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Submitted by Randomguy#5 on Sunday, July 10, 2005 at 10:12 PM EST
"I'm not Mr. N'Sync. I'm not what your friends think. I'm not Mr. Friendly, I can be a prick" Welcome back to the column that types in fear of having its head sliced off, The Nosebleed Section. I am your soon to be headless host, Randomguy#5, and as any guy will tell you, it's never good to be headless. I’m sick of the bullshit. I hate you and all you stand for, I hate turning on my news to find out who won the Cardinals game and seeing nothing but image after image of death and destruction. I hate the media for shoving it down my throat, but more importantly I hate you for giving them material, I’d prefer they just went back to making shit up. In about three weeks, I’ll be taking my position in front of a classroom full of 6th and 7th graders, and I’ll be forced into teaching them about "current events", aka this rat infested world we live in. Ever have to sit down a twelve year old, look into their eyes and explain to them about a group of religious zealots who are so convinced that their ancient book has a bigger dick than our ancient book, that they are hell-bent on killing people at random until….what? "Sorry Tommy, I don’t know". "But Mr. Random" says the cute blond in pigtails in the back. "What do the terrorists want?" "For you to be afraid Katie" Then there‘s the mean, freckled kid sitting by himself by the door. He swallows hard, trying to down enough macho pride and look vulnerable in front of his peers just long enough to ask, "Are you afraid Mr. Random?" I pause for a second, before I realize that I’m about to do the same thing the little brat just did… "Yeah, I am" I’m sick of fear. ----So, I realize this sort of thing is almost cliché, but in all seriousness, my thoughts and prayers are with the people of London. That shit sucks, and if you’re just "a wittle swow" those events are responsible for my feelings in this column. I know Lop has some British blood, so I hope everybody’s friends and family is ok. --I am sorry to say that for the first time in close to three years, I did not see any wrestling at all this week. It sucks hoover style man. Monday I was too busy doing the holiday thing, and Thrusday my girl and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary, so no Smackdown, sans the main event. There,I've admited it. That's so embarrassing. ---- I missed HBK’s heel swerve???? Now I’m really pissed. --I’d like to thank everybody for the emails and feedback last week, particularly those of you who decided to play along with the Random Acts of Wrestling bit at the end of the column. It’s no fun if people don’t play along, so thanks for taking the time to send in your lists, you guys are cool and shit. --Likewise, I noticed that some of you managed to make your way over to my websites. The Project Lives and Project Radio both had a successful first week, and I appreciate the feedback on both of those sites. They were a lot of work. I’m sick of fear. The very word "terrorist" means quite literally one who seeks to employ terror. Fear is the mechanism by which our esteemed shadowy figures (with surprisingly tremendous internet service providers) hope to accomplish their goals. Now, I’d hope that my sentiments expressed during my introduction were such that people know how I feel about terrorism. I think that it is no different than any other form of coercive violence as a method of achieving any goal- coercion is met with coercion. Evil breeds evil. Live by the sword….yeah whatever, [just go ahead and insert twenty cliché statements of non-violence demonstrators HERE]. In the times we live in fear has become just another method of controlling the public. I’m tired of living in fear. It flat out pisses me off that for two seconds at the beginnings of this column, I stopped and actually thought about what I was typing, for fear that men in black masks will barge in my room after publishing this column and drag me away to their web cam laden dungeon where they will make threatening speeches and lop the head off a self-pissing Randomguy. I know, it’s asinine, but think about it. Seriously, anything can happen and I won’t lambaste you with examples of why. Of course by the same token I joked with a friend before writing this that some government agency would kick down my door, and I’ll awake in a bright room with unknown substances in syringes, forcing me to give all information about terrorist units, simply because a work with "Al-Qaeda" in the title showed up in an internet search with my name attached. Sounds idiotic, but as much as I’m afraid of my mother seeing my image alongside Nick Berg’s on Google, I’m equally as afraid of what my own government will do with this situation. I don’t believe 90% of anything I hear from anybody as is, so as the situation escalates worldwide; I’m left with more and more bullshit to wade through about the same "here me, fear me" crap everyday. See, at the heart of this whole "fear" operation of the terrorists is one simple premise: They assume people are listening. Well you know what? I’m not. And if that lands me in some government laboratory or at the top of Google‘s "headless" search tomorrow morning, so be it. Thus far, I’ve explained that 1) I’m afraid and 2) I’m sick of fear. My reasons for being sick of it have nothing to do with paranoia, because as much as I believe this whole thing could be the end of the world, I’m also entirely convinced that there is not a damned thing some random guy can do about it. Nobody enjoys living their lives looking over their shoulder, so fear is something that is inherently an idea that people turn their back on. Sadly, we’ve become desensitized to fear, having been bombarded with so many horrible images we just grown accustomed to do being scared. "Fear" is an emotion that everybody can relate to, but rarely can anything be done about it. Fear is boring. And I give you exhibit "A". Typically, when one thinks of professional wrestling characters (as in Stone Cold, not Steve Williams) one doesn’t take much time to consider the emotional range that these characters demonstrate. For my money, that is the real deciding factor in what gets a wrestler over with the crowd, having some depth. (It suddenly occurs to me that I should write a column about that, so excuse me as I add it to my list of sticky notes around my desk.) When it comes time to demonstrate emotion, most wrestlers are very limited in what they do. Anger, and all of its components, jealousy, pain and maybe a comedic attempt at being hurt or being in love is pretty much the extent of what wrestlers try to portray through their characters. Understand I’m not interested in getting into a debate about what emotions are involved in wrestling characters (like I said, we’ll do that later) just that I’m claiming they are typically fairly limited when compared to the normal human span of emotion. However, confusingly wandering itself into the anger driven world that is the kayfabe of pro-wrestling, is the feeling of fear. Fear is, was, and forever shall be one of the hinge-pin emotions of the professional wrestling landscape For generations now, fans and participants have known the word fear when dealing with their wrestling, and it has manifested itself in a variety of fashions, many of which we are all familiar with. I suppose it’s important to start by paying tribute to the art of the cowardly heel. Chris Jericho, The Rock, and even the legendary harass himself Stone Cold have all played a coward at one point in their career, and done it extremely well. Presently, Christian has shown traits of this classic character, choosing "discretion as the better part of valor" and JBL has played it to perfection in his feuds with The Undertaker and John Cena. But to me there’s still one guy who really has made a living with it. The character that comes to mind when think of the use of fear is without a doubt Triple H. (Wevv, keep the hate mail, please). Many will recall his "sell’ when he realized that he was about to face Cactus Jack in Hell in a Cell. His priceless reaction to the flannel wearing, mask-less Mick Foley single handedly sold that entire feud. It made both characters work and the entire feud legendary. Of course, there is also the awful use of fear that Trips displayed during his hellish run in a feud with Scott Steiner. As much as I came to despise that entire year of programming and passionately hated HHH for holding onto the title while hurt and unable to get in the ring, I have to give props where its due. His constant unwillingness to engage Steiner had me HATING him, and basically begging for the title to be dropped. Now, some would argue that is the wrong kind of heat, but I was still watching, and screaming at my TV every week to boot. Still, it is entirely possible that living in this world of kayfabe, if you were HHH and had accomplished all he has, would you really be afraid of anybody? I suppose you would. You’d be afraid of the Undertaker. I’m sure I’ll catch hell over this as well given the majority of people seem to hate Undertaker like he’s a religious fundamentalist or something, but if there ever was a character to me that justified extensive use of fear, The Undertaker is that character. Seriously man, c’mon. If you’re going to suspend disbelief than go all out on this one mother-fuckers. You’ve got a guy who has at points in his career has buried men alive, killed his manager, broken the necks of opponents and zipped them into body bags, crucified a man, led a cult, tossed around lightening bolts and rode a Harley. Now that’s hardcore. He’s got a tattoo on his THROAT! Fear him for Christ’s sake! Now, I’m not advocating everything about his character by any means, personally I think clean losses every four years or so are a little bit ridiculous. But think about it, through the use of fear his character will always remain in history as an icon. I can remember being scared as hell of that guy as a kid, hiding behind my dad rooting for Hulk Hogan just like his promo suggested years ago. The guy has made fear, and fear has made him. Other characters could benefit from that sort of dimension in their character, though obviously abusive use of it would get out of control. I understand that it’s "disrespectful" to wrestlers to ask them to go to the ring and damage their own character by looking afraid., but it adds such an awesome dimension to the character shown that respect that it should be asked occasionally. Not to mention, that in some cases as I outlined above with Austin, HHH, and JBL, some characters are able to show fear and still be a threat. If I’m Triple H, and Batista gets up from the Pedigree, I’m officially scared, because I know he just shrugged off my best chance at winning. In fact, if I’m anybody, I’m scared of Batista. Look at the guy. Can you imagine running into him drunk at a bar? Suppose he hits on your girl, what you going to do? Not a damned thing. Suppose he hits smacks her across the face? Shut up, you wouldn’t kick him in the nuts, you’d very politely tug your girl away from his skull crushing arms and say "Gee golly I’m sorry Mr. Animal sir, I hope she didn’t hurt your hand, what’s wrong with you bitch!" Guys like Chris Benoit and Shelton Benjamin have built characters (all be it somewhat badly) on a "no fear" sort of attitude. Is it any surprise that their unwillingness to swallow some pride may be the reason their characters have no real depth? You don’t root for them to overcome like a true "baby face" because you never expect them to lose. (I’m kayfabe here). Take a guy like Kane: his character has been crapped on and will continue to be because nobody fears him. A guy like RVD could be 10x the character he is know if he was built as the guy who will do anything to win a match, and thus his opponents were a bit reluctant to meet him. But sadly, the WWE will not be willing to give them that push. Why? Because they are afraid too. No, not of the terrorists, though they might be now given Hassan’s actions on Thursday night. No, the WWE is afraid of just about everything else but Bin Laden’s Boys. They fear losing sponsors, they fear drops in attendance, and most importantly they fear losing money. Is it possible the WWE is really such a frail company that they fear any sort of competition in the industry? Maybe, though truthfully I kind of doubt it. Certainly though, I wouldn’t blame them if they were. People accuse them of terrible things having bought out WCW and monopolized the industry, but in all manners of speaking what business doesn’t try and dominate its industry? Sadly these are not the issues that strike me as odd concerning the WWE. What concerns me is their fear of success. Some time ago the WWE became completely unwilling to take chances. They ceased pushing the envelope, pushing new wrestlers, saying dirty words on television, spending money, and just about everything else that could have made them entertaining. Why the fear of being great? Is it such a scary premise that something might actually work? What if, and this is a big if, the WWE suddenly decided to get crazy-like and push RVD? What if Cena’s mic was given a slightly longer leash? What’s to be afraid of? "THQ may pull its sponsorship when they here Cena say something controversial", but if done right then twice as many people would be rushing to see what all the fuss is about and you’d have ten new sponsors tomrow. "Well, people might not like RVD’s status as a main eventer", but its not like it would be the end of the company or anything. What? "People going to change the channel?" No, let’s go ahead and say what people want me to say here. "Triple H won’t let anybody else main event". So, where’s he been nowadays? And even if that’s the case, maybe he’s just afraid of success too. If the RVD’s and Jericho’s of the world are successful at the top, you think he’s worried about not selling as many T-shirts? He’s sitting in pretty sweet financial situation anyway I’d say, probably not a concern. The greatest fear in professional wrestling nowadays isn’t of the Undertaker or Batista (though it should be). The biggest coward isn’t JBL or Christian. Hell, it’s not even Al-Qaeda. The biggest fear is the fear of being a success! It takes a lot of guts to risk it all; it’s not easy to "dare to be great". Human beings are forever cursed by their comfort zones, unwilling to step outside of them and open their minds to the possibilities that maybe things would be better if we changed our ways just a bit. We are so hell bent on the ways of doing things, the "dinosaur" mindset I touched on last column, that we are petrified of what will happen to us if we step outside the box a bit. Even we as wrestling fans live in a fear of what people will think if we chant the wrong name, scream at the wrong time, or boo the wrong wrestlers. The only sound wrestlers fear is silence. And sadly, we live in a quiet world. A world where people are afraid to speak their minds, afraid to take a stand for anything, afraid to stand up and say "this is wrong" when some asshole in the forums declares all Muslims "camel fuckers" just because a few radicals are hell bent on making the rest of us live in fear. Our entertainment is driven by fear, our wrestling too scared to be unique, our world petrified of becoming the "freak". Fear owns us, it dominates us. I wish people weren’t afraid anymore. Sanctimonious Son of a Bitch Now, people probably expect another rant about terrorism here, but with all due respect to the terrorists, Shawn Michaels just went heel everybody. We have a new SOB in town! Cannon Fodder Damn, wish I could bother listing you all, but there was something like 24 wrestlers fired last week, and I can't help but feel sorry for them. It sucks as I think there was talent there, but I won't go too far into detail about it. I don't run a wrestling company, so hey what the hell do I know? Cheap Pop *deep breath* A gentlemen who signed the email as "V" wrote in to offer me his two cents regarding my column. I seriously thank him for that, even if he did feel compelled to act rather high and mighty while telling me that I should actually attribute the quote to the writers of the screen play from which I quoted, and not the character which I was giving it credit for. Regardless… The feedback V sent me just so happened to be my first on the main page, and it ripped clawed at my face like man possessed. For 22 paragraphs that email went on, insulting my intelligence and giving me a lesson in grammar and sentence structure. I greatly appreciate the slap in the face, because looking back, that column was not very structurally sound. Thank you, and I seriously mean that, it was the best feedback I’ve ever gotten. However, in spite of my apparent shortcomings in your eyes, you need understand sir that I write to entertain, which means I take some liberties with the English language from time to time. While I should have certainly paid more attention to my column’s grammar than perhaps I did, if you think I’m going to spend the time on a weekend in between two jobs and college, (not to mention a social life) to treat this column like a term paper you are sadly mistaken. I’ll respect it, but not treat it like a job. For those who seem to be confused, very few writers on the internet (and none at this site to my knowledge) are paid. We do what we do because we love to write about wrestling, and I hope you enjoy my efforts. I respect the time you put in to degrade my column, and I took your advice to heart. (I hope it shows) I can only hope you respect the time it takes to compile what you are looking at here, because I firmly believe you have no earthly idea. That, or you’re an asshole. Either way, thanks for writing in, this will be one of the rare occasions I publicly address feedback. I felt given your efforts you deserved to be acknowledged. Please particpate by emailing via the link below or atop this page, and provide me your top ten favrite acts of wrestling right now. There is no other criteria. 10) "You’re Fired" The releases of the last week, totaling somewhere around 24 WWE employees are a hot topic right now, as people try to determine which were right and which were wrong. 9) Fallout From the Draft Still? Maybe they should consider doing the draft twice a year….NO WAIT I’M KIDDING DON’T!!!!!!!! 8) The Raw Diva Search See. I blame all of you. I hate this damned thing, but you vote for it, it ends up here, Vince sees this shit, and he keeps putting it on the air. I BLAME YOU!!!! 7) Raven v Abyss The entire feud has people talking, though a lot of the conversation is just surrounding Raven as champion. TNA should be ecstatic to have people talking at all, this was their only component on the list. Ever. 6) Kurt Angle No more pencils, no more books, no lame-ass Invitational thingy! 5) Carlito’s Cabana The IWC’s favorite skit. He’s entertaining, but I’m still not entirely sure I "get it". Maybe I’m just not cool. 4) Christian For years I was an Edge guy, and I thought you had to be one or the other. Gay as it sounds, I think I’m changing teams. No offense to gays, its cool. Not that I am. Not that there’s anything wrong with ….oh never mind. 3) HBK’s Swerve Nothing like a brand new prospect for a heel main eventer, and people are foaming at the mouth for what "the showstoppa" may be capable of yet again. A Cena/Michaels feud is probably money. 2) Brock Lesnar’s imminent return Didn’t everybody hate him when he left? How soon we forget…..anything to freshen things up I suppose, I am personally stoked about this as well. 1) John Cena In spite of one vote against him (which doesn’t actually count) Cena continues to demonstrate that maybe the IWC doesn’t hate him. He’s been at or near the top since the inception of this list, and I just don’t see him coming off anytime soon. He’s entertaining, and he’s only getting better in my opinion. "Earth to Al-Qaeda…" Fear doesn’t work. All it does is piss people off. So film all the footage you want of people begging for their lives with a saw blade shaving the back of their neck. Put out all the threatening tapes you want…blow up another car bomb….waist another school. Because in case you haven’t figured it out yet, take it from one of them evil westerners. "We don’t give a fuck!" You induce fear into the hearts of millions, and our own government promptly spins that shit like an Eminem record. You show me an attempt to make the public afraid, and I show the fans of professional wrestling. A public that changes the channel on fear. Thanks everybody for reading what I have to say, some columns are thought out and planned, and some are just "shoot" interviews, since that seems to be the operative word of the Internet nowadays. Sorry I’m a day late on this, here’s hoping it was worth your trouble. Do me the honor of dropping some feedback, and I’d appreciate your taking a second to check out the few links I’ve dropped below as well, my sites appreciate it. As for me, I appreciate your time here today and thank you for visiting the Nosebleed Section, but next time, get better seats Click here to send 'em feedback and email Randomguy#5!  The newest wave of philosophy and creative writing has just gotten a little deeper.  Tired of thinking? So were these guys.. WOW! ECW Diva Tiffany Looks STUNNING!!!
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