Chunnel 3 – The Final Death Blow

When I was searching for something else I came across a reddit thread (is that what they’re called?) where a guy mentioned how once he and his pals dressed up like the wrestlers Right to Censor and went to a show and people were hassling them all night and eventually they got thrown out for getting into a shoving match.  A second fellow recounted a similar story.  I found this interesting since that same thing happened to me.   Apparently it’s a thing.

I’ve heard it said that the friends you make in college are your friends for life and you forget the gross idiots that you were friends before that, but that’s certainly not the case for me since I made zero friends in college.  I think I went three weeks once without speaking a word to anyone.  But I did have a couple acquaintances through wrestling.  You see at the time I was into “e-wrestling” which is basically an online wrestling roleplaying game where you fight by way of short stories.  It’s probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever spent time on.  What’s really stupid though is that every now and then I look around to see if e-feds are still a thing.  They aren’t.  If they were there’s a chance I might try it out.  I don’t feel good about that.  I generally try not to judge myself too much for liking uncool stuff, but online wrestling roleplaying games is a bit too far even for me.  Although I guess that’s better than in person wrestling roleplaying games. 

Anyway, through one of these e-feds I found a dude that was going to Iowa State and training to be a wrestler also.  Looking back on it now I think he had serious mental problems.  He was utterly and honestly convinced that Vince McMahon was personally spying on him and stealing his moves.  At the time I just thought he was weird.  I don’t remember his real name but I remember his wrestling name was War Machine.  Anyway, through this dude I met a couple other people in the area that liked wrestling.  Mostly we interacted online through e-feds but sometimes we’d got to shows IRL and once in a while we’d get together to watch Raw. 

When Raw was in Ames I think in 1999 we got tickets to go together and we thought it would be fun to dress up like Right to Censor – it’s easy because they wore black dress pants and white shirts and ties.  If your idea of fun is being screamed at and having shit thrown at you all night it was very fun indeed.  We left the show early and some dudes were in the parking lot wanting to fight us.  I know one dude’s wife definitely got shoved to the ground.  Turns out that some wrestling fans are assholes.  Who knew?  Let me qualify that, most mainstream wrestling fans are assholes. 

I didn’t go to live shows for a long time after that for a variety of reasons, but for a while a couple years ago there I was going to ROH and Pro Wrestling Revolver and Steel Domain and Windy City wrestling shows and stuff like that.  This was before hipsters decided it was cool to like wrestling ironically and the ticket prices went way up and I stopped.  I think the wrestling boom was on the downswing anyway, but the lockdown certainly has killed it.  What I learned going to those shows is that there’s different kinds of wrestling crowds.  I think most of the super assholes who were into wrestling in the late 90’s – the so called Attitude Era – probably go to MMA instead how, but there’s still some assholes at WWE shows.  It’s a weird mix of adult assholes and kids with their parents.  Much different from an ROH show, which is much different from a Chikra show.  Each crowd has their own personality.

Sidenote I would say at 90% of the wrestling shows I have been to there’s been a group of young women there who are going to see wrestling for the first time and it always plays out the same.  The first couple of matches they’re all like “this dude is hot, this is awesome!” but after a half hour of so they’re more like “how long does this last?”  Fifty percent of the time there’s a dyed in the world wrestling dork with them and I wonder how that came about.  He’s always really excited. 

In other news, if there’s a silver lining to the current deadly pandemic (there isn’t) for me it’s that I’ve been reading a lot more.  Most of my life I read a book ever week or so, but for SOME reason I’ve really slacked off the past three years or so.  Mysterious.  But with the lockdown (or not lockdown but you know) I’ve gotten back into reading like I did in the old days.  What else am I going to do?  Eat better?

My method of book buying is to go to half price books with a couple books in mind that I have chosen to get and then also grab some randos because you never know you know?  Some of the best books I’ve read have been random shelf grabs at half price books.  Anyway, I had a stack of books and I made my way through the selections and now am into the random pile.  So far they’ve been kind of duds.  Part of it is my own fault for going down that Dresden Files rabbit hole, but even so I feel like I’ve been getting a lot of similar kind of stuff. 

Here’s what’s bothering me currently.  People getting shot and it’s no big deal.  The worst offender is the book I’m reading right now, which I like mostly, but it in the main character gets shot in the chest with a 38 and the next day he’s fine and out working the case again.  I’ll call bullshit on that.  I’m no trauma surgeon, I’m not even an ER doctor, but I’m fairly certain that if you get shot in the chest unless you’re at or near a hospital at the time you’re dead.  And if you’re not dead it’s going to be a while before you’re “okay”. 

A lot of media things try to play this off by “just” having the character get shot in the shoulder or leg but, and again I’m no expert, I think pretty much anywhere you get shot is a big deal.  There’s not a lot of empty room in your body for bullets to pass through without damaging something – there’s usually like muscles and tendons and shit in there.  And I think you need that stuff.  To move and live and whatnot. 

I’m currently watching through Justified for the third or fourth time and overall I think that show does a pretty good job but Boyd got shot in the chest in Bulletville and just limped a little bit.  That was annoying.  Sidenote, I don’t know why I never noticed this before, but a lot of the characters in the show got changed slightly from the books because they didn’t have the rights.  Several Elmore Leonard books have been made into movies or TV shows and many more have been optioned but never produced.  Ergo the character of Maximum Bob becomes Mike the Hammer in the show.  Daryl Crowe Jr becomes Dale Crow Jr.  And there’s probably more than I’m missing.  Same character, different name.  Which is kind of funny, because what the law is trying to protect is the idea not the name right?  But instead it works the opposite.

Another thing that’s bothering me is how easily these main characters are getting laid.  I’m as ugly as a squashed toad so I don’t know what it’s like to be a pretty boy, but I have to think that even handsomites have to make SOME effort.  I feel like in several books I’ve read lately the good looking dude just walks into the room and the lady is like “you’re handsome you want to have sex in the broom closet?” and then they do.  I’m not saying that it’s hard for them to get some action, but I think they have to do something – I don’t think women are coming up to them DTF just on sight.  But maybe I’m wrong, maybe that’s totally how it is.

“But Jeremy, you’re basically just saying you don’t like these things because they’re unrealistic and you just talked about how something doesn’t have to be realistic to be good.”

True, and that was a hell of a point that I made, these are just things that bug me.  More and more I seem to be dissatisfied with movies and TV and books and stage plays (I go to tons of stage plays) and whatever.  I suppose the more you consume the more you see the flaws.  Or what I perceive as flaws anyway.   Or maybe people just lean on convention more these days because they’re spewing out so much content.  I’m sure with a $100,000 grant from the government I could study it and find out. 

In conclusion the Nice Guys is a great movie.  I always think it’s based on a book and then I think I should see if that author wrote more books, but it isn’t – it’s a movie that was just written to be movie!  I didn’t even know they could do that anymore.