Scar talk...

Scars... scarrrrrrrrrrrrsssss... so we all have scars of some sort... some physical, some mental, some emotional...some possibly obtained when trying to wrestle a bear while on an LSD trip. Some easily visible, some not so much... I think you get the idea of what I'm saying here...

I know I have many scars, none quite as horrifying as the time I saw the next door neighbor, Old Man Miller trying to paint his house with his penis, Jackson Pollack style...dip, fling, splatter... he'd paint and play the harmonica, and he would call any cat that crossed his path a "spice cake"... he also despised German engineering and threw oranges at any Volkswagon he would see... oh man, memories...
OK, I'm just kidding, that never really happened, but I'm surprised it didn't...

Anyhoo, I'm talking about physical scars today... I've got lots of them on my feet, and my right hand and arm... here's the one on my right forearm...


I know what you're saying..."What scar? I can hardly see one! Stop lying through your teeth, asshole!"...well, after asking for an apology for berating me so much, I will say that there is in fact still a scar there...it's been there since 1979...it looks like a centipede... in fact, when I was little, I tried to bullshit other kids by telling them that it was a centipede tattoo, not a scar... I'm sure it made me especially popular when the Centipede video game came out...

But that's what's kind of cool...the scar has really faded...I bet these days that the same surgical procedures I had back then would leave a hardly visible scar, but back then, they were cutting us open with pizza cutters and stitching us back together with piano wire and thumbtacks... and with no anesthetic either...if you wanted to be knocked out for your surgery, they had a big goon come in and beat you into unconsciousness with his fists...that was the anesthetic! And you know what? It toughened me the hell up...gave me character...made me what I am...

Do you believe me? No? Well OK, I guess I can't blame you... remember, I was the same one lying about it being a cool tattoo to impress the other elementary school children...gullible little shits...the kids back then, not you...or are YOU the gullible little shit? Hmmmm?
Hey, don't leave, I'm just kidding! Really! If you stay, I'll make Tang! Tang!!!

So, do any of you have cool physical scar stories?

5 songs of the day:
Spirits In The Material World by The Police
Inner City Blues by Marvin Gaye
The Sound Of Failure by The Flaming Lips
Candy-O by The Cars
and
Dazed And Confused by Led Zeppelin

It's not QUITE worldess Wednesday, but whatever...

OK, I'll be honest...I don't have have shit for you today... seems that I have run headlong into a writer's block brick wall without my "special boy" helmet on to protect my pudding head...and don't EVEN bother to point out that I am telling you this only two days after my triumphant, inspired post about how I yearn to make my living as a comedy writer...believe me, the irony is not lost on me... blahhhhhhh...I'm sure that even Dickens and Shakespeare woke up some mornings and said "Fuck it, do I have to be ON every damn day?!"...thanks, ghost writers (get it?!)...thanks for getting my back on that...
Not that I'm comparing myself to those old farts in any way, I'm just sayin'...you know? OK, time for me to cop out and show you some funny pictures instead...deal? Roll the ugliness...















5 songs of the day:
Once In A Lifetime by The Talking Heads
I Surrender by David Sylvian
Kashmir by Led Zeppelin
One Of These Nights by The Eagles
and
Earache My Eye by Cheech & Chong

Is it too late to dream?

I know the title is lame and it sounds like I'm getting ready to drop some trite emo-ish poem on you, but it is a serious thought in my head lately...am I too old to tell you what I want to be when I grow up? You may be surprised to hear this, but working for an imploding, failing telecom company is not what I wanted to do with my life, and more and more every day, I know that the "workaday clock in-clock out ad nauseum until the day you die" life is not for me...it just isn't...
I'm not saying that it can't work out for people...hell, most of us live that lifestyle, and some people enjoy that kind of structure...I'm just saying that I don't... I'm a bird...I'm a big, dumb bird that keeps trying to flap his wings and get off the ground, and you just have to laugh when you watch me because it's so funny and awkward to watch me trying to achieve flight...and then you think to yourself "Wow, I'd like to catch that dumb bird because he won't be able to fly away from me, and I'm hungry, and it looks like there's a lot of meat on him, and hey Rita, get me a fork and knife!"
Then I become scared because I realize that you are serious about eating me, and I start pushing my skinny ostrich legs and implore them to give me just the right momentum...and then suddenly, this retarded, flightless bird finally springs off of those legs and I start to coast away...and just like that, my wings catch the air, and I fly...I fly away, leaving you standing below, holding a knife and fork, hungry and dejected...there...don't you feel silly now?

Where was I going with all of this? Oh yeah...what I'm saying is that I do still have aspirations... I want to write comedy...this is something that I've known for a while, but I think I can actually see some light ahead in the tunnel...somehow, some way, I think it is possible...

My wife and brother are the funniest two people I know in this world... I knew that I had met the girl of my dreams when one of the first things my soon-to-be wife did that got my attention was quote an obscure line from The Simpsons (Kirk Van Houten's Can I Borrow a Feeling song)... and my brother, well, I owe him more than I could ever probably admit...
When we get together for dinner as we did two times this weekend (and boy did I get DRUNK Friday night!), we come up with some of the most inspired comedic ideas that I could ever imagine...we are serious about this all of a sudden...we have some friends who want to collaborate...these things that we laugh about over drinks and dinner are taking shape and there are great ideas already being put into action... it is exciting, exhilirating even... that's all I can really say about it for now but trust me, I will happily be telling you guys here about it's progress...

I always knew I was meant to do something unconventional, and I say that not in some bullshit religious sense of "Oh, I always knew God put you in this world for something special"...I call bullshit! My Mom and Dad brought me into this world and nurtured me, not some magical conjurer in Rainbow Land... no, my path is my own, and I want to make it interesting...being a right brained recreational musician and former Professional Wrestling performer might be some evidence of that... but my heart lies in making people laugh, making something that is timeless, and I think that when comedy is done right, it can be timeless...I want to make something that meaningful... for me, that would be the most thoughtful way of showing my appreciation for my time on this Earth...

5 songs of the day:
Night Spots by The Cars
The Benefit For Mr. Kite by The Beatles
Films by Gary Numan
The Enemy Within by Rush
and
When I Say Stop, Continue by King Crimson

Dropping the eaves...

OK, so I just have to get into this now... Yesterday I was laying around and just generally being lazy (what else is new?) and I'm watching Family Feud on the GSN channel... In the middle of watching the very objectionable displays of Richard Dawson planting his big, blubbery lips on the mouth of every female on the show, half the fun is the commercials, all pretty much selling those "As Seen On TV" products... Of course, they're not nearly as much fun without Billy Mays, who at the time of his death had stopped just short of selling dildos on TV... I could just hear it now. "The new Oxy-Pleasure Rod!"

So there is this one product that really caught my attention... Maybe you've seen it, maybe you haven't, but it's called the "Listen Up", and it is a device that supposedly amplifies sound up to whatever specified range they were talking about, and the idea is that you put earphones in like an MP3 player and you can watch TV or listen to the stereo without bothering your spouse or one-night stand partner so much... At least, this is how the old guy in the commercial was forced into using it because of his old hag of a wife incessantly nagging him about watching TV with the volume too loud while she was trying to sleep. One "Listen Up" and a good firm pillow suffocation later, and old Betsy was nagging no more...

If you think I am bullshitting you, check it out:

http://www.asseenontv.com/prod-pages/listen402.html

All of this was thoroughly entertaining, but the most memorable thing about the commercial was the fact that the voice-over guy in the commercial was blatantly endorsing using the product as a means to eavesdrop on others!.. "Hear what others are saying about you" is what he actually says. They even had a little scene in the commercial where this guy is listening with this little trinket in the gym so that he can listen to two girls gawking over him... "Hey, he's pretty hot! Look at that body!"

I kid you not, this is the actual content of this shameless display of shilling... I can't wait until I see this thing in Walgreens (which of course is where most of the Made-For-TV products do end up), because I would like to test it out in the store for myself. Or at least find somebody to test it out on...

I would find the nearest old person and have them listen with the amplifier while I conduct fun little experiments, such as farting into the amplifier, or scratching a fork down a chalkboard... Oh wait, I don't think I've ever really seen chalkboards in Walgreens... How many paranoid maniacs are going to go out buying this thing now? I can just see some guy now using this thing in a sleazy motel so he can amplify the sounds of the crack whore in the next room inflicting a new strain of STD on her willing john... Sorry, not for me, thank you. I'm going to stick with my Billy Mays "Super Ass Vacuum"..

5 songs of the day:
Shrivel Up by Devo
Burnin' For You by Blue Oyster Cult
Who's Behind The Door by Zebra
Turnaround by Robert Plant
and
Snowblind by Styx

Google Analytics = instant blogging material!

The title pretty much says it all! If any of you bloggers out there aren't using Google Analytics yet, you MUST DO SO NOW... if nothing else, you will get some great blogging material out of it if you are stumped for ideas... particularly, the key word search... it is both pants-shittingly hilarious and positively frightening to see what key words have been used for some of the world's most unusual people to happen across your blog...

Take for example, Rachael Ray, seen here below practicing her hand job skills on an ear of corn on national TV:


While it is widely documented just how much I consider her to be this millennium's version of the Bubonic Plague and how I generally blame her for all of our society's ills, I have to admit that her accursed name has brought many strange new visitors to my blog...check out all of the different RR related keywords used below:

keep your hands off your face rachael ray (this carefully worded phrase got my blog 13 hits...how???)
i hate rachael ray (me too, stranger...me too...)
rachel ray maxim spread (dear God, NO!!! What, was Janet Reno not available?)
rachael ray big fat pumpkin head (Ha!! Love it!)
rachel ray i hate you (preaching to the choir!)
hate rachael ray (not anyone in particular I guess, just general hatred...works for me...)
i hate rachael ray tongue (I'm not familiar with her tongue, but I'm sure it's loathsome too)
i hate rachel ray recipes (nay, her MOM'S recipes...rachael is a hack...a hack!)
rachael ray boobs (are laughable)
rachael ray get your hands off your face (again with the hands on the face? What does this mean??)
rachael ray keep your hands off your face (am I missing something here??? What the fuck are these people wanting to find with this phrase?)
rachael ray/mangosalsa (looks like somebody innocently seeking assistance to spice up their next party with some mango salsa...)
rachael rays cunt (let's not go there...)
rachael ray big floppy pumpkin head (pure greatness!)
rachelray pig-dog (No idea what it means but I love it!)
watch rachael ray boobs (no thanks...)
what does rachael ray's cabin look like in lake luzern (One of our regular blogger guests here in fact DOES know...)

Wow...just...wow... should I be thanking Rachael for bringing this unsolicited traffic my way? Possibly, but no...I thank her for nothing...

But if you think those are strange, you've seen nothing yet... here are the key words that really baffle me:

nude forever "living mannequin" (sounds like some Abercrombie and Fitch bullshit)
violin bow sex fetish (orchestra porn?)
100 questions about meat (what do you want to know?)
beard soup fetish (OK, you scare me...)
bruce lee sneeze (I have no fucking idea how this led to me...)
does the fortune cookie writer have to put it in cookie? (Is this a euphemism? What is the "it" that he should be putting in the "cookie"?)
gobble gobble my ass (I will politely decline...)
japanese jockstrap (whatever it is, it probably has Hello Kitty on it and fondles your genitals for you...)
my name ist hanz and my name is franz und we are here to pump you up! (OK, SNL fan here...not sure how this rat-mazed them to my blog...)
old navy water bottles safe taste salty (I think your friends are playing a cruel joke on you, then...)
scat;shitlove 43 (OK, officially frightened now...)
tarantula in my beard (at least it didn't have the word "fetish" at the end...)
telly savalas beard (whatever floats your boat..."Who loves ya, babyyyy?")
weird round head guy milk (Alrighty then...)
the work bathroom is right next to my desk and stinks (then you clearly aren't respected at your workplace...)

If any of you reading now or regularly that used any of these key words to find me, please reveal yourself here and now...this is where the healing starts, friends... I have happy pills for you! Come run with the Kool-Aid Man... he is waving you in...all you have to do is driiiiiiinnnnnnkkkkkk...

5 songs of the day:
No Quarter by Led Zeppelin
The Hero's Return by Pink Floyd
Are You Experienced? by Jimi Hendrix
The Sailor's Tale by King Crimson
and
Squonk by Genesis

Introducing... Billy The P...

OK, let's see...this is the big post I was promising you since last week, so where do I start? Well, how about this: I used to be a professional wrestling "manager"/entertainer/performer...
Well, that wasn't so hard (that's what she said!)!

I don't know if this was the kind of big secret you were waiting to see unveiled, but it is all absolutely true...it's my big secret...it's a past part of my life that is now 11 years behind me. I can't say that I have ever really been running from it, but it's something that only my closest circle of friends knew...until now, that is...now you all know...



I worked as a heel (bad guy) manager named Billy The P for a smallish promotion called the Independent Wrestling Association Mid-South (IWA MS) that was originally based here in my hometown of Louisville, KY. I started with them from day 1 of the promotion starting up...
I grew up watching pro wrestling, and as I got older, me and my buddies would go down to the Louisville Gardens to watch the local promotions and the occasional WWF show running there, and we got to know many of the wrestlers that worked there...one of those guys I got to know is called Ian Rotten, and he had just moved to Louisville after working with the ECW for a while... we got to know each other, and apparently he thought I had the charisma and extrovertedness needed to actually perform in the business...

It was a dream come true for me...I always wanted a chance to work in the wrestling business, and I did it...I took a chance...a big chance...I wanted to be like the bad guy managers on TV that I idolized...Bobby The Brain Heenan was my idol...he was the greatest heel wrestling "manager" ever, and I did my best to emulate him as well as Jimmy Hart, and yet, make it my own style in some way...

On October 10, 1996, the IWA Mid-South was born, and so was Billy The P...my persona was based on a pimp, and to be frank, a crippled pimp, taking "advantage" of my disability...I talked a bad-ass game, but I was the little wimp that hid behind the big, bad guys that I managed...that was my gimmick...I went to the local Salvation Army and found the worst, cheesiest 1970's clothes I could find...my goal was to look like a skinny white "Huggy Bear" of Starsky and Hutch fame... I'm including pictures below...you'll have to tell me if I pulled the look off...


(Me and my main charge Bull Pain...check out my snazzy clothes)


(Me and Bull with the IWA Championship belt...looked good on me, no? Hahaha)


(Me and my buddy, the late, great Rollin' Hard, who died of cancer last year, a year younger than me)


(Strutting in my disco shirt, courdoroy pants and pink scarf...I was a real fashion plate!)

I won't kid you when I tell you that it was a lot of hard work...not only did I perform, I also was involved in promotion and day to day activities of keeping the promotion afloat...and you know what? It started to take off...the promotion took off and my character got over the way it was supposed to...the fans hated me...that was what they were supposed to do... I got on the microphone every night and told them what a bunch of inbred idiots they were...I called the rednecks...I called them retards...I told them that they were all just a big waste of sperm...it was awesome...
And they had a hard time containing their hate... things were thrown at me... drinks, food, batteries, lightbulbs (!), coins, and even chairs were thrown at me...people spat at me... one time, some decrepit old man actually took a swing at me and punched me in my arm...it was hilarious... I needed security to escort me out to my car...people called in to the special promotion hotline and left death threats for me on there... yeah, that's what's called good old fashioned "heat"...

And yet...yet...these same people that threw things at me, called me every name under the sun, and called in death threats would be happy to see me if they ran into me out somewhere... trust me, I was never clouded by the illusion that I was famous or some special celebrity, but even local celebrity status can be intoxicating... I signed autographs for kids, I had a group of guys chanting my name when they saw me in the local mall, I even got free food at fast food restaurants if somebody working there recognized me...hell, I even got into a movie for free once because the kid selling tickets recognized me... you can get used to treatment like that!

And even though we were a small promotion, I got to work with some legendary names in wrestling...I got to work on a show with "Stone Cold" Steve Austin when he was the hottest thing going in the business...I got to work with the legendary Terry Funk, I worked with Chris Jericho...I even worked with Chris Benoit, who would go on to infamy when he murdered his wife and son before hanging himself, leading to yet more controversy over steroids and drugs in the wrestling business... I even met Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson before he became a wrestling mega-star, not to mention a Hollywood superstar...
But there was a downside too...a lot of the friends I made are dead now, most of them either via direct drug overdose or the consequences of many years of drug abuse... it is sad to check a wrestling news site only to find out that another friend has died...it seems like lately I am losing at least 1 or 2 friends a year...

My career only lasted about a year and a half solid, and then some assorted shows here and there until my final show in October of 1998. All in all, I worked about 125 shows and worked all over Kentucky and Indiana, as well as some shows in New Jersey, Detroit, and a very special star-studded memorial show for the late Brian Pillman in Cincinnati which was the most memorable of my career... and I didn't only work for the IWA Mid-South...the memorial show was for the HWA wrestling promotion, and I worked a few other independent promotions...

As I said, the wear and tear, the promoting, the performing, the travel, it all gets to you, but ultimately, my lack of financial gain led to me getting out of the business. One thing is for sure...if you are not in the modern day WWE or TNA, there is no money for you to make, especially with the costs of traveling and the economy the way it is now...

There were lots of ups and downs for me, but I have a lot of good memories and made lots of good friends... one thing that I really like about Facebook is that it has made it easy for me to reconnect with so many of the guys I wrestled with, so I've had a blast getting back in touch with them... would I ever get back in the business? No way...there's no place for a guy like me in this business anymore, and besides, I'm too old and broken down now...

Believe it or not, even though I wasn't technically a wrestler, I still took a lot of bumps (getting slammed around), the most memorable of which was taking a power bomb from a legit 6'6, 375 pound guy called The Tower Of Doom...I was trained how to take bumps and I usually enjoyed taking bumps, but that one was rough...he took care of me, but still, being the little 5'6, 125 pound runt I was at the time, that was a long way for me to come down...it jarred me good, and I could barely move my neck for a month...I think it has a lot to do with the problems I have with my neck today... so yeah, if you are a manager on the independent wrestling circuit that can't take a bump once in a while, then you're like a guitar without strings...worthless... besides, last I checked? Yeah, still no money to be made...

These days, Billy The P is long behind me...nobody recognizes me anymore and I haven't stepped into a ring in 11 years...out of sight is truly out of mind in the wrestling business. But that's OK...I have lots of good memories, a handful of pictures, and a lot of video tapes where Billy The P still lives on...living that life was fine when I was young and single, but today, I am married, I am happy, I have a job, and I can just be a normal guy (relatively speaking)...

I'm sure there are probably lots of questions to be asked out there, so fire away if you want...I think I'm finally ready...hehehe...and oh yeah, to those of my co-workers reading this, do your buddy Billy a solid and kinda keep this under wraps a little bit because we all know that too much knowledge is dangerous with some of the true shitheads we work with...

I'm sorry for the long post ...I know how tedious long posts can be, but I don't know how I could possibly have condensed this any more than I did...maybe there will be more wrestling days posts in the future...so there you have it... every word of this has been absolutely true... it feels good to finally get it all out there...now you really know nearly everything about me...hahahahaha


(I confront Tracy Smothers during one of our TV tapings)


(I ended up costing Tracy a match and berated him some more from outside the ring as the spiffy Dean Hill looks on)


(Rollin' Hard tries to come to my rescue as Chris Kidd throws me like a bag of potatoes)

**Sorry about the quality of some of these pictures...I literally had to take pictures of our TV as I rolled some video!

5 songs of the day (Billy The P themes version):
Magic Man by Heart
Larger Than Life by KISS
Kung Fu Fighting by Carl Douglas
Pusherman by Curtis Mayfield
and
The Sanford & Son theme (in memory of Rollin' Hard)

Gobble, gobble...

Hey blogerinos, hope everybody had a good weekend... not much to say so I'm going to make this brief, plus, this is going to be my only post this week since we'll be leaving town on Wednesday. I know I said last week that I am tired of talking about myself and making myself out to be a wildly interesting person, and I really am tired of myself, however, I do have one more big thing to talk about regarding a past double life I had next Monday...

Be prepared for a big post then, because it will take some explaining... maybe I'll split it into a couple of different posts just because I know how tedious long posts can be to read...I'm not sure...maybe I can give you the gist of it all in one post...

I have been putting off talking about it for a long time, mainly because it almost sounds improbable, also, many of my co-workers read this blog apparently, but I can count on one hand the number of people that I work with that know about it, so it's going to make me a bit nervous to put it out there... plus, I know there's going to be lots of questions about it, so I have to be ready for it, so I certainly hope you will come back next Monday for the big reveal...

Oh, and just to nip it in the bud right now, no, I was NOT a porno star... hahahahaha... it's not quite THAT Earth-shattering, but once I get it all in the open, then hopefully I can finally stop talking about myself for a while...

Did I say this post was going to be short???
OK, that's all for now, but I will leave you with this photo to ponder over for the Thanksgiving week... Wwwwwww...what the fuck is going on here????!!



Can anybody make sense of this for me?
Is that JUST milk?
Is that Frank Stallone in the yellow shirt?

Have a great Thanksgiving everybody...

5 songs of the day:
Wrapped Around Your Finger by The Police
Talking in Your Sleep by The Romantics
Cactus by David Bowie
One More Red Nightmare by King Crimson
and
Genghis Khan by Ace Frehley