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7/15/03 Destination Void
Hey Hope everyone had a good Bastille Well, I'm just back from Cleveland this morning- no, that's yesterday, Monday morning, this staying up all night and then sleeping sometimes during the day, and sometimes not, plays hell with your time sense. Had a GREAT damn trip. First off, let me say, Harley Race is god. No kidding, what a cool,
cool man, just nice as all hell. Got a picture with him, it'll have to be
appended here at a later date since I still have many, many pictures left
in that damn camera. He looks alarmingly old, but has still got that
great, grating
They had an excellent card, from what I could see- let me tell you, working security at a hardcore Cleveland wrestling show is no walk in the fucking park- "Get down off the chair! Put that video camera away! Hey! HEY! If you throw that, you're fucking out of here! You're gonna kick WHOSE ass?"- I may get a video of it so I can see what I missed. The guys who came down in January and told me I had Chair-isma are already long gone, along with their TV deal. This independent wrestling shit is just ephemeral as all hell, a lot of the guys are way shady, and a lot of them aren't the world's best business heads, and a lot of them are both. Still, as Bobby says, "There's no use crying over sour grapes." As for Bobby, he was telling me stories going up and back that had me in fucking hysterics, they don't really hold up under repetition cos a lot of their hilarity is based on Bobby's incoherent way of telling them, he told about the time he and his brother first went to Cleveland, they see a bunch of people walking down the street so they tag along to see what’s up, it gets more and more crowded, finally they realize there's lots of same sex couples all holding hands- they'd gotten into some Gay Pride March. "Hell, I thought we was all going to the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame!" Then that night on the news when they cover the march, who's right there on TV? Yep, Bob and his brother.
(I DON'T SWEAT ANYONE, ANYWAY). Bullshit. Harley Race would've chewed you up and spit you out. (IN HIS PRIME, MAYBE. STILL, I WOULDN'T SWEAT GETTING IN WITH HIM. YOU CAN NOT WIN IF YOU DO NOT PLAY). Okay. Going with Vito to Portsmouth for the RCW show this Friday, they're having some tag team tournament and they need an extra team. I already told Vito I'm not jobbing for those jokers ("Trace Michaels" still sticks in my craw) only loss I'll take is DQ, he agrees. Also, Bob got a call from this guy in Marietta wants him to come up the first weekend in August for some TV taping, asked if he'd bring two guys along, one to work him and one to work Ricky Morton, so me and Vito are supposed to do that as well, although my experience is I'll believe it's happening once it's over.
Things will go like this till I get what I call sleeping sickness, although it's actually the opposite, but I get real weak and shaky, literally, I can hold out my hand and it looks like I've got the fucking DTs, and I run a low fever and I can hardly string two words together and have them make sense and then finally it breaks and I sleep for a day or so straight and then I'm okay. Till the next time. What else to complain about? My right shoulder keeps getting worse and worse, hurts constantly, it'd be keeping me up if I weren't already. Was playing volleyball in Lori's pool 7/5, jumped up to spike a ball with my right hand and it was like lighting hit, seriously, this big electric jolt from my shoulder down through my arm. If I ever get any insurance I probably should have it looked at cos something in there is fucked up, I think more so than when Lori checked it out a while back. Speaking of Lori's pool, holy shit, 40' X 20', its one of the largest home pools I've ever been in, very, very nice. More power to her, I guess, she and Tim have done very well financially and materialistically the past few years, while I continue to go in the opposite direction. As I've said before though, as long as Tina's alive I never have to worry about being the family failure. Although if Tina doesn't change her ways I may not have her to cover my ass a whole lot longer, cos my ten years younger sister looks like she's my older sister, if you know her and have seen her lately you know what I mean, she looks like the wages of sin hell. Nuff said. Lori's looking a lot like my Aunt Helen, my dad's sister, which is creepy. It's hard to imagine Lori now as a college athlete but she was, and a damn good one at that. She made the Marshall girls softball team in '81 as a walk on and later that year pitched a no hitter for them, which is just an incredible feat in girls' softball. She pitched just like her big brother taught her to- throw really fucking hard, and really fucking accurate. I never threw a curve ball, or change, or slider, or any of that junk in my life, and I was an awesome pitcher. I taught her the art of throwing the un hittable strike, which isn't bullshit, against any batter there are places you can throw the ball that he can't get the bat on them, but the ump will call them strikes- because they are. To her credit Lori took it a hell of a lot farther that I ever did, so much so that she was given a scholarship for '82- right before Marshall dropped girls softball. Dang. I say Oldie's hanging in there in the last newsletter, only to find out he was dead when I typed that. Man, Jack has me come help bury that reeking pig I never gave a damn about, but doesn’t invite me to Oldie's funeral. I saw Jack driving the truck around in the back yard the morning of the 4th, but I thought that was just Jack driving the truck around in the back yard, I didn't know he was putting Oldie in the ground. Have to say, Jack did the Oldster proud, though, nice big cairn of stones over his plot. Of course he probably did that so the remains of the rat pack didn't dig him up, I'd be on here bitching about how they were retching hairy chunks of Oldie up under my window. Oldie was far and away the best animal this place has ever seen, RIP. Still nightmaring during my infrequent sleep, had one last week where all these people are congratulating me on my book coming out, I'm like, "MY BOOK, I had no idea, thank you Jesus!" and then someone hands me one, it's called "Hot Damn, My Feet Are Happy!" and it's like this dance instruction book and there's this picture of me on the front looking totally stupid and goofy, it looks like I'm trying to do the Seig Heil dance or something, and I'm going, "Oh no . . . no, this isn't my book, what the FUCK?!". May sound funny but I woke up out of it with this profound feeling of disappointment that stuck with me all day. What's Bill drinking? Budweiser. It's sleep tonic. Not working too well just now. Listening to? Nuggets II, old news, but still great, and I just haven't been able to pull the trigger on buying a bunch of new stuff like I want to ("usually sensible about money" to quote Horoscope Hazel) until I have confirmed a new source of income. Read the Chester Himes books last week, the ones I got for Christmas, they were very readable, fast paced, extremely funny in places, I enjoyed them, probably get the other two volumes in the series as soon as- see above concerning income. Getting ready to start the paperback Chris lent me, he, along with a couple others recently, recommended "Sea Biscuit", everyone says the same thing, they'd have never thought a book about a horse could be so good and so interesting. I plan on checking out, you might consider doing the same. The comic team voting has tapered off, they're coming in now sort of like those last few pops in the microwave popcorn, I'm going ahead and announcing the winner- Joe, you and Laura of all people, never voted- and it's- Alien Legion by a landslide. I was quite surprised. The final tally was-
The Alien Legion WAS a great comic, during the mid-80's heyday of what I considered a host of great comics- Badger, Nexus, Scout, Grimjack, Miracleman, Dynamo Joe- about the futuristic equivalent to the Foreign Legion. Being in the Legion was rough, I have an Alien Legion poster on the wall in my music room ("SEE THE WONDERS OF THE OUTERWORLDS- THE ALIEN LEGION WANTS YOU!) and of the 6 characters in the poster 3 ended up KIA and one MIA, plus the alien looking at the poster ended up joining and getting 2 of his 4 arms blown off.
Info on the three losing teams in future issues- I'm sure you can't wait. Hope you watched Point Blank earlier tonight- last night, fuck- been a few years since I've seen it, I always forget how surreal it is. Coming up later this month is Seven Samurai at 2 am on the 26th, you also might want to check out Roar Of The Dragon but you'll have to take off work to do it, 8:45 am on 7/24, and the marvelously titled The Mayor Of Hell at 9 am on 7/25, all are TCM, a mighty fine station to be named for such a dick head. Rachel and I were talking the other day and she says out of the blue, apparently in total seriousness, "Daddy, you should've been in the Army." "Why?" "Well, you can eat almost anything and you're kind of tough and you don't mind if you kill people." Good lord. They're at their mother's this week and next, miss 'em bad, better get fucking used to it. Driving in and out here the past few weeks I've been seeing where everyone out this way has been cutting their hay. Man, that sounds like a good racket to get into. You just let the grass in your field grow real tall and then you cut it and roll it up and sell it.
Chris was telling me about this very successful fishing trip he went on earlier this month, made mention of tarpon fishing, I'm trying to talk him into going to Key West next summer. Could be a lot of fun, especially if Staci is still living there (and still remembers me). (YOU MEAN ME). Actually, I do. I've had lots of fun in Florida over the years, and some experiences not so fun, like starving with Torch. We were sitting around my dorm room at Marshall toward the end of the '76 spring semester- Torch didn't go to Marshall, a semester at Tech was all he could manage, he was just visiting- drinking beer, and I was pissed off about something, imagine that, saying shit like "I need to get the fuck away from here" and next thing we know we're on our way to Florida to stay at Torch's grandmother's empty house, about 30 minutes inland from Daytona Beach. He had $80 dollars on him and I had none, the more things change the more they stay the same, we weren't gonna waste any of that on food, so we ate everything in his grandmother's house- that's where I developed my taste for Kraft Parmesan cheese with hot sauce on stale crackers- while spending the $80 on Pabst Blue Ribbon, the only beer we could agree on. Wasn't long before we ran out of food, granny had nothing there but a few staples. Torch knew some old lady friend of his grandmother's, we went by there, God, she was frightful, only part of her face she hadn't hit with the lipstick was under these big Harry Carey sunglasses she was wearing inside the house when she answered the door. Torch ended up cutting her grass for money while I swam in her pool. About noon I knocked on her door and asked her what was for lunch and she goes, "Are you boys hungry? Let me fix you a snack." Torch comes over all pissed about getting stuck cutting the grass, but was mollified somewhat when he found out lunch was on the way. She brings out this plate just piled with these little sandwiches, they looked like pimento cheese on some type of dark bread, cut into quarters. I grabbed up one and shoved the whole thing in my mouth- what in the name of God?!. What I thought was pimento cheese was pimento cheese. What I thought was dark bread was some type of chocolate cake with nuts in it. Jesus, the combination was just fucking vile. She goes back in cos she forgot the drinks. Torch and I immediately spit. "God bless Torch, she's nice to feed us and all, but gramma here
is crazy. Who the hell eats pimento cheese on cake? I'm getting
sick." She brings us out what I think is grape juice. I take a drink. You'd have thought I would already have learned. It tasted like kerosene with a little grape Kool-Aid in it. "Do you like the wine? It's Mogen David." Sweet Jesus. "Yes ma'am it's fine, but you wouldn't have any beer, would you?" She didn't. We left as soon as gracefully possible, and it took a lot of PBR to get the taste of that nasty, nasty lunch out of our mouth. Eventually we were down to the last $20 we needed for gas to get back to WV. I wasn't ready to go back. Torch: I guess we could shoplift So it fell on Torch to provide us with ill gotten food and beer. Torch wasn't one of your more sophisticated shop lifters. He was more your snatch and grab type. He'd go in and load his arms up with lunch meat and beer, sometimes some candy bars- then just run the fuck out of the store with it. He'd also yell at the top of his lungs- he said it was nerves- just in case the store guy missed the sight of this idiot running out of the store with a case of Pabst and 3 pounds of baloney. Since Torch was the steal man, that left me as getaway car driver. That shitty old Dodge Colt of his was a standard, and stick shift driving's never been my best trick B: Mmm. Damn thing don't wanna go in reverse. I finally get the fucker in gear. B: All right, we're moving, you happy now? And can I please have a
beer? Torch found some money his grandmother had hidden and I talked him into taking it down to the dog track and holy mother of god, we WON, almost $200, so were were good to go for another month. Lest you think from previous issues that my younger years were nothing but one sexual conquest after another, I got lucky exactly one time the whole six weeks we were down there, and man, it wasn't cos I wasn't trying. To show you how things work, though, that one time I did score I wasn't trying at all, this girl had gotten her car stuck in the sand beside the parking lot at this club, and we offered to help, in pushing her out the car tire spun sand all over the front of these black velvet type pants I had on- the 70's were fucking unreal when it came to clothing- and once she was back on the pavement she gets back out and comes over, "Oh thank you, you're so sweet, oh I got sand all over the front of your pants," which she starts brushing off, hmm, what have we here, and you know how it ends, there in the back seat of her car. I did get her name and it went in the book, I'd have to look it up to tell you what it was, other than remembering she had blond hair (bleached) I couldn't tell you what she looked like to save my soul. A lot of our problem scoring came from just being too damn drunk. We were down on the beach early one morning, drunk as lords already, I fell over and ended up rolling around in the surf there right next to shore for like half an hour, too drunk to get back up, I almost drowned in like 18 inches of water, swallowed about a ton of it, crawled up on the beach finally like some prehistoric half fish thing, just feeling like hell. Torch talked me into going back down to the beach that evening, although I had this pounding headache, my head felt fit to fucking burst. We're in this club and we've met these two girls who seem pretty receptive, Torch and I have got them out on the dance floor and we're shaking it up- I think I was doing the I'm a drowning idiot dance- when all of a fucking sudden, about a quart of seawater, along with some sand and seaweed, and I think some kid's plastic shovel, all comes gushing out of my nose and onto the dance floor, SPLAT. My dance partner looks at me with this mixture of horror and disbelief- look in the dictionary under WHAT THE FUCK?! and there's a picture of that girl's face- turns, and runs, not walks, away. Her friend follows her, hell, half the people there walked off the dance floor going "Did you see what that guy just DID?". Torch comes over, and I've never seen a more disgusted look in my life, "What'd you go and do THAT for?" he hollers, like I'd somehow done it on purpose- hey, wanna see me drain a bucket of water outta my head? He bitched all night- "We finally get a couple girls interested
and you have to go and blow the damn ocean out your nose at 'em. Dammit!"
Speaking of funky things up your nose- we're almost done, here- while I'm not normally a nose picker, at least not anymore, I admit I was bad for it in grade school, I'd lay around on my bed reading comics and idly picking, and then flick the boogers at the model airplanes hanging from my ceiling, so when kids would come over to my house for the first time, "Neat, look at all the pla-OH YUCK!" I was sick maybe, I don't know, 10- 12 years ago, bad sinus infection, I know cos I was so sick I actually went to the doctor and that's what he said, I'm starting to come out of it, been having a lot of nasal drainage, I've got this crispy thing hanging out of my nostril, I didn't even have to go in there after it, so I pull on it- and I can feel it tug all the way up into the front of my head. I'm serious. I'm thinking, Jesus Christ, this boogers connected to my brain. I pull again, harder, again I feel the tug in in my forehead, before it breaks loose. I pull, and this damn thing just keeps coming out, and coming out, looks like a piece of rusty coat hanger. Eventually I've got this all out, it's at least 4 inches long, looks like a bloody piece of rusty wire, I guess it was congealed infection goop, I don't know. I took it in to show Loretta. Man, guess where this came from? On that note, think I'll try the sleep thing, I've heard it's good for you, just like broccoli and beer (but not at the same time).
Later Bill
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And
now at my present age 
Day,
and slapped a Frenchman for Bill. Bastille Day is one of my favorite
holidays, and I'm being totally serious, it commemorates a bunch of
Frenchmen killing the fuck out of a bunch of other Frenchmen, and I'm all
about that.
Harley
Race voice, since everyone showed up and I didn't make the card I was
doing security (hey, it paid $10) so I snatched the plum job, before the
show, anyway, of keeping him secure (beat having to escort Raven to the
men's room every few minutes), and during the lulls between fans coming up
to him he was telling me all these old wrestling stories, about the Funks
and the Briscoes- he worked this card in Florida once where the main event
was Dory Funk Jr. against Jack Briscoe where they wrestled to the 60
minute time limit, they weighed themselves before and after the match,
Briscoe lost 7 pounds, Funk 9- among tons of others, he showed me this big
scar where he split the tip of his middle finger when he clocked a fan who
attacked him in the ring, got some fan tooth stuck in there, didn't feel
like getting it sewn up, so he stuck a thimble on there and taped over it,
said next night he came out and first thing he did was stick the thimble
right in Dusty Rhodes eye, Rhodes is screaming, "Goddamn you,
Race," Harley says, "Thank your damn fans." Before he left
he came up to me and shook my hand and said, "God bless you, Bill,
it's guys like you that'll keep this sport alive," and I swear to you
I almost choked up. Harley Race talking like that to ME? For an old school
fan like myself it was just a wonderful experience, Vito went up with me
and Bob (he got stuck with Raven duty) and he was just marking like hell,
he kept going later, "Jesus, dude, you were hanging with Harley
Race." Yes, I was.
As
for the other "stars", Raven was pretty cool, though looking
distinctly unhealthy, I'd heard Buff Bagwell was a shit, but he was
actually quite friendly, although buzzing out of his mind when he got
there, I was standing with Bobby and Tracy Smothers (another nice guy,
although he calls EVERYONE brother, so he says things like, "Brother,
brother says that brother needs you to go tell brother that brother wants
brother to get him a beer"), Buff says hello to them, sort of, he
didn't get either of their names right, then to me, and I guess mistaking
me for someone he knew, asks, "When'd you start wearing
glasses." "Along about fifth grade." Buff gets this
befuddled look, "Damn . . . don't they get broke when you
wrestle?" and sort of wanders off. Tracy- "I'll have some of
what brother's having." Alexis Laree, who wrestles for NWA-TNA was
also there, cute, very, very cute, and very sweet as well.
To
wrap up the rasslin' and move on, went to an MSWA show in Elkview Saturday
night with Joe and my dad, had talked to the guy by e-mail about working
for them, he said get with him before or after, he wasn't there before,
was real busy after collecting money and paying off, which I understand,
but I got tired of waiting- if my dad hadn't been along I'd have probably
stuck around but I could tell he was getting tired- he e-mailed me about
coming to the August show, I don't know, we'll see, the DF sure didn't see
anyone in that league that he'd sweat.
What
else has been going on? Got the insomnia (not as bad as the versitis, I
guess, or the misery, but still no fun), was up all night last Tuesday and
Friday, wasn't able to sleep during the day, either. Sucks, cos I end up
wasting all this time cos I'm too fucking tired to do anything, my mind's
a fucking tar pit- I mean, more so than usual- but I can't fucking SLEEP.
Hate it. I was so tired coming home- shit whatever morning I came back
from Cleveland, Monday- that driving out here on whatever road that is
after you cross the bridge, I was hallucinating, the trees were turning
into these big leonine heads with snarling faces, and the grass in the
fields was undulating like the sea. I enjoy hallucinating as much as the
next man, if not more so, but not while driving, the same problem I had on
some of the trips home from Beckley when I was working there. Still, got
home safely about 6:30 am, 24 hours after I left Joe's- spent the night
there to save me a half hour on my drive down to Ashland to meet Bobby-
slept till about noon, woke up and haven't been able to get back to sleep
since, though I mostly just laid around on the couch feeling puny.
As
for M.O.D.O.K, that was initial speak for Mobile Organism Designed Only
for Killing (if you think that's bad, you should have seen him). He was
created by Advanced Idea Mechanics (sounds very Outer Limits-ish to me),
the guys who wore yellow rubber suits long before Devo, with these
beekeeper hat like things on top. They also created M.O.D.A.M.- Mobile
Organism Designed for Aggressive Maneuvers. And people ask me why I love
old comics.
Jesus
hid my tuner. I think it was him, whoever it was was looking out for me.
The girls and I went up to David and Barbara's last Tuesday to visit, I
borrowed Dave's Tele, still far and away the best playing guitar I've ever
put my hands on, and his effects pedal chain, I sat down Thursday night to
try this really hard twelve-string part (I borrowed the pedals to help
cover cos I just can't hit it clean) and couldn't find my dam tuner. I'd
been looking for about 20 minutes- right about the time I'd've been in the
middle of recording had it been at hand when I started- when the power
went out, which it does out here WAY too often for me. I can just see me
finishing up that really hard part, having pulled it off- and the power
going off, and it being lost. I'd not have taken it well, so better not to
have to gotten started. But I still can't find my damn tuner.
I
opened the door and what do I see 