Don’t Think Twice 01.10.09: Idiot Wind

Posted by Scott Slimmer on 01.10.2009

I recently spent three hours waiting in line to buy tickets to a Raw house show. This is the true story – true story – of the fans I met that morning and the questions I’ve been asking myself ever since.

Idiot wind,
Blowing every time you move your mouth,
Blowing down the back roads headin' south.
Idiot wind,
Blowing every time you move your teeth.
You're an idiot, babe.
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe.
– Idiot Wind by Bob Dylan

A few weeks ago I started writing a column about my grandmother and how I've gradually turned her into a fan of professional wrestling over the course of the last two years. Of course, when I say "fan of professional wrestling," I actually mean "raging Jerichoholic." I kid you not, she actually cheered when Jericho launched Shawn Michaels through the Jeritron 9000. So maybe it was only natural that my mind would drift back to my grandmother as I recently sat in line waiting to buy tickets to an upcoming Raw house show. But instead of pondering her rather questionable taste in heroes, I instead began to contemplate a phrase that she uses quite often, a saying that she learned years ago from her mother, a little piece of wisdom that up until that point I had never thought applied to the world of professional wrestling. "Show me who you run with, and I'll show you who you are." As I sat there in that line, looking at my fellow wrestling fans and listening to their conversations, I realized that the column about my grandmother and her love of Chris Jericho would have to wait.

I consider myself a fairly hardcore fan of professional wrestling, and yet there are certain rights of passage that have thus fair eluded me. I've never attended a pay-per-view, and I've never even been to a television taping. The simple fact of the matter is that I've lived in a fairly rural area for the duration of my tenure as a fan of professional wrestling, and there just aren't any venues here in town large enough to accommodate a television taping, much less a pay-per-view. Sure, I could drive a few hours to catch some of the bigger shows, but I'm usually content to wait for a WWE house show to roll into town. We usually get a house show every year or two, and while I've been in grad school I've gone to two Raw house shows and two Smackdown house shows. So when I found out that Raw and ECW would be coming to town in a few weeks, I began to prepare myself for another chilly morning in line at the box office.

Tickets went on sale one frigid Friday morning, and as usual I got to the box office just after the break of dawn. There are always a small number of brave souls that camp out the night before and are already in line in front of me, and I'm more than happy to let them get the best of me. I hated camping with my family, I hated camping when I was a Boy Scout, and there's no way in hell I'm camping out in the middle of the freaking winter just to score some wrestling tickets, especially when the tickets are only for a house show. I love me some wrestling, but I love me a warm bed even more. So anyway, I'm more than willing to let the campers have their victory, consoled by the fact that I'm usually the first non-camper to get in line in the morning.

This particular morning I took my place in line at about 7:15 AM, huddled down in the folding chair that was making its annual pilgrimage out of my basement, and prayed that the warmth of a large McDonald's coffee would be enough to keep me alive for the next three hours. A few other early risers began to trickle in behind me, and by eight o'clock the line had grown quite a bit. Most of the campers in front of me were awake by that point, and all around me conversations began to turn to wrestling. But while there were probably forty or fifty people in line by that time, I found it impossible to divert my attention away from two specific fans. I don't know if it was the acoustics around the perimeter of the box office or simply the sound of their voices in contrast to the still prairie morning, but these two wrestling fans became engaged in the single loudest conversation that I can personally ever recall hearing. They weren't arguing or even engaging in a heated debate; they were simply talking. Really, really loudly. And it was the volume of their conversation that made its content seem all the more unnerving.

Before I recount a few specific moment from the conversation, I think it's important to remember that these were not casual wrestling fans. They had both made the choice to sit in the cold for more than two hours just to buy tickets to a house show. They both told stories of the numerous house shows, television tapings, and pay-per-views that they had attended. They both boasted of their extensive collections of wrestling souvenirs, memorabilia, and apparel. And they both even had close ties to a number of local wrestling promotions. Much like me, and much like many of you reading this column, these were hardcore fans of professional wrestling. We all have at least that much in common with them. "Show me who you run with, and I'll show you who you are."

The conversation began with the two men discussing their recent Holiday celebrations and recounting the gifts that they had each received. One of them had been given the ill-fated TNA video game, and that brings us to our first story (the names have been changed to protect the idiotic).

Coy: I already won the TNA game last night.
Vance: Yeah? How was it?
Coy: Pretty bad. You can only play as one character.
Vance: Yeah? Who is it?
Coy: One of them little Mexican guys.
Vance: Yeah? Which one?
Coy: The one that started showing up on Impact – Psicosis.

And that's when I started to realize that it was going to be a long morning. Not only had Coy completely missed the point of the TNA video game, but evidently anybody in a luchador mask looks identical to him. Oh, and keep in mind that our friend Coy has trouble distinguishing between wrestlers who bear some similarities to one another. That's gonna become important a bit later. But for the moment the conversation stayed on the topic of TNA, more specifically talent that had made the jump from TNA to WWE.

Vance: R-Truth used to be in TNA, didn't he?
Coy: Yeah, I think so.
Vance: Who was he?
Coy: I think he was Ron "The Truth" Killings.
Vance: No, I think he was somebody else…

Now just to clarify, Vance's contention was not that Coy had the name wrong. It's not that he thought R-Truth used to wrestle as Randy "The Truth" Killings or Ron "The Truth" Billings or something like that. It was clear that he remembered Ron "The Truth" Killings, but he was rather certain that R-Truth had been an entirely different TNA star, maybe Monty Brown or Sonny Siaki or Cute Kip. I had stayed out of the conversation up to that point, but I thought that maybe I should clear up the confusion. But then, for a moment, I also toyed with the notion of telling them that R-Truth had been Curry Man, just to keep myself amused. So I ultimately decided to only observe from a distance and refrain from interfering, guided by some sort of IWC version of the Prime Directive.

The better part of an hour later, the conversation turned to a recent indy show that had featured a number of "big names" including Jake "The Snake" Roberts, The Honky Tonk Man, Pat Tanaka, Tracy Smothers, Danny Basham, and Rosey, who will always hold a special place in the heart of this former Heat Reporter.

Coy: I saw Danny Basham at a show a few weeks ago.
Vance: Hey, whatever happened to his brother, Doug?
Coy: I was talkin' to him after the show and asked him. He said that Doug was working some independent shows, but he kinda lost touch with him.
Vance: How can you loose touch with your own brother? Doesn't he want to know how he's doin'?
Coy: Yeah, but they were only brothers in wrestling. You know, they played brothers for wrestling, but they weren't actually related or anything.

Now this certainly buoyed my spirits a bit, for I was relieved that Coy had at least some understanding of the concept of kayfabe. But it seems as though Coy had lifted my spirits only in an effort to more effectively bring them crashing back to the ground.

Vance: How could they not be related? They looked identical. They were like twins.
Coy: Oh, they were twins, but they weren't related. You know how there's people who look just like you, identical to you, they're your identical twin, but they're not related to you at all? That's what these guys were. They were twins, but they weren't related.
Vance: Wow, and I always thought they were related. That's cool.

That's when I began to feel a little nauseous, and I don't think it was because of that McGriddle I'd wolfed down an hour earlier. No, quite the contrary, the shock of Coy's complete lack of understanding of the human reproductive process was trumped only by the horror of Vance's glassy-eyed acceptance of such nonsensical twaddle, and the entire affair left me wanting to purge my stomach of a breakfast that was prepared by people who were quite likely related to one or both of these idiots. But I had no intention of leaving the line with only an hour to go, and I really didn't want to sit in a pile of regurgitated McGriddle for the next hour, so I closed my eyes and went to my happy place.

In retrospect, maybe I should have hurled. Maybe I should have left the line, forgotten the house show, emailed Larry, quit 411, and never watched wrestling again. Because what came mere moments later was so horrible, so unimaginable, so traumatizing, that I may never again be able to watch professional wrestling without thinking of this one cursed moment. For the conversation quickly segued from the unrelated Basham Twins to their former employer, one John "Bradshaw" Layfield.

Vance: Hey, you remember when JBL used to be in a tag team?
Coy: No. Who was his partner?
Vance: Richard Simmons.

DAMN! Just… just… DAMN! As most members of the 411 staff can tell you, there are few men in this world that I love as much as Ron Simmons. Sure, Small's man-crush on Khali gets all the press, but my love of Ron Simmons in far more deep and meaningful than any superficial feelings that Small may have for the Punjabi Playboy. And yet, in one fell swoop, Vance had just erased Ron Simmons from the annals of WWE and replaced him with the world's most unambiguously gay man (not that there's anything wrong with that), fitness "guru" Richard Simmons. Now to be fair, I can't be sure if Vance actually thought that JBL had been in a tag team with a blindingly white pixie or if he had simply gotten the two names confused, but the bottom line is that either error is unforgivable as far as I'm concerned. It's just… just… DAMN!

As I sat there shivering, so very cold and so very alone, the thought that kept me warm and got me through it all was the joy that I would feel while sharing with the entire IWC my tales of those two dumb marks. But as I walked back to my car an hour later, a first-row ticket clutched in my numb, frost-bitten hand, I came to another startling realization. I am a fucking asshole. Or at least I would be if I wrote an entire column with no greater purpose in mind than to mock and belittle two people whose only real sin is loving professional wrestling as much as I do. Two people who, just like me, spent the better part of their Friday morning shivering in the cold just to get seats to a wrestling show. "Show me who you run with, and I'll show you who you are."

Professional wrestling is an industry built on a lie, and industry in which concealing the truth and deceiving the audience are so very fundamental to business that a new word had to be invented just to encompass the entirety of the fraud – "kayfabe." Is it any wonder, then, that there would still be some members of the audience whose understanding of the industry is faulty or incomplete? Is it fair to blame a pair of wrestling fans for being dumb marks when for so long the industry depended on its fans remaining dumb marks?

As I continued to ponder my fellow fans, I began to realize that I really wasn't bothered by them being such marks. In fact, they really weren't all that markish at all. They understood that wrestlers use different stage names in different promotions, and they understood that wrestlers can portray siblings even though they aren't actually related. No, those are characteristically "smart" notions of the industry, and they demonstrated that these two fans were far from being complete marks. And that's when I realized that those idiots didn't bother me because they were marks. They bothered me because they were idiots.

We've all heard the jokes and the slurs about wrestling fans being backwards, inbred, redneck idiots, and we all know that it isn't true. At least it's not completely true. There are many intelligent, thoughtful, incredibly well-spoken and articulate wrestling fans, fans that make you proud to be a fan yourself. And yet, at the same time, there are fans like those in line with me last Friday. Fans that perpetuate the clichés and stereotypes and give the general public the fuel they need to feed the fire of ridicule. Every sport has its own minority of undesirable fans, from drunken soccer hooligans to Alaskan hockey moms, but I'm beginning to wonder if our little fake sport has more than its fair share of fans that the rest of us would like to pretend don't exist. Does professional wrestling actually attract morons and imbeciles? And if so, what does that say about those of us who love professional wrestling but would also like to believe that we're not complete idiots? "Show me who you run with, and I'll show you who you are."

This is yet another in a long line of columns that I've written in which I ask a few questions, offer fewer answers, and don't really know if I've come to a conclusion or not. I've written about professional wrestling as art and attempted to show that there is value in being a fan of professional wrestling. But now I'm beginning to wonder if I was just lying to myself, if I was just trying to convince myself that this bizarre little form of entertainment that I spend so much time watching and discussing and writing about is something more than a way for simple minds to burn their idle hours. Is this a column about standing in line for wrestling tickets with a pair of idiots, or is it a column about the possibility that standing in line for wrestling tickets might imply that I'm an idiot as well? What does it say about me that I spent a frigid morning in the company of a pair of idiots? And what does it say about you that you've now taken the time to read an entire column about guy that spent a frigid morning in the company of a pair of idiots? But you'll have to find your own answers to those questions, because I'm too scared of what the answers might be to dig any deeper right now.

Idiot wind,
Blowing through the buttons of our coats,
Blowing through the letters that we wrote.
Idiot wind,
Blowing through the dust up on our shelves.
We are idiots, babe.
It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves.
– Idiot Wind by Bob Dylan