-----------------------------
TKG: tomk
- If you see it and want it, buy it, own it.
RM: I've been listening to a lot of DJ Screw and OG Ron C lately.
It's about all I can really enjoy anymore, and that good type of reckless
fuck-the-world type music that causes me to pull over and buy a 12-pack
of beer even though I told myself I wouldn't drink till next weekend. Tom
gave me a couple of the Ron C CD's I've been pumping in the car I inherited
from my wife since we got a '97 Subaru for her and the kids. I always get
the B-car, and my Tercel just blew up, so
I now pimp a Camry with completely shot rear suspension, flaking paint
as opposed to candy-flake color-changing paint, but it has a CD player,
though you have to trick it by bumping ahead to track five to get it to
play burned CDs. I imagine if Screw had lived longer, he might've gotten
a big deal and blown hip hop on its side like the Wu or the Chronic did,
but instead we just get this endless parade of pussified
well-cleansed certified gangsta commodities
for material consumption. I'd rather drink cough syrup.
TKG: So been thinking a lot about the life I’ve led and what it means
never to have even tried to yodel and what that means spiritually or some
shit. So Wednesday night I go out and get shit
faced, end up going back to the apartment of a Congressional intern who
was on the rag. I have no personal blood taboos. No problem fucking
young ladies on their period. It’s all about the level of flow. You have
all this lubrication that leads to really deep deep
penetration…and that’s an amazingly cool feeling but then you get so much
lubrication, you don’t get enough friction and that makes it hard to get
any pleasure. I mean the goal is the physical pleasure from the friction,
not the ego pleasure of getting the deep penetration. So there’s a lot
going into this, cause your all about positioning
for maximum friction as opposed to positioning for maximum depth. Its
like normal world upside down. So there is this backwards world thing going
on while their also is the knowledge that their are blood taboos and taboo
can be exciting, plus its messy as all hell.
Well anyways when I’m all finished up, this girl hands me a wetnap. A wetnap.
Somehow it was just too much for me to take. The backward world sex, the
taboo and then the post coital wetnap threw
my psyche for a leap…What am I doing with my life? I mean a wetnap.
A nice restaurant would give you a hot towel. So I use the wetnap
walk past Ashcroft’s townhouse, knowing that he would never even touch a
women unless he had toweled her down with rubbing alcohol pre penetration.
I get on the subway to go home and some guy sitting next to me has the
nerve to tell me “Damn boy, you smell like pussy”. “I’m sorry. I mean I
used a wetnap”.
RM: I paint houses. It's not glamorous, but it's low stress. And
you meet a lot of kooks - not internet "I dress up like a rabbit and masturbate
other men" type freaks, but ex-cons and perverts and guys who enthusiastically
abuse things I've never even heard of. We've been painting a shitty house
in Orange, Virginia, because this guy bought it, thinking he could fix
it up and sell it right away for twice what he paid, clock his grip, and
finally build the house he's always wanted for him and his family. Plans
like that hardly ever work. The contractor doing most of the fixing is
an inept little penis-looking bald guy named Jim, and he's got a dirtbag
skater kid as his right-hand man, and a big black dude they just leave
to do all the sanding of the sheet rock mud. And then my boss leaves me
to do all the prepping of the windows. Me and big black dude talk about
various subjects like pussy ("All the girls in that apartment building
at the bottom of the street fuck, ALL of them," says he), politics ("I'm
more of a socialist terrorist dictator type of motherfucker though," says
he), and he explains some of the basic tenets of 5% Nation of Islam beliefs,
which he of course learned in prison, and I find out the guy who founded
that offshoot branch of the offshoot branch of the religion that has offshoot
branches that plough planes into giant buildings, that guy was born and
bred in Danville, Virginia. It makes sense.
TKG: Dan H had posted about his moving to West Coast and his freak
show act. I wrote “ And as I'm about a day
past the begining of midlife crisis....so
how does one go about finding a teacher to properly teach me to be a sideshow
geek.” Dan responded “ Geek is specifically
someone who bites the heads off of living creatures, usually mice, snakes
or chicken. It was usually performed by some drunk running from his wife
paid on a steady supply of booze. Don't confuse the two, even if it's a
common mistake.” I couldn’t believe made the mistake. I’ve read “Shocked
and Amazed” spent days in front of mirror
trying to figure out how to recreate Burkhart’s two face stunt, and knew
better. But Dan’s response made me realize that at the moment I was a drunk
contemplating running away from my own life to bite chickens.
RM: A lot of times, the motivation of staying alive to enjoy my beautiful
family gets overwhelmed by how dim my dreams become the older I get, and
I contemplate jumping the median every now and then. It's one fucked up
World we live in. But then just the random kookiness of interacting with
people makes it all worthwhile, because if I'm not here to enjoy a crazed
black man from New York living in small town Virginia now, explaining to
me why you have to beat Puerto Rican women because if you don't, they just
won't show you any respect, well, nobody would enjoy it.
TKG: Originally I thought I was going to be working this weekend
and that I wouldn’t be able to attend the lucha.
Then all of a sudden things changed and it looked like I could, so quickly
posted on out admin board to see if could hitch down to RM: I grew up in a town a lot like Orange, but I glamorize and romanticize
my memories. Working in the minimum wage land of sadness that is Orange,
Virginia, sort of forces me to realize what a shitty place I grew up in,
and why I have so many psychological issues that create in me a pride in
being fucked-up, rather than successful. Even admitting that seems pussy
to me, and makes me want to drink all night, because going to work hungover
on two hours sleep is way cooler than being rich, ain't
it? God, I'm fuckin' stupid. My youngest
sister lives with a crackhead boyfriend
and is fighting her own meth demons (successfully
at this point), being stoked to be a waitress at some shitty diner in a
shitty town. My other sister lives in a miniscule trailer with a hole by
the toilet where you can see the ground. Her cats use that hole to get
in and out the house. (I guess by these standards, I'm pretty successful.)
Dealing with Orange and seeing the thugged-out
kids walking up and down the street in last year's pimping shit, raggedy-ass
cars everywhere, a general hopelessness hanging over everything, it's sad,
especially when I realize where I'm from is even worse. But then again,
it's perfectly beautiful as well. "Simple Man" type shit. Or
my fucked-up psychology, either one.
RM: Raven Mack - I'm gonna go skyyyyy-diving.
----------------------
TKG: I’ve been listening to a lot of early Ernest Tubb
lately. It’s really odd listening to young ET. When he was young he was
a yodeler. Who knew? He had this really cool yodel that was both broken
and clear at the same time. As he engaged in self destructive behavior,
the smoking, drinking and the lifestyle of the road did more and more damage
to his voice, he dropped the yodeling out of his repertoire and developed
the kind of strained conversational baritone voice that we all know and
love. It’s a unique baritone that he developed cause
no one would argue if you described it as its conversational yet you’d
never describe it as being relaxed. On some level, he only found his true
voice after loosing his the ability to yodel.
I’m almost thirty and I’ve never even had a yodel. Never
yodeled. I’ve done almost thirty years of damage to myself but can’t
say I’ve lost my yodel since never was there to begin with. Somehow not
really happy about that and what it means.
TKG: Take the bus up to
RM: Work sucks, and even though only half a day long, it lasts forever with my mind racing of the promises of Lucha Salvation. I had no idea Big Jim's Texaco station heading out of town was also a Greyhound station, but it is, and I meet Tom there. He's clutching a Big Jim Burger, I buy a fountain drink, and we wait in line behind the lunch crowd.
TKG: Get to
RM: I had to change out my painting clothes, and am leery because internet people usually aren't what they're cracked up to be, and my wife hates the computer. Tom, though, is gentle around kids and doesn't say weird things that show he's never been in a crowd before. My wife also hates wrestling. And she hates DJ Screw. But she loves crazy, and is crazy, so we thrive creatively together, and our kids are doomed because of this. My wife also is not Puerto Rican, so I don't have to beat her, which is a plus.
TKG: We drive and drive and talk and what not and I completely loose my voice at it turns into something between a frog croak and a wheeze. Fucking painful to talk. Forget yodeling.
RM: When he talks, it gradually gets to sound more and more like
a bad high school English project attempting to recreate drug abuse by
reading Ginsberg poetry really slow, then playing it at fast speed, so
that it comes out garbled. I start my two-day tormenting of Tom with my
latest infatuation - country radio. It also starts to rain like madness,
so that my car's wipers can barely keep up, but I refuse to stop. After
some fidgeting, Tom suggests it'd be okay if I stop, but I push on. I've
got visions of wonderful trashy little bars where we could enjoy a greasy
burger and a few pitchers of Happy Hour rate beer before the lucha
starts. I should know better than to think of soulful little urban bars
in suburban sectors of places like
TKG:We bump into Tim and Dave at Schlotsky’s deli. The Schlotskys deli has free internet access. Read the last sentence again. The Schlotskys deli is an internet café. Welcome to the research triangle, you dumb luddite fuck.
RM: I see those Wrestling Power guys at more fucking wrestling shows than anybody, going all the way back to seeing Jimmy Snuka at the South Boston Speedway years ago. Some fake Leatherface took my beer and threw it in the face of a bald guy in a Patroit get-up. I hate the "throw-a-fan's-full-beer" spot.
TKG: Damn the
RM: Brown-skinned women are my weakness. I love them like no other flesh-tone of female. They serve beer and I am in Heaven, ogling the lovelies. The National Anthem playing impresses upon me how lame us Americans can be. While our anthem plays, the fine Mexican people in attendance, who are the clear majority, stand respectfully, while a marching band version of the Star-Spangled Banner plays. We always, at events, get this or the playing or performance of someone singing it who really overdoes the same four parts, and this is supposed to be patriotic. When the Mexican National Anthem starts, everyone stands with their arms across their chest like some army from a BattlestarGalactica episode, and the singing gets louder and more enthusiastic, drowning out what the P.A. is playing almost completely. I promised myself I'd actually sing the words next time I'm hearing the Star Spangled Banner. The Mexican National Anthem gets the hotter of the two ring girls as its flag-bearer.
REY MISTERIO vs. HALLOWEEN
TKG: Have I mentioned that this show is in
RM: Rey Sr. has gotten more pussy
than I've probably looked at in my entire life in all the magazines and
websites I've come across. That makes him a
LATINO KID (Mickey Segura) vs. DAMIAN 666
TKG: The first match is refereed by Rafael Maya of Arena
RM: I mark for Damian and Halloween simply because they're musical maturity obviously peaked in the late '80s during thrash metal's apex. I can relate. I would bet some of the first English Damian learned was from listening to Mercyful Fate records.
TKG: Mike Segura is announced as Latino Kid and is wearing an AstroRey
Jr.-ish style mask. He’s listed as Suicida
in the print advertisements. This match was surprisingly good. Much better
than
BRAZO DE
ORO/ BRAZO DE PLATA/HIJO TKG: From here on in its 2/3 falls matches with two referees. LUCHA
LIBRE~!!!! Advertised as Brazo
de Oro, Brazo
de Plata and El Brazo. El Brazo
is replaced here by Hijo Del Diablo. Hijodel
Diablo is working face. I don’t know if I’ve seen him work face before
but holy shit let me say it right here “Hijodel
Diablo is a great technico. I mean really
good. Better technico than he is a rudo”
Who would have thought?
RM: I love beer, and I do my best to
keep mine and Tom's cup full. He explains to me, in his broken voice, how
Scorpio's pops was true-to-the-core carny,
and procreated with the ugliest woman he could find to hope to bless his
children with the looks required to carry on the family gimmick. Luchalibre
is so closer in-touch with wrestling's true roots than American wrestling.
TKG: So before the match starts Super
Porky climbs the ropes to wave to fans. Brazo
de Oro watches him do it. Porky gets down, Brazo
shakes the top rope. Looks disdainfully at the ring
set up.Kicks the bottom rope.Grimaces.Brazo
de Oro then jumps with full weight on one
set of bottom ropes. Then jumps on other.
The screws holding one turnbuckle break completely, other turnbuckle just
collapses and hole bottom rope comes off. Brazo
de Oro has this look that says “Yeah I knew
it, shoddy American ring crew”. Any one who’se
read my review from first RM: Super Porky is just such an amazing phenomenon,
I couldn't have loved him more. But his entrance culminates in the hotter
of the two ring girls shaking her ass madly. She definitely knows her way
around brass poles, and I am intoxicated with a love for a culture that
is not my own.
TKG: We go to intermission and I pick up the poster they used to
advertise show. I get a couple beers to rehydrate
as my voice is completely shot at this point. The ring announcer asks for
kids to do a La Parka impersonation contest during intermission. A
million masked seven year olds bum rush the ring and start testing
the ropes. It rules.
RM: I had been watching this old dude in front of us one section
- he had five kids with him. At the beginning of intermission, he comes
back with two masks - Atlantis and Parka, and you can see him try to explain
to the kids to share. Yeah right. The kids work him over with cute pleadings,
and Pops trudges back up the stairs to the concession area, returning with
enough for everyone. When all the kids hit the ring for the dance contest,
the smallest of that crew is hanging from the top rope while all the other
kids stand there, waiting to dance. As they all leave, the small kid climbs
to the top, and I'm sure he's gonnaplancha
someone, but better sense fills his five-year-old mind, and he flips out
through the ropes and heads back with his brothers to Pops, who's waiting
there with a proud smile. A completely beautiful family scene,
and it restored my faith in the professional wrestling being something
I could share with my kids at some point, without fifty pudgy white guys
chanting every twelve seconds.
LA PARKA & PSICHOSIS
vs. LOS TKG: This was all messed up. In RM: The Pitbulls
didn't really work as heels, but being from Cuba, they were. The
crowd seems to be confused as well, as Nicho
is a dick, and Parka, even amidst playing the face, also acts a dick.
TKG: First fall is a long extended squash where the Pittbulls
really don't get much but hope spots. Nicho
and Parka get to show off all their double teams including a nasty powerbomb/enziguri
combo. Nicho works really loose and sloppy
while Parka looks pretty good. But this was too long without the Pittbulls
getting their heat back. They just looked like jobbers here. Second Fall
was won by the Pittbulls but you really
got the sense that the Parka/Nicho combo was
working like Samoans where the only thing that hurt them was collision
spots. Third fall is better as Parka matches up well with both romero
and Reyes. Nicho doesn't. Nicho
does do his crazy land on top of head bump in corner (which he has been
doing in every match since at least 1989). I was sitting surrounded by RM: Romero is small and fluent and obviously has watched his fair
share of Benoit tapes. Nicho is on cruise
control. I have a hard time swallowing the entire clusterfuck
confusion of who's supposed to be good and who's supposed to be bad, but
enjoy the portions where Parka and Nicho
finally allow Romero and Reyes to beat on them for a few quick minutes.
TKG: Some point in the third fall Parka clearly turns heel attacking
ref. I'm still unclear if Pitbulls were
faces. There is a really elaborate whole set of ref bumps, series of accidental
ref collision spots. Really well done as ref doesn't get knocked out on
just one bump but it takes a bunch to take Maya down. The WWE could really
learn from this as Maya gets hit enough times that it actually makes sense
for him to be out that long...in WWE ref takes one bump and is out for
twenty minutes. The series of ref collision spots ends with Parka absolutely
popping Maya in the face to break a pin. Maya is out. Reyes and Parka continue
to work near falls with Tigre Hispano counting. Tigre
Hispano is about to count Reyes down when Maya armdrags
Hispano to keep him from counting fall. Maya DQs
Parka giving the Pittbulls the win.
mention of
RM: The ref nonsense attempted to explain the good/bad structure of the match, and that alone made the third fall less confusing and more fun. Parka is icon-status though, so he could probably piss on a child and the people would still cheer for him. He threatens to punch a few folks in the front row, and guys in the second row are still clapping for him. Heroes don't die easy.
TKG: All the ref stuff was really hot (as opposed to way ref stuff in Mexico can often be comedy). I think part of what made it work was that neither Maya or Hispano worked as tough guy ref and both really sold well. The ref stuff was best part of otherwise messy match. Even at the end of match with post match mic work it was unclear as to what the face/heel structure was supposed to be. Tigre Hispano continues to sell while walking to back. Some drunk in the audience punches Hispano. Hispano reels back to punch the fan but security gets in the way. I wanted to see Hispano pop a fan. Yes I did.
EL DANDY & PENTAGON BLACK vs. EL HIJO DEL SANTO & PANTERA
TKG: This was advertised as Dandy, Pentagon Black vs. Santito,Blue Demon Jr. I was kind of worried about this one since Blue Demon Jr. STINKS. But then out comes Pantera. And WOW that’s a HUGE improvement.
First fall is worked real face vs. face. Santo and Dandy are just awesome together in the ring. You loose your mind watching how tight those two work each other. Pantera and Pentagon Black also work really smoothly against each other. Pantera and El Dandy also do some smooth lucha work. First fall is a lot of Dany constantly shaking hands and saying good sport kind of stuff with everyone working technico until El Santo throws first stiff blow. Leading to El Dandy going down to el caballo.
Second fall, Dandy is pissed “Oh it’s gonna be like THAT, is it”. Dandy has this amazing slow burn sell. The burning Dandy glare is so superior to burning Choshu or Tenryu glare. Really need to see that glaring contest, but the Japanese would leave with their tails tucked in. Dandy just starts with the swings. Punching at Santo “yeah, where you get off motherfucker? It didn’t have to be like this. But now there’s gonna be some shit.” Dandy wins fall with Dandina on Santo. I’ve now seen Dandy and Negro Casas live. Both of them using a magistral as a finishing move. But its really striking how different the Casita is to the Dandina. The Casita is this really fast capture of your opponent, the Dandina is also fast but less about catching and moreh a feeling that hes forcing it in against opponents will. Maybe that’s just the way Santo sells it for him. But was really struck how different it felt to Casita.
RM: It's been months since this happened, but I still remember that second fall as the most promising thing I've ever seen in a wrestling ring. El Dandy emitted hatred with his taunts, and it was all about him and Santito creating carnage. Dandy promised it. I believed it. I was ready motherfuckin' for it. It made me think, to this day, El Dandy is far more awesome than any of us really realize.
TKG: Third fall starts with Santo getting better of Dandy which just seems to piss Dandy off more and more. And you really feel like they’re building to an explosive third fall. Instead it really gets cut short as Pantera rolls up Black and Santo topes Dandy out of ring where he’s counted out.
RM: The second fall was that blonde ring girl jacking me off as hard as I could get, using her left forefinger and thumb as a cockring, and the third fall of this match was her running out the room because she thought she heard her dad banging on the front door, but there's no sound there. I thought maybe since it was a few minutes after midnight, they had hit curfew, but this was the most abrupt shitty ending I'd ever seen. And it didn't help that they talked a bunch of shit I could barely understand that made me think it was gonna break open in climax, instead of leaving me hanging like it did.
TKG: Dandy is helped back into ring where he sits on floor selling leg taken out by tope and you buy that he couldn’t make it back for count out, buy that taking weight of tope broke his leg. Than they have this weird mic work confrontation stuff. Where they play out the entire match story again in the mic work.Santito puts over Pentagon Black as being the real Pentagon Black and tells all the fans that they shouldn’t watch the fake one, “this here is the real deal and I respect him”. Santo does all this respect of opponent stuff, while Dandy sits there glareing, burning. Dandy gets on mic and just essentially says , “yeah you guys are good but I was off, we’ll beat you easily next time”. Santo starts to burn, “where you get off, we’ll beat you anytime anyplace” and so you get this mic work that starts really technico style and then builds to burning confrontation “next time”. Whole thing would have made for good episodic TV. Where this TV main event and mic work would have made me want to get PPV or go to house show. But Juster doesn’t have a PPV planned for next week.
RM: I was trying to remember how to get to my boy Boomer's house after the show, and I stood in the picture line for a while until I remembered everything costs money, and I was broke. So I sat on a table laughing at the kids in soccer jerseys and small masks pushing each other around in the corridors.
TKG: After show get my picture taken with Super Porky. Overall kind of disappointing show compared to the others. On the other hand its neat to see how much more polished Juster’s promotion has become. The ring announcer who was atrocious at last show has gotten a lot better. Although he still needs to have the wrestlers tell him when to ring bell between falls (which is just embarrassing). The music comes on at the right time, the PA is better meaning you can make out all the mic work and the timing between matches is a lot tighter. The ring announcers stalling between matches comes off far more organic. No shitty womens match, the increase in 2/3 falls matches and bringing in two refs all show a company moving in the right direction. They still are promoting under the LuchaLibre Latina name. And I think using LLL as your name is a bad idea.
RM: We got really drunk at my boy Boomer's house,
drinking all his beer, his champagne, and even mixing some weird concoction
of alcoholic and juice beverages together. Boomer played his amazing
record collection, including Pentagram from northern Virginia, which made
me wish bands had emulated the pagan earth-worship aspects of Black Sabbath
more than the dark hateful aspects, and then maybe metal wouldn't be as
stupid to me in my old age. The next morning, we split, ate pupusas
at a roadside convenience store where I fell in love with the 15-year-old
working the cash register, and I dropped Tom off at the bus station in
Charlottesville, rushing to make it half an hour late to dinner at my brother-in-law
the doctor's house, where I was too hungover
to drink beer. Until I sat down and listened to the conversation. Then
it was all about Anchor Steams and memories of Super Porky.