Hello everyone and welcome to a very special All Hallow’s Eve edition of Pulp Wrestling. As always I will be your guide through this spooky maze of thoughts that are to come. If you get scared you can always close the window and go to someone else’s column. I’m sure there’s bound to be at least a few out there timid enough for you. Just kidding. In all honesty I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. You see I’ve always been described as a bit of a weird personality, and since I was a kid, Halloween has always been my version of Christmas; in that it’s the one time a year where we weirdos become the accepted norm instead of the outcasts we’re perceived to be the other 364 days a year. 
It’s nearing that time of year again and my memory is visibly glowing with fond remembrances of a misspent youth. It was the time when children from all over town dawned outfits in order to emulate ghouls, goblins and assorted monsters of all types. All of this spooky fun done of course in the hopes of receiving some good wholesome (meaning rotten cavity causing) candy. I still remember fondly back to my childhood days when I got to go trick or treating for the first times. It was a gloriously strange and exciting night. One I looked forward to all year long.
One person put it this way “All your life your parents warn you not to talk or take candy from strangers, then on October 31st they dress you up in a kinky costume and send you to every possible pedophile’s door on the whole stinkin’ block in order to get their poisoned goodies and spiked treats.” Take out the pedophilia and poisonous parts and you have exactly why I loved this holiday. Basically, Halloween was the one day a year where the regular rules didn’t apply. There was no dress code, no rhyme, reason or order of any kind. It was on Halloween that you got to watch all the violent scary movies that most networks wouldn’t even think of airing any other time of year.
Thinking back on it now, it was for almost identical reasons that I first got into the world of professional wrestling. Wrestling like Halloween, seemed to exist in a universe far removed from the rules of regular day to day diffidence. The characters in wrestling seemed to be oblivious to pain, and most of them looked exactly like the monsters and ghouls we dressed up as on Halloween. Even today thinking about it, pro-wrestlers kind of exist in a world where everyday is Halloween so to speak. They are the equivalent of kids, who dawn their costumes all year long, going from venue to venue, house to house, begging us all for some candy. (money, applause, fame or fortune.) If we like their costume and their act, we will reward their creativity with much kindness in the form of money and other accolades; if they disappoint us however with a mediocre costume we will just give them some Smarties and a few pieces of sugar corn and send them on their way.
On a side note, to all you stingy louses out there handing out those miserable sour creations I just mentioned, please stop it and buy some decent sweets for a change. Why do you insist on continually disappointing the youth of America with your most un-scrumptious treats once a year? Seriously every time I got a roll of Smarties for Halloween I felt like lighting them on fire and throwing them back at the miserable old fart who handed them out to me. You want crime in this country to go down? Stop handing out shitty un-flavorful candy to our damn kids. End of rant number one.
Alright, back to wrestling for a second. In my formative years as a fan one of the first characters that I really connected with was Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts. You could sort of say without him I would probably never have discovered this glorious little hobby in the first place. The story of my fandom began like this.
One fateful day while a six year old Jules was wandering through the halls of ‘Toys R’ Us’ he spotted on the shelf a rather peculiar item. There in a store full of innocent and boring looking toys sat a nefarious looking green sack with some cool lettering on the side. My dark little heart was immediately won over by its pure ugliness. There in the middle of a store full of docile and inconspicuous action figures was an object just jumping out at me with its sheer evilness. So I convinced my dad to buy me the sack. When I got it home and opened it up I was then blown away by the second major occurrence of the day. Inside the bag you see was a long yellow cotton stuffed toy snake. On the side of the bag was the name ‘Jake The Snake’.
My dad then asked me at the time, just ‘What is a Jake The Snake?’ At the time, I did not know. Whatever it was though, I knew I wanted to find out as much as I could about it. So with that the roots of the oncoming obsession were planted. Somehow, (the details have become very sketchy with time) I was then exposed to some very old Coliseum Home video tapes featuring not only Jake Roberts, but several other monstrously delightful characters such as the leather clad baddasses known as Demolition, the seven foot four behemoth called Andre The Giant, and this bald f***er in yellow undies who was always ripping his clothes off and letting out these very homo-erotic grunts and groans. Though his name seems to elude me for the time being. Eh, probably no one important anyway.
For some reason during these years in which I was just getting acclimated to the wrestling world, I was always super drawn in to the darker characters like the ones mentioned above. I think part of the reason was that these men seemed to be absolutely out of this world. Wrestling exists in a place somewhere in between the actual universe of sports and all the real world rules that apply there, and the fantastical world of entertainment and the limitless possibilities therein. For a kid like me, it was the perfect combination of realism and surrealism. Here were men and women doing by all accounts what I’d been told and believed that men and women simply could not do.
Over the years I would be introduced to many strange and wondrous characters. Super human forces like Big Van Vader and Bam Bam Bigelow dazzled me with their sheer violence and ferocity. They looked like creatures from Horror movies and sometimes legitimately scared the bejesus out of me. If you had asked me back then whom I’d rather have to be crossed in a dark alley with the options being Vader, Jason Voorhees or Freddy Krueger, I’d have gladly taken on both of those movie monsters in a handicap match with both arms tied behind my back before I’d even agree to be in the same building as the mammoth mastodon from the Rocky mountains. He was that scary.
Then there was a character that seemingly crossed that thin line between surrealism and absolute impossibility. His name was the Undertaker. He was a walking dead man who felt no pain, and moved at about two miles per hour. He looked incredibly cool, but there was always something a tad off about him to me.
Now post apocalyptic bikers complete with spiked shoulder pads for some reason seemed completely natural to me, as did a man who carried a snake to the ring with him to assist him in winning matches. But a literal ‘dead man’ walking? Even a kid’s very limited and untested bullshit detector begins flaring up eventually. So from that moment on I always watched wrestling with a sly smile across my face. It hadn’t clicked for me yet, but the cloak of kayfabe had been pulled away slightly and from that moment on I began looking closer and closer into all the minor flaws and inconsistencies that make up most wrestling matches.
I suppose you can chalk most of it up to just ‘part of growing up’. Meanwhile, whilst I was busy picking apart the bits and pieces of pro-wrestling, everyone else around me was busy trying to tear down the very essentials of my favorite holiday. Growing up in a decidedly Christian home and church I was taught that Halloween was the ‘Devil’s day’ and that I should shun it completely. Now, I still consider myself a Christian, however I have yet to this day, understand the theory behind the banning of Halloween. For most kids Halloween has absolutely nothing to do with all that hardcore gothic crap, and everything to do with just going out and having a good time.
To rob kids of this day is no less appalling to me than the deliberate raping of almost every single other holiday we used to have in this world. When I was a kid, I used to hunt Easter eggs in April, and then go trick or treating on Halloween. After that we’d eat a Thanksgiving turkey and exchange Christmas presents the next month. It was a good time all around. Currently however, people hunt for eggs on a day far enough removed from Easter so as to not to offend anyone’s religious viewpoint, then we have a harvest festival sometime in October, followed with a tofu turkey dinner so we don’t actually have to slaughter any live turkeys. Then in December we celebrate the winter solstice and give each other holiday presents in remembrance of, well, nothing in particular. It’s damn disgusting. End of rant number two.
Years went on and I continued to enjoy both Halloween and wrestling simultaneously. They were the kind of true childhood joys that simply cannot be recreated or even fully understood once one reaches the age of ‘maturity’. As I entered my teenage years the wrestling business evolved to the point where it was now fully out of its shell. Now supernatural occurrences were happening on virtually every show. Long lost siblings were showing up on Raw and hurling fireballs down upon the ring. That dead man who planted my first seeds of doubt was now throwing lighting bolts at people. On the competition there was this guy whom I used to really mark out for that now dressed like a Crow and descended down from the roof at lightning speed with a black baseball bat.
Wrestling no longer existed in a carefully balanced world between sports and entertainment. It had now gone completely into the ream of theatrics, and surprisingly business was better than ever. Still the wonder and excitement was still very much alive in me. Every Monday night I sat glued to my television in awe and astonishment at the spectacle that was presented before me. I had long abandoned any thoughts of this business not being a complete and total work, but it was still very entertaining nonetheless.
Just like on Halloween you know the kids under the masks aren’t really the hideous creatures they pretend to be, but you still love them just the same and pass out the baked goods all the more willingly. In its purest essence it’s all nothing more than a form of escapism. Some might say those who feel the need to ‘escape’ reality are just really weak minded and apt to be doomed to a life of mediocrity. Maybe so, but in the overall options of escape I’ll take wrestling and candy over used needles and heroin any day. Like I said, I’ve always been a bit of a weirdo I guess. But enough about that.
Every day after school I literally could not wait to leave the boring and mundane life of studying and homework so that I could enter once again into the magical world of pro wrestling. It was around this time that I started growing a bit too large for the ceremonial act of Trick or Treating though. Although on the plus side, I was at the age when it was not totally frowned upon to begin enjoying the other great aspects of this holiday. That being getting really drunk and gawking at women in costumes that were indeed, very, very out of this world!
See what I mean?
Now though I am far too old to go out trick or treating anymore, and the surreal characters of today such as The Boogeyman, and The Vampire bore me more than they shock or amaze me. There are no more Road Warriors or Demolitions. No Jake Roberts or Andre The Giants. There’s still an Undertaker, and his crazy half brother, who’s now bald and maskless and apparently likes to fornicate with corpses. (Don’t ask.) There’s a seven foot five hundred pound monster holding the ECW championship who could be considered this generation’s answer to Andre. But still, even these imposing figures do little to rekindle the spirit of my youth.
Nowadays I’m drawn more to the pure athletic aspects of wrestling. I find myself more into the drama and excitement provided by Chris Benoit or Kurt Angle and the no nonsense approach of Samoa Joe. I guess you could say I have become a pretty boring person. That’s just the price of growing up I guess. All in all I can’t complain though. I had a good time, and it was a good ride while it lasted. Now it is time for a new generation of kids to grow up in the awe and splendor of this wacky little world called pro-wrestling. I just hope the experience is as fun for them as it was for me.
And now a special Halloween edition of The Ten Commandments, by Jules.
I: I am The Godfather, and I am most blessed above all this season, as my ho’s possess both the tricks and the treats.
II: Thou shalt not dress up in any costume that requires a full body suit, unless you actually have the body required for it.
III: Hollywood, thou shalt stop remaking every classic horror film. Most of them were perfectly alright the first time around.
IV: Thou shalt not pass out any more Smarties, or candycorn or any other nefarious tasting treat.
V: Lord, I don’t ask for much. But thou shalt surely smite Keven Federline before this year's over, ok?
VI: And make Britney hot again.
VII: Somebody, thou shalt make up some Halloween carols. it’s been far too long and there’s absolutely no excuse for us not having any by now.
VII: If either Paul London or Brian Kendrick show up at your house dressed like grown men, please send them back home to their parents. I’m sure they’re very worried about them.
IX: Thou shalt make a best of Demolition DVD, dammit!
X: Finally, as always, thou shalt be good to each other.
Happy Halloween everybody.
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