-Roll Express. Sandy Scott is old enough to be a terrible referee. He just stopped the count because he knew it wasn’t time to end the match, though nothing happened to stop the count. Such is what happens when you can’t hear the ref smack the mat and kick out when appropriate. Ref/manager/opponent bump by Taylor. Terry Taylor wins with his feet on the ropes. Reversal of decision by promoter; Ref Sandy Scott is terrible, and that’s being nice. Hey, the match ended while I was looking for my Hawkwind CD underneath the stack of lucha tapes behind the box of porn that I have well-concealed from my wife like it’s more wrestling tapes or old zines or something or another. And Rickey Harrison won. There’s two-thirds of my shitty Jamaican lager left, so the official decision, for the sake of the Tournament of Independents is eight and one-thirds beers.

S14: NCAA Tournament's Top Returning Scorers - Sweet Sixteen Friday

I have drunken them beers tonight, having the teams I actively rooted for in West Virginia and Western Kentucky fall short, while the teams I passively approved of in stupid UNC and stupid Rick Pitino win, so I am full of basketball love without anywhere to put my hard dick on Saturday. Hopefully, underdogs of a non-Villanova variety will play big today, to give me hope for something beyond future NBAers and overhyped programs in the Final Four. Nonethefuck, here are the top scorers going into today's games, with very little commentaries because I am uncaring at this moment...
#1: Chris Douglas-Roberts (Memphis guard, 126 previous NCAA tournament points) - CD-R, burning shit.
#2: A.J. Abrams (Texas guard, 119 previous points) - A.J. in effect.
#3: Drew Neitzel (Michigan State guard, 103 previous points) - Whiteboy has picked it up and carried the stupid Spartans after bailing on them in the first round. Mayhaps they continue their MAGICAL RUN because Tom Izzo, beyond his last name being famous Jay-Z lyrics, is widely acknowledged by fuckers who acknowledge such things as a great coach.
#4: Stephen Curry (Davidson guard, 100 previous points) - Birth of a college superstar. Dude lit it up last year, and I didn't even realize he was only a freshman. The great thing about him scoring 3000 points per game is he is a team player, patient and passing in the first half, until the coach is like, "Uhh... Stephen? Just go ahead and start throwing up all our shots this half," and they start winning.
#5: Brandon Rush (Kansas guard, 97 previous points) - Fuck Kansas.
#6: Mario Chalmers (Kansas guard, 94 previous points) - Has played for seven years; only man with a longer collegiate career of prominence than Donovan McNabb.
#7: Antonio Anderson (Memphis guard, 89 previous points) - Initials are Double A, which stands for double anal in pornspeak, which is an entirely uncomfortable thing for me to think about. First off, someone having two penises in their anus seems rough, but also having your penis rub against another penis inside some girl's ass seems even rougher. Isn't that ultimately gay (the penis rubbing part, not the me not liking it part)?
#8: Russell Robinson (Kansas guard, 81 previous points) - Double R stands for fuck Kansas.
#9: Scottie Reynolds (Villanova guard, 69 previous points) - Hard not to like this guy as he has carried his team thus far. A youngster who, if he doesn't go pro early like hotshots like hisself usually do, could mean big thangs for the Wildcats in the next year.
#10: Robert Dozier (Memphis forward, 69 previous points)
#11: Joey Dorsey (Memphis forward, 68 previous points)
#12: Darrell Arthur (Kansas forward, 56 previous points)
#13: Andre Allen (Memphis guard, 52 previous points) - Another double anal dick-rubbing.
#14: Brook Lopez (Stanford forward, 52 previous points) - This is the one of the giant twins who doesn't have the white man 'fro, although their last name makes me think they may be trickster hispanics instead of for-real white dudes.

S14: NCAA Tournament's Top Returning Scorers - Sweet Sixteen Thursday

The only real super underdog playing today is Western Kentucky, who will probably play the normal Cinderella team of getting dispatched strongly by UCLA. That's why the George Mason run two years ago was so great, because they took the Cinderella role through two weekends. Usually, shocking Sweet 16 teams are happy just to make it that far and have no real psychological attitude towards win-at-all-costs. Well, here's the top 14 college career scores in the tournament for today's four games...
#1: Tyler Hansbrough (North Carolina forward, 157 previous NCAA tournament points) - The sad thing is I do not mind a lot of the other players on UNC, but I just cannot stand Tyler Hansbrough. I grew up near Hampden-Sydney College, which is an all-boys private college and the third oldest one in America. Some of Bush's brothers went there, and it's white America's highly-privileged elite lumped together. When I was in high school, I would go there to frat parties to sell weed and pick up drunk chicks that were imported from other colleges for sexual purposes. Oftentimes this would end up in fisticuffs, more often than not multiple fists cuffing up against my defenseless head. One time, me and a friend got into a situation with eight dudes, who proceeded to beat down my friend, who had committed the infraction that offended them, tossed him down a hill, and then asked me if I wanted to fight too. I said no because there was no point. I mean, I wasn't saving face by getting my ass kicked too. (I should mention while they were beating down my boy, I was being held by three dudes, with one of them giving me occasional 'bows to the back of the head.) Hansbrough looks like all of those guys. Fuck him. I hope he gets stripper AIDS.
#2: Darren Collison (UCLA guard, 118 previous points) - I guess it is to the point in the college basketball season I can display my unlike of UCLA. They won like 38 titles in a row and I feel like they should never win another because of that. This may be construed as a sports-related form of playa haterism, but it is how I feel. I am sorry that one old dude coach is on his deathbed, but I do not feel that it means we should have UCLA NATIONAL CHAMPS! mode kick in. Shit, he probably doesn't even understand what's going on right now anyways.
#3: Chris Lofton (Tennessee guard, 115 previous points) - Lofton has not been playing up to his All-American status this tournament thus far - only 14 points in two games this year - but the Volunteers are stacked with enough top-tier players that Tennessee has advanced, although they tried to blow it against Butler. This week, Lofton is going to have to get hot or UT will probably be eliminated. Of course, even if he does pick it up, going against Louisville's endless bench and possibly the UNC juggernaut doesn't bode well for the Volunteers. I'd be shocked if they win two more games.
#4: JaJuan Smith (Tennessee guard, 98 previous points) - Has helped cover the lack of Lofton production, as part of the Tennessee Smith brigade.
#5: Luc Richard Mbah a Moute (UCLA guard/forward, 92 previous points) - The French-African finally played again after injury on Sunday, and contributed 2 points.
#6: Ty Lawson (North Carolina guard, 81 previous points) - Lawson is back to full-speed and gives Carolina a ridiculous fastbreak potential. They've scored more than 100 points both games, which is not very collegiate at all. Seriously, after the first weekend, I find it hard to believe anyone can take them out without them completely self-imploding.
#7: Josh Shipp (UCLA guard/forward, 79 previous points)
#8: Wayne Ellington (North Carolina guard, 70 previous points)
#9: Juan Palacios (Louisville forward, 69 previous points) - Louisville is your standard Rick Pitino team - ten deep where no one really needs to get over 30 minutes playing time. Palacios was the high scorer in their first round game, but when he wasn't as fire hot the second game, they just ran other players through. I am hoping for a Louisville/UNC regional final because that game will be crazy hyper, and would be as good as a national championship in many years.
#10: Josh Duncan (Xavier forward, 64 previous points) - I don't know shit about Xavier, and I think I've tuned them out for the most part listening to all the games on the satellite.
#11: Derrick Low (Washington State guard, 62 previous points) - See above, but change it to Washington State. I actually don't even think I know what the Washington State nickname is... no it's Cougars, I remembered.
#12: Wayne Chism (Tennessee forward, 61 previous points) - Chism was my favorite player on Tennessee last year because, of all their players, he looks to me most like a guy who would kick it with 8-Ball & MJG. And to be honest, that's my personal litmus test as to whether a top-tier Tennessee athlete - football or basketball, but usually football - should be appreciated or not. This is also part of the reason I have always hated Peyton Manning.
#13: Edgar Sosa (Louisville guard, 57 previous points) - Sosa is the heir apparent at point guard for Pitino's team, and does so sometimes now. Mostly, he comes off the bench as part of their second team and throws up the points.
#14: Ramar Smith (Tennessee guard, 56 previous points) - Smith Brigade's power player number two.

MNZ: W April 2008

This is one of those there fashion magazines, and it was sitting on top of the trash at the post office so I took it, hoping for some wacky pictures to use since it promised a "60 Page Salute to New Orleans". Except of those 60 pages, 39 was like some zombie model chick in $300 underwears. I am amazed people would actually buy these fashion magazines, because they are not cheap, and you go 80 pages before getting to the table of contents, and the whole things smells like perfume. I used to associate that smell with the brief period my dad had a subscription to Playboy, because it has the same stupid smell, but like these fashion magazines, Playboy sucked too. No open vaginas, and for a kid growing up sneaking peeks at his dad's secret stash of Ouis, Hustlers, and Penthouses, Playboy was a step in the wrong ass direction. Even when it comes to articles, it sucked. Old Penthouses turned me onto a lot of conspiracy theories back in the day, and Oui had mind-shaping interviews with wackos like Lemmy, Ozzy Osbourne, and Charles Bukowski, when I was a young one winding down after a heavy afternoon of staying home pretending sick by myself, masturbating myself silly.
Oh yeah, W magazine... it sucks. I won't be picking it out of any garbage cans again.

12-Pack Review: ECW 05/18/93

BEER ONE: Ahh, cheers to the young man who either ripped me off and got scared that black nationalist were emailing him all of a sudden, or maybe the kid was just slack. But he finally sent me my fuckin’ tapes and without an email apologizing. Ultra-Clash was very early on in ECW’s history, so early that they weren’t even extreme yet. I have never seen this, and when I looked up the date I held my hand over the screen so that I had no idea of who would even be in this. I have a fresh 12-pack of my old lover, Old Milwaukee, and am ready to get fuckin’ hyped. The daughter is upstairs asleep and the wifey is out at a dance party. I am wearing cut-off jean shorts with a big hole on one side that allows me easy access to rub my dick if the urge strikes (not sexual, it’s nice just to touch it and know it’s there and safe and all that), and I am wearing my Darrell Green football jersey. Those black away jerseys the Giants were wearing against the Yankees tonight were pretty swank. I’d get one if they didn’t cost four thousand dollars. It is Friday night, and as the old redneck saying goes, I’m overworked and underpaid. So the SPLISTSH of opening a can of delicious OM is Heaven to my ears, which are connected to the body that has spent fifty-plus in the pits of Hell on the Monday thru Friday routine. Fuck all routines, whether work or vaudeville or body checks by law types. Nothing should be routine. It goes against the natural chaos of the Universe. A very old school and channel 65 looking ad for the ECW Wrestling Academy, it is not even public access quality by today’s standards. I will drink to generic, and to Bruiser Brody sticking his tongue out at me. The beginning segment features such greats as Snuka, Koloff, Shane Douglas, Road Warrior Hawk, fireballs, and people falling off the balcony of the ECW Arena. I am geeked. First match is The Public Enemy vs. Jason Knight & Ian rotten. A young Ian Rotten looks like an old G.G. Allin. Jason looks like a Lakers fan. The ECW Arena looked much more like the bingo hall it actually was back in these days. My bad, it’s actually the PE that look like Lakers fans, in yellow and purple wigger gear. I actually heard a dude at work talk about “stupid nigger” today. I thought that shit was gone. The thing is, he’s a liberal middle class kid. They’re always the most racist, yet it’s creepy ‘cause they keep it on the down-low like R. Kelly did his marriage to Aaliyah. They should have a fat man moonsault challenge between Rocco Rock, Vader, and the Headhunters, and The Blue Meanie if he bulks back up. Joey Styles announcing, John Finnegan reffing, it’s nice to see ECW kept those guys around and rewarded their hard work with paychecks that were four weeks behind.

BEER TWO: Don’t let the speed of that first beer fool you; I’m just ready to get drunk. Though a 1993 Johnny Grunge is certainly no enemy of mine. The PE pins Ian Rotten, and shit, it was the PE’s debut in ECW. A drunken senton bloody legend is born. Boy, they sure punked out their own rep in WCW, didn’t they? Next match is Tony “Hitman” Stetson vs. Tommy “Ironman” Cairo. Stetson seems to be a hybrid of both halves of the original Hart Foundation, in appearance. Here comes Tommy Cairo, who I’ve never actually seen before, but have always read about. He looks like he’d be friends with The Sandman. Ahh, the leather jacket with fringe and leopard print trunks, you can’t be a face in an outfit like that anymore. Mr. Hunter Hughes, the manager, looks like the type who would be Ricky’s black friend on Silver Spoon. Remember when little Ricky cut slits in all his nice sweaters because he was going “punk”. That damn Ricky, what a rebel, with all his video games right there in the living room. You know you wished you had that shit back then, plus the hot ass step-mom to catch naked in the shower. She was one of those hot ‘80s brunette Kates, there were like three of them. Shit got confusing though when one of them was on that Kate & Allie show but they’re character wasn’t the one named Kate, or some shit. I don’t know for sure. I was growing and the hormones were spurting through my body and all over the side of the pillow I didn’t put my head on. I love raw wrestling, much like raw hip hop. When it gets overproduced and everything’s shiny and finely mastered, it’s just not as good. It needs some raw to it – an old person in the front row wanting to throw Dr. Pepper on the bad manager, shitty black ropes and a murky blue ring apron, a rope barricade at best tied to chairs nobody can sit in at all four corners of the ring about four feet outwards, hot 13-year-olds actually getting to have sex with the wrestlers still. It’s fuckin’ beautiful, and it’s American as shit. Japs made it seem real, and the Mexicans made it seem like a cool movie that would come on late at night on the weekend. Raw American wrestling, at best, is a good realistic brawl displaying the moral beliefs of the crowd inside the ring fantastically in opposition to regular life which jades and cynicizes those asses in the chairs, and at worst, is a couple of weird guys running around in funny-looking underwear. Either way, I don’t mind shelling out a few dollars to sit there and look at it. You should sell beer, though, if you’re thinking about doing that type of shit. I like when wrestlers put their foot on the rope and the bottom of their boot looks like he walked through tar pits. That means he’s keeping it real. Kevin Nash has never wore a pair of dirty boots, nor has Bill Goldberg. Oh, it’s the old manager distracts the ref while the heel hits the face with the title belt and thus, wins said title belt. It is evil irony displayed for public consumption, the face being the American worker, the heel being an oppressive government, and the title belt being taxes. And the ref, which symbolizes the Law, lets it stand, and there’s nothing anybody can do, though everybody knows it’s fucked up. Match three is Super Destroyer #1 vs. Super Destroyer #2. Somehow, I don’t think either of these guys are Wild Bill Irwin under the mask. Ricky’s black friend manages the first Super D to come out. Super D #1 is the face, obviously. You can’t get a crowd full of dumbass wrestling fans to root for #2 over #1. Ahh, they wear different armbands, that’s the way to distinguish them. Face Super D has a ska-ish checkered arm thing on his right arm, the good arm of course. Evil Super D has a dark red (blood?) band tied to his ominous left arm. Additionally, good Super D has white soles on his black boots, while bad Super D has black soles. Such things may seem trivial, but a good wrestler who smokes too much weed and has immersed himself deeply into the carny history will do such “unimportant” things completely on purpose. At least, I ‘d like to think so.

BEER THREE: The great thing about the indy show masked man match is it’s probably two guys who are wrestling again somewhere else on the show. Old school wrestling masks with the weird eye shape and outline around all the facial features are so fuckin’ swank, even more so than outlaw women chicks in Harley tank tops at the river on the weekend. This might not suck if I could tell these two guys apart. Oh, Jerry Styles just said that whoever loses must remove his mask; that makes it at least partially more interesting. The stepover toehold is just not ominous unless you do that Terry Funk spin around thing every now and then to conceivably twist the toes up like cartoon chicanery. Good ska armband white sole (soul?) Super D won. So bad black sole (soul?) Super D has to unmask. The Dark Patriot comes in to cause trouble. An all black outfit with red stars here and there, that’s the Dark Patriot’s get-up, and he is Doug Gilbert, an American Classic.

BEER FOUR: You can buy a fuckin’ Super Delfin mask with real dolphin skin and a string of firecrackers hanging down the back, but you can’t buy a Dark Patriot all black mask with the swank giant red star around the right eye. It’s a crying shame. Same as when my old boss, Sam, used to come to work, in his big pick-up, with a bed cover and little Confederate soldier caricature in the back window, with a box of bagels for everybody. A supposed Southerner bringing bagels to his own fuckin’ business? What the shit is that? Biscuits, motherfucker, biscuits. Get some butter and some jelly and a few slabs of ham and bring some goddamn homemade biscuits into work; that’ll make people work harder. Bagels…whoever heard of such shit. When I get rich I’m gonna buy a bunch of billboards across Virginia and the Carolinas that read “BAGELS – THE DIET OF MOTHERFUCKERS WHO MOVED DOWN HERE FROM UP THERE”. J.T. Smith comes out. He was the trainer at an industrial park wrestling school outside of Richmond that me and Firefighter Matt went to one time. Hey, this is a scaffold match, and you can’t see half the shit going on because of the heat pump contraptions in the ceiling. Ahh, chain stabilizers for the top of the scaffolding, nice engineering. I’ll drink to mad science like that. There hasn’t been a good scaffold match in quite some time. I guess Owen Hart kind of ruined it for the rest of us. When you get headbutted into the sprinkler system on the ceiling, that’s fuckin’ awesome. J.T. is hanging onto the sprinkler system! And getting choked by a drawstring. This is fuckin’ beautiful. They really test the sprinkler system now, as The Dark Patriot pulls J.T. across the top of it, so that his feet are on the pipe, then he does a face first Pedigree style DDT onto the scaffold. FUCK! J.T. Smith just did a drop kick on top of the scaffold! That’s fuckin’ retarded.

BEER FIVE: The Dark Patriot goes in his trunks for…we’ll see. Powder, of course. Two things are appropriate in a scaffold match, powder and selling a broken knee on your fall from the scaffold. It is testament to the great Midnight Express vs. Road Warriors scaffold match from Starrcades of yesteryear. The Dark Patriot is beating J.T. Smith through the crowd now. Chairs are smashed and there’s a guy in the crowd wearing the classic white D.R.I. shirt. God Bless America, Mother Fuckers! ECW had a lot more black people in the crowd back then. One black guy in the crowd is bald, looks retarded, and is wearing a pink polo shirt. I bet he’s Ricky’s black friend’s father. WHAT THE FUCK! Stan Hansen & Terry Funk vs. Abdullah the Butcher & Kevin Sullivan, in a Texas Bunkhouse tag team match!?!? How ‘bout I just drink up two beers right now. Funk goes immediately up the scaffold and tries to shake it down. Abby & Sullivan, goddamn. You have a blind guy, a soul food restaurant proprietor, a Funker, and a guy who used to pretend to be a Satanist in the state that has more bonafide Satanists than any other.

BEER SIX: I am putting the over-under on blade jobs at three on this match. Funny to think this was 9 years ago, and three of these guys (not Hansen) plus Dusty Rhodes just fought a match a few months ago that ended up with Terry Funk trying to run Rhodes over with a pick-up truck. I predict blood in the following order: Funk, Abby, Sullivan, maybe Hansen. This is fuckin’ great watching these guys do all the old school shit to get blood. Hansen is trying to juice Abby. Funk smacks his own scar tissue hoping to break open a trickle. Abby’s bleeding. Sullivan and Funk climb the scaffolding. Of course, Abby shakes the scaffolding, trying to kill everybody. The ECW Arena was much nicer with yellow walls. Funk has a gusher going. Hardcore wrestlers who wear normal old school brief-style trunks rock, because there’s no bullshit t-shirt or cut-off jeans or some shit to protect them. They are hardcore within the established history of pro wrestling. Today’s wrestling ignores the history of pro wrestling, which makes it seem stupid. Like when the WWF lost that stupid court case and had to not be the WWF. Instead of becoming the more extended World Wrestling Federation and thinking up a new shortened version of that, they immediately changed to World Wrestling Entertainment and everything was WWE and it was like Brave New World where everything changed all at once. Or was that 1984. No, 1984 was that Van Halen record with “Hot For Teacher”. And I’m sure Vince McMahon had that shit in place for if they lost that court case, because he’s a marketing guy, not a wrestling guy. A wrestling guy would’ve called it World Wide Wrestling Federation again, WWWF, and paid Superstar Graham’s hospital bills. There should be a movie about Jason vs. Abby. That would be seventeen times better than Jason in Space. However, Abby in Space would be tight as fuck. Right now, Abdullah has the best blood, but Sullivan is hitting Funk with a hammer, so maybe Funk will bust a main vein. Eddie Gilbert comes out and nails Funk and the ref. And The Dark Patriot is out there, too. Shit, couldn’t they have added the Gilbert brothers and made it a 3-Way? Well, Sullivan turns on Abby, and the mad man from Sudan takes a few chair shots before he pokes his white foreign object into Kevin Sullivan’s eyeball a few times. Of course, out comes the locker room, which gives the crazy vets open season on the youngsters for a few minutes. I imagine this is a locker room tradition, like telling the new guy he’ll win the battle royal in his hometown, only to throw him over the top when he’s not looking after he thought the last guy got eliminated. ABDULLAH IS THE FUCKIN’ GREATEST! He just ran up the aisle with his eyes wide open, his forehead covered in blood, and both hands upraised as Hansen chased him with a chair. Beautiful. Now, we’ve got a mixed gender battle royal. The only person I recognized was Sensational Sherri, so she’ll probably win. Well, Donn E. Allen is in it too, but he’s a jobber. Tigra has a big ass. There’s a sign in the crowd that says “Michael Jackson Kidnapped Freddie Gilbert”. That’s old school. Angel is a chick with fake blond hair, fake tits, and American flag trunks. Tits are so nice. Never has flabby flesh been so succulent.

BEER SEVEN: Some guy called Jay “the 6-pack” Sulli comes to the ring. Apparently, his gimmick is to look and dress like Mr. Haney from Green Acres, yet drink like Otis from the Andy Griffith Show. It works for me. Sherri is mean and nasty, like a pussy should be, even when old. Damn, the two chicks have de-pantsed Ricky’s black friend. Lesson number seven from the Confederate Mack School of Wrestling – if you want to give the crowd a good time, take an established bad manager, strip his pants off, but make sure he’s wearing goofy underwear. You can’t abuse this gimmick, but you should use it once every five years or so. It is priceless. The clothes are so ‘80s. I’ve come to realize the attire of your average wrestling program is about five years behind real life. Hip hop guys in wrestling today, 2002, dress like Ice Cube is still popular and Biggie Smalls is alive. About two years from now, there will be a wrestler with a finishing move called “The Bling Bling”. Sir Richard Michaels, I have no idea about. “Wildman” Sal Bellomo is a gladiator with a teddy bear sidekick. Sir Michaels looks like Jerry Lynn ten years closer to Faster Pussycat’s first record. Sal Bellomo has called Sherri Martel to be his second (her four hundred and seventh, thanks folks, I’ll be here all week after dinner). What happened to Bellomo? He seems very ECWish. I’m surprised I never saw him in the later years; he must’ve wrecked a car or some shit. I would’ve preferred him and Hack Myers over Justin Credible any day. Damn. Bellomo is doing some cool shit in the ring, and all while wearing a gladiator outfit. And he wins.

BEER EIGHT: The Rockin’ Rebel is now beating on people. Using the usual clusterfuck mentality of ECW, even back in ’93, I will assume somebody will come out and fight him. Well no, he leaves. I guess this is setting up next month’s show or some shit. The ECW Heavyweight Title match is next. The Sandman, skinny somewhat and before Metallica ever made his theme song, comes out first. Shane Douglas has dark hair and looks young. He also has tassles on a cut-off leather jacket. It is actually the worst piece of clothing I’ve ever seen in my life. The Sandman is wearing actual wrestling trunks. To Shane’s credit, he does the classic heel kick-step across the ring to raise your hand while being announced thing that gets the crowd all pissed off forever. Shane left, and there’s a nice shot of the ring rats by the dressing room door. That’s worth drinking to. The Sandman is a normal wrestler, which leads me to believe that he’s a major drunk in real life, so they just made that his gimmick so that it wasn’t so hard for him to do his job. I wish my job would work with me like that. At this point in the ECW Arena history, there were only like five rows of fans on the camera side. I think they ended up switching the angle on that, but I don’t know, I’ve never been there. Think how great ECW was, just judging it by how many indy groups run the ECW Arena in hopes of attaining that same greatness. And you read the listings and you wonder if the Public Enemy, The Sandman, and Steve Corino don’t live in apartments underneath the ECW Arena or some shit. They’re always booking ECW faves in these Viking Hall shows. Wiliam Devane is in the front row, I just saw him. You know what? Alan Jackson is about the only current country musician worth a shit. He’s alright. I don’t care what any of you uptight, stuck up motherfuckers think. Way down yonder on the Chattahoochee, it gets hotter than a hoochie coochie. Back home, that’s what we call a quality couplet. This is actually the first ever match I’ve seen of The Sandman where he’s not wearing either jeans or Joey Buttafucco pants to wrestle in. We have a ref bump.

BEER NINE: Sandman did that club thing underneath against the nuts. I always thought that should be called the Clubber Lang. Did I ever tell you about my surreal moment with Mr. T? Well, I’m staying in a hotel room in Oklahoma City, and I get up early to try and hitchhike to Colorado. I put it on public access, because I don’t care where you’re at, public access has the shit to watch. Well, they’re talking about arson, and I think, “Fuck, is arson that big out here?” All of a goddamn sudden, Mr. T is on the screen going, “Don’t be burning nobody’s house down, fool. How would you like it if somebody burned your house down? I pity the fool that burns a house down.” To this day I am haunted by that memory. Hey, it’s a baseball bat match. The Headhunters take on Miguel Perez Jr. and Crash the Terminator, better known as that dude with the fucked-up beard who does moonsaults. The Headhunters rule because they’re like two Abdullahs, but with Sting face paint. Sorry, I got sidetracked, now everybody’s bloody and fighting everywhere. Shit, remember what I said about the moonsault challenge? Well, both Crash aka Hugh Morrus and one of the Headhunters have missed moonsaults in this match. Headhunters win. Shit, that’s it. But they have a post-match brawl, and in the greatest ECW moment I’ve ever seen, Miguel Perez Jr. throws a box fan at the Headhunters, breaking it on the ground. Miguel Perez Jr. should do a Norelco commercial; it’d be better than that fake one Saturday Night Live used to have after that female bitch did interviews in the New England Patriots locker room like seventeen years ago. I remember everything, even the shit I don’t recall.

PP: Part Nineteen

If you have a pimp ass bronze toned Brougham with wire wheels, and some fuck-up plows into it fucking it all up and ruining it beyond your financial means to repair it, the best thing to do is just park it by the road for everyone to see. It's kind of like a drunk driving warning, except this one warns you to not be an unlounging asshole.

This is the one picture I was most glad for this project for thus far. I was at the demolition derby in Harrisonburg, and was walking around trying to not be too suspicious, taking pictures of cars in the pits, and I walked over to a dude at this truck and asked if I could snap a Polaroid. He said sure, and then told me the story behind the truck, which he was afraid he wasn't going to be able to run since there were only two other trucks and the promoters said there had to be at least four for them to run a truck class. The truck's original owner was a guy who had a wife and two kids, and they got in a car wreck and the guy and one kid died, and the mom was crippled, and only the little girl came out of it okay. The dad had wanted to run the truck in a demo derby before he died, so this other guy finished the project for him, and the handprints all over it were the little girl's, helping paint her dead father's truck for it to fulfill its destiny and his dream. On the back was R.I.P.s with the dad and brother's names in small paint I didn't notice at first. Unfortunately, I had to cut out early to make my daughter's ballet recital, but on my way out of the place, I saw two more trucks being hauled in for the derby, so I knew the guy was gonna get the chance to wreck up the truck for his dead buddy and his little girl.

I am proud to live in a part of the country where you might take a back road to the grocery store and pass a brick rancher with a homestyle armored troop carrier sitting in front of it. It is only a matter of months before the local barter system starts printing its own money and the sporting goods store (meaning gun shop) accepts it and I can paint barns for pistols.

I think I went through a spell where I saw like 15 old Scouts in a row, so there might be a few more of these fuckers coming up. I dig Scouts, but I have problems with dudes who are collectors of Scouts. I never understood car fetishes where you were in machine love with one type of car. There's so many beautiful sexy cars out there of all shapes and colors and manufacturers... why would you settle for just one?

12-Pack Review: ECW 05/03/98

BEER ONE: I’m drinking Mike’s Hard Lemonade tonight. That doesn’t make me gay, does it? Last year, my wife was drinking this lemonade shit and telling me how good it was, and I was all old school, and like, “fuck all that, all I need is an ice cold mother fuckin’ goddamn beer, woman.” But this year, for some reason, as the temp is cracking 95 in the first week of June, these damned things taste good. When I bought them at the Food Lion, the checkout lady asked me, “Do they taste like lemonade?” And then I pretty much told her what I just told you; that’s actually where I thought of that crap. Stupid life. Anyways, I’ve drank five of these things already, so one is actually six, but the tape machine wasn’t running, therefore David Crockett deems it inadmissible. Of course, we start off with Joey Styles. In retrospect, I hate that little fucker, but I guess he made Taz seem taller. Big Jon Burr is somewhere in the crowd, I hope he’s that fat bald guy in the front row with the green t-shirt. Of course, he’s not though. At this point in time, I lived in a trailer park, and would ride to my mom’s house to get the ECW pay-per-views with my sister Corinne. At the trailer, all we had was an antennae, and all it picked up was ABC out of Richmond, which meant pretty much all I watched was the View at three in the morning all drunked up. You would not be happy with how many times I masturbated to Meredith Viera. To this day, those brunette Lifetime channel hosts type ladies like her make me horny. We start off with the Full Blooded Italians. There is not a more wrestling in ’98 thing than the Italian flag with Tommy Rich’s mug airbrushed onto the middle of it. Guido and Smothers, damn, that’s a fine tag team. Their opponents are Nova, still in his comic book nerd stage, dressing like a blue version of the Green Lantern, and the Blue Meanie, still fat and in the shake his belly doing the raise the roof to DJ Kool stage of his career. Listening to Tommy Rich threaten the crowd, and looking at his alcoholism-ridden blade-gouged face, I think back on that thing I wrote about “What Would Tommy Rich Do?” Sometimes, I don’t know what I write, and I become a mouthpiece for something else. That Tommy Rich thing is such an incident. I will drink to my mysterious drunken muse. There’s some kid in the second row, maybe 13, being a fake Hat Guy, complete with Hawaiian shirt. Fuck that kid, and fuck the Hat Guy. Wrestling nerds are just below Armenians and just above Honda Civic with Japanese letter vinyl drag racers on the God-thinks-you-deserve-his-benevolence scale. A dance contest. The ref dances. As the Blue Meanie raises the ref’s hand, Smothers double axhandles from behind. This is ECW, friends, once Paul Heyman ran out of shit to steal from Memphis that he cross-bred with the 3-way concept.

BEER TWO: I finished my beer in honor of the airbrushed t-shirt Meanie is wearing. The airbrushed t-shirt has gone the way of iron-on letters down the side of your trunks. The Cauliflower Alley Club needs to be more concerned about things like that. Wouldn’t a Russian legsweep by Guido actually be an Italian legsweep? If I ran a wrestling school, lesson one would be, “If you’re a bad guy tag team and you’re doing some dastardly double team move to cheat and beat down your opponents, and you throw one guy into the ropes and hold hands and come at him with a clothesline, make ultra-sure you hold your arms low enough to actually clothesline him. Because if you don’t, he’ll just bounce back off the far side ropes and then double clothesline you. Trust me, boys. I’ve seen it happen more times than I care to remember.” The Meaniesault is broke up by Rich, NO! But the Meaniesault misses. Nova does his Novacaine, which is basically a fall backwards hug onto your shoulder which wouldn’t hurt a crying two-year-old if you were a shitty babysitter doing the move. According to ’98 Joey Styles, both Justin Credible and Mikey Whipwreck are 23. That would make, today, Whipwreck a half-crippled 27-year-old, and Justin Credible a bald, dorky 27-year-old. I thought only Mexicans could be washed-up as wrestlers by age 27. The first ECW title match I ever saw on TV was at a bar when Whipwreck beat the Sandman in that ladder match. Him training under the Public Enemy by climbing a ladder to get Johnny Grunge beers hanging from a tree in Central Park, that’s quality TV memories right there, boy. Some guy in the front row has a Diamond D sign, I hope to fuck that was Jon Burr. Chastity is hot in a too-drunk-to-not-recognize-you’re-fuckin’-a-whore-with-a-panther-tattoo-on-her-ass type way. Shit, Chastity just looked like Lucille Ball’s slut granddaughter. I’ll drink to that. Mikey Whipwreck rocks. There is nothing about ECW Whipwreck before he jobbed in WCW that you should not like as a wrestling fan. Nothing, motherfuckers. Credible flipped over the rail and crushed a kid. The longhair guy behind the kid leans over and yells “E-C-W”. This is why America rocks. You can’t find shit like this anywhere else on Earth, except Mexico, which is basically America with less rules and everybody’s got a tan, even the doctors and lawyers. You know the type of quality information you get with me? One time, I remember hearing an ECW hotline hype job where they said Nicole Bass wasn’t the only member of Jason’s crew that starred in a porn movie. I figured it was Jason, and it was gay porn, so ever since then I’ve explained to people how Jason used to star in gay porn. Of course, Chastity did some porn flicks for a while, long enough to become obsolete like all porn hookers do. But I still spout that Jason knowledge. Why? Because fuck the truth, speculation is just as fun. Anything you read by me is part-truth, part-possibility, and all-good. Shit, Whipwreck is actually wrestling Jerry Lynn during this match. But what do you know? You don’t care. You just want me to say something stupid that makes you laugh. Fuck you. Jerry Lynn nails a Van Daminator on Whipwreck with the chair, DDTs him, and goes for the pin, but Whipwreck kicks out. The crowd is chanting stuff to make themselves feel better about their pitiful lives. ECW fans were known to do this, even in Georgia.

BEER THREE: Somewhere, I wasn’t paying attention and started another beer. Lucky for me, I brought four in here when I came and this one is warm. That’s a benefit to drinking hard lemonade, because it doesn’t taste like the shit that a warm beer tastes like. Somebody is holding up a “Mid-Day Express” sign. Wrestling fans are so clever. They should write comic books. I never understood why Justin Credible wore black long johns underneath his cut-off shorts when he wrestled. It’s like he came in from sleigh-riding or some shit. Chastity takes a top rope Whippersnapper from Mikey, because the good guys always beat on women in ECW. How gay do you think Paul E. is? How many times do you think he and Tommy Dreamer sixty-nined? Credible wins and I don’t care. I want blood. The slow-motion replay of Whipwreck forcing Credible through a table even though he attempted to break the move twice, that’s great. Ahh, Axl Rotten and Balls Mahoney come out. That’s two great bar drunks there. Balls Mahoney is one of my all-time favorite wrestlers, no shit. When I was taping ECW and living at my mom’s house, my dad usually wasn’t allowed to come over, but once in a while he’d sneak by to see my sisters when my mom was off or some shit. One day, I sat him down while I was watching the tape to make him see the Balls vs. Sandman match when Balls was first getting pushed, where he said he’d offered a thousand dollars but nobody would fight him, so he pulled out a can of Budweiser from his leather jacket, and the Sandman came out and they fought for the Bud, the ref even held it in their faces like a title belt. My dad thought that was some good new-fangled wrestling right there. In fact, he hates the Dudley Boyz to this day for breaking up that match with their interference. Rest in peace, Big Dick Dudley. I hope your tombstone says “Big Dick” somewhere on it. That’s all any white man could hope for. At this point in my drinking of alcohol-laden lemonade, my stomach lining apparently is revolting against myself. I have indigestion of the small intestine. That’s okay though. When you drink too much, things like this happen. It’s all mind over matter. Fuck my organs, they’re not more powerful than my brain or MY HEART! Lance Storm and Chris Candido come out. Even as disagreeable partners, they were always my favorite ECW tag team, well, second favorite, just behind Kronus and Saturn in their shiny brief trunks prime. Candido’s promos, wearing the title belt around his neck, he is a positive role model for aspiring cokehead wrestlers everywhere that are told their drug addiction will kill their career. Lance Storm is the king of geometrically homosexual wrestling trunks. The great thing about this Cobb County Civic Center is it looks like it’s two in the afternoon, plus all the house lights are on. Balls seems like a good guy to drink muscle relaxers with and rape schoolgirls.

BEER FOUR: It is carbonated, it has alcohol, it’s flavored with lemons, and I’m drinking it. Axl Rotten looks like he does lawbreaking types of things; and I don’t mean the cool things. He seems a little too Anti-It for my tastes. Plus, he lives in Maryland. Only fuckin’ retards and people who are on parole in Delaware live in Maryland. Axl Rotten has done two armbars in this match already. That is not the equation that equals me drinking beer. Incredibly enough, Candido does his long hold-up-in-the-air suplex on Axl. ECW ref shirts look like a rugby jersey. As hard as Candido is trying, this match sort of sucks. Axl needs to have a heart attack and let the other three go to it. I always loved the fact Balls had that one big tattooed arm, and nothing on the other arm. It takes a man who loves his mother to do some weird shit like that. Tammy Sytch is straight up white trash hooker in the ring, complete with white tank top and white sandals. I don’t give a fuck what anybody says, Tammy Sytch is hot. She is my weakness in wrestling’s whore pantheon. Her and Sunshine, Gorgeous Jimmy Garvin’s first valet. Actually, Precious is better; I just wanted to say Sunshine so I could show you what an old school smart I was. I’m a fuckin’ dumbass. I’m gonna try and bash one of these bottles on my head. Three tries and it didn’t break. But now I have a headache and I feel like a pussy because I can’t break a lemonade bottle over my head. Hey, it’s legends remembory going on. The Junkyard Dog! His last major appearance before dying.

BEER FIVE: Of course, I drank it down. That cat JYD got down and boogied, motherfuckers. He is one of us. He played Spades with the jokers still in the deck and put hard-boiled eggs in his potato salad. JYD has a pierced lip. Out comes Dick Slater. He is a Southern wrestling legend. Drunk, old, fat, still with ponytail and a jacket with fringe hanging off the arms. God bless him. The Masked Superstar! Man, I love America that a guy could wear a suit and a shiny mask with a star on it and be famous. Bullet Bob Armstrong. I never was much of an Armstrong fan, being the anti-hero subversive I always have been. I root for heels. But think about the Bullet and his family. This guy was running around the southeast, wearing a weird mask, all thick in the chest, and being a good guy. He was never at home, though. I’m sure ol’ Bob had more than his fair share of rats and hotel room drunken smashings. And his boys back home in Marietta – Brad, Scott, Steve, Tim Horner, Road Dogg – all they wanted was their father’s approval. So they got into wrestling. And they tried and tried, but they could never become the Bullet. There is no thing more needing of a sociological study that the abundance of masked wrestlers in Alabama that everybody knew who they were. Well, Bob’s boys got in the business as well, looking for Dad’s love that was never at home. I guess the only that really got it was Brad. And poor Road Dogg Armstrong, getting hooked on all sorts of drugs, selling his soul for WWF fame, what did it get him? Nothing. He’s a loser who lives in Florida because he knows too many people in Alabama or Georgia would ask him about his daddy in that subtle way that only rednecks can do that makes you aware of all that you’ve done wrong with the person they’re asking about. Props to Bill Eadie for wearing his mask. I wish Jerry Stubbs would come out and hit Bob Armstrong in the old knees. Then Dick Slater could run off the other two legends, and maybe Doug Gilbert could come out and throw a fireball in honor of his dead brother. Styles is hyping up all the broken bones that Shane Douglas is gonna wrestle with tonight. Back acne is a sign of steroids abuse. When Shane Douglas cut his ponytail off, he lost any chance of being cool with me. A guy with tassles on his boots and no matching ponytail is pure fuckin’ dumbass. The lights go down and out comes Taz. I hate UFC shit, but I’d like to see Tito Ortiz and Taz in a chicken wire cage in my backyard, with the loser getting shot four times in the knees. Short, muscular guys with lots of upper arm tattoos usually bounce at trendy bars and talk a lot of shit about how many drug connections they’ve got. Taz and Shane talk shit, with the eventual outcome being Taz throwing the Casa Aunt Jemima on Douglas. Then Bam Bam comes out, with grey flames, which makes me think of watching the Creature from the Black Lagoon with those 3-D glasses as a kid. Or even better was The Mask, where whenever the dude put on the mask, you were supposed to put on your 3-D glasses. That was some tight shit to watch while you did bong hits with your boy, although when you only had one pair of 3-D glasses, there was some negotiating to be done. Fake cops are throwing Taz into a fake cop car, where he kicks the shit out of the window in the back, with the cops sitting there long enough for the camera to get a good shot of Taz’s feet sticking through broken window. Bam Bam Bigelow has his head tattooed. That makes me drink, regardless.

BEER SIX: I pulled a ligament in my right knee, and they prescribed motrin, and I think the combo of motrin and alcoholic lemonade is making my small intestine rot, but hey, two peas in a bucket, mother fuck fuck it. New Jack smashes a Godzilla doll with ECW spray-painted on its chest with a hockey stick against Bam Bam’s balls. Lou Thesz and Bruno Sammartino would be proud. New Jack is bloody and wearing a Tupac shirt. New Jack is all fucked-up, climbing the stairs, which means Bam Bam has to hang out looking around forever. It ends up with NJ dropping from the rail and hitting BB with a powder-dusted guitar. Very lame. Bam Bam is bleeding from the back of his head, though. That’s good. Double juice equals beer in my belly. “I was in the belly of the beast, now the beast is in my belly,” said Kool G. Rap in my memory bank, which he and DJ Polo were robbing while I waited in the drive-thru. I have an account with my memory bank, which is nice, because I can cash my fake paychecks in the drive-thru rather than having to go inside. I still hate that rule, though. Now they’ve got slow motion highlights of Tommy Dreamer and some acoustic guitar heavy music, kind of like the type of thing that any good hard metal band would put as an interlude on their LP, to show they were musicians. Hey, the Dudley Boyz are in the ring, four dead guys. Big Dick is dead literally, Buh-Buh and D-Von are dead spiritually, and Sign Guy is dead career-wise. When the Sandman’s music kicks in, Big Dick takes off his fake glasses and tucks them in his pocket. I will go on the porch and drink beer because of that. Okay, here’s what I don’t understand. When I lean down with my face facing down, my head hurts like I just took a milk crate shot against it. But when I stand straight up, face forward, nothing hurts at all. Best I can figure is too much drunk man’s lemonade gives you the Soul of a Weeble Wobble. Ahh, the blood, sweat, and beers t-shirt, plus Beulah. Beulah was hot for a weird-looking bitch, kind of like Precious. Beulah didn’t spray mist though, she let The Sandman pour beer down her shirt. That’s what 15 years of evolution means in pro wrestling. The great thing about the Sandman is that he actually drinks most of those beers. Most gimmicks are just smoke and mirrors, with the announcer covering the flaws. Like Dreamer drinking beer off of Beulah’s tits. Tommy Dreamer is the Mike Piazza of wrasslin’. The Sandman must’ve poured half a beer on a wigger’s face, then he grimaced as he got off the chair, selling the angle. Bless you, Jim Fullington, bless you. D-Von is my fourth favorite all-time Dudley, just behind Little Spike Dudley, Dances with Wolves Dudley, and Dudley Dudley.

BEER SEVEN: At this point, I am very drunk, counting the pre-PPV beers. But I can’t quit, or I’m a pussy. Except I’m misspelling every other word. My stupid fingers won’t work right. If I fell asleep right now, this second, I could sleep for four hours before I had to get up for work. I just now slept with my forehead balanced upon a bottle. Two things about that. I must be fucked-up enough to sleep so easily. And two, why would you keep people awake with horns and changle-changlerers and shit. It’s a game. I can appreciate it, but goddamn, I’m not gonna overthrow the govt. over the men’s world cup team. Fuck, I’m tired. And drunk. And I’m off to the see the wizard.