Part I: Tribute
It’s been a good chunk of time since my last 411 column, mainly because 1) I was planning out how to propose to my girlfriend; 2) I started going back to school to pursue a Master’s degree; and 3) There hasn’t been anything going on inside a WWE ring that has motivated me to sit down and churn out a few hundred words.
That is, of course, until one of the all-time greats in the wrestling industry made headlines due to unfortunate circumstances. Classy Freddie Blassie passed away last week at the age of 85, and all I can say is that Mr. Blassie was one of the most charismatic and engaging personalities in all of entertainment history.
I personally caught the tail end of Mr. Blassie’s run in the WWF, as some of my earliest wrestling memories involve Freddie playing a heel mentor/manager/interviewee in the 1980s. He was always fun to hate because you just never knew what tricks he would have up his sleeve or what outlandish things he would say if he got hold of a microphone.
Of course, one thing that everyone across all generations will remember is Freddie’s famous catch phrase/insult term: pencil-neck geek. I actually own a copy of Dr. Demento’s 20th Anniversary Collection, and wrestling enthusiasts may want to grab their own copy of the CD, since there is a song on it, “Pencil-Neck Geek”, that pays tribute to Freddie’s catch phrase and even includes voiceovers by the late legend.
I’m sure Freddie’s in Heaven right now whooping someone’s ass with his cane as I write these words and he will surely be missed but also gratefully remembered by fans across the world.
Why Mick Foley Will Always Be Go(o)d
Man, that was the most refreshing thing on Raw in a long, long time.
You see, Mick Foley did more in one appearance when it comes to cutting promos, selling the main event for a PPV match and getting both the live crowd and TV audience riled up with excitement than people like Test will do in a lifetime.
To me, Mick just always seems to be the consummate professional who can accurately gauge the pulse of the wrestling fan in an interview or vignette, thereby captivating our attention on a real enough level where we become emotionally engaged in the storyline at hand. That innate ability he has to bring out my emotions is exactly why Mick Foley is my favorite wrestler of all-time, not to mention the fact that he can crash into steal steps and take chair shots better than anyone this side of Terry Funk.
It’s a shame that he is not wrestling Triple H in the Hell In A Cell instead of Kevin Nash this Sunday, because if Mick was the one going toe to toe with The Game, I might actually care about the outcome.
What do you guys think about Freddie’s passing and/or Mick’s temporary return? Feel free to drop me a line or three by clicking on the email link at the bottom of the page.
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Part Two: A look at some of the greatest soda products of all-time
Now that the sun is finally beginning to shine through the previously indomitable clouds of rain, I started thinking about one of my favorite things to do on a warm spring afternoon: sit outside, kick back my shoes, watch my 14 year-old dog run gleefully around the yard as if he were still a wee little pup, and open a can of good old soda pop!
Over the years, soda has been manifested into a wide variety of brands and flavors. Before I go into my own set of rants, I figured it would only be proper to point you towards a nifty little site I found while brainstorming for this piece: www.sodamuseum.com. Here you’ll get a comprehensive history of the following soft drinks: Coca-Cola, Pepsi Cola, Mountain Dew, Dr. Pepper and A&W Root Beer, among others.
Okay, now that I have afforded you the chance to become better acquainted with some longstanding soda pop brand names, here’s my own take on some personal favorites.
And Then There Was Tab
When I was growing up in the 1980s, Tab was a highly touted soft drink. Sure it was revealed that this particular soda contained chemicals linked to cancer, but that didn’t stop Marty McFly (played by Michael J. Fox) from seeking out a can of the fab yet controversial cola when he traveled back to 1955 in Back to the Future.
Personally, I have a soft spot in the nostalgic chamber of my heart for Tab, because if there was any soda product that harkens me back to those times where I paid attention to the colors of the streetlights and how many games of Spud I could get involved in before dusk, well, it would have to be the soda with the pinkish can and tacky white lettering.
Ah, the memories.
The Mist-ery is solved: Lemon-Lime finally done right
Sierra Mist, perhaps but probably not named after wily baseball veteran Ruben Sierra, is the first lemon-lime flavored soda that makes me feel all warm and tingly as soon as a drop hits my taste buds. In fact, I would equate my intimate experiences with yellow-green soda to the children’s tale of Goldy-Locks And The Three Bears: 7-Up is too dry; Sprite is too sweet; and Sierra Mist is Jussttttttttt right!
As you can decipher, I was never a big fan of 7-Up and Sprite, and the only other lemon-lime soda I ever even remotely enjoyed was lemon-lime Slice, a brand that nowadays is only produced in its Mandarin Orange form. Sierra Mist, however, is a crisp and refreshing break from the disappointing monotony of its adversaries, mainly because the underutilized lime component actually takes precedent over the increasingly trite lemon flavor. Maybe it should be called lime-lemon soda after all!
It’s Just A Little Crush
The main premise of the movie Joe Versus The Volcano was that Tom Hanks’ down-on-his-luck character – Joe Banks – would be sacrificed to appease the gods of an indigenous island. The reason Joe was summoned to become the sacrificial lamb for the island’s inhabitants was that the people on the island enjoyed orange soda so much that they just could not stand to part with the tangy soft drink.
Now I know this whole scenario sounds more like a soda commercial than an actual movie plotline, but in 1990 the 11 year-old me bought the whole thing hook, line and sinker. Why? Because I was so infatuated with Orange Crush soda at the time that I truly empathized with the dilemma posed to the inhabitants!
I actually wound up rooting for Joe Banks to not have to die in the end, but I was also glad that none of the people on the island wanted to stifle their feelings towards their beloved orange soda.
Finis
Before I bid adieu to Part II, here is a little extra something to spice up your day:
Chris Biscuiti presents Blatant Gimmick Rip-off!
Ripping off my brother Matthew Michaels’s Fun with Spell-Checker routine, Dikembe Mutombo actually comes out as December Motorbus. Nets in 7, baby!
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Part III: The Best & Worst Guilty Pleasures Of All-Time
Let’s look at some officially unauthorized dictionary definitions of the words, “guilty pleasure”:
1: Any moment in the popular culture lexicon that incorporates pseudo-celebrities with hyphenated names, e.g., Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Keisha Night-Pulliam, Beavis & Butt-Head.
2: Any Weird Al Yankovic parody, e.g., “I Think I’m A Clone Now,” “Another One Rides The Bus,” “Like A Surgeon” {Extraneous footnote #1: According to Weird Al’s Behind the Music special on VH1, Madonna actually helped the “Like A Surgeon” parody come to fruition by parading around the streets of New York City wondering aloud when Al would do the “Like A Surgeon” parody. The news got out to Al and he promptly decided to go with it.}
3: Any movie featuring an actor named River, Keanu, Keifer, Kevin, Corey, Dolph, Steven, or Sylvester.
4: Clay Aiken.
Personally, what I look for in a guilty pleasure can be broken down into three primary characteristics: 1) Was it an overnight fad or phenomenon that swept the entire nation?; 2) Was there a heaping pile of backlash for the aforementioned fad/phenomenon after months/years of useless drivel being shoved down our throats?; 3) In retrospect, do we look at the previous fad/phenomenon nowadays with all warm and fuzzy feelings of nostalgia?
Here’s a look at the best and worst guilty pleasures of all-time:
ALL-TIME BEST: Saved By The Bell: If any TV show can be characterized as the measuring stick of the guilty pleasure, it has to be this Saturday Morning NBC classic that starred fresh-faced teens who were basically featured in the same storylines every week. Here’s the synopsis: Mrs. Bliss lasts one season as do some of the ugly kids who couldn’t make the transition from the original Indiana location to clean-cut Bayside High in California; Zack and Slater fight over Kelly, who chooses Zack but then cheats on him at “The Attic” with Jeff who she worked with at “The Max”, so they break up and Zack falls in love with Stacey Karose at the beach house, until returning to Bayside and falling for Torrie, who replaced Kelly even though no one ever mentioned where Kelly went; Screech sheepishly pines over Lisa, who always rejects his affections, until he finds love with his nerdy friend Violet; Jesse hates men, but likes Slater, so they end up together and she becomes addicted to caffeine pills; Mr. Belding is goofy but means well; and everyone ends up with someone and/or happy by the end, because friendship is forever.
I don’t know what’s harder to believe, the fact that this show lasted more seasons than “Sports Night,” or that it can be found at least ten times a day all over the world on TBS, the WB, USA and many other networks.
I must admit, though, that nothing can make me feel like a bright-eyed kid again than an old episode of Saved By The Bell, and it will always have a special place inside my admittedly cracked cranium.
ALL-TIME WORST: The entire Disco era. Excluding Grease, Saturday Night Fever and the songs of Donna Summer {Extraneous footnote #2: Donna Summer is spared because people in my family like her music and I don’t want to write myself out of any wills}, the Disco era is my least favorite music era as well as my least favorite guilty pleasure. While the genre still has a concrete following, albeit one that is comprised of divorced soccer moms and rich, raving teeny-boppers who are on so much crank that they think it’s cool to flail around with glow sticks and make out with fat chicks who wear low rise jeans enabling grossly exposed white cotton thongs with pink flowers on them, I just could never fathom how disco music was so popular to begin with. Most disco tracks are poorly constructed pieces featuring crappy synthesizers and lyrics that could have been written by Sloth from The Goonies when he had his first joint while simultaneously seeing his first rainbow Slinky magically creep down the stairs into the Frotelli dungeon.
That may seem a little harsh, but so are albums by any of the following so-called “musicians”: Lipps, Inc., The Weather Girls, The Andrea True Connection and any other Disco CD that you used to be able to find at your local Caldor.
Now that I gave you my all-time Best and Worst guilty pleasures in detail, here’s a laundry list of some other favorites and least favorites:
BEST: The Rubix Cube: Any inanimate object that still gives people headaches and makes people so furious that they want to smash it against a wall is fine by me.
WORST: Corey Haim movies without Corey Feldman; Corey Feldman movies without Corey Haim, excluding The Goonies, of course, which managed to transcend The Curse Of One Corey.
BEST: Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon: This hip little pop culture phenomenon was so strong at one point that there was even a Visa Check Card commercial that featured Kevin Bacon playing Six Degrees Of Himself!
WORST: 1-900-NUMBERS. In the 1980s, these 1-900 $3.95 per minute telephone numbers were not just relegated to phone sex lines. Instead of targeting horny/depressed husbands, there existed 1-900 numbers featuring “Santa Claus” hotlines whose main demographic were actually elementary-age children. I remember every year around Christmas time these shady 1-900 numbers would pop up all over USA’s Saturday Morning Cartoon Express, and in retrospect I still cannot believe how these companies got away with luring thousands of kids to ring up these numbers and rack up their parent’s phone bills in the process.
BEST: Ms. Pac-Man: Maybe it was her seductive red bow of distinction, or perhaps it was her affinity for power-pellets, but whatever the case may be, Ms. Pac-Man captured the hearts of hot-blooded American males everywhere during the 1980s arcade boom. To this day, there’s just something about her that tickles my thumb and forefingers, making me crave that big, red joystick in my hands for a quarter a pop.
WORST: The Rock Tumbler: I still don’t know how it works; all I know is that everyone on my block had one.
BEST: “Hey hey we’re The Monkees!”: Sure, they were fabricated by a TV network and are still looked upon by irreverent rock purists as a complete farce, but the entity known as The Monkees is one of if not the most famous popular culture icons in music history. Today’s pre-packaged, smoothly run pop culture merchandising machine began with the mass production of Monkees’ lunch-boxes, bobble-heads, stickers, t-shirts, knickers, patches, mugs, piñatas you name the product, and The Monkees most assuredly had their clean-cut stamp on it at some point in time.
However, what continues to distinguish The Monkees apart from other, more recent boy-band phenomena is the fact that these four men had enough innate charisma to make millions of people tune into their weekly television series, and all the while they were making catchy music while playing their own instruments. Plus, of course, they were British, and that automatically makes them cooler than their American counterparts for having those half-unintelligible, half-cool accents.
WORST: Turning any hit TV show into a movie; Turning any hit movie into a TV, with M*A*S*H being one of a very rare group of exceptions. Here are the three worst attempts at going from a hit movie to a TV show:
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off;
My Big Fat Greek Wedding;
Harry And The Hendersons.
And here are the three worst attempts at going from a hit TV show to a movie:
The Jetsons Movie;
Jerry Springer: Ringmaster;
A Very Brady Sequel.
Now that I have provided approximately 3000 words of fodder for discussion, I leave you all with one simple homework assignment: Email me at chris411wrestling@yahoo.com and let me know about any of your own thoughts on guilty pleasures, soda, or, of course, wrestling!
That’s all for now PEACE.
– Chris Biscuiti
(a.k.a. Cubistic Irish <-- That's what you get when you rearrange the letters in my name)
“You gotta remember this one: They took a real-life dump truck and a Tonka truck and pushed them simultaneously off a cliff to see which one held up better. As they fell, we saw slow-motion close-up video of the truck tumbling end over end, taking terrible damage as it collided with rocks and such on its way down. The toy, meanwhile, bounced harmlessly off the outcroppings. At the bottom, the real truck was a pile of twisted metal, but the toy was merely brushed off and presented to the camera.”
– Tonka Trucks 1980s commercial recap –> Credit: Inthe80s.com.
Chris Biscuiti also writes for moodspins.
