Story Lines 12.07.06: Have a Nice Day - A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks

Posted by Mike Hamflett on 12.07.2006

Welcome, to the column thats changing Thursday nights!

Don't know if you've noticed but it sure isn't Sunday Night. I'll get to that in a minute. But first, seeing as I've missed out on commenting on a lot in the last two weeks, and as a bonus coming free with my promotion, here are, for the first time ever in this column (and robbed liberally from Larry)…bullet points~!

• I haven't chance to comment on it, but I thought Survivor Series was a huge, huge, huge waste. Burying Team RKO was stupid, Umaga not winning was stupid, having the legends on first was stupid, having 10-minute long Survivor Series matches was stupid, and above all else, above everything, everything else, giving the company as a whole no direction leading up to the Royal Rumble was really, really, really stupid. The WWE's hot streak ends with a thud at two months.

• Angle v Joe was absolutely fantastic, in my opinion. Wrestling was not as great as these two are totally capable of, but the drama was amazing, psychology fantastic and the sheer weight of the occasion was phenomenal. TNA have THE money angle on their hands now – have Joe go on another 6-8 month winning streak before challenging Angle, this time with the gold on the line. Though sadly something tells me Jeff Jarrett's ego and the company's general impatience won't let it happen.

• Holy mother of god, the Hindenburg of poorly promoted PPV's that was In Your House 4 (Diesel vs British Bulldog) is PISSING ITSELF laughing at ECW December to Dismember, truly one of the most horrendous and disastrous PPV's ever made. I'm sure people loved taking screen dumps of the WWECW.com page on Sunday, as it listed the TWO promoted matches, then proceeded to groan heartily as the ‘one time only MNM reunion' turned out to be A LIE!! In fact, screw this…

o EXTREME ADDITIONAL BULLETS

 The small rise and humongous fall of CM Punk. Two standing ovations and the hottest young worker in your company. Not to mention a potential excellent candidate for WM's Money in the Bank. Well and truly screwed up barring a MAJOR rebuild, quickly.

 Bobby Lashley, the big ass black (yes – that does matter to Vince McMahon), spearing powerhouse they created to counteract Monty Brown, has been shunted off Smackdown for the actual Monty Brown. Problem is, they need to justify the push they've given him, and ruin a solid (if a little dull) title reign.

 No actual card, which goes beyond frustrating when they manage to screw the audience in 50% of the advertised matches by replacing Sabu! With Bobcore! Truly, some fine conmanship at work.

 Paul Heyman gets all the blame and becomes out of work. Yeah, because TNA won't snap him up. Not at all.

Needed to mention all that,...oh, shit, actually, I have one more...

• And finally, am I the only one who can't resist a sneaky little peak out of the furthest corner of a squinted eye at the actions of VKM? I am…oh, well…. yeah, then this ‘war' sucks!!

Really wanted to get them all in. Now, as I said at the top, this is not a Sunday night. I feel you know that. No, somebody decided it would be cool to take me away from Sunday's and get my bookworm-shaped behind onto Thursdays, which, so I'm reliably informed, is a good thing. I am both overjoyed and excited, as it meant a whole extra three days to craft this column, and a nice way to discuss the particular book. I always wanted to shine a bigger spotlight on this one than any other review I did, and now thanks to moving days, I truly can.

Prologue

‘It has to start somewhere; it has to start sometime, what better place than here, what better time than now?'

- Guerrilla Radio, Rage Against The Machine

In the first edition of Story Lines, I looked at Shawn Michaels' autobiography. As I explained at the time, this was the book that reignited my love for Wrestling books. Outside of a select few, for me, the genre had been slightly overfilled, with the initial zest and vigour delivered in the Superstar page-turners decreasing at an alarming rate, so much so that the old New York Times bestseller list hadn't seen a wrestling book in literally years. The book was a well-justified, well-written and well-recognised nod to a performer who deserved it, and had a multitude of stories you wanted to know.

But why was this all of a sudden, a draw to wrestling fans? Surely all wrestling fans are loudmouthed, inarticulate oafs who like nothing better than 6 beers, fake fights and the odd set of tits to make the night go by. Moreover, surely the wrestlers performing are all high school football dropouts, big, steroid-infested muscle heads with insects flying in one ear and right out the other. Well, you and I know this isn't, and has never been, the case at all. But it took several factors to change this preconception.

Primarily it took the bare bones writing ability of one Mick Foley. After that, it took Vince McMahon and the WWF/E to forward hundreds of notepad pages anywhere other than straight down the nearest toilets. And it took a ballsy move by an accomplished publisher to make the scribbles a reality, available in bookshops everywhere. While risky, the move was astute. The WWF was flying extraordinarily high as a brand of entertainment, and had a good go at selling anything with the famous ‘scratch' logo adorned on it, but the weighty hardback reader was largely an ignored audience, to the point where it might not have even existed. The risk paid off.

The book destroyed competition, reaching number one in the bestseller list and kicking the door wide open to anyone in the business who wanted to make their memories a public affair. Many will always say the time and the execution was simply perfect, and those people would be right. But again, and I can't stress this enough, the movement was pushed forward a greater length than any publisher could have done, by the sheer supreme quality of the autobiography. I've been saving this story for the perfect moment, now, finally, it can be told.

Have A Nice Day: A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks

Subject: The Autobiography of Mick Foley
Release Date: October 1999

For the record, a lot of people refer to the book as Have A Nice Day, if I'm honest, myself included. But as those who have read his other works know, Foley always really wanted A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks, so out of respect to him, I am keeping the slightly wordy title.

So anyway, its 1999, and the WWF has nearly reached the end of its most stupendously successful year ever ever (only to be topped the following annum), and this bad boy hits the shelves, selling out all over. Truth is, even if he couldn't write for shit, Mick Foley would have still been an ideal candidate to start surfing on the waves of book love with.

A truly lovable character as a superstar and as a human being, Mick Foley probably would have won a Nobel Prize for something or other had they been asking those at any live events from his face turn in mid-97, to…well, now, still by some. Particularly in the attitude era, where ultra cool was the way to be a kick ass babyface, and a real real, REAL dickhead was the only way to be an effective heel. Sticking himself to the emotions of every normal guy in the crowd, Foley had a marvellous way of making you feel like you were his very best friend in the world. His feud with The Rock played perfectly off a geek who would fight regularly upending the jock bully. His misguided love for Mr McMahon was the ultimate sympathy angle, which was always easily going to pay itself off. Pretty much everything he got involved in made him hugely likeable. Not only that, he became a vital factor in pushing WWF that little bit further forward when they needed it most – the start of Steve Austin's title reign. His initial role as heel Dude Love would ultimately lead him to a phenomenal match which defined Austin as a champion, and defined that style as the way Main Event matches should then be booked for Stone Cold.

His war of attrition with The Rock lead to some amazing, and at times, utterly gruesome matches, which did nothing but good for The Great One, finally giving him the rub he needed to be treated as the real deal. Almost identically, he put over Triple H repeatedly as a show that The Game was ready to carry the company. Foley was a company man through and through, and was regularly rewarded with highly entertaining stories and loads of character control – in a way that WASN'T used to a manipulative, self-serving end. All of these things will be what Mick Foley will always be remembered for.

Oh, and this other time, this guy threw him off a cage.

So with all of that, (that being what was FRESH in people's minds, let alone everything else Foley had worked hard on in WCW, ECW and his early WWF run), the guy was a hot pick to hear a story from. Thing was, he didn't need to be picked, he already had the goods.

Mick's decision to write a book (seemingly as a way into early retirement and into a new career) began on a plane while touring from show to show, just like everybody else does in the wrestling business. Thing was, this particular journey ended in one of the most amazing tales ever told.

From the outset, Foley's writing style is endearing, heart-warming and amazingly funny. Using a razor sharp wit mixed unusually with a cuddly soft interior, the language is not coarse, sporting or vulgar, but more fatherly, endearing and warm. On that note, Foley opens the book with the story of how he lost his ear in a match to Vader. This sums up the career and subsequent novel of Michael Foley. Hardcore legend and Disney lover.

The book follows the formula, only it doesn't, because it creates the formula that all other books would eventually stick to. There's the story of his youth, and the well-publicised Dude Love videos that would give birth to the character then portrayed on TV, plus the gloriously sad and fantastically funny tales of his adolescence and troubled (!) youth. Once again, the identification with reader is absolutely spot on.

After all the formative stuff, Foley moves on to WCW, where he discusses in depth the problems they had controlling the Cactus Jack character, which also leads to the Ric Flair criticisms you may have heard about. I'm purposely not going into detail because I don't want to spoil to much to the truly, truly unfortunate folks that have not yet read it, but Mick's castigation of ‘Lost in Cleveland' is great fun, and his road tales of travelling with the likes of Steve Austin and DDP are absolutely fantastic reading, the perfect example of why probably every wrestler could write an entertaining autobiography without having to mention themselves once.

ECW figures afterwards, in great detail, as he talks at length about the Cactus Jack that came to be THE Cactus Jack, as Philadelphia became a spiritual stomping ground for so many of Mr Foley's true loves. A couple of amazing promos (which now exist in visual form on his DVD set), are in full as well as some amazing tales of madness in the ECW Arena, and an enthralling insight into the creation of his heel persona that he kept up until he left for Uncle Vince's. Many within the business seem to rate Foley's work at this time as some of the very best wrestling has ever seen, and he lovingly laments this through the words, markedly a sign of any good author.

Naturally the book winds up with his WWF stint in depth, again, encapsulating a number of fabulous road stories from many of the guys and gals, much discussion of Vince McMahon's ups, downs and in betweens, and more Al Snow jokes than are every necessary for one Al Snow Joke Party. Mainly within this section comes the discussion of his family and wife, and how in his later (and yet most successful years), he came to appreciate so much about the life he was able to lead, despite the multitude of fantastic injuries he accumulated over the years.

Oh, and he mentions something about this time when this guy threw him off a cage.

In the smallest nutshell I have, all the above, is this book. But it's like this book needs a new scale. This is, as simply as I can put it, an amazing, breathtaking book. Not a wrestling book. Not a superstar autobiography. And the polar opposite of a spin-off. No, Mick Foley wrote a book. For anyone.

A love story? This guy has two that walk hand in hand. A love for the business that causes him all the physical pain but gives him that intangible he would never let go of, and the love of his wife and children, his true, real, lifeblood who remind him on a daily basis just why he goes to work. A good angle? Local skinny kid with heart of gold makes massive success of himself despite not fitting in with norm? Jesus, because that isn't just the dream of everybody walking the streets. Great supporting cast? Only the most important people in the wrestling business. The Vince's, Flair's, Funk's and Austin's feature prominently, as well as many other wrestling alumni's that hold major weight in the printed word. Tragedy? I dare you not to melt at the way Foley beautifully eulogises his late friends such as Rick Rude, Brian Hildebrand, Brian Pillman and Owen Hart. Triumph and a happy ending? It's Mick F'n Foley, it's always a happy ending!

Here's the deal. You know this book, and you know it well. If you're reading this column because you need to know if the book was worth your time, well: it's worth your time, now, tomorrow, and frankly most other days. If you're reading this column, and have just never read the book out of sheer disinterest, you're probably on the wrong website. To those that know and love it, and to those that soon will, I've got to bail now. I'm afraid I've got 511 pages to breeze through for the 1,000th time.

Worst Bit: If you're that way inclined, his tributes to those that have passed away are very sad. Wonderful reading all the same though. Otherwise, absolutely nothing at all.

Best Bit: For me, it had to be the ECW stuff, but your mileage may vary based on what Foley stuff you love the best. His talk about his 1996 Undertaker storyline is pretty immense too.

Buy It, Borrow It, Bin It: Buy it. Buy two. No, buy three. Give one to a friend and still have a spare just in case you lose it. You owe it to yourself, and why the hell not, owe it to Mick. He busted his ass enough times. As stated numerous times above, this is the benchmark, and is required reading of the highest order for any wrestling fan. Any.