See you in September!
This column is going on hiatus, statring now and continuing through the summer. There are too many personal and professional pressures in my life right now, and I don’t have the time to invest in writing the kind of columns that I feel good about posting on Inside Pulse. More importantly, I really need to be able to watch wrestling “just for fun” over the next few months, rather than overanalyzing every match I watch.
Thanks to everybody who’s taken the time to write in! Thanks to Matthew and Widro for always supporting me, never censoring me, and allowing me to write about whatever caught my fancy in any given week! Thanks to my fellow writers on Inside Pulse for all of the fun times and great discussion we’ve shared! Most of all, obviously, thanks to everyone who takes the time to read this column! I hope I’ll see you all again in September.
There are dozens of columns I’m leaving unwritten. I still haven’t finished writing about Golden Boy Tapes’ Best of Japan 2004. I wholeheartedly recommend that set to anyone who wants to catch up on the Japanese scene, and I can’t say enough good things about his Best of Japan 1990s, the ideal starting point for anyone getting into Puroresu for the first time. I still haven’t done my review of Mike Naimark’s Shoot Comps They are to MMA what Best of the 90s is to Puroresu: The single best place I can think of to start your journey.
I keep meaning to recommend the following books: Dynamite Kid’s Pure Dynamite, Terry Funk’s More Than Just Hardcore, Heath McCoy’s Pain and Passion, John F. Molinaro’s Top 100 Pro Wrestlers of All Time, and Spencer Baum’s fictional One Fall. I also have long meant to write about Alex Hutchinson’s Backyard Empire, a book that I honestly didn’t like at all, but which I thought some of the Backyard Dogs who read this column might enjoy.
If you go to YouTube and search for Inside Pulse, you’ll find a bunch of really good matches that I’ve posted on there. So far, there have been more than 10,000 total views of the matches I’ve posted. That’s a point of very mild pride for me, as I genuinely enjoy sharing good wrestling matches with my fellow fans.
On Friday, I stopped over in Bellingham, Washington on my way to Seattle. By an incredible coincidence, Rowdy Roddy Piper happened to be doing his one-man show in town that day! I wholeheartedly recommend attending the show if you get a chance, especially if you are a fan of old school wrestling. The man has a lot of stories, and he tells them very well. Thanks also to the guys who tipped me off about the location of the after party! I meant to buy you a beer there, but I couldn’t pick you out of the crowd.
I’m not sure if Piper ever even made it to the after-party, but Mene Gene was a real gentleman.
It is, in part, memories like those that make me so glad I’m still a wrestling fan after all these years. I hope you all make some great memories of your own before we see each other again.
In the meantime… and in between time…feel free to write to me any time, right here: mr.gordi (at) gmail (dot) com
Thanks for reading!
