How would you like to be this guy?  You’re all kinds of tanked up on liquor of various sorts, you’re at a pro wrestling event, and you think “Hey, these guys aren’t so tough.  Heck, I’m bigger than that guy in the mask!  I bet if I got in there, those guys would piss themselves and run away!”  You work up the nerve to jump the barricade, you stick your head in the ring… and get it almost taken off by a kick from the 5’6″, 140 lbs referee.  Worse still, you then get locked in a choke hold by said tiny referee, and are held down, unable to break free (and clearly in great discomfort) until security guards hit the ring and frog march you away.

Pro wrestlers have been “protecting the ring” by beating the crap out of any fan who dared get too close since time immemorial.  But what this dude didn’t count on was getting in the ring with Brian Hildebrand, better known as referee Mark Curtis–a man Mick Foley once described as, pound-for-pound, one of the best wrestlers he had ever seen.  He trained for years to be a wrestler, but his metabolism would never let him put on any significant muscle mass.  Coupled with his small stature, this effectively ended his dream of being an active wrestler.  Instead, he became a manager and later a referee.

The best part of the video is how amused the announcers are by what is going on in the ring.  Like most other events that have to sometimes deal with fan interference, most wrestling organizations have a policy of not broadcasting fans who get in the ring, and usually the announcers make just a passing reference to such things–just enough, usually, to let the viewer at home know why there is suddenly a long shot of the crowd on their TV.  This time, however, Bobby “The Brain” Heenan is clearly so tickled by what happens he can’t stop talking about it.

The wrestlers too take it unusually in stride.  As I said before, wrestlers tend to beat the crap out of anybody who gets in the ring who shouldn’t be there.  It’s something of a time honored tradition.  Dean Malenko and Psychosis, however, barely break their rhythm.  Dean watches the guy get in the ring, and he and Psychosis both give him one good kick after the ref takes him down.  Then they just go about their business, realizing everything is under control.  They continue the match like they didn’t just see a big fan get taken down by “the smallest referee in the world” (as the Brain puts it).

Sadly, Brian died of cancer in 1999.  He was just 37.  But we’ll always have evidence of what a tough little son of a bitch he was!

I spend a lot of time busting on other people on this site, so now it’s time I got a taste of my own medicine.

For several months now, I’ve been using the alarm on my iPhone (or as I like to call it, my iPad Nano) to wake me up in the morning.  Every morning, things go approximately the same way.  The alarm goes off, I fumble for the phone, stare at it for a second, hit the on-screen button that gives me five more minutes of sleep, and instantly pass out again.  I do this a few times, then I actually get up.  The whole process has worked pretty well–until yesterday.

Yesterday morning, the phone started doing its impersonation of an air raid siren.  I fumbled for it on the dresser, looked at it, and–hang on, what’s that?  The button on the screen was labeled with an unfamiliar word.  I stared at it for a second or two, the alarm still blaring, and vaguely wondered if I’d accidentally changed the language settings on my phone.  Was that Russian?  Norwegian maybe?  Whatever.  I hit the button and went back to sleep.  About five minutes later, when the phone went off again, I picked it up and started blankly at that word again.  I tried sounding it out this time, but it sounded so unfamiliar to me, I still was convinced I’d accidentally changed my phone over to some crazy non-English language.

The third time it went off, I realized, hey, the word “Alarm” is still in English.  But under that, there was still that word I couldn’t figure out.  I sounded it out again, but… man.  It wasn’t happening.  No matter how I said it, it just didn’t sound like any word I knew.  I was more confused than ever now, but I was also still super tired.  So off to dreamland I went one last time.  Finally, the fourth time the alarm went off, I was able to wake up enough to clear most of the fog from my head.  I looked at that strange word one last time, tried sounding it out again…

You’ve probably guessed where this is going, right?  Yeah, the word was “snooze”.  A perfectly good English word.  In fact, the same word I’ve been staring at two or three times every weekday morning for the past three months.  I was even sounding the word out, pronouncing it correctly even, but I was convinced it was some Norwegian word or something.  It couldn’t possibly be English anyhow.  Snoooooze.  Snooooooooze.  WTF?  That’s not a word!

Yes it is, asshole.  And now I take my place amongst the dummies of the Internets.

I know you’re out there.  Remember when you were all counter culture, and spent all your time trying to change the world (which of course meant smoking a ton of pot and dropping an assload of acid)?  Well, the 60s died at Altamont, and you put away your tie dyed headbands and grew up to be bankers and lawyers–in other words, you became the establishment you used to hate.  Now you live every day trying to rationalize to yourself what happened.  You gave up the dream, man!  You gave up the dream of a better world, and for what?  For a suit and tie, a Lexus and a Rolex?  What would Lennon think, man?

Well, I’m here to help.  I’m not of your generation, but I feel your pain (every two weeks when I get my paycheck and I see how much you bastards are costing me in Social Security taxes. )  So I want to help.  I’m going to help you recapture some of those halcyon days of your youth.

I’m going to help you out by showing you this $900 bean bag chair.

As I write this, it’s on sale for a measly $570.  But even if you don’t make it in time for the sale, I know you can afford it.  I mean, you drive that Lexus and all.  And what is $900 in the grand scheme of things?  $900 to recapture some of your youth spent as a culture warrior!  $900 to get together with some of your other ex-hippie friends and smoke tons and tons of pot again (ha–like you ever stopped.)  And you can afford the good shit now man–no ditch weed for you, and no dirty $12 bean bag that’s leaking beans all over the basement floor, either.  Think of how groovy it’s going to be when you get together with your friends, spark up a doobie, put on some of your vintage vinyl albums and pretend like you’re not a bunch of hypocritical assholes who sold out everything they believed in to become everything they claimed to hate.

So yeah, spark up that fatty, put on that Dead album, and park your fat champagne socialist ass in the most expensive bean bag chair you can find.  Because you deserve it!