In Case of (My) Death, Break Open

I'm fairly obsessed with the idea of how I'm going to be remembered when I’m gone. I have this morbid feeling that I'm going to die young. I'm 39 and have felt this way since my 20's. I've somehow cheated it for the intervening years but it's a feeling or premonition I’ve never been able to fully shake. I feel like, despite being in good health, I’m going to die of a heart attack, or in a car accident.

A lot of this is out of my hands, but regardless of how or when I go, I want to be remembered for something. Preferably something positive, not including chlamydia tests. I think a lot about the way I'm perceived, and I don't want the last thing I say to be something sarcastic or insensitive, though it probably will be because I say a lot of things that are sarcastic and insensitive. The main reason I don't want the very last thing I say to be something sarcastic or insensitive is that that people will say it's karma, and that I deserved it.

So in case something happens and all of a sudden I’m no longer around, I wanted to make something clear.

I always mean well.

Regardless of what I may say or how it sounds, I have the best of intentions (unless you're my dad's wife, in which case I hope you slip on vomit). As much as people irritate me in more ways than Heinz has varieties, I do actually like them. I like to make people laugh, and sometimes in my zeal to do so I’m called “inappropriate”. I would just say it's not my fault you're so sensitive. Then again I’m the most sensitive person I know, to a fault. Look at me cross-eyed and I'm going to think about it all day. I just get fed up with life's absurdities and allow them to bug me more than most people.

My body is composed of 60% water and 40% pet peeves. If I call attention to these pet peeves it's not that I’m trying to embarrass or shame anyone, it's that I truly want these people to know how, in just one person’s opinion, ridiculous they are so that maybe they'll change and make the world a better place, at least for me. I'm just trying to help in my own confused and unhelpful way. That's at least how I justify these thoughts in my head. I'm not naive enough to think people will change, just as I'll never stop being sarcastic, inappropriate, and posting pictures of my cats on social media sites. In reality I can't imagine anyone being so self-conscious that they would take the opinion of a guy who essentially picks up dog shit for a living with anything other than a grain of salt. 

I just want people to know how mind-bogglingly ridiculous they look wearing those running “shoes” with the individual toes. They look bad enough running in them, but when worn as casual footwear I just want to gouge their eyes out.

I want people to know that unless they're Superman, blue pants and a red shirt are a terrible combination.

I want middle-class and affluent white Christians to stop crying about how persecuted they are when they are, in reality, among the most privileged and the luckiest individuals in the world.

Those are just a few examples.

I always wanted to be a writer, but lacked the discipline (and if I'm being honest, possibly the talent) to do so. I never pursued it, instead wasting nine years working at a supermarket, one horrible year at a paper company (think Dunder Mifflin but without the comedy and likeable characters), and then nine years at an insurance company, where my soul was slowly and almost completely sucked from my body, leaving me a withered husk. I think my sense of humor is what saved me from actually curling up in a ball and dying.

If the best I can do is make occasionally witty (though more often than not, annoying) social media updates and blog posts then at least that's something. One day maybe I'll even have enough to publish my own book, probably titled “The Wit and Wisdom of a Man-boy”, or “Who Asked You?”.

I just hope people will care when I’m gone. I know my family will, but I just want the general consensus to be “Oh yeah, he was a nice person.” I've pretty much grown apart from most of my friends, either because I'm not into beer and sports, or because I'm holding a grudge against those who don't realize/care that I'm doing it (which totally takes the fun out of it). I actually texted another friend who didn't wish me a happy birthday to tell him that it was my birthday and told him I’d give him a week to come through with the well wishes. 6 weeks later that text still hasn't even been acknowledged. Is that petty on my part? Probably, but we all have our moments of pettiness and stupidity.

I suppose it's also possible that I care too much. We don't all have some amazing legacy. I'll never cure a disease, win an Oscar, or paint a masterpiece. On the other hand I'll never convince a mass of people to ingest poisoned Kool-Aid at my Guyana compound, murder and torture innocent women who were just trying to go about their jobs at South Chicago Community hospital, or be the drummer for The Eagles. I have, so far, lived a good and personally fulfilling life. I've always done what I’ve wanted (some of these things I'm told have been “sketchy”, but you only live once) without hurting anyone else in the process, so that's something. Maybe that's the best I can hope for. I never hurt anyone else..... and there are far worse things to be remembered for.

Wrestling With Idiots

I have not watched wrestling in many years. The modern product embarrasses me for reasons that I won’t get into here and now as it has nothing to do with what I want to discuss. I did, however, watch a lot of wrestling between 1985 and 2001. A lot. Probably too much, considering my grades in math. I still think the coefficient of 6 is cabbage. I also remember not completing a history report on time because I was watching WrestleMania VII.

As a wrestling fan I was fortunate enough to grow up in a time when there was no shortage of wrestling on TV. In addition to the juggernaut World Wrestling Federation, cable gave me access to the NWA, AWA, World Class, and because the territory system had not yet been completely killed by Vince McMahon, I could keep up on areas like Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, and Oregon via the monthly magazines or the short-lived Pro Wrestling This Week (seriously, it existed – check it out on YouTube).

Having watched hour after hour, week after week for year after year as a kid, I learned a lot of things. The main thing I learned?

Good guys are idiots.

Seriously. These guys just kept making the same stupid mistakes over and over again. I know as fans we're supposed to suspend our disbelief and just get engrossed in the storyline, but when the same idiots keep making the same mistakes over and over again, you have to wonder if they're worth rooting for.

So, they say hindsight is 20/20 (or in my case 20/40 because I have astigmatism), but here are a few tips to help the good guys out there stop making such stupid mistakes and get one over on the bad guys. This is by no means a comprehensive list of all the things good guys can do to keep themselves from being suckered or looking like idiots, but it's a start.

1. Be Aware of Your Surroundings

If you're wrestling, and your opponent's tag team partner or manager (or worse, both) is outside the ring, do not attempt any moves near the ropes. If you attempt a suplex, a slam, or any other move where your opponent is above you, your opponent's partner is going to reach under the ropes and trip you, allowing your opponent to fall on top of you and ultimately pin you. Now of course even though this illegal move happens right in front of the referee, the ref will not see the partner reach under the ropes because he's too busy arguing with your opponent's manager.

2. Trophies are made for smashing

Championships are generally represented by title belts, but sometimes a trophy is used, like in a special one night tournament, or if fans are voting in a contest. If you have won a trophy and it is going to be presented to you live during an interview segment, think twice. More often than not, the person you beat for that trophy will ambush you and destroy the trophy, more often than not by bashing it over your head. Now for whatever reason no good guy has ever figured out that trophies equal beatings, and they never have back up. Normally the bad guy will have a good one to two minutes to lay the beating on you before your fellow good guys realize what's happening and run out of the locker room to save you. By then you're a bloody mess. Use your head for something other than a target. Either bring someone out to watch your back, or insist on a private trophy presentation.

3. Ignore the fans – they're also idiots

The fans are not to be trusted. They're not that bright. I attended a card in 1989 with a match between The British Bulldogs (true Brits) and The Bolsheviks (Russian characters), and the fans were chanting “USA, USA”.

I digress. Anyway, in the middle of a match, never turn to the fans and ask for their approval to execute a certain move. If you have your opponent compromised, keep on him. Don't turn around and ask “should I keep beating him some more?” The fans will encourage this kind of behavior instead of, if they were smart, shouting at you to keep your attention on the task at hand. Many a moron has been beaten by turning away from his opponent, only to turn back and get clocked by a pair of brass knucks or a roll of quarters.

Speaking of brass knuckles and quarters - 

4. Be Prepared for Foreign objects

You know this is going to come into play at some point, because you're a good guy, and you're wrestling bad guys. Bad guys use foreign objects. So, how do you avoid being the object of what the late, great Gorilla Monsoon would call chicanery?

If you knock your opponent out of the ring, let the referee do his job and start counting. If you distract the referee by trying to pull your opponent back into the ring, he's only going to turn around and push you back into your corner, and while his back is turned your opponent will grab brass knucks, a roll of quarters, a chair, the hammer for the ringside bell, or, if his manager is Johnny Valiant, a lit cigar. The only way to minimize the use of the steel chair is to have all ringside fans and officials sit in beanbags, and that's a lot less exciting. Comfy, though.

As a good guy, you should never use a foreign object, because while the bad guy never gets caught, you most certainly will. And if you do manage to get the object away from your opponent and hit him with it, don't then stuff it into your tights. The ref will count the pin, but while the bell rings and you're busy celebrating, the ref will notice the suspicious bulge in your tights (settle down) that wasn't there during the pre-match check and then disqualify you. Toss the object out of the ring instead.

5. Fool Me Once, Shame on Me, Fool Me Twice, I'm Tito Santana

It's a well known fact that unless the match is being held under some sort of special stipulation, a title can only change hands if you pin the champion or make him submit. This has been the rule since the dawn of time, yet countless times, some idiot good guy, usually Tito Santana, beats the champion by count out or disqualification and grabs the belt, starts jumping around like a lunatic because he thinks he's the new champion, then acts shocked when the ref takes the belt away and tells him he won the match, but not the title. The fact that Tito had this happen to him multiple times may say more about his individual intelligence than good guys in general, but it's still a point that needs to be made.

6. Be Aware of Friends' Mood Swings

We all argue from time to time. It's part of being human, but if you have a tag team partner with whom you have never had a cross word and suddenly in interviews he begins acting differently, even if in extremely subtle ways (facial expressions), or arguing with you in the middle of a match, watch out. He's going to turn on you. It'll happen in one of two ways: 1) he'll unexpectedly assault you during a match, costing your team the win, or 2) attack you after a loss in which you accidentally bumped into him, causing him to get pinned. In this second scenario he may even extend his hand to you to say “it's OK, I know it was an accident”, but once you take his hand he's going to waffle you with the other. Then he'll continue his assault with a ringside beanba.... chair, until all the other good guys run to your aid. One of them will try to talk some sense into your partner since in the world of wrestling all good guys are friends (as are all bad guys), but your partner will waffle that guy too before beating a hasty retreat to the bad guy locker room despite the fact that all of his clothes are in the good guy locker room (and where oddly enough all of the bad guys will welcome him with open arms, despite the fact that he was the enemy only five minutes earlier).

7. Keep Family Away

Bad guys will do anything to mess with you. Nothing is off limits, not even family. If you have your wife or kids at ringside watching the matches, or if you bring your wheelchair bound father out with you during an interview segment, someone is going to be harassed, threatened, hit, or humiliated. These situations never end well, and you're just going to cause months of heartache for yourself until you ultimately get your revenge in some bloody brawl in a cage.

Little Mac severs ties with legendary trainer (AP)

Little Mac, former WVBA boxing champion has fired his long time manager, Eugene “Doc” Gubbins, after what appears to be a lengthy period of dissatisfaction. Mac, who has not been in any high profile fights since the early 90's, claims he was hoping to make a comeback and maybe even bite off Evander Holyfield's other ear, showing just how out of touch he is with the state of the sport. He claims his manager has done nothing top get him any high profile fights, and instead spends all of his time calling Mac to his office to help remove the plastic shrink wrap from CD cases.

“It's always the same CD, too,” Mac told us when reached for comment. “The Best of Dexy's Midnight Runners”.

Little Mac first burst onto the boxing scene in the early 80's, earning a reputation as a fierce brawler with resounding victories over a veritable rogue's gallery of racial stereotypes. Among his earliest foes were a Nazi sympathizer, a drunk Russian giant, a mentally challenged hippo-man whose pants would fall off every time he took a punch, and a gay flamenco dancer with a curious grasp of the English language.

Despite these resounding early victories over his fellow pugilists, rumors abounded that Mac's manager and trainer may not have been the boxing professional that he claimed to be.

“I found his advice to be very sophomoric, at best,” said Mac's corner man and brother, Big Mac. “Mac would be taking a tremendous beating and Doc would say things like “just keep trying', or 'dodge his punch and then counter punch'. You know, really kind of basic stuff.  Then at a point he would throw his hands in the air and scream 'run for the hills, little cracker'!”

When reached for comment, Doc shouted a series of racial epithets before finally telling us to 'join the Nintendo fun club today, mother(expletive deleted)”.