Why Can't We Not Be Sober?

I'd Rather Take a Dick than Watch this Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEuBeYZvx6w

...seriously, this dude lost me at about the :25 second mark. Hasn't he heard of 'Take 2'? Shit, take 21 if you need 'em. This guy makes Ben Halkum sound like Vincent Price. I'm all for vlogging, but I promise you'll never catch me flexing the golden pipes with a YouTube rendition of Rod Stewart's "Forever Young" any time soon.

Wrestling Just Ain't What it Used to Be
For the first time since 2001, I'm regularly watching wrestling. Yes, I'm the quintessential rabid 90's wrestling fan who jumped ship for MMA soon after Vince bought the competition. The feeling I got watching PRIDE fighting championships in the early '00's was exactly how I felt watching ECW for the first time, and I was hooked. Since then, I haven't looked back...

UNTIL NOW!

So I've been watching RAW these past few weeks, all in anticipation of something I've waited near 10 years for: the return of my hero, Bret "The Hitman" Hart. The best there is, was, and all that good stuff. I was never a huge Hogan fan, even as a kid, and I always thought Flair was a douche that only people south of Delaware liked. Fuck those assholes, Bret was the best. (Yeah, I admit, I was a Warrior mark too. Who wasn't!)

Look, wrestling's never going to mean as much to me as it did back in high school, but aside from the scripts, the shitty acting, the two minute matches, the obviously telegraphed moves, and all the crap that drove me away in the first place...RAW ain't that bad, I've gotta admit.

For the audience they're trying to attract, WWE's roster basically does the job. John Cena plays the hero to a T, Randy Orton does well as the villain with half a screw loose, and up and down the roster is full of guys who I'm sure will entertain kids for another decade or two. The only guy not from the '90's who impresses me on an adult level, who actually has me marking the way I once did, is CM Punk. My days of being a smark are long gone, and I'm not hip to who is "forum fashionable," though I understand Punk is to smarks today what RVD and Jericho were to smarks yesterday. However, just as somebody who never watches the product and only sees what his friends link him to and what he's seen himself the last month, CM Punk sells the drama and realism like nobody else (and is a pretty damn good worker too).

Case in point: I was watching his "shoot" on Jeff Hardy, where he ran him down for being a junky, and one of my brother's 20-something friends came by and said, "Oh shit, is this for real?" That's the reaction that drew people, teens and adults, to wrestling in the late '90's, and it is that reaction which wrestling fails to capture today.

While watching RAW two nights ago, I found myself a bit embarrassed every time someone walked by the screen and saw me watching wrestling. In 1999, my dad would call me in to the living room: "Bill, you've gotta see this!" and I'd realize I was missing something on RAW (mainly cause at that point I only gave a shit about ECW, but still!). That's the difference between wrestling yesterday and today, and why millions of fans have abandoned the age old art form.

Finding Shit to Talk About
People sometimes ask me, "You updating the blog soon?" And by people, I mean two people: Lindsay and Edmunds. No, I'm kidding, it's more than that. No, wait, it's not. Anyway....

The thing is, this is a blog about fantasy wrestling, and within that context there is only so much to talk about. True, FW supplies me with an endless stream of mentally challenged maniacs to rile up and lampoon, but what does that leave me? "Umm...dontcha really hate it when people start RPs with quotes? I mean who the fuck is narrating this shit, Morgan Freeman?" (Actually, that joke is totally ripped from a combination of Mike Stanton and Gregg Gethard) Theoretically, this blog (and all others like it) should only be as active as the forums. And if you haven't noticed, the forums are about as a dead as a senior citizen's dick. I'm hoping NLW can be like the Viagra we need, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Weird Fuckin' People in FW
Seriously, how do some of you people exist? How do I exist, for that matter? I remember, as do most of you, the "golden years" of fantasy wrestling (directly parallel to the golden years of pro wrestling) in the late 90's. Most wrestling fans I went to school with had heard of fantasy wrestling and had at one time participated. My best friends all did it, my cousin was in some shitstain AOL league, even a few girls I knew RP'd. One girl told me she RP'd Shawn Michaels in a real-based AOL fed- to which I replied, "You're a slut." Maybe that's why I never got laid in high school?

Of course, they all grew out of it, while the hardcores (mostly those who treated it as a serious creative writing exercise on Prodigy and scattered leagues across the internet) stayed. But what we didn't factor is that it takes somebody who is seriously fucked in the medulla oblongata to stick this hobby out. Look, I know a handful of you are normal, but some of the most fucked up people I've ever met count themselves among our little hobby's population. Hey, look, this ain't some weak attempt at self-effacement, but I count myself among the "screw loose" segment of FW, believe me. Shit, I write a blog about this stuff; about the only guy weirder is Tom Holzerman (and Stanton, and Brunk, and...uh, whoever else).

This is precisely why fudgepackers like the guy from this link need to understand that taking your socio-political qualms to the FW population at large is pointless. The only one crazier than a crazy person is he who tries reasoning with said crazy person. Or um...don't try to make sense with a band of fucking lunatics.

See, I didn't just find that link on YouTube; the creator linked me something like THREE TIMES in a reply to my previous blog entry. What, did you think I was gonna be all like, "Hi folks, Billy Ferraro here. You may remember me from such hit characters as terence, Problem Child, and Just One Dude Looking for Adventure Yet, Totally Willing to Party Along the Way. At times I can be abrasive and downright IN YOUR FACE, and while we both enjoy this blog, I'd like to take this opportunity to talk to you about something serious. Homophobic slurs don't just hurt the 20 some odd percent of us who are either in the closet or full out flaming gay, but reflect poorly on us as a society. Just as it's not OK to use the N word even when describing on of your white friends, use of the words 'FAGGOT', 'BUTT-PIRATE', 'ASSFAG', 'QUEERBAG', 'PIKER', 'FUDGEPACKER', 'KNOBSLOBBER', and 'PETER PUFFER' are hurtful, spiteful, and down right mean! And just because Joe The Plumber uses them, doesn't mean you can too. UUUUGGGGHHHNNN and may the force be with you."

Look, this hobby isn't for the sensitive or the easily-offended. Plus, Beau Michaels already set homosexuals back by like, 200 hundred years, so there's just no use complaining at this point. Either way, I'm not sure what you were hoping to accomplish by linking this shit to someone Lindsay once described as "the guy who got banned once before for pretending to be and making fun of someone with a physical and mental disability."

On the other hand, if you were hoping this fucking piece of shit right here would shame me into changing my insensitive ways, I've got news for you: I lost all sense of shame somewhere in between pretending to be a paralyzed man begging Andrew Medina to call him "dog man" and telling Chad I was Steve Aylward and proceeded to interview him for a "tell-all book" on fantasy wrestling. And Chad, if this is only news to you now, then I'm sorry and don't retro-ban my ass...it was a long time ago, and I was addicted to, um...well...hmmm...I guess Snickers, and stuff.

So sad, I'm actually sober when I pull this shit.