JOSHUA GRUTMAN: I need to write a wrestling column but I don’t feel like doing it. Mind having a conversation with me for an hour about wrestling related stuff instead?
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: I’d love you till next Tuesday!
gloomchen: I can try. I’ve been a bad wrestling fan the last few months, never mind that our town does not have UPN.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: That’s okay. I don’t watch much either. I just pretend to be an expert about it.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: First item: They are giving a 1 million dollar contract to the next Tough Enough winner. What do you think of that?!
gloomchen: I am thinking it will be money well spent, especially looking at the great money-drawing performers they gained with previous Tough Enough winners.
gloomchen: I <3 MAVEN
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Exactly! We all love Maven and Nidia and blond guy and what’s his name. I don’t see how they can go wrong. Do you this immediately dooms the winner to a year full of cold stares and unhappy other wrestlers?
gloomchen: That could be the bonus. I know if I was the winner, I’d completely buck every lockerroom tradition in the book.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: “So nice to meet you Triple H. Seriously, I’m such a huge fan. By the way, I’ll give you a thousand bucks if you make out with ugly over there! What’s your name sir? Lita?”
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: He should go to shake Undertaker’s hand but then pull his hand back and run it through his hair.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Moving on or are you writing something profound?
gloomchen: There are fifty million options to piss off people. Hell, most wrestlers try to act according to the unwritten rules and still get shit on.
gloomchen: I just out of the blue now have 4 IM windows open. People are nuts tonight.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: You’re the most popular Gloomchen in the world.
gloomchen: I suppose!
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Next issue! Steve Austin was backstage at Raw on Monday night. So was X-Pac. So was Method Man. What the hell were they doing there?
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: I’m going to pee while Gloomchen writes funny stuff. You can watch me pee on my webcam at my webcam site!
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Remember, if you don’t see Grutman peeing, you’ve been robbed of your civil liberties.
gloomchen: That’s a lot of ego to fit in one backstage.
gloomchen: And a lot of people with really messed up stuff going on in their lives. Except for maybe Method Man. He could be a bored househusband for all I know. We’re moving out of my area of expertise.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Wait a second.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: You write for the music section and you don’t know about the M E T H O D man?
gloomchen: I know who he is, dammit. I just don’t know anything about his life.
gloomchen: I know he did some crap with Limp Bizkit once, and that’s very tragic.
gloomchen: So perhaps the three of them together in tragedy DOES fit.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Don’t mess with Durst. He’ll go all high pitched annoying on your ass.
gloomchen: If we’re gonna unleash the high pitched, I’ll ante up with MC Chris
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: And I’ll shoot back with… hmm… I dunno… Prince?
gloomchen: Wow, that might do it.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Anyway, I see Sean Waltman as a guy really trying to get his crap together. Gotta respect a guy who goes to rehab and is still in love with his best friend’s ex.
gloomchen: So was there really any significance for these three particular folks to all be backstage at Raw? Or do these things happen just to hurt our heads?
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: It was in LA. They all live in LA. The Rock was there because he lives in LA.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: The sad thing is that the backstage celebrities on Monday outnumbered the fans at Tuesday’s house show.
gloomchen: X-Pac should’ve brought his kittens to the Tuesday show. X-PAC KITTENS = LOVE
gloomchen: X-Pac LOVES Kittens.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: That might be the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen.
gloomchen: It’ll give you nightmares if you let it.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: By the way, great idea bringing up waning house show crowds.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Let’s discuss that. How can the WWE improve attendance at house shows, and how does it involve King Kong Bundy?
gloomchen: Well, it shouln’t involve backhair.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Of course not. I think the only way for Vince to bring the crowds back to the house shows is through hypnotism.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: They have a two hour show. Surely they can find a five minute segment where they can hypnotize the audience and have them forget that they’ve been hypnotized.
gloomchen: Ooooh, nice. Bigger bonus if he goes straight for the hypnotism crowds. He could market along with the guys who hold seminars to quit smoking or to lose weight with self-hypnosis tapes. Cross-promotion. Lose the tobacco, spend the saved money on a house show ticket.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Yeah! Hey… you don’t think they do that, do you?
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Hypnotize us and then make us forget it? Maybe they ask us to imagine we just saw a La Res match or something.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: I think you’re on to something Gloomchen!
gloomchen: Perhaps if they aimed higher than a La Res match. Why hypnotize people to see the same crap they can see without hypnosis?
gloomchen: Andre the Giant can rise from the dead for a night to get bodyslammed by The Rock.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: But then it’s like the Matrix. We would reject the false reality and rebel against the WWE by… I dunno… watching the Olympics?
gloomchen: Oh, don’t make me tangent onto the Olympics and the radass boxing match where one of the Greek fighters got pelted with bottles from the stands. SOOO AWESOME.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: I saw that! That Greek guy got screwed! The Egyptian hit him with an elbow and that’s what caused the cut which lost the match for Greek guy.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Then the Egyptian really endeared himself to the crowd by bowing to Allah.
gloomchen: Insert some old WCW joke about no blood allowed to be drawn.
gloomchen: Stupid Olympics. The people want blood.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: At least the US has Greece as an ally now in the war on terror/Islam.
gloomchen: But what does any of this have to do with King Kong Bundy?
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: EVERYTHING SLUT!
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Sorry
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Medication… bit off…
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: I’m sorry.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Next issue! Taboo Tuesday will be the very first interactive WWE PPV! What does that mean for the Internet?
gloomchen: Oh lord help us all.
gloomchen: It’s the IWC vs. thousands of kids on their parents’ AOL lines.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: I know! I swear to God, those marks better not interfere with our plot to make Chris Benoit world championn/world’s sexiest man/my baby’s daddy.
gloomchen: Let ’em. I like watching everyone in a tizzy because Benoit is being treated like a bitch.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: God I love Chris Benoit. He’s so tiny, like a a mini-poodle. I just want to pick him up and scratch him behind the ear and put him in the box with some newspaper on the bottom. That’s both so he has something to read and so the mess he makes can be easily cleaned.
gloomchen: But he looks like a horse stepped on his face.
gloomchen: His butt isn’t nice enough to make up for it, either.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: God, you are so gay.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: What’re you doing checking out his butt?
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Homo.
gloomchen: This isn’t Grut vs. Daniels.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: What? Who am I talking to? You’re all the same person to me.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Gloomchen!
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Girl, right.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: No, not a girl.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: A woman.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: A proud, black woman.
gloomchen: If by black you mean pasty white, sure!
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Well, that’s what happens to us net writers.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Interactive tv always comes off terribly. This is going to blow.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: 2 months from the show, knowing nothing about it besides the basics, I express negativity. Internet, thy name is Grutman.
gloomchen: You don’t need to know much more. We know McMahon and we know the internet.
gloomchen: We can only hope McMahon doesn’t know the internet and he leaves us some way to totally mess up his plans.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: “It’s your choice: Benoit vs. Orton for the world title or two hours of this monkey with a pipe. Vote now!”
gloomchen: MONKEYMONKEYMONKEYMONKEY *finger snaps*
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Man, I am going to enjoy the shit out of that monkey.
gloomchen: It would be American Idol all over again.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: You think he’d be trained to smoke the pipe or would he just throw it at people and things?
gloomchen: If he’s a proper monkey, he’ll smoke the pipe but throw his poop.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: And Eugene could interact with the monkey! Maybe they’d form a tag team.
gloomchen: I would so watch that, you have no idea.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Eugene would teach the monkey to wrestle and the monkey would teach Eugene to love again! Eugene would finally have a friend! Another friend, anyway.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: BUT THEN THE MONKEY TURNS ON EUGENE AND JOINS EVOLUTION!
gloomchen: How big is this monkey? Could he sit on HHH’s shoulder?
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: He’s a decent sized monkey. Not a gorilla. I think HHH would look adorable with a monkey around his shoulders.
gloomchen: Sit him up there with a pipe and a fez on his head. And he has to do that monkey thing where he grins big and flaps his lips.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: And every time he does, Triple H says, “That’s right Jim!” I named the monkey Jim.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Just think of the irony: The creature we evolved from now a member of Evolution. Now I’m really excited about this PPV!
gloomchen: Ric Flair will spend the rest of his days stepping in monkey poop. *deep sigh*
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Don’t worry about it. Did you read his book? Ric loves crazy angles where he looks foolish.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Now then, let’s get serious for a few minutes. I wanna talk about self-image.
gloomchen: Ooo la la, deep thoughts.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Wrestlers are just like you and me. Some of them don’t give a crap about how they look. Some are obsessed with their bodies. Their appearance is their self worth.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: I sometimes obsess over the imperfections of my own body, much the way I’m sure someone in amazing shape like HHH obsesses over his much smaller imperfections.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: But sometimes I don’t give a crap and just eat that bag of oreos, much in the same way The Big Show or Spike Dudley would.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: But the majority of character are well built, good looking men. Does wrestling promote the same impossible standards for men as Vogue and Cosmopolitan and MTV does for women?
gloomchen: I would have to say not hardly. I don’t know many guys watching WWE who feel ashamed of their bodies after looking at the Dudleys. Granted, you get your scary sculpted folks too, but when one can just as well be a champion while looking like a dogpile, what is there to worry about?
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Says the hot girl who has conformed to societies standards! HA!
gloomchen: The Divas, on the other hand, and their “oh pie don’t want to touch it” ways
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: What?
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Yes.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Anyway, back to this issue at hand. Are you or are you not “hot”?
gloomchen: Oh goodness, are you looking to give me a mental breakdown? I don’t think I’m hot. I’m definitely not ugly though. Upside of average.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Look at the hypocrite people! LOOK AT HER!
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: This girl is obviously hot and she’s been teasing Jim Vanderhost since day one!
gloomchen: Hah, you are a punk.
gloomchen: My only defense is that I photograph well?
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Oh you do? Then explain THIS! Explain it!
gloomchen: Okay, but that was 135 pounds ago.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: That’s besides the point!
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Okay. Back on message.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Jim really, really likes you. He’d never say it so I’m saying it for him.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: I just want to know why you think you’re too hot to go out with him?
gloomchen: Truth? Until I see a photo, everyone is assumed ugly.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Well, assume no longer about JOSHUA GRUTMAN!
gloomchen: Oh holy god that is incredibly awesome
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: I know, I know. I’m sexy.
gloomchen: But what is TOO sexy?
gloomchen: How could I be TOO hot for someone?
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: I don’t know. I’m not the one claiming to be too hot for Jim. Why don’t you tell me how you do it?
gloomchen: Maybe it would be more fair if I knew Jim?
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: He’s a great guy! He lettered in football and basketball and he loves black! What’s not to love?
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Also, he’s a poet.
gloomchen: Black is good.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Yes it is.
gloomchen: I lettered in academics.
gloomchen: Look at all the things in common already!
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Yeah. I’m done with that bit. As we end our column, we take this time to reflect on our first real IMing column together.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Hey, remember when we talked about the monkey?
gloomchen: That ruled. Wasn’t there something about throwing bottles at it? No, wait.
gloomchen: I forgot already.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Nah, that was about when X-Pac boxed the Greek guy.
gloomchen: And the kittens got hypnotized!
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Yeah! I remember that! And I think I released a picture that will come back to haunt me years from now!
gloomchen: Let’s not talk about pictures coming back to haunt.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: You were a different person then.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Seriously, you were like 3 different people then.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: I think Gloomie got pissed and left. So for Gloomchen I’m Joshua Grutman thanking you for reading.
gloomchen: I am here. Sleepy, but here.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Good. Say goodnight.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: To the fans.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Not me.
gloomchen: Okay! Night night.
gloomchen: NO GOOD.
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Try again
gloomchen: goodnight
JOSHUA GRUTMAN: Better
gloomchen: Yay.
