Oh you didn't know?

Last night, after a less-than-comfortable band practice, I took a moment to rekindle my relationship with WWE SMACKDOWN VS RAW in the comfortable and vaguely redolent habitat also known as the House of Brad, Conrad, Rob & Joel. Some people are surprised by my relationship with wrestling, but this form of grappling, showmanship and (poorly disguised) man-love... well, we go way back. Back to when I first met Frank and he was still doing amateur wrestling now and then. I can't remember his stage name, but it was something VERY NuMetal... or proto-Emo. There was a Reznor-esque fringe in there.

TAKE ONE:

AND ADD:


Anyway, after Frank was dropped through a table, and powerslammed onto the roof of a car, his knee suffered a tragic blow to its... abilities... and created a nice pronounced limp. Frank retired, and we moved from recording occasional wrestling shows (I have many photos... including a Mankind-esque guy being piledriven into some thumb tacks) to playing various WWE games on the Playstation 2.

Our characters included:
1. HAL 2000, a giant white humanoid with no face. He liked choke-slamming folks, and being an expressionless lump of inhuman machinations.
2. Carlos the Cook. A lithe Latino who would enter in a pimped Impala. Carlos was fighting racial iniquity, in red sequent pants.
3. Dracos... a man who looked a lot like Frank's wrestling alter-ego. He prefers 'Fragile' to 'Pretty Hate Machine'.

And we spent so much time with these creations! Giving them careers, story-arcs, special moves, special taunts... Long ago, that passion petered out, but it was great to see that obsessive, unproductive affection for electronic destruction - those feelings that create joy when you pull your finisher and it draws blood from your opponent - alive and well in Upper Queen St.

Other news is that I've booked my trip to Chile, Peru and Bolivia. More on that soon.