Cantankerous Chicanery

I don’t know if most of you remmeber, or even care, about this, but a while back I mentioned how I was going to see a friend of mine particpate in a MMA cage fight. I forgot in which post I had mentioned it.

Anyway, me and some friends went that night, expecting him to emerge victorious and a good time would be had by all. We had our drinks, ate some food, and watched a bunch of sweaty, half-naked men throw each oher around a mat and try to choke each other out. All wholesome, family-friendly, all-American entertainment, right?

The time came for the acquaintence of mine to enter the ring. Right off the bat something felt amiss. He seemed nervous making his entracne, despite the fact that he’s me age and is 200+ pounds.

What ensued was an exercise in disappointment, and a hard lesson for me to swallow. Let me just preface this by saying I can now understand why people get so into sports. atheltic teams, fooball players, and basketball players are extensions of ourselves. Through them, through competition, and through games we our own life stories being played out. We feel their losses and we are jubilated by their overcoming of adversity.

Anyway, he proceeded to come off the bat with a few punches but his opponent quickly took him down to the mat. He struggled to get up and from then on looked quite simply out of his element. At the end, he got choked out, a hard lesson for our crew to swallow (no pun intended).

At once, the only phrase that popped in my mind was “death of heroes” for some reason. It is a motif we refuse to accept in life, one that we spend most of our waking monets running away from. We have faith in assumed truths, only to realize they were nothing but illusions in the first place.

From the onset of our lives, we are told Santa Claus exists. Why, a nice, big, random guy just wants to give us toys for being such good chldren. Only later, as teenagers and adults, do we realize our parents simply bought us cheap gifts to make us sut up.

The politicians we place our trust in and elect take money from us, lie on national television, and service themselves whil assuring us of the complete opposite. Our spouses and patners regularly cavort with foreign parties, all right under our noses. This country hides its drug and alcohol problems like a post-pubescent boy with a Playboy. So many of our lives are lies, so many hard truths are staring us right inthe face and we don’t even acknowledge it.

Another quality I ultimately stumbled upon is that lad culture is, once and for all, a comlete sham. Us guys love to brag and talk shit; about how much we can hold our liquor, how many hoes we’ve smashed, how popular we are, how interesting our lives are, how tough we are and ow we can take down a potential foe with great ease. Folks, let me just assure you this is all talk.

Men love to throw out tough-sounding talk but I rarely see any action. There’s always talk of a fight with this person or I can do this but, in the end, it just boils down to hot air. The truth is, most guys work a crap minimum-wage job as a mechanic or sales rep or, if they’re lucky, in some office somewhere. Male society is based on denial and resilence when, in fact, neither permeate our days.

As I watched a guy I grew up get locked in a hold and tap out, in front of a few hundred people, and with me as a winesss, I recalled his confidence days before the fight. “I’m going to win,” he told me. Here, on this humid and fateful Saturday, I felt like I’d lost too, that somewhere deep inside, I had died as well.

Trolls. Probably the most despised, and curiously, the most popular personalities to pop up on message boards and forum threads. It is an accusation and insult which pops up frequently, even if the OP in question isn’t trolling in the least.

So what is a troll? It’s supposed to be someone who makes a comment or leaves a message simply for the purpose of eliciting an emotional response or causing controversy. The troll is derided because of his lack of meaningful content and his online rabble-rousing and trouble-making.

But where do you draw the line betwen a troll and a freethinker, I ask? Is someone simpky a troll because they may present a contrary, controversial, and thought-provoking point in a conversation?

In the hell-scorched battlegrounds that is 4chan, being labeled a troll happens almost immediately upon submitting a query. To disagree with /mu/’s elitist opinions or to even ask a simple question is to get figuratively shit on. Is declaring your interest in Korn despite their mainstream niche being a troll? No, it is simply annoucing your interest and signaling that you can break away from the Anonymous mindset.

There’s an interesting statistic out there: aparently only 10% of people who use the Internet actually comment on it. This became an interesting metaphor for life: so often, the world is bizarrely domianted by a select few extroverted, loudmouth personalities. Then, the human race is subjected to the brash whims of a few people.

Keep in mind all the hatred and bragging and porn that you find online is only the vicious cream rising to the crop. The rest of us are just like you: quite, unassuming, sand-of-the-earth types.

Ah, but trolling is almost like a lost art. It’s vanished in the echoes of time like ASCII art and Mr. T ate my balls pages. The true troll is simply an objective screen; a blank conduit through which others reflect their heartfelt emotions. The troll is a catalyst, almost like one of those crappy shock art pieces (a crucifix dumped in a cup of urine, for example): he brings out others’ feelings, their prejudices and their moral triumphs, their faults and their desire to rationally rise above the chaos that is raging geekdom.

So, remember that next time when someone calls you a troll, there is no such thing as a troll. Tell them they can only post if they answer three riddles correctly.

If you look at our culture today, the people we could arguably be said to worship are celebirties. But what exactly is a celebirty? The sense of the word itself is curious: someone who is known by others. If a lot of people know them, what does that make the people who know them? We are all simply people, regardless of title or designation.

At the top of the poplarity food chain, past the politicians and actors, are rock stars. The lead singers of rock n’ roll bands, the frontmen with their wails and grunts accompayning the chugging rhythm of the electric gitar and leanding a melody to the banging of the drums.

It strikes me that we are no different from any other culture: finding certain figures to take on larger-than-life ideals through which we experience our pain, hardships, triumphs, and own personal and introspective thoughts.

My particular thesis is that rock stars are modern-day shamans. The role of the shaman, in ancient tribal socities, was to lead others in a spiritual journey by way of ethogens and an organized ritual in which everyone would dance wildly and let themselves go in an ego death of ecstasy.

Tell me this doesn’t sound like any hippified music festival you’ve been to.

The old stereotype of sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll ring true in some senses. Through these extreme repudiations of a conevntional life, we find authenticity and, perhaps, discover ourselves. Psychedelic music, heav metal, and punk elucidate common emotions we experience in everyday life: frustration, anger, enlightment, boredom, terror, and depression.

The cult of personality entrances us and we are taken over with someone who is quite simply so charismatic and expressive we have no chance but to turn our heads and give them our attention. Jim Morrison is remebered for being a dark and libertine figure, when in real life he was actually remembered for being quite shy and withdrawn.

The rock star occupies a unique place in our world: he is famous and endowed with money, despite the fact that he seems to rebel and be at odds with seemingly every aspect of contemporary American life. When we showered Kurt Cobain with love, attention, and respect for his art, he completely revolted against it.

With the 198os and the dominance of hair metal, we got all the aspects of the countercultural revolution but none of the meaing behind it. Bands like Motley Crue and Poison blindly descended into drug addiction and the void (essentially) with no sense of social awareness or confessional lyrics.

Nirvana and Pearl Jam turned the music industry on its head by not responding to the promises of riches and fame. They essentially mocked the whole idea of rock and turned it on its head.

Listen to this and tell me it does stir or strike at the very cockles of your heart. To hear Layne Staley’s disappointed wails and the eerie sound of grunge music is to feel it for yourself. For anyone who has been through a breakup, an addiction, or just feeling like crap, you can relate to the impressionistic and all-encompassing thoughts emoted in this song.

This doesn’t just extend to the suburbs, either. The hood has its heroes and prophets. Tupac became an example of the destructive qualities inherent in inner-city black youth. Nowadays T.I. or Kayne West embody the desire for paper and swagger than so many of African-Americans strive for.

So what happened to rock stars? They seem dead and buried, like leisure suits or some other tired cliche from days gone by. When we turn on the radio, we’re assaulted with endless Led Zeppelin/Soundgarden clones who all churn out the same tired riff and angsty lyrics about some vague malaise they feel. Nickelback and Saving Abel preach both partying and being frustrated with life/wanting to save the world, without any of the feeling experienced in past legitimate artists.

Perhaps, then, they are still shamans and reflections of our times. We prize and praise generic medicority, and so we see it in the bands we listen to. Go further underground and you find the scene kids: endless clones of kids in tight pants, graphic t-shirts, and fedoars all cowding around a local show, chatting about who’s dating, not paying attention to the music at all. It seems true meaning laden in hard rock is gone for now.

So relax, put on some Pink Floyd, and fire it up. You’re about to be transported to another world. And trust me, you’re no different than the Samoans in the 1000s. When you look at it from a certain sociological perspective, it all boils down to the basic standard that we’re all people. From ow to the beginning of time, we’ve all been through the same basic life experiences and have acheived the same victories and been through the same hardships.

What’s poppin’, everybody? It’s your old host of hostility and running buddy of rage, The Angry Cynic, back with some more Cantankerous Chincanery to warm the cockles of your heart…..right before you have a massive coronary from eating that fatty burger. Sorry I haven’t been around in a while, but the obligations of that thing called real life call and such.

Anyways, let’s get right into today’s topic, which is Matt Morgan of TNA being underrated and ignored, and why I feel this a travesty of monumental proportions.

What’s to not say about the guy? As he so often reminds us in kayfabe, he is a genetically jacked freak. He has impressive skill, insane strength, a decent look, pretty capable mic skills, and is quite agile for a guy his size. Throw in a dedication to the business and a seeming eventual push and you’e got all the tools for a bankable main eveneter.

Well, then. Where is all the hype and build that usually goes to a CM Punk or Edge? Very few opinions on Matt Morgan abound in the IWC, and the few pop up mostly comment that he’s “boring” or “another big dude”. Not so. Unlike the Batistas and Chris Masters of the world, he obviuously brings more to the table than just muscles or cool-looking power moves.

True, he is a diamond in the rough, and I don’t think anybody’s about to confuse him with Kurt Angle anytime soon. But he is still young, and learning as he goes along. When he makes his entrance and comes out to the ring, take note of his energy; how he amps himself up, screams to his entrance theme, looks out to the crowd with a smug smirk.

That’s another trait of his that I’ve picked up on his that I like: his heel cockiness. Too often when we see a tall wrestler, they’re either cast into the “big evil menace” bad guy role or “goofy, gentle giant” role. Matt Moragn occupies the same unique niche as Kevin Nash: a charismatic and confident monster. He’s huge, but he’s definetly relatable in a human sense.

So why is he being overlooked? And not just by the fans, but the TNA booking comittee as well. He’s bounced around from being partners with Abyss to feuding with Abyss to trying to court the MEM to being a kinda partner of them, maybe, quite possibly. It’s a criminal waste of what I what consider almost a perfect wrestler.

And let’s not even get into his awful WWE gimmick:

This is proof that sometimes WWE doesn’t know good talent when they see it. They just wasted him in some awful midcard comedy gimmick and had him play second fiddle to Carlito, of all people.

Now, let’s check out how TNA has tried to utilize him, in a much better way. I consider this Matt Morgan at his best:

The IWC is riff with hatred and venom for Jeff Hardy. A man who I’m sure they cheered for a few years ago and hoped he would suceed are now calling for his head and almost hoping he gets another Wellness violation.

What happened? And why is everyone so up in arms over Jeff Hardy’s personal life? In this post, I am here to defend Jeff hardy and tell all the naysayers to get off his back and leave the poor guy alone.

Keep in mind this is not from another raving 15-year-old girl, but a grown man about to turn 21 and who has seen Jeff Hardy rise from a mid-card tag team to become a big player in the wrestling landscape.

Bascially, I like the guy and enjoy his matches. A lot of critics call him a spot monkey. So what? he brings something different to the table. He hits a lot of highspots that pop the crowd (which is the ultimate goal in wresling, mind you). The same netizens calln g Jeff’s matches pyschology-barren forget this is basically what CM Punk and Evan Bourne and John morrison do: hit lots of high-flying moves to entertain the crowd.

Without a doubt,  the biggest contention against Jeff is his drug use. So the fuck what? How is what he puts into his body personally affecting you at all? If he does have a drug problem, I conisder that a sad disease. But so far he seems like he’s reiugned it in. Besdies, it’s nobody’s business but his own.

Jeff hardy strikes me as a very individualistic and creative person, and I for one can respect that. If he wants to smoke meth or leave the WWE to pursue creative musical endeavors, that’s his choice. It acually shows he’s got more balls and a sense of freedom than 90% of the population.

Imagine right upon waking up being kidnapped by a few shady men in black suits. They throw you into the back of a car and drive you to an undisclosed location. While raveling there they take turns savagely beating you with no meryc, up to and including tazers and nightsticks.

They arrive at an abandoned warhhouse where they drag your near-lifeless and pleading-for-mercy body into the middle of a dilapidated floor. They tie you to a chair and proceed to stick leeches onto your face. They then take broken shards of glass and insert it slowly into your flesh, all while pouring hot wax on you. If you’re alive and/or concious after that, they just go ahead and light you on fire.

Multiply the above horrific scenario by 10, 000 and that can still not describe the intense sense of torture I feel when I hear Michael Cole’s voice on any WWE program.

I don’t know why. Usuaully I have a high tolerance for outright stupidity when it comes to wrestling (I seem to be the only one who enjoy Zack Ryder’s admiteddly campy new gimmick….WOO WOO WOO! YOU KNOW IT! How can you not enjoy that?). But, for some reason, whenever Michael Cole says anything, I liken it to fake press-on nails on a chalkboard, accompanied by the soundtrack of a vomitting convention.

The reasons for the IWC’s dislike for him are manyfold and have been explained in more and beter detail than I am doing right now. His “vintage {insert wrestler here}” catchphrase. His overuse of idioms like “controlled frenzy” or “the viper-like Orton”, as if he’s some sort of puppet that Lawler just pulls the strings on. His excited squeal over everything that happens in the ring. His overly cheesy face-like bashing of the heels and crying foul over their “evil” tactics and his respect of babyfaces.

Apparently he was a reporter in the Gulf War, as if I could give a crap. Wouldn’t exactly be an Edward R. Murrow-esque outpouring if he had gotten caught…..

He seems like he just got hired on account of his metrosexual pretty-boy looks. It’s obvious he has no talent. Despite spending almost ten years with the company, he seems to have little grasp of the acual matches and moves. Whereas Lawler adds color and storytelling to a match, or J.R. describes a wrestler’s stragtegy or explains their moves, Cole just squeals like a little girl and whines when a heel distracts the ref to bring a chair into the ring. Don’t even get me started on when he forces a goofy laugh whenever Hornswoggle or some other lame comedy figure takes up precious TV time.

Oh yeah, take everything I said above, and apply it to Kelly Kelly. Does she just come off as the very definition of “airheaded bimbo” or what? She has absolutely zero wretsling talent whatsoever and she has no interesting character or personality at all to speak of. If she wasn’t young and hot, she wouldnt have a job in that company at all.