Bubba...........

The Iron Sheik passed away today at 81... which to even imagine he lived to 81 is amazing considering the litany of health problems and the out-of-control party lifestyle this man lived.

He's another guy if I search old articles on this blog his name comes up often. I was a big fan of the Iron Sheik since I was a little kid watching wrestling.

He's always in those "Twitter Awards" Olympic medal awarding ones I used to write a lot.

It says on his twitter, that Sheikie, joined twitter in 2009 and posted 32.5 thousand tweets from 2009 to 2023. Wow... that's quite a few .... I will say he is probably the most prolific and beloved twitter persona of all time. I will miss him forever.

Today, in the vein of those Twitter Awards articles I used to do a lot... I would like to give the Iron Sheik the all-time most-greatest in-memoriam Gold Medal for Twitter which will remain his forever. No one will ever be better at tweeting than this man was.

Tweeting wasn't even what he was known for though. He was the most-hated heel in Wrestling for a good decade or more. He was a reviled Sheik from the Araby out to destroy the apple pie loving America people... hack patooie!

Now... All Rise for the singing of the Soviet National Anthem!

Russia NUMBER ONE!

Iran NUMBER ONE!

USA? Hack! PATAW!

He's up there now with the Classy Ayatollah the Freddie Blassie and the Nikolai. He's survived by his family and by Sgt. Slaughter.

In the words he coined in the twitter-verse whenever a celebrity he liked passed away... I would like to say...


Goodbye Iron Sheik... I will miss you and love you forever...

......Bubba.

2nd Annual Twitter Awards

Almost a year ago I wrote about Twitter Feeds that I think are entertaining. I gave out three awards: a Bronze, a Silver, and a Gold.

I'm gonna do it again. Why? Well, because it is Sunday night and I am bored ... but also ... with the Olympics on it reminded me that I handed out medals for tweeting once in this blog ... so let's do that again ... why not?

I'm not really into the political end of Twitter too much which can be a mine field of difficulty to navigate through, so my awards, like last year, are for ENTERTAINING feeds only.

To qualify you need two things:
 
A) Be Entertaining
B) Have Good Reach

Reach just means that you're famous, basically. I think there's funny people on Twitter at times but they are not Omni-Famous enough to include in an Awards article.

Last year the Medals went to:

BRONZE MEDAL: George Wallace
SILVER MEDAL: The Iron Sheik
GOLD MEDAL: Mr. T


You can read last year's Twitter Awards: Here


I have it narrowed down to Five Finalists for this year's awards, the finalists are in no particular order:

Mr. T (Incumbent Champion)
Iron Sheik 
George Wallace
Norm MacDonald
Jose Canseco


Runners Up

Canseco, Jose

Alright so our first runner-up, in Fifth place, is Jose Canseco ... who I worked into the article last year but did not earn a medal. This year, again, he's in the article but not in the medal seeds. Jose Canseco had some ups and downs on the twitter box this season.

He had some funny tweets during the World Series but his year was memorable more so due to a FIRE STORM of negative publicity over a joke he wrote.

I saw the tweets, and personally, I didn't find them to be that bad. They were OBVIOUSLY jokes ...and I actually find it scary that some dumb joke someone writes can lead to 100 negative articles in the press (within an HOUR of the person writing the joke) ... and people can end up losing their job (he lost his media job he had with the A's).

The jokes were some things along the lines of (paraphrased):

"Hey, I've been felt up and harassed by like hundreds of women and I didn't care ..."

" All these guys getting in trouble with women are all butt ugly politicians. I think women are racist against ugly dudes..."

There was NO QUESTION that these statements should be filed under the Joke Column. These are legit jokes. If you read things like that and take it 100% serious ... you're probably taking life too seriously. When you read things on the internet ... just ask a few questions before freaking out ... ask "is this a joke?" or "should I take this seriously?"

If the statements appear to be a joke ... then give it a pass ... and save your outrage for the next thing that comes into your feed, okay?

These Canseco tweets were definitely oozing with machismo and I can see how, in the times we live in right now, how they brewed up a storm of indignation ... but in the end it's easy to see these were jokes.

Alright, let's move on to the next runner up,

...The Iron Sheik.

Sheik, Iron

Sheik, strolls in at fourth this year, down from his stellar Silver from last year. He had some good offerings this year including top notch tweets such as...

"Yeah, sex is cool .... but have you ever broken somebody's neck?"

...amongst other prime offerings.

I kind of gave Sheik the Silver as more of a Life Time Achievement Award last year. He's been hammering the twitter box for a decade now and needed recognition. Pound for pound, and all things considered, Iron Sheik is the greatest tweeter of all time ... but as for this year he clamped down 4th place overall.

Another wrestler who almost made it on here was the highly controversial tweeter and former wrestling super star Virgil ... who is freakin' hilarious at twitter but I understand how that feed could offend people. Virgil's current shtick is that he's poor. No joke, that's his whole persona now, his whole gimmick is that he's a poor man. Virgil will tweet about how much he likes free bread sticks at Olive Garden or how flummoxed he was that the sleeping bag repairman wanted eight dollars to fix the zipper on his favorite sleeping bag. It's .... not for everyone.

WWF LEGEND!

Like Canseco's feed though, I get that the Virgil feed is a joke, y'know? I understand in real life Virgil isn't asking women to buy him Olive Garden pasta, or asking his alleged estranged bastard sons to send him thirty dollars and a few Stouffers frozen lasagnas, or doing any of these absurd things. I know Virgil is doing an act ... and yes it is sort of offensive ... but in the end it's just an act.

I've heard in interviews that even in his wrestling days the "Virgil" character was the most hated heel in history in the eyes of African American wrestling fans. Virgil in interviews has said, if he was wrestling a venue in the 80s/90s which was in a prominently African American town  ... he'd just be pelted with garbage from start to finish. African American wrestling fans HATED Virgil more than any other wrestler in history.

So, even though the feed is legit funny, Virgil misses out on even the making the Top 10 of tweeters, because although the act is god damn hilarious ... it's a little raw. On top of it all, Virgil doesn't meet the "reach" standards either as he's not really Omni-Famous or even Super-Famous, really.

The guy even lost his blue check mark last month or so. I was following what led up to him losing his blue check mark. It was sooooooo freaking funny. There was some mix up or confusion over twitter feeds in which some people in jolly old England seemed to think the "at real virgil" feed was for some footballer guy ... and oh my gosh ... confusion was so abounds. It was just so much confusion ... oh my. He didn't do anything wrong though. It was just a simple mix up is all, mateys. It was all but a simple mix up, mateys.

Ok so, Jose Canseco and the Iron Sheik are our runners up this year. LET'S GET TO THE REAL MEDAL PODIUM NOW!



Twitter Awards Portion of this Article

BRONZE MEDAL: Mr. T

Entertainment Genre: Helluva Tough
Favorite "Feud": N/A

The Man is No Stranger to Ice

Last year's Gold Medalist, Mr. T, is on the medal podium again this year in the Bronze position. Mr. T has taken a genuine interest in Curling of late, and from this recent CBC article and interview with him, it's not a lark ... the guy is into Curling ... big time.

See:

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-friday-edition-1.4538952/controlled-mayhem-mr-t-talks-about-his-love-of-curling-on-as-it-happens-1.4539621

This Curling fad isn't going away and someone's gotta harness this wild goat known as Curling and really make something with it. I really think that if you put together the modest success of Mixed Curling (co-eds) at the Olympics with all the celebrities tweeting about Curling ... you'd be on to something ... and that something is ... Celebrity Mixed Curling. If you could even see how good this show is as it plays out in my thoughts/hopes/dreams ... you'd freak. Celebrity Mixed Curling (One Male Celeb + One Female Celeb teams participating in a round robin Tournament of Champions) would be a SMASH HIT ... believe me!

I mean, celebs tweeting about Curling is not limited to Mr. T either ... I've seen many (although probably 60% are from Canada) ... so if a network is serious about Celebrity Mixed Curling ... don't hesitate ... this fad won't last forever ... get that good stuff on the AIR. I'd watch EVERY SECOND OF IT.

It's fun. It's like Tactical Ice Bowling or Cold Bocce Ball or maybe Ice Stone Chess. If you add celebrities to this Curling business ... forget about it ... It'd be such good TV.

Just picture Mr. T with a Celebrity Mixed Curling Trophy .... I know it sounds like it doesn't make sense ... but it does. It truly does. Trust me.



SILVER MEDAL: Norm MacDonald

Entertainment Genre: Sand Box
Favorite "Feud": w/ Margaret Atwood (runner up: Joyce Carol Oates)

Iconic Novelist Norm MacDonald's feed is hard to pigeon hole into a genre ... I really think he looks at Twitter as a big sand box to test out writing ... or to narrate golf ... or to spin odd yarns ... or to wax nostalgic about memories past. Sometimes he'll just delete his whole feed and start again akin to messing up the sand in the sand box and starting fresh.

He writes short stories at times, which are pretty good. He detailed a pretty interesting and entertaining romanticized version of Quebec's History from 1960 to 1980 a few months ago which is not really standard fare for the tweeting sphere but it was pretty good and interesting.

This guy knows stuff. When David Letterman was on Norm's podcast, Dave said Norm is like the most clever guy around. Dave is right ... he is pretty smart this guy. He got to the million dollar question on Celebrity Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, even.

His "feuds" on the platform aren't standard fare either ... I mean he doesn't go after easy targets or jabronies ... he critiques literary icons. He doesn't do it often, but he'll lay a critique down on Joyce Carol Oates or somebody in a blue moon. He can be blunt with his literary critiques at times. Recently he referred to Margaret Atwood's prose as being of the "sweaty" variety. Margaret Atwood, creator of the hit show The Handmaid's Tale is a very good writer and an Iconic Novelist herself ... but Norm might be right ... I mean, there is a hint of sweatiness to her prose ... there really is. It cannot be denied.

Now before we get ahead of ourselves here reader, yes both names in his feuds list above are female ... but that's not to suggest he has an issue with female writers. Norm is on record, many times, stating that the great Alice Munro is his favorite author. So, his critiques of Joyce Carol Oates and of Margaret Atwood are purely critiques of writing only ... nothing more and nothing less.

Norm MacDonald has stated that his second novel is on the horizon which many a literature enthusiast is surely looking forward to. There's only so many humans on earth who can be regarded as Iconic Novelists and he is definitely one of them.


GOLD MEDAL: George Wallace
Entertainment Genre: Comedy
Favorite "Feud": N/A

Mr. Wallace's wide ranging humorous tweets as well as his exceptional feud with Charles in Charge star Scott Baio landed him the Bronze last twitter season ... but this year he's leap frogged into the pole position. Why? It's hard to explain but this man just has the format DOWN.

Twitter is a medium of short burst information snippets. It's actually a hard medium to be funny on. The reason I think George Wallace has it down is that his persona and his familiarity come across in his tweets. I really think he's mastered the medium of writing short text messages in hopes of creating humor in the twitter format.

It's hard to build rapport with an audience in any format ... but limited to just pushing keys on a keyboard and making strings of words which are read by people on their computer screens or phones ... it's very very hard to create that rapport. You need a pre-existing character that everyone knows (so they can read the text in the voice of that character) and you need some sort of familiarity with the audience.

Since he's a famous stand up comedian the audience reads the jokes in his voice and through the use of exhaustive leitmotifs and signature finishers ... he has that familiarity with the audience. You know in 85% of his tweets that you're gonna get a whatnot ... you know he's gonna get a whatnot in there somewhere.

I think I know what's so good about "whatnot" ... I've figured it out. I used to end all of my sentences with "....and shit" because I really believed that any sentence in the english language is improved if it ends with "....and shit."

I'd put that on like anything ....

"I'm going to the store ... and shit"
"You need something at the store? I'm gonna go down there ... and shit"
 "Hey dere, I'm gonna head on down to that store dere, ya want some smokes and shit?"
"Oh hello, I haven't seen you in a while, how's it goin' and shit?"

Every sentence in english is a better sentence if it ends with "and shit" ... but you can't use it 100% of the time. Like, you can't be with your Grandma and be like "Oh, hey grandma this is a pretty good chicken sandwich and shit!" ... you can't say that ... there's times where you can't work with "and shit" ... so what's the SECOND best word to end sentences with if you have to omit "and shit?"


It is "and whatnot." It is. It really really is. Look:

"I'm going to the store ... and whatnot"
"You need something at the store? I'm gonna go down there ... and whatnot"
 "Hey dere, I'm gonna head on down to that store dere, ya want some smokes and whatnot?"
"Oh hello, I haven't seen you in a while, how's it goin' and whatnot?"

See? If you've over done "and shit" or you can't use "and shit" because your grandma is there or you're working in like customer service or some shit and whatnot .... switch out "shit" for "whatnot" and it is almost a seamless transition. It really is, right after "and shit",  I think "and whatnot" is the best thing to flow off a sentence with.

 Let's take a sample George Wallace tweet now:

This guy has it DOWN. Reader, if you're not big on social media and think things like, "hmmm, I don't know how to tweet good and am scared to engage in social media because I am not sure how to present my words in text in a humorous and light hearted way that shows my relevant familiarity with my fellow humans of earth ..."

... Don't fret. Just read a bunch of the George Wallace tweets and you'll learn because that's how you do it. He's got it down, 100%. One Hundred and Ten Per Cent .... and whatnot.

I'm not the only one who thinks he's the Gold Medalist at Twitter either ... in that Bird tweet ... famous director Jordan Peele refers to Wallace as the "King of Twitter" .... so don't just take my word for it.




That's it for this year's Twitter Medals. We're February ... next February ... 2019 ... I'll try and remember to do an annual Twitter Awards again.

My Favorite Twitter Feed

Twitter is a hard venue for entertainment because of the 140 character limit but that limit also makes twitter what it is. You get to work with a 140 character statement, or a funny photo, or a stupid GIF ... and that's the only tools you can use to be entertaining on Twitter.

It's a good site, I find it is a great way to stay abreast on the world around me, to be wicked honest. I turn off the regional filters on trending topics on social media so I can get a sense of what is really buzzing around the globe concerning human matters. If you don't turn off the regional filters you will just get things that are happening around your town. It helps to keep a couple of good news sites, or political oriented people in your feed list, and then you can stay decently on top of what the heck is going on.

I like Twitter, I think it's a different vibe than facebook .... both have their pros and cons. You can write long counter-points to news stories or whatnot on Facebook which on twitter you can't do. So it has it's ups and downs but in general I cruise the twitter-sphere more often than the facebook-sphere I'd say.

Alright so, this article is not concerning the news/world-events related part of twitter, this article is going to explore who I think are the most entertaining twitter feeds on Twitter.

I narrowed it down to three finalists. The runners up for the prize of Best Twitter Feed in My Opinion are George Wallace and the Iron Sheik. The winner will be declared lower down in the article (or you could scroll down and see who it is if your sitting there with the most bated of breaths).



BRONZE MEDAL: George Wallace

Entertainment Genre: Comedy
Favorite "Feud": w/ Scott Baio

Feed: https://twitter.com/mrgeorgewallace

George Wallace is a fairly legendary stand up comedian. I've seen him live once and he is genuinely good at his craft, he's a great stand up comic and probably in my top 10 of all time ... but his twitter feed? It's definitely in my top 3 of all time. His comedic formula translates to 140 characters so well. His rapid fire opinions on anything at all really work with a 140 character limit ... he can fit a lot of content into short statements.

I've realized of late that to be a funny person you need to really personalize and be unique to be successful. There will only ever be one Rodney Dangerfield for instance, no one else can be him, you can impersonate him but there's only one him .... there's only one Gilbert Gottfried, you can try and talk like him and copy his mannerisms but there's only one Gilbert ... and George Wallace is the same, his idiosyncrasies and uniqueness can be mimicked by others but there will only be one George Wallace.

The best Twitter feud for Wallace, was one I watched unfold live, where George Wallace took on "Charles in Charge" star Scott Baio. The New York Daily News did a good write up of it the next day,

See: George Wallace Wrecks Scott Baio (NYDN Aug. 2016)

They state, "Not even the Fonze could help", and declared Wallace the winner of the twitter scuffle. I like when feuds end with a handshake and goodwill like this one did, in this case concerning the veterans, because it shows good sportsmanship by both parties.

So, for the thousands of short-burst statements that use only 140 characters or less which have made hundreds of thousands of people laugh so many times ... the legendary comic George Wallace is the Bronze medal winner



SILVER MEDAL: The Iron Sheik
Entertainment Genre: Bat Shit Anger and the Hurling of Invective at Everything and Everyone
Favorite "Feud": w/ Jose Canseco

Feed: https://twitter.com/the_ironsheik


You can say the Sheik feed is getting repetitive, but I do not care, there will never be a day before either myself or He pass on from this mortal realm where I will not click the Heart or the Like on something the Iron Sheik media feed spits out. It's the best. It's the friggin' best.

My first encounter with anything related to the Iron Sheik was as a very small child I had a Panini WWF sticker book, the ones where you buy packs of stickers and try to collect them all and paste them in the book .... and I had every sticker except one. I was missing the second half of the Iron Sheik two-sticker layout on one of the pages and that book stayed 99% complete ... I never got the other half of the Iron Sheik and it was annoying.

My childhood video store (remember those relics of the past!?) had a whole section devoted to WWF and I would rent one every week until I saw them all. I had a full historical account of everything that happened in every major WWF pay-per-view event by the time I was about 11 years old. I was familiar with the work of the great Iron Sheik and was always aware of what a colorful character he was.

Like everyone else, in modern times, when Sheik re-emerged onto the pop scene after releasing a youtube interview where he threatens to sodomize B. Brian Blair, I was so happy that he was famous again. His appearances on Howard Stern are some of the funniest moments in media I've ever seen. He was so angry and so hilarious in those interviews. It was great.

My favorite feud, and with Sheik I mean he's tweeted angry hate-filled statements at probably every celebrity under the sun, so it's hard to narrow it down to one ... but I don't want to do Bette Midler or somebody ... I want to write about Jose Canseco because he was close to making this list too. Jose Canseco is definitely top 5 in twitter feeds.

Canseco tweets about .... oh wow, I don't even know what the fuck this guy is talking about half the time. He's deeply interested in colonizing Mars and trouble shooting all sorts of space flight difficulties. He uses a lot of science words but I'm not sure he knows what any of them actually mean. If someone is gonna be successful in sticking a jabroni on Mars it's probably gonna be that Elon Musk ... but don't rule out Jose Canseco and his Mars colonization theories ... who knows maybe he'll surprise us all and figure out how to terraform Mars whilst Elon Musk is twiddling his thumbs. I heard he got a job in media with the A's, I think, if that's true I am happy for Jose Canseco ... a lot of baseball people don't like him but I think Jose's a good guy.

Anyways, The Sheik and Canseco took some bites out of each other a few times, the largest bites coming in 2012,

See: The Iron Sheik and Jose Canseco Twitter Beef (Deadspin, Sept. 2012)

I've never seen a person refer to another person as being dumber than a dead dog or smelling worse than a dead dog's shit before this. The Iron Sheik is the Silver Medal recipient.



GOLD MEDAL: Mr. T
Entertainment Genre: Helluva Tough
Favorite "Feud": w/ Mr. T

Feed: https://twitter.com/MrT

The great Mr. T, star of the A-Team and Rocky III, has only really starting tweeting a lot only of late. Ever since he signed on to fight for the children of St. Judes and Shriners Hospitals on ABC's smash hit TV Show "Dancing with the Stars" .... He has begun keeping his legions of supporters updated on his day to day progress via his twitter feed ... and .... it is so INSPIRATIONAL!

This guy is inspiring the absolute heck out of everyone! He's pumped, man. PUMPED! YEAH!

Me? I'm inspired, I cannot tell a lie, I am INSPIRED to be more than I can be ... EVERYDAY! I know I can be better .... I can be a more better writer and a more better person! Yes.

Mr. T does not have a Feud to speak of because that's not how the man rolls. He doesn't work like that, that schoolyard stuff is not how T operates. His feud is with HIMSELF ... to better himself every day. He's not competing with the other stars on Dancin' with the Stars ... he's competing with himself in order to become a good dancer.

Mr. T does not want to pity any fools, or pity the judges, from his tweets we know he is in this 100% and wants to win for the children. There is no pity in his heart for the other contestants such as the multi-talented Charo or David Ross of the 2016 World Series Winning Chicago Cubs.

This journey to becoming a good dancer and raising money for the children's hospitals is being self-journaled on his twitter feed and it is a story in itself. His feed is inspiring to all those who follow it.

Will he win Dancing with the Stars, I'm not sure, but after seeing his recent appearance on the Conan O'Brien program I could tell he's going into DWTS Week #3 rip-rock-and-raring to dance! Yes, and just like the kids of St Jude Hospital, the kids of Shriners Hospital, The Great Great Man Sylvester Stallone, the Great Great Man William Shatner, and millions and millions of Americans ... I am 100% behind MR. T in his dancing endeavor!

An Open Letter Acting as an Official Nomination for the Following Party to be Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize Trophy

The following letter is an open style letter (meaning anyone can read it), it is submitted to the internet for all to see but is specifically directed at the attention of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee who accepts and reviews nominations for said prize.

The criterion for a human being to be allowed to nominate someone for review by the Nobel Committee is to meet one of the following requirements:


A) Bein' a "member of national assembly and/or government of state"
B) Bein' a "member of international court"
C) Bein' a "University rector; professor of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology; director of peace research institute and/or foreign policy institute"
D) Bein' a "Person who has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize"
E) Bein' a "Board member of an organization that has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize"
F) Bein' "Active and former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee; (proposals by members of the Committee to be submitted no later than at the first meeting of the Committee after February 1)"
G) Bein' a "Former adviser to the Norwegian Nobel Committee

I meet the following requirement: B


In the month of July of 2012, I served on jury duty in the case of Fields, S. vs. Amsterdam, M., thereby (be it bit but a brief moment) acting as a member of an "international court" and thus giving me access to nominate humans to be reviewed by the Nobel Committee in regards to said party being awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.

Okie Dokie?

Before penning my open letter to the Nobel Piece Prize Committee, we shall look at just what the heck the peace prize committee is and we shall also look at the man I wish to nominate. So this is gonna be a pretty clunky article smashed into three parts.

Nobel Peace Prize

A brief tl;dr summation of the history of the Nobel Peace Prize is as follows:

This guy invented dynamite and got very rich, but he hated money so much that he never spent any and as he lay on his death bed he proclaimed to the people watching him die,

"My fortune is yours for the taking, but you'll have to find it first.
I left everything I own in Nobel Piece." -Nobel, A.(Dec.10/1886)

Millions of able bodied men and women searched Scandinavia for the fabled Nobel Piece. Naysayers thought they were just dreamers and n'er do well adventurers who were searching for something which didn't even exist....but it did. So, yeah. Yet, inside Alfred Nobel's buried treasure was simply a letter which stated,

"I, the undersigned, Alfred Bernhard Nobel, do hereby, after mature deliberation, declare the following to be my last Will and Testament with respect to such property as may be left by me at the time of my death:

...

[my] estate shall be dealt with in the following way: the capital, invested in safe securities by my executors, shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind." -Nobel, A (source)

That's the jist of it.

Everyone knows about it but is it even that important? I mean Albert fuckin' Gore has one of these fuckin' Scandinavian trinkets so how important can it fucking be? Fuckin' Mikhail Gorbachev has one of these chachkies...what's up with that? One year the recipient was "The European Union" not even a human at all. How on earth could Albert Gore have been deserving of an award commemorating the "greatest benefit to mankind" during the 2007 season?

Look, to me it sounds like a stupid little thing but people around the earth take this thingy super cereal. So, as the power invested in me as a member of an "international court" during that one time I jury membered on Fields S. vs. Amsterdam, M. I hereby nominate to be the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace...

...The Iron Sheik.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LhqN7SFNEE)

Yeah!

Iron Sheik

A man who's name precedes him and needs no introduction of any kind. Everyone knows the Sheik, he's a living Legend, a living Champion, a living The Real. Like a Michael Jordan, or like a Muhammad Ali, he's a man who's kind is born only every five hundred years.

The Sheik's selfless acts of altruism make him the most deserving human being ever to awarded one of these Nobel Peace Prizes. Why? Firstly, some historically significant set-up is in order...

Back in the olden times, wrestling wasn't a monopoly, instead it operated in scattered factions who claimed "territories" under their respective promotional banners. There was Memphis Wrestling featuring Jerry Lawler and Andy Kaufman for example amongst many many other regions.

Eventually one regional promotion would grow so powerful that they monopolized wrestling promotion and that company was the WWF (now the WWE). How did they get so powerfully popular? So popular that they were able to unify the country under one single wrestling promotion? "Hulkamania" happened...

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xHz0Ozq5EQ)

Hulk Hogan become such a phenomenon that other regional promotions couldn't compete with this ratings grabbing behemoth of a hollywood babyface superstar. Hulkamania conquered wrestling promotion for the WWE and discounting a brief challenge by Ted Turner in the 90s...it has remained that way since.

As everyone knows for every hero there must be a villain and Hulk Hogan's explosion into Hulkamania was heavily due to the Iron Sheik. The Sheik represented the evil foreigner who defeated the 60/70s America-Boy babyface Bob Backlund and was the most hated man in America while holding the title...and it was the hollywood blonde 80s baby-face Hulk Hogan who who took the belt back from the great Sheik which launched Hogan like offa spring board into Super Stardom.

Remember this is before the monopolization of wrestling promotion and other regions were jealous of this brazen Hulk Hogan who they viewed as a body builder who didn't know a thing about fake wrestling. Many don't know that the Iron Sheik had an offer on the table from Verne Gagne in Minnesota to literally break Hulk Hogans legs as the ultimate insult to this hollywood blonde body-building jabroni. In fact, Gagne offered the Sheik hundreds of thousands of real dollars to break his jabroni-ass legs.

Nobel Peace Prize? None more deserving than he.

What would you do in that situation? I bet many of you good boys and girls are thinking, "Oh, surely the angel known as me would not have broken Hulk Hogan's legs for I am a good person" but if you're thinking that's what you'd do if faced with a similar situation then you people are full of shit. The Iron Sheik is a shooter, man. He is a man who could break your back with one of his little pinky fingers. He could have "accidentally" snapped Hogan's legs like a twig, ruined Hogan's career, went back to Minnesota to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars...and in that moment...destroy Hulkamania forever and ever.

Under those circumstances, breaking Hulk Hogan's hollywood blonde jabroni legs was obviously the most beneficial choice for him. In the present we can look to the past and see that he did not chose to do what 99.9999% of us would have done in his shoes...no, no...he chose to spare Hulk Hogan's legs and lose the fake wrestling match like he was paid to do. Why? Because he's a man of his word, he would never double cross anyone...he has a heart of the purest of gold.

With the act of choosing not to smash Hulk Hogan's leg bones into millions and millions of pieces, the Iron Sheik displayed a level of humanitarian kindness and goodwill that I believe blows all other acts of humanitarian kindness out of the water. If you could condense kindness into some sort of sap-like substance (you know like maple sap in maple trees) I bet the Iron Sheik's heart would be figuratively oozing with Kindness Sap. It's unreal how he put others before himself in that situation, and for that I believe there has never been a human more deserving of a Swedish award that commemorates goodwill.


The Official Letter

The following is a transcript of the notarized letter sent to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee by yours truly,

"The Norwegian Nobel Committee
Henrik Ibsens gate 51
0255 Oslo, NORWAY

Dear Noble Peace Prize Committee, 
Attn: Peace Division

I hereby, under the authority of acting on the jury of the legendary case of Fields, S. vs. Amsterdam, M., and thereby a member of an "international court" (i.e. a court in a nation somewhere on earth at any given time), nominate one Khosrow Vaziri AKA "The Iron Sheik" to be this or next year's Noble Peace Prize recipient.

I nominate him under the merits of that time back in 1984 that, under the guidance of his heart made of gold-like sap, he refrained from breaking one Terry Gene Bollea AKA "Hulk Hogan's" fucking legs at the Madison Square Garden in front of like a hundred thousand people.

This act of humanitarian courage should heretofore be recognized by your organization, the King of Sweden and/or the King of Norway and/or the King of Finland, and/or the Bernadotte dynast-kings of yesteryear (retro-active). If you leave this man's merits unrecognized you risk a great deal of international shame to your organization as many will question if you know what the heck you guys are doing over there.

Truthfully Yours, 
Deric W. Brazill (md) 

I threw an "md" on that shit at the end to make it look like I got some smarts, you know? I'm not really one of those.

Anyway, hopefully the Sheik gets a Nobel prize this year or next because he's obviously super-deserving of one of those things.



(End Note: This letta is OFFICIAL meaning if they fail to respond to an OFFICIAL letter then they are proclaiming to the world that they a bunch of friggin' jabronies those Scandinavians.)

Great Moments in Literature: The Evolution of "Bob Backlund"

From Howdy-Doody to Criminally Insane to Loved and Accepted, the wonderful character development of Bob Backlund is one of literature's greatest moments.

Glossary of Terms to be Used in Article:

Howdy-Doody: This was a puppet that appeared on NBC in various forms from the 1940s to the 1960s. It was "a freckle-faced boy marionette with 49 freckles, one for each state of the union" who represented polite All-American boys around the great nation of the U.S. of A.

Criminally Insane: To display behavior so anti-social and violent that the only recourse is to either jail, hospitalize, or exile the individual from society.

Love and Acceptance: The concept of an individual being welcomed and appreciated in a group of multiple individuals of varying quantity.

The Cross-Faced Chicken-Wing: An unstoppable, unbreakable, and ultimately undefendable arm-lock submission hold that if you refuse to tap-out will leave you with a fractured limb.

Bob Backlund

Who's Bob Backlund? The Double B was a pro-wrestler who was famous from 1973-1984 and then made a reemergence and was doubly famous from 1994-1997. As everyone knows pro-wrestling is a shtick and not a competition of athletics. It is governed by a rule structure referred to in the business as "kayfabe" which replaces athletic skill competition with over-the-top choreographed drama. Most of the time this "drama" is fantastically and laughably retarded but in some cases it manages to create some interesting characters and satire.

One of the earliest precepts of "kayfabe" was to maximize drama by pitting "heroes" against "villains." The terms were refered to as "baby faces" versus "heels" where a babyface is a well-liked good looking person who the crowd relates to and the heels were foreign people with strange customs who the viewing audience could not relate to. Examples of "baby faces" are Hulk Hogan whilst examples of heels are guys like Nikolai Volkoff and the Iron Sheik.

In Backlund's first incarnation he was the aforementioned baby face character. Baby faces, naturally, are relative and dependent on their environment, meaning if the audience was Japanese then the baby face would be someone like Rikidozan and the heel would be someone like the Classy Freddie Blassie. In the case of Bob Backlund, he was operating in 1970s America and to pull off this role in that environment it required being a clean cut white "boy" who was constantly draped with American flags.

American flag jacket, American flag undies, American flag singlet. That's what you needed to be the "All American Boy." They should have gave him 49 freckles on his ass to symbolize the 49 states in the union then he'd be perfect.

Many probably know that America went through a cultural revolution of sorts during the 1960s and 1970s featuring all sorts of movements from civil rights to women's rights to aboriginal rights and many others. This "All American Boy" persona did not sell as well as it used to as Americans were becoming less religious, less nationalistic and thus more adults than "boys" so to speak.

click to enlarge

This was the case in other sports as well. A famous case in baseball was in the Yankees organization where Mickey Mantle was regarded as the "All American Boy." You probably don't know that Mickey didn't exactly like being known as a "boy" and he didn't like the howdy-doody persona one bit. In a famous 1973 letter (shown to the left) when asked to speak about his favorite Yankee moment, Mantle responded that it was that one time he got head from some chick in the bullpen in right field, and he sarcastically signed the letter as "The All American Boy."

Wrestling noticed a drop in sales due to their "All American Boy" champion not drawing the crowd's support as it once did. Backlund was made to lose the belt to the Iron Sheik (who in turn lost it to the body building hollywood rockstar 80s babyface Hulk Hogan) and by the year 1984 Backlund faded out of wrestling, into obscurity, into the the no-man's land of "has-beens."

The Hokey Dokies and Howdy Doodies time in the sun was over. These rinky-dinks weren't entertaining anyone and were quickly being regarded as ultra lame by the society they were meant to be accepted by.





Reemergence and Total Character 180

Backlund was out of wrestling for a full decade before making this appearance in the squared circle in 1994,

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFwtjILNN28)

I was about 11 years old in 1994 and I saw this bit as some kind of boring little tribute to some old dinosaurs from when wrestling was super boring and stupid. Then Backlund comes out and goes on some angry vicious diatribe culminating with him putting the poor old Arnold Skaaland in the dreaded chicken wing arm-lock! What the fuck is he doing!?

The All American Boy had lost his marbles. This wasn't a one time isolated appearance either, he went on a nation wide chicken-wing RAMPAGE in which he put announcers, managers, wrestlers, fans, old dudes, and just about everyone under the sun in the divine unbreakable arm-lock. No one was safe from this mentally unstable kook and his patented chicken wing.

All-American Bow-Tie?

He wore these silly bathrobes that looked like they were made in the 1930s...he looked like a relic from a past age that was dug up by an archeologist. He still wore the American flag on his person...but as a bow tie.

The bow tie is like the encapsulation of lame, no one can look tough or bad ass in a bow tie. Yes, Bob Backlund still represented America but now he was an encapsulation of everything that was wrong with it. He was a status-quo conservative backlash that wanted to place all of society in a cross-faced chicken-wing and caste it in place so it would never change. He basically wanted to put all of America into 1930s bathrobes and force them to read the dictionary 24 hours a day.

He displayed ultra-conservative views of morality and preached that society was a mess that needed intervention. He was like a fire-brand preacher spraying ludicrous invective on anyone who would approach him, observe:

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVEyE9F-fGQ)

Bob is now the ugly side of America...he's a living embodiment of the John Birch Society. Hold up though, did you notice something in that clip above? That he's got the belt? Yeah, in 1994 Bob was once again the Champion. Yup, the megalomaniac chicken-wing madman was now the most popular wrestler on the circuit. I'll say this right now, Bob Backlund was my favorite wrestler in that era, hands down. He was entertaining as hell.

He's a criminally insane old man...but he's so darned likeable. It was so weird to watch him look at his hands (sorta like Ren used to on Ren and Stimpy) after the aftermath of a chicken wing atrocity just took place.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JdY9ZxyH64)
THANK GOD THE MACHO MAN WAS AT RINGSIDE TO SUBDUE THIS MANIAC!!

Iconoclast

Fast forward to 2012,

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58DwRdpluAs)

Look who rises up from the ashes to challenge today's heroes...it's a relic from the past. A beloved relic from the past who the fans cheer for and chant his name. Bob Backlund is an icon, maybe even a folk hero.

Is he an icon for being the rinky dinkin' howdy doodin' All America Boy? No. He's an icon for portraying a criminally insane status-quo obsessed homogenized pasteurized marauding psychopath who wants to put today's society into a permanent cross faced chicken wing.

In Conclusion

Not through patriotism did Backlund achieve love and acceptance from society...he achieved his L&A through good old fashioned satirical kookery.

So next time you see an old bastard in a bathrobe, slicking his hair back with Wild Root Cream Oil, kicking cats around, speaking in tongues, and putting random passersby into vintage submission holds...don't hate on him, just see him as a window into the past...a chilling past where everyone was crazy.