By Shane McKinley, Torch specialist

"Out of my head and into the womb
So will my ghost take me from you
You can remember the fool that I am
Don't cry baby don't cry"
-"Why I Am" by Dave Matthews Band

Pulled our shtinky RV (thanks, sanitation tank) to a kooky KOA kampside kampground. Location? Seligman, Arizona. Where the trains never stop rolling and your tears never stop flowing. Went inside the crazy KOA krap store and in the midst of buying knockoff items for the folks back home, I saw that they had some DVDs to rent. Lo and behold, "The Wrestler" beckoned me. Went back to the shtinky RV and popped in the movie in my trusty laptop Bessie (the same laptop where I'm writing this absurd report. Location? Yurma, Calif. "Come for the fun, make sure to bring a gun.")

I must confess something: I had never seen "The Wrestler" before. Lord knows I wanted to. Wanted to go see it with my girlfriend, but she ditched me and joined the Coast Guard in Jersey. Figures. Thought about seeing it with my Dad. You know. The gruff one who thinks idiots watch wrestling. The one who saw Hulk Hogan tearing up his shirt on TV once, contorted his face into a disgusted grimace, and made a remark about The American Hero "being gassed." Ol' Hulkster might as well been caught spiking kids's cheerios with HGH and Morphoplex in my Dad’s eyes.

Looking back on it, it was a good thing that I didn't take my Dad to go see the movie. If the seemingly endless talking bits didn't bore him, the seemingly endless shots of that chick from "My Cousin Vinny" shaking her fine ass would have drove me under the seats.

My opinion of the movie? Way too much talking. Guess I ain't all cultured and such. Did like the "Everybody works the leg. Let's work the neck. Wait...you're working the neck? Okay, we'll work the leg" bit. But I'm in line with pretty much everybody in what their favorite part of the movie was. (No, it wasn't The Ram doing blow and having sex with some floozy in the bathroom.) It was the ending. "The world doesn't care about me. In here, I can't get hurt."

I believe what the movie does best is to establish a connection with Randy and the audience. Hell, it's easy to root for the guy. And we all get caught up during the climax, where the Ram is preparing to do the Ram Jam despite the fact that his heart might give out. This guy needs to hear the crowd. He needs that excitement. That's why he's stuck thinking about glory days: because the present is in the crapper. Realizing this, it's easy to believe why a wrestler would go through the "Staple Gun" bit in the movie. They need the “rush."

I bring up "The Wrestler" because the director likes to employ the shot of following The Ram from behind as he walks to the ring or to his supermarket job. Seeing the Ram and his blond haircut in a curt ponytail, I was reminded of Jeff Hardy.

I'm guessing that you, as a reader, are sick of the Jeff Hardy non-sense. It's true that, as a fan, I have no "right" to judge or to decree what is right and what is wrong for Jeff. It's not judging,
it's worrying.

This was long before I started to contribute to pwtorch.com. I remember watching Chris Benoit's last televised match with Elijah Burke on ECW. I remember that night that Benoit looked really disheveled and troubled. Maybe I would have written about it in a ECW absurd report or reader reax, being somewhat worried. Or more likely I would have made some jackass comment. Probably more of the latter.

There's no excusing what Benoit did to his family. I'm not glorifying what he did and I still feel horrified and shamed about what he did. I understand why WWE has pretty much banished "Benoit" from their history books.

But I remember that Raw where Vince came out and told the audience that Benoit was dead. The rest of Raw was of wrestlers giving their hearts out. C.M. Punk crying. Of course, this was before we learned that the killing was done by Benoit's hands.

I bring up Benoit because I remember that night. One of my friends came over and couldn't understand why I was so distraught. So a wrestler died. So what?

They didn't understand that a family member was taken away that night. In a sense, these guys and girls do become like some sort of a strange, weird family. Which might be odd for some of you to read, considering how most of my contributions end up with me bitching about them. It's probably a bit naive and some of my youth talking, but these meatheads in spandex do become like family members. It is my wish not to see anybody involved in this business be under tremendous pain or to die prematurely over things that could have been prevented. One can analyze how much I truly do care about their well-being in the first place. (Do I value being entertained more than caring about the well-being of these guys?) I don't know the answer to that question. That’s for another time.

And, oh, about "The Screwjob" that happened at "Breaking Point": the thing that bothered me wasn't the notion behind the act. They needed to stall. They needed to keep Punk champion without Taker losing. And, what the hell, another "controversial" bit in WWE PPVs. Whatever.
Fine. That's a part of watching wrestling: sometimes you're going to get shafted and there's nothing to do but take it, since the payoff will compensate. But doing "The Screwjob" again? I disagree with the idea that "well, the majority of the audience is too young to remember what happened in Montreal." Sure, they’ve got youngins. But for the rest of us whose balls have dropped (including you girls), this thing just reeks of laziness.

-Ol' Batista is back on Smackdown. When Batty came into being, I thought he was named after the evil Batista from Cuba. I also thought that the Hardy Boys - Matt and Jeff - were named after the junior detectives from the books I read as a kid. Man, maybe I need to be drunk to be entertaining.

-Oh, yeah! Linda McMahon is throwing his hat into the political realm? My fondest memory of her involved the tag team of "Linda's breasts" and "Eric Bischoff's hands." Ah, rape angles. Or when she was comatose for six years, woke up in the ring, and kicked her Vince in his grapefruits. Ah, comatose angles. Good stuff. Advice for Linda? Wear a brace around your neck in public to garner sympathy! It worked for your hubby!

Well, it's time to shut down Ol' Bessie and get the hell out of here before the fine people of Yurma launch a barrage of fake Indian bracelets, underwater talkies, and stuffed raccoons on our still shtinky RV. Tally ho!

(Apologies to the fine people at Seligman and Yurma for my hurtful comments. Wrestling made me do it.)

Email is mckinley.torch@gmail.com

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