The Wizard of Oz

I wrote in the itinerary "September: The Wizard of Oz" ... and to be honest that topic was almost chosen at random just to make it a challenge for me to remember to write in this.

This is going to be a bit of a challenge... I haven't seen the film in decades and really have no clue why I wrote that the Wizard of Oz is the next Subject for Writings on Subjects (New 2 Stronger) to cover.

The main angle I was thinking of was "Things from youth that are different after you re-view them as an adult" ... and I narrowed it down to three choices...

1. Summer Rental (1985) starring John Candy
2. Waiting for Godot
3. Wizard of Oz

Summer Rental was a film I always considered as a B-rank Candy offering as opposed to his A work (Planes/Trains/Automobiles, Great Outdoors, Uncle Buck, etc. being his "A" work). I wanted to give Summer Rental a try and see why I filed it away as one of John's lesser works ... and even after re-seeing it... I don't think I was wrong ... it's a B+ Candy film if anything more than a B.

Waiting for Godot was something I didn't like at all when I watched it as a 26 year old person ... I thought it was boring, contrived, and pointless. This 36 year old version of me re-watched that ... and holy crap ... I got it about 1000% more than 26 year old me did.

In one sense, going back and watching Waiting for Godot again and comparing what 26 year old me thought of it to what 36 year old me thinks of it ... made me feel like I was a living version of one of Beckett's other works, "Krapp's Last Tape" ... which is a solitary play about this dude listening to old recordings he made on a tape recorder of what he thought of life many years ago ... and presently ruminating and lamenting them to the audience (sort of what N. MacDonald does in "Dirty Work" if you young folks are looking for something you'd be familiar with).

Me just Krapp's Last Taping out big time to Godot ... would be a good article ... but man alive, man.... it'd be too heavy. Way too heavy, man. I could probably Krapp out pretty loose for about a few thousand words for Godot but it'd be pretty heavy, guys.

If you wanna Krapp out for Godot... you guys can watch "Krapp's Last Tape", and then "Waiting for Godot" ... and you can Krapp the heck out for Godot yourselves in your own time.

So If we're not doing Summer Rental (1985) starring John Candy as this month's topic, and we're not doing Waiting for Godot... looks like we're gonna do the Wizard of Oz after all.


Sections:

1) Formula

2) Then and Now ... my view of it as a growned-up person as opposed to my view of it as a young person

3) What would a modern day version of it be?



The Wizard of Oz's Formula

Let me clue you guys in on something that ALWAYS works in writing... and that's the Four Person Journey and it is maybe the hallmark style of fiction.

I remember I closed this blog like a few years ago because I was gonna write a book and actually like try and "make it" as a writer... like a Pro Writer, you know? I was gonna do a gigantic four-person journey that would have been like eight million words. I gave up on it early because fiction is not something I am really versed in. My short story from early 2019, "The Journey", was a short 3-person Journey (with parts 3-80 left blank in case one day I do want to turn it into a full-out booky-book).

Most Pro Writers have done good 4-person Journeys. A more modern one is Stand By Me which is S. King's 4PJ where four teens wanna go see a dead guy in the forest so they embark on a life-altering adventure.

I'm surprised, after playing Final Fantasy XV the last few weeks, that "Stand by Me" is huuuge in Japan. I think the guy from "Legends of Localization" did an article on this. Stand By Me is maybe bigger in Japan than it is anywhere else. I don't think it's the formula of the movie that they wig out for... I think it's the dead body part though. There's been a lot of articles lately about this spooky forest in Japan where you can see a dead body most likely .... and that forest has been around Japan folklore for a long time... so I think the idea of four teens going on adventure just to see a dead guy is relatable-to for Japanese people. Still, the popularity of Stand By Me in Japan is slightly baffling ... maybe the localization of the film was just well-done or something.

Speaking of Final Fantasy.... that's a Four Person Journey as well. The most recent one is a total Four Person Journey with a car too. I put-off playing Final Fantasy Fifteen for a few years because I didn't think the Final Fantasy series has really lived up to its name for a good while. I think The Tenth One (FFX) was the last one I thought was good.... for the record I believe 6, 7, and 4 are the best ones. I really thought Fifteen was going to be an emo-laden snooze-festival but that is not the case... it is a great game... and even if the emo-style character designs are off-putting at first these four bros became my bros pretty quickly and by the third gas-station I felt like I KNEW these guys in real life.

The most popular of all time Four-Person Journey is probably Journey to the West. In that Chinese Epic, Sanzang must depart China and travel to India to retrieve ancient Buddhist scriptures ... and along the way makes the most unlikeliest of amigos... an out-of-control Monkey King, a lecherous Pig man, and a Swamp Monster who roils the waterways and eats travelers. It's the most well-known, epic, and at times strange Four Man Walker you're ever gonna get into.

It's so long, like millions of words, and there's some whacky stuff in Journey to the West. There's a chapter where they are at this all-women town with no dudes in it.... and Sanzang drinks a bunch of water because he's thirsty... then asks how the ladies make babies if the town has no dudes... and they say they have a special holy water that makes them get pregnant without doing any sex at all .... and Sanzang just spits out the water he's drinking and is all "OH CRAP! I'M PREGNANT!!!" ... but it's okay because Monkey King sneaks into a secret cave that has anti-pregnancy holy water to stop Sanzang's pregnancy.

I wonder if the Wizard of Oz's author one L. Frank Baum read Journey to the West. It was compiled from vocal legends into the text we read today in the 16th century... but I don't think there's a real translation of it to english until well after L. Frank's time. There is a part of Wizard of Oz that leads me to think L. Frank may have read Journey to the West somehow (maybe he could read Chinese, I don't know). The Monkeys of the Wicked Witch. She controls the out-of-control winged-monkeys with a golden cap, Sanzang controls the out-of-control Monkey King with a piece of golden head-wear entrusted to him by Guan Yin.

Gold head wear to control out-of-control monkeys. It could be a coincidence or it could be a shout out by Baum to the most epic Four-Person Walking Text of All Time.

I do feel the unlikely comrades Dorothy meets is slightly similar to Journey to the West. She meets three troubled compadres as well... a Scare Crow who feels he has no brains, a Tin Woodman who feels he has no heart, and a Cowardly Lion who thinks he lacks courage. They are not ex-criminals banished from heaven who are trying to find remorse as the compadres to Sanzang are in Journey to the West ... but they are very odd and even possibly frightening characters in their own right.

Another similarity is the main character is the "driver of the story" and in some regard is NOT the main character, per se, as the other characters have more depth. Sanzang is almost a place holder in Journey as the "Why" they have to go on this Journey... and most of the book is Monkey flying around the damned earth to bail this guy out of all the messes he gets into ... such as getting pregnant even, as mentioned above.

In Wizard, Dorothy is definitely more of a "story driver" than a main character. She's the "Why" they have to get to the Emerald City and the other characters get more depth and text/screen time devoted to them. In Baum's later Oz works, he opens his books by thanking his fans and in one he notes that from the mail he received from children... they don't like when Dorothy is not given a lot of text time in an Oz book and he vowed to make her the central character again ... it is in that sense that this "driver" worked... the children experience the text AS her... as a normal person from a normal world (Kansas in this case) who is transported to a land of imagination. The young reader doesn't view Dorothy as a character from Oz, she is from Kansas in the USA in Actual Reality. They experience the world of Oz through the "main" character of Dorothy.

In Journey, the vulnerable, innocent, and "real" Sanzang is who the reader "becomes" as they travel through the text. This "driver" main character, I feel, is another similarity between them.

This is not to say that despite a bit of over-lap that these two texts are very similar or anything. I don't think the themes, dialogue, nuances, style, or very much else is similar between Wizard of Oz and Journey to the West. They are just Four Person Travel books ... with possibly a slight shoutout here and there by Baum to Journey which is considered the gold standard of the genre.

Due to Journey not being well-known in the Americas and Europe... I'd venture to say that L. Frank Baum's four person travel text, first published in 1900, is the most well known of the Four Person Travel genre in the Western World.

Anyways, the next section will look at how young-me viewed it and how old-me now regards it. Also, the differences between the text version and film version will be highlighted as well.


Then and Now
(One important note that needs to be noted is that Young Me saw the Movie while Old Me read the book.... so there's that involved also.)

The 1939 film, the Wizard of Oz, was basically the first blockbuster movie. It was not just in full color but it was vivid as all heck. I mean, one thing I notice about other "first color" events in movies and TV is the novelty of getting to work with color was not lost on the artists of the era. If you watch TV's first big-time full-color shows like Batman (1966), or Ultra Man (1966) ... you notice very fast that they use vivid and contrasting colors out of the wazoo.... the intro to Ultra Man features paint mixing even! This 1939 film is similar to those TV color firsts in the 60s where they really got everything they could out of their chance to work with color.

I think why it was chosen for the first color film adaption of a text was because it is very colorfully written but almost using standard primary colors more than anything. The munchkins were a pale blue society, the winkies (who don't appear in the film) were a full on yellow society, and the citizens of the Emerald City were a green folk*.

The movie was an aesthetic event more than anything. It is a good movie and made the epic Four Person Journey genre hugely popular for another century... but the movie and book are not the same cup of tea, really.

As a kid, I never really learned very much from the Wizard of Oz film... it was just a cool fun movie that I knew was old and looked cool for something that was that old.

Reading the text as an adult, you pick up on the themes of it more quickly... and yes most of them are well shown in the film but in text these themes and the opinions of the writer come through more clearly.

In the film, the audience does realize that the Scarecrow was smart all along, and the Tin Woodman was a nice guy all along, and the Lion was actually pretty courageous all along... but it's not as pronounced as it is in the book.

Throughout the 1900 narrative, before they even make it to Oz, the reader picks up that these three characters are just being too hard on themselves and are over-compensating for the character flaws they perceive is wrong with themselves.

The Scare Crow from the get-go is basically the party's strategist. He is so hung-up and worried that he's not smart that he has basically devoted his entire being to overcome this perceived flaw in his person that all he tries to do in every chapter is think up ways to help his friends get out of difficult-to-manage situations.

The Tin Woodman, is so worried that he is an emotionless automaton that he does nothing all day but think of how to project himself unto the world in a manner that is perceived as being caring and full of empathy because he believes he has no heart and is deeply worried about that. As they walk he looks down at the yellow brick road to see if any ants are on it, even, so as to not step on any. He really over-compensates his behavior to mitigate his perceived weaknesses.

The Cowardly Lion, in the film is a scaredy cat but in the book he's a regular walking-on-all-fours lion's lion. He is definitely scared of the other monsters in Oz (in the book there's way more than "Lions and Tigers and Bears" in it, there's legit monsters).... and in Oz a Lion is not a big deal when there's flying monkeys and kalidahs and other fantasy monsters. In the film its not really told to the viewer that a lion is not a huge deal in the Oz universe. In the text, he's worried about monsters stronger than him, and over-exagerates his constant fear by roaring and putting on a big show. In that sense he's cowardly in the book ... but not so much as in the film where he's really a more innocent man-lion guy. In order to overcome this constant fear he never runs away from a battle in the Oz book ... he fights a gang of kalidahs (who do not appear in the film) in one chapter and those things are vicious.

Before the end of the book, you are already shown that these three characters are not flawed at all. The guy who thinks he's dumb is very smart, the guy who thinks he's heartless has more empathy than anyone, and the guy who thinks he's a coward will fight solo in outnumbered battles against tiger-headed bear monsters.

In the film, this is shown to a degree... but I find the awarding of the gimmicks to them at the end is a little forced. In the book the "You Had it All Along!" theme grows with the characters from chapter to chapter... and by a certain point of the book you know these guys got it even if they think they don't. The other portion of the awarding of the gimmick-trinkets in the film that is totally different from the text is that ... the characters kind of dig the trinkets in the movie and they feel like they've succeeded in their journey.

The BIGGEST difference in the text and film of Wizard of Oz is how big of a bozo, or a "humbug", the Wizard of Oz actually is. In the film he's a bit of a let-down but still a likeable character to some extent... but in the book.... after reading many chapters (which takes longer than watching a movie)... and finally they get to meet this guy they wanted to meet... and guess what...he's a bum! He's not even anything at all.... he's not even from Oz... he's from Omaha which is even LAMER than Kansas is!

Older me loves this book. It's a pretty shaggy dog ending... well it's not an ending in the book actually, there's a few chapters after the Oz let-down part. In the film the Used Car Salesmanhood of the Wizard of Oz is not as memorable to the viewer. The movie is really beautiful, with the colors, the music, etc... but the best part of the book is the total humbugerry of the Wizard. I think many children who grew up reading the L. Frank Baum's children books probably grew up to be adults with a great sense of humor and also a great understanding of the how Life Itself is sometimes in such bad taste and is for the most-part such a Let Down.

I'm not surprised American literature is one of society's most humor-based bodies of literature. If you take the George Ades, the Mark Twains, and the L. Frank Baums (and even to a lesser extent the Thorne Smiths and a couple others) ... you have some real Humorists here.

The Humorist is not the same thing as a Comedian. If life was a current-era video game... the Humorist is what you level up to when you gain 15,000 experience points as a Comedian and have already used another 15,000 experience points to unlock all the skill-branch tree slots in the Comedian skill set.

L. Frank is a Humorist, 100%. I don't even think there's that many, especially in now-a-times era. I really think young people in the 20th century (1900s) grew up versed in Humor from a young age. I'm not sure that's the case in present era times.

To me, the Humorist understands that Life Itself is a Big Letdown and that we have to make the best within ourselves to make light of an otherwise bland and unjust world. The Humorist has no political slant to his or hers view of the world... the Humorist makes light and humor out of the difficulties of life using mostly base-emotions and universally relatable-to themes.

Previous to recently, having only seen the film and never read the book from 1900 it was based upon, I would have never known L. Frank Baum is in the Humorist category ... If you would have asked me what the book of Wizard of Oz was like as a kid who only saw the movie, I'd probably say, it was probably just some run-of-the-mill fairy tale ... but no... this is a real Humorist text.

Anyways, we forgot a character above. We didn't look at what Dorothy was worried about and trying to over exaggerate in her understanding of herself and the world around her. That is to say, what is the "driver" of the text over-compensating for? Thus to say, the driver character of the text being the "reader" themselves. That is to say... what is the reader of the text of the Wizard of Oz trying to overcome?

To me the answer is "boredom" for the Dorothy character. She lives in Kansas at a farm of her adoptive parents (Aunty Em) and is completely bored with life. She is one day transported to a land of total imaginative excitement and adventure. This is one of the things the film gets 100% right, even better than the book does.... because her world is Black and White prior to arriving at the land of Oz in the film... which to describe how well this must have worked in 1939... the first block busting color film ... that starts out on a black and white farm in Kansas ... and then the viewer is whisked away to an aesthetic bounty of color and adventure. That's something story-telling wise and technology-advancement-wise that cannot be recreated. The first big budget color film using the theme of Dorothy/Reader's lame life and then blasting it with visual stimuli that to-that-date had never been seen before? It's a storytelling event that could only really exist once at the level that it must have worked so well in 1939.

Dorothy, the driver of the story, the eyes/ears/nose/hands of who's the reader experiences the World of Oz from... always had that imagination inside of them.... they could have "went home" whenever they wanted... whether by clicking the Ruby Slippers a number of times or just by simply closing the book and putting it down. They picked up that book and were drawn into it out of boredom, they wanted to escape to a land of interesting adventures.

Just like the the other three characters (Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, Lion) who had it in themselves the whole time... the reader had that imagination inside of themselves the entire time even if they thought they didn't ... for in the end, the Wizard of Oz, was just words written down on paper. It was the reader's own imagination that brought those words to life.



*(Note: The Emerald City in the text of Oz is such a sham that our heroes are given goggles when they enter the city which tint the world green ... the "Emerald City" in the book is actually all Pale White like a paint primer white. I'm not sure this is inferred to the viewer in the film version.)





A More Modern Version


I would still like to write a really long Four Person Journey genre of text one day... but I think as experimental with writing as I am that it would not be very similar at all to the Wizard of Oz. However, it is interesting to think of what a modern version of it would be like.

Is today's society hung up on the same relatable-to problems as society was in 1900? Is boredom really a big deal in today's fast paced, stimulus over-loaded, world? Not really.

Are people walking around scratching their heads over if they are smart-enough, or kind-enough, or courageous-enough? I guess but I'm not sure you'd classify those as the top three mental hang-ups of 2019's world.

It would be fun to think up base human emotions that create deep-seeded problems for people in today's society and think up antithesis emotions for them ... and then write a story about four people who suffer from difficulties common in today's worried brains ... but who in the end were not actually suffering from it and were simply over-compensating for perceived faults in their character.

I could think of some, but I don't know, I'm sure you can think of some of your own. What are you worried about all the time that you perceive is a deep-rooted character flaw in your own heart? Maybe you think about it so much because being the opposite of that is important to you. If that something is important to you ... and you're trying hard to overcome your personal struggles and achieve that... then maybe it's not even a character flaw at all. Who knows.


Conclusion

Those are the main themes of the Four-Person Walking-Arounder genre. Four people on a long almost-never ending quest to find "something." It is a genre that's endured for so many centuries because it's very fulfilling personally for the writer to write one, I think.

Elvis

I know you guys, the few readers I have on this thing, are saying it ... you're saying "That guy's finally bitten off a topic that's too large n' difficult for him to do." You're saying things like "Ya, his Liberace article was okay, I guess, but Elvis? No way, he can't do it. He's not good enough a writer to write about Elvis."

.... and you know something? You're probably right. I don't think I can do it. I don't think I can write about Elvis. There's some topics that are reserved for good writers, you know? Not two-bit bums like me. Topics like this are for good writers.

I can't do it. I can't write about Elvis .... and now you're all like ... "I told you so!"

Ya well, go ahead kick me while I'm down, reader! Kick me while I'm down, I don't care reader! You can knock me down! You can step on my face! You can slander my name all over the place! You can do just about ANYTHING to me, reader! But don't you .... tell me I can't Write about Elvis!

I feel it, like a hunka hunka burning soul-fire almost about to erupt in my soul! I know I can do it even if you tell me I can't! Oooooooh let's go cat! Walk the dog!

Oh you can burn my house even! I won't care! Not a bit! You can steal or even eat my car! You can drink all of my liquor from an old fruit jar! You can do anything that you wanna do ... but please ... do not tell me that I cannot Write about Elvis!

Because I .... CAN WRITE ABOUT ELVIS!

Okie dokie, so, now for your reading enjoyment I now present to you Elvis in Four Persons: An Essay about Elvis.




Elvis in Four Persons: An Essay about Elvis - Index of Contents


We shall be summarizing previous Elvis research from prominent musicians in the first Three Persons of Elvis ... and in the Final Person I shall relay to you my own personal opinion of Elvis and tell you once and for always what he was Truly the King of.

Part 1: Elvis as Philosophy

Within Part 1, the first Person of Elvis, we shall look into the Residents philosophical view of Elvis by examining their popular album, The King and Eye. A look at the King in a deeply philosophical and inward manner.

Part 2: Elvis as Entity

Within Part 2 of Elvis in Four Persons, we shall examine the Second Person of Elvis one in which Elvis is regarded as Entity, a force larger than any of us could comprehend. This section shall be highlighted by looking deeper into famed Elvis enthusiast Mojo Nixon's seminal Elvis as Entity piece entitled "Elvis is Everywhere!"

Part 3: Elvis as Friend

Within the third part we shall deconstruct Wesley Willis's famous Elvis song entitled "Elvis Presley" and witness the Third Person of Elvis ... Elvis as your Friend.

Part 4: Elvis as..... ???

Within the Final Person of Elvis, I shall summarize everything we learned about Elvis on our long-winding Elvis Journey in Essay Form and relate to you Elvis's Final Person. The Fourth Elvis.





Elvis as Philosophy


Elvis, was definitely The King... but the King of what? Some folks say he was King of Rock and Roll but then there's other Elvis Aficionados who say he was The King of Truth while others think he was the King of Happiness. I recently transcribed all the spoken word portions of The Residents' highly interesting lectures on what thy ruminate he was the King of ... and here is that transcription....

This is the Life of Elvis as presented as a children's fairy story. I find it to be not only a very nice story but also a very truthful summation of Elvis in a philosophical sense.

This Story is From the King and Eye. I'm transcribing this by ear so there may be some audible misunderstanding possibly...

"Once, there was a baby and the baby wanted to be King because kings were good and kings were strong and kings were the best of everything. Wouldya like to be a King? You would huh? Well, he worked and he worked and worked so hard to be a King and never let go of it in his mind all the time... he kept thinkin' 'I'm gunna be King, I'm gunna be King I'm gunna be King' ... and he was still a baby because really only babies can turn into Kings ...  because Kings are good and Kings are strong and Kings ae the best of Everything. So, a Stranger came and the Stranger said "follow me.... and I'll make you a King..." ... and He did, and the Baby became a King.... and for one bright shiny moment... He was Happy.

Do you know who the King is? Do you? Okay we're gonna talk about the King, but y'know, I got a question first, and maybe you guys can help me with this question, He's the King of What? The King of What? I don't know either, but, if he was the King he must have been King of something important, huh? He must've been King of Something Important.... but the King of What? "The King of Caring" ... you think so? Well caring is pretty important, hmmm, you think he could've been the King of Caring? You think so? I don't know. He didn't care very much about anything except being King, so, he must not have been King of That. You think maybe he was King of Happiness? Well, I dunno, maybe so ... but you know he really wasn't very happy so he must not have been King of That. So, I don't know, he was King of Something but King of What, I dunno. 

Everybody's got a Mommy, y'know? Everybody loves their Mommy. Do you love your Mommy? Do you? Good. Well, he loved his Mama sooo much ... he loved his Mama a lot more than anybody else. He loved his Mama so much that he turned her into a Madonna and in his mind she was Mama-Madonna. Mama-Madonna... but you know sometime sooner or later your Mama's not gonna be there and someday you're gonna have to take care of things yourself. Someday, it's a long time, but Someday. So, that's what happened to Him and he didn't know what to do ... so he went and he got a Girl ... and he Worked and he Built and he worked sooo hard to make her into a Mama-Madonna, but you know what happened? She turned into a Woman. She turned into a Woman and that's not what he wanted. That wasn't a Mama-Madonna. So .... she left.... and then He was all Alone.

We're talking about The King, and we're trying to figure out, the King of What? Well, maybe he was King of Truth. You don't think so? Yeah, you're probably right. He hid away from the Truth, y'know. He hid in the dark from the Truth so he must not have been King of That. Maybe he was King of Love. That's pretty important. Well, he was King of Something ... and I think maybe ... it was Something like Love that felt like Love.. a lot of people get confused with Love ... but what it is ... is Need. Need, yeah Need. I think that's What He Was, I think, he was the King of Need ... and I think he Needed So Much, he Needed more than anybody else. He Needed so much that he made himself a King... and I think that people Needed Him... and that's why they made him a King and that's why he made Himself a King... and I think everybody that's out there listening Needs him a lot too. They've already made him a King... and they Love him and he'll always be a King... and he'll Love Them. 

...and for one little Bright Shining Moment.....he was Happy.... because Kings were Good and Kings were Strong ... and he was The King. But, then the Stranger's Path got darker and darker... and the Baby lost his way... and the Baby got Old, and the Baby got Fat, and the Baby didn't like himself too much anymore... and he Died. Yeah, but we have to never forget that he was a Baby....

...and Babies are Good, and Babies are Strong, and Babies are the Best of Everything."  

-The King and Eye, The Residents

Long time Elvis fans know the characters in the story but if you're new to Elvis the "Stranger" is the Colonel Tom Parker, and his wife who turned out to be a woman instead of a "Momma-Madonna" was his wife Priscilla.

I think I'm still somewhat-stuck in George Ade style capitalization from that George Ade article from a few months ago. I capitalized words that I found to be importanter than others whilst transcribing this fable.

Happiness, Truth, Need ....

Elvis once said this,

“Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away."
-Elvis

He understood Truth, he knew you couldn't run from it forever. No one can run from the Truth. It's true, he wasn't The King of Truth. He did indeed hide from it at times for better or for worse.

Elvis also once said,

“I wish, I just wish, that everybody could know the same kind of happiness I’ve known from all this. I wish that, more than anything, with all my heart.”
-Elvis

 
He was definitely,  at some point, or points, of being Elvis ... he was indeed Happy... and he wanted everyone else to be Happy. He loved his fans, and his fans loved him.... which makes the Residents' conclusion on what he was the King Of interesting. They think he was the King of Need ... but not only on a one-ended sense. He needed to be loved by his fans in order to be Happy ... but his fans also needed to be loved by him to be Happy. The Residents conclude that this two-sided give-and-take style of Need is what made him a King. They needed someone to make them Happy and he needed... he needed more than anyone ... he needed endless adulation .... endless super stardom to be Happy ... and in turn this symbiotic relationship made him a King. He was 100% the King of Rock and Roll, no one doubts that, but I also tend to agree with the Residents that he was 100% also the King of Need.

A person can live a life of total solitude and of non-action. Never doin' wrong and never doin' right ... and to some that's what life is about. Just a humble, quiet, stess-free, existence of total non-action. It's when NEED is entered into the equation that the Human Life starts to deviate away from non-action. Once the Human starts Needing to be Loved by other Humans in order to be Happy ... Life starts to become a whole lot more complicated. Security starts to be less about eating and sleeping ... and starts to be more about being accepted and liked by other Humans.

Who Needed who more? Did his fans Need him more than he Needed his fans? It's probably similar. It's probably pretty equal in terms of the tug-and-war of Who Needed Who More in that regard. That's how Kings are born.. Mutual Need. Mutual Human Need.

They're right about his End too. He did get old, he did get over weight, and he probably wasn't as Happy in those days as he used to be. We are all gonna get old, we are all gonna stop liking ourselves, and we are all gonna one day have to take a long break from being alive and accept the undeniable Truth that we're all gonna take a long vacation to that Graceland in the Sky....

...but we can't forget that Elvis was a Baby. He was Young, Hip, Elvis at one point. That happened, it's not washed away just because he got Old, or because he got less Elvitical in Nature as time marched on and he was no longer his Young Elvis Self. He was Alive, and he was the King. We can't forget that. Elvis was a Baby ... and Babies are Good, and Babies are Strong, Babies are the Best of Everything ... but most importantly ... Babies are the Future.

Every child born has the potential to be a King.... even your kid. You look at 'em and think "What are they gonna grow up to Be?" ... will they be rich? Will they be handsome? Will they stay in their rooms all day and play video games ... and never bother nobody... and live a nice quiet life of non-action? Or will they Need to Need ... will they Need to be Happy? Will they Need to be a King? Who knows ... que sera sera, bubba .... que sera sera, bubba. Maybe your Baby'll break free for a while, maybe your Baby'll travel down the wrong path for a while. Maybe your Baby will Need some Fame and a little bit of adulation .... and maybe they'll get it ... and then maybe your Baby'll get old, n' fat, and ruminate over the past. Who knows.

But just like Elvis, you shouldn't forget that all Humans were Babies ... beautiful beautiful babies. When I see an old person ... I think to myself ... that old person used to be a baby.

Baby.

Truth ...
Need .........
Happiness ......................
KING .......................................
Oooooooooooold ..........................................................................

Baby.

That's the Cycle of Elvis in a philosophical sense. Truth be told that's the Human Cycle in an Everyone's Sense to most degrees of the average human life. We can't vilify any of these terms. Without Need he had no Happiness. Without Running from Truth he might have had no Need. Without that Happiness he could never ever ever have become King.... and without being a Baby he would never have ever been a Baby, baby.

He returned to Sender, his address was unkooooooown but he found how to get it Back. From Baby to Baby, baby.... he got it back. We remember all of Elvis not just the Old Elvis. We remember Young Elvis too, Baby.

That's even all I really try to do in life. To me, Return to Sender isn't a song about a Letter ... it's a song about Rememberin' and a song about trying to Find Yourself. Sometimes I feel all Old, and all Fat, just like Old Elvis and I don't always really like myself that much either just like Old Elvis didn't like himself all that much. I just wanna Return to Sender ... to Center ... I wanna find myself just like Elvis. If I gave a letter to the Postman, and he put in it in his sack, could he bring me back? Could that letter Return me to "Center"? Or will he just bring that letter right on back? Even if I sent it Special D ... could I re-find the old Me? I dunno.

This introspective Personage of Elvis is getting a little sappy ... come on Baby ... let's move on to Part Two right about now ... Elvis as.....Entity.




Elvis as Entity

"Elvis is Everywhere.
Elvis is Everything.
Elvis is Everybody.
Elvis is still the King.
 
Man-oh-Man
 
What I want you to see
Is that the Big E is
Inside of You and Me!"

YeeeeeeeeeeeeeOOOOOOOOOW!

Now we're talking, Baby. We don't gotta get all mired down and bogged down in Introspection, Baby.  Elvis? Man, Elvis is More Bigger than those thoughts that mortals weigh themselves down with! Things such as Need, n' thangs like Happiness, n' blah blah blah and whatnot and what-have-ya and psycho-babble n' foo-foo doodily doodle!

Elvis was ABOVE all of that!

Elvis was BIG, Baby! Elvis according to Elvis researcher Mojo Nixon phd. was a Perfect Being! A Being who we are all attempting to Emulate to the point that One Day ALL WILL BE ELVIS! EVERYTHING SHALL UNIFY INTO ELVISNESS! All of Humans will probably MELT and we'll become this Goo ... this BLUE SUEDE GOOOOO .... a Hunka Hunka meltin' Burnin' Human Goo ... We'll ALL MELT BABY .... and when all of humanity boils itself down to this Blue Suede Goo and becomes a Gigantic Blob ... we'll all join together as One ... as One .... as One Gigantic ELVIIIIIIIS!

Elvis is not Mortal, okay? He doesn't suffer the same trivial sufferings that we do. He doesn't get all worked up and hung up about the silly trivial things we do! He's not worrying about Need and Happiness ... and if Happiness can exist without Need ... or if Need can exist without Truth.... Elvis is a Complete Larger Entity at this point moreso than a Mortal guy like you n' me.

As Mojo says, it 'aint even Evolution. Baby ..... it is ELVIS-LUUUUUUUUUTION, BAAAAAAAAABY!

As we all melt down into transcendent energy, a slop of Human Blue Suede Goo will from one leg, and then another batch of human melty blob will form his other leg, and then a hunka hunka burnin' slop will make his body, oooh and then a sloppa sloppa slimey blop will form his arms.... and then his HEAD and his HAIR and then his SIDE-BUUUUUUURNS!

....Oooooooh you know you left me! You know you left me! You never even, ever even, said even a word, baby! Never even said a word!

But wutcha gonna do when a Seven Thousand Foot Elvis shows up at your door, baby? Wutcha gonna do when a Seven Thousand Foot Elvis of Melted Humans runs wild on your house, baby?  Seven Thousand Foot Elvis don't play by normal rules anymore, baby! He 'aint going to no Heartbreak Hotel! He's a Kanpek Chojin now! He's a melty melty hunka hunka burning robot Voltron Elvis. He don't get lonely! He 'aint going to no Motel! He is Bigger than This! He is above these common place emotions that bungle our minds down!

Perfect god-like Entities don't feel the pain of the common man. They do not feel the stress of the everyday walking individual person. Elvis is not a King! Elvis is a Larger-Than-Life BEING! He's a Perfect Super Guy!

Why do we waste so much time on deep introspection on Life and its minuscule problems when we can entrust all of our problems to a Bigger Entity that we Trust and that we know will take care of us? Help us, Elvis. Save us, Elvis .... let us all be born again in the perfectest of Elvishood and of Total Elvis Light. When I go to the Casino, Elvis, please bring me luck. Don't let me lose all my money n' my chips My Elvis. My own personal Elvis, heal me n' save me, baby. Let me get a Royal Flush on the computer poker, baby. Please?

Bring me down to a Bright Light City, Elvis. Bring me down to the Promised Land. Set my human soul on Total Fire, baby. I hope in this Promised Land up there, Elvis, that there's about a THOUSAND pretty women just waiting UP THERE! Let me play a little blackajacka poker and a bit of roulette wheel, Elvis. Give me nerves of Steel. baby. It's okay Elvis, even if I just wind up broke I will remember 'til the day I die that I had the most swingingest time! Just once, just once my Elvis..... please just lemme shout out a Seven on every single shot, baby!

Not just making money though, Elvis. Not just luck on some roulette wheel. I Need you in a bigger way than that. I need someone to talk to, someone who I can just close my eyes and say "Hey, lemme talk to you, Elvis ... I know I can trust you, baby... you're maybe the only One I can."

All those people praying? Like Mojo theorizes, they are just talking to Elvis. He's that Big, baby. Soon they'll be these old blue-haired ladies going to door-to-door with Elvis pamphlets asking you to repent your sins to the Glory and Light of All that Is. To repent your Darkness to All that Is..... Elvis.

.......... but was Elvis a ...... hmmmmmm. No he wasn't. He was just Elvis. If you're that popular and cool does your Life Cycle somehow alter to something more like:

Baby.

Truth ...
Need .........
Happiness ......................
KING .......................................
Oooooooooooold.....................................................................
Baby..............................................................................................................

Entity?

I guess.... but even this new Fire-Brand Elvitical Preacher that I have become over the last little while .... part of me harkens back to a simpler time when Elvis was just Elvis.

Yeah, yeah. I know the Adrenaline and Hope that is associated with Fire-Brand Elvangelicalism is fun and intense.... but part of me can't forget the deep burning introspective questions. Yes, Adrenaline and Hope can over-run and bulldoze over mortal qualms and deep feelings of the mortal Human Guy..... but do they really go away? Do they really melt away?

I don't know.....

Needs, Truths, Hopes, Dreams, Happiness, Getting Old, Dying........

Does it is really cover that all up, all those philosophical meanderings, through its sheer fiery intensity? For a time, I guess.

Elvis as Entity in itself does become "Bigger" than the "Questions" .... but do the Questions stop existing just because something is more Bigger than them? Well, I dunno. I dunno. What do you think? You think so? Yeah, maybe. You could be right. Maybe.

Man, Elvis's Second Personage worked for me for a while.... I was bogged down in Philosophical mud by the end of the first section of this essay and Mojo's assertion that Elvis is not in the mortal world really helped me climb above that mud..... hmmmm.... but those questions are still in the back of my mind .... like an anchor.... anchoring me down. I know Elvis is Big but is he really an Entity of that beyond-mortal nature?

Sometimes questions just lead to more questions. Sometimes, I guess, I just have this suspicious mind, baby.

It's like, it's like I just get caught in this Trap ... a trap I just cannot walk out of, baby. Why? Why can't you see what you are even doing to me when you do not believe these words that I say. This 'aint a joke, baby, I mean these words. How can we go on in this essay with such suspicious minds? How can we build our common human dreams if we are bogged down with suspicious minds?

I know you don't know me in real life.... but if you did ... and I was this Old Friend who just stopped by to say "Hello" .... Would I still see the suspicions in your eyes?

Man, all these question just make more questions. We're caught in a TRAP! A trap that I cannot even walk out! Because I........... I dunno. I dunno why, Elvis.

How do We get outta It, Elvis????

Ooooooh Elvis, we tried to burn over the questions by making you Bigger than you Were, baby. We tried to make you Larger than Ever, more Bigger than Anything .... but the questions still burned inside, my friend. They still burn inside. The loneliness, the emotions.... the reality, baby. The reality of it all is hard for us sometimes, My Elvis. Are you really an Entity, baby? I can look up to the sky, wonder why, and ask you to let me win at computer poker in Vegas, baby. I can ask you to help me outta this mental philosophical trap, baby.... but in the End, baby .... can you, even?

Oh Elvis, I'm sorry Elvis... I didn't mean to place my hopes and dreams upon your already over-burdened shoulders, baby. I didn't mean it. I'm so sorry, My Elvis. 

Forgive me, Elvis. I didn't mean it, Elvis. I know you were just trying your best, baby. I know you never wanted all these people to Need you, Elvis. I guess we are all just caught in this same never-ending loop of a trap, baby. I'm just cursed with this suspicious mind, Elvis. I can't break out. I just want Happiness, Elvis. But when I try, and I try, and I work, and I work, and I try ... I just make things worse, Elvis. Sometimes I curse this never-ending Journey, baby. I do. I really truly do.

But you know something? I understand that YOU did too, Elvis. You cursed this never-ending journey probably more than I did, my friend.

You didn't wanna be a Deity, my friend. You never wanted to be an Entity, brother. You didn't. You couldn't walk out, brother, you couldn't, daddy. Oh, baby, you Loved them too much, baby. It was a Trap. The Need, The Happiness, The Truth.... it was ... it was a TRAP.

A Trap!

Oh Elvis, forgive me, I shouldn't have placed you on such a pedestal, man. You didn't want this, man. You didn't at all, Elvis, you just wanted to be Happy. You just wanted to be our Friend......

To be Our Friend......

Elvis as Friend

We are over-thinkings things, gang. We need to De-Elvis loose a bit and see the man in a more purer window. Let's look now at Wesley Willis and his assertion on the Personage of Elvis as we begin our third portion of this Essay, here-so entitled, "Elvis as Friend."

According to Mr. Willis, W.......

"Elvis Presley was a rock star

He was the greatest
He can sing his ass off
Right on brother

ELVIS PRES-LEEEEEEEEEEEE! (x4)

He is my greatest singer
He was my kind of guy
He can really rock
He can rock this place apart

 ELVIS PRES-LEEEEEEEEEEEE! (x4)

That man can sing great
That was the tone of his voice
He can really get down
He can really get in the groove

ELVIS PRES-LEEEEEEEEEEEE! (x4)

Rock over London,

Rock on Chicago....."
-Willis, W.

Unlike our two previous Elvis Aficionados this one keeps it quite simple. Elvis, in Willisian terms, was a Rock Star, his kind of guy, and due to his tone of voice he could sing great.

He's not a philosophical fable to Wesley Willis nor a larger-than-life fantastical entity.... he's just Elvis, a cool guy who could knock it out and really tear the place apart. I tend to agree with this assertion ... though not more or less than the previous two assertions of the personage of Elvis.

Elvis in the Third Person is a simple man. He liked to sing, to rock, and from personal accounts of his friends and family ... he liked to go fishing and do common stuff any other fun-loving human of the grounded world engages in.

He was really a Real Guy. Many people met him, even. Just think of some of the people who met Elvis...

Liberace met Elvis...President Nixon met Elvis....Johnny Cash met Elvis..... James Brown met Elvis.... maybe even the person reading this even met Elvis when they were young!

He was just like a guy, you know? You could like talk to Elvis and stuff. He was just a guy who was good at singing and rocking and rolling. That's all.

He could really knock it out! He could Rock it and Roll it like a Rock and Roller! He was my man in the mix! He was my greatest singer! He was my favorite person! Rock over London and Rock on Chicago! Wheaties! BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS!

Elvis was our friend! He was just a guy like you and me! 

That is the reason why so many people say he's still Alive, they don't want to believe he's a larger than life entity or a fable... they consider him, even if they haven't ever met him, as their friend, who can't possibly ever not be with them. You know, maybe Elvis IS still alive somewhere.... just being all Old and Over-Weight and just drinking coffee and eating bacon-jam sandwiches. No one could ever actually prove he's not doing that right now. 

He might be playing cards with Bigfoot for all anyone really even actually knows for sure. People say they see Elvis to this very day ... 100% alive just Elvising around some town. Sure, maybe it was one of the ten million Elvis Impersonators that endlessly roam earth, but maybe it wasn't, maybe Elvis really is still Alive!

People want to think he was Elvis-this and Elvis-that... but we can't forget, ever, that this Elvis was just an Elvis!

We get bogged-down and muddied-out mentally by so many things now-a-times. We get philosophically hung-up on why he became who he was. Whether it by Need or Truth or attempt for Happiness. It is under this mental confabulation that we become placed under the grandest of collisions.... we try to climb out of these mental traps we create for ourselves.... and for the briefest of moments we find happiness through the Adrenaline and Hope we create through fire-brand soul-intensive assertions.... but, through it all, we just forget how Simple it all is.

There is a simpleness to Life to many extents. To Wesley Wills, unlike the Residents or Mojo Nixon, Elvis is a simpler man.... just a guy who could Rock and Sing. Is W. Willis and his interpretation of Elvis in a simpler sense any less interesting than the previous two assertions? No.

Elvis only becomes Elvis and the Elvinessness of Elvis only becomes supremely clear and apparent when all three of these Elvis researchers assertions are synthesized together to form a well-reasoned picture. 

The third personage of Elvis... Elvis as My Friend ... a super cool guy you can hang out with.... is as important to the full synthesis of Elvis as the previous two entries. Elvis as Friend, Elvis as Entity, Elvis as Philosophy ..... 

.... it is only with these three components tethered down can I tell you my own personal opinion of Elvis as Elvis in Part Four....

Elvis in the Fourth Person: Elvis as Elvis

Elvis was Elvis. He got up in the morning and went to bed at night. He was born in Tulepo, Mississippi in the year of 1935.

He joined the army in 1958 and for two years had no fun. While he was in the Army his momma passed away.... he became bored and sad .... and when he got home from the army he decided to really have some fun with the remainder of his Life....

He made some cool music, filmed some cool movies, made some more albums..... got some gum stuck to his shoes while walking down the street after missing the train.....  he slept, and ate, and stuff and lost some pocket change under couch cushions.

Elvis was a person. He was a Human Being. Yes, we need him to help us understand life, yes we even want him to be larger than it, and even with all that we just want him to be our friend... but in the end Elvis is just a Simple Human Being.

A human being who over his short time on earth sparked philosophical, meta-physical , and mundane notions about him for millions and millions of other humans right up to this very second.

He Needed Them.... and they Needed Him..... and even on a human-based Level...

...Elvis was a King.

The Fourth Elvis is The King.

Conclusion

I know they are making an Elvis bio-pic with Tom Hanks as "The Stranger", the nogoodnick Norwegian bloodsucker Colonel Tom Parker, and I have my doubts it'll be that good.

Tom Hanks has NEVER played a bad guy in a film. He's always a Good Guy. He's a mean-streaked guy at times like the coach from League of their Own where he yells at the pretty baseball ladies that there is no crying in baseball ... but he's a likeable character in the that film too.... by no means a villain.

To do Colonel Tom Parker .... Tom Hanks needs to really Heel it Loose, baby. He needs to actually want to be mean and bad... and at no point try to make the audience feel compassion for him. That Tom Parker is a bad man. He is. I know Tom Hanks is not used to audiences viewing his character-creations as Bad Guys and not liking the character. He's doing a Mr. Rogers bio-pic too now, and I know everyone will love Tom Hanks in that Mr. Rogers movie.... but....

Tom Parker is a bad bad man.... and if T. Hanks wants to play him he HAS TO BE A VILLAIN ... which is something he's never done before. We're used to liking Tom Hanks in film and it'll be hard for him to make an audience not like him on film..... it's going to be interesting to see the upcoming Elvis bio-pic.

I know no one wants to by personal choice, dislike a Tom Hanks character in a film. "Big" and "Forrest Gump" are such great movies.... but Tom Hanks, you have to mean to that Elvis in the Elvis movie.. You could even be looking at your next Oscar if you do, Mr. Hanks.

You gotta be mean to that Elvis, Tom.

Anyways, even if Tom Parker/Tom Hanks are bad n' mean in the movie we have to remember that both Tom Parker and Tom Hanks were once babies....

....and Babies are Good, and Babies are Strong, and Babies are the Best of Everything........

Yes. 


And thus Concludes Elvis in Four Persons: An Essay About Elvis 

Is AEW gonna be Big?

Okay, I'm still on a nostalgia bend to be honest with you readers. My favorite things from my halcyon youth-related days of yore were basically Sports (with a heavy tilt towards Baseball), Video Games, and Wrestling. I don't lump Wrestling in the Sports world category, I consider Wrestling, even though it is a highly athletic display of skill, out of the Sports genre and more in the performance art entertainment genre.

I'm getting back into Wrestling lately which is something I liked as a kid that I never really kept up with as time marched on. A lot of Industry Insiders and Wrestling Speculators are on the edges of their seats of late ruminating about a development in the Wrestling world... namely they are openly pondering whether the AEW (All Elite Wrestling) is going to make a splash.

They have a lot of good wrestlers, they have good methods of presenting their art to audiences, and apparently have some deep pocket funds to build a budget around. You can't really say this about any Wrestling promotion in recent memory who's not the behemoth industy-leading promotion we all know of.

Everyone is watching AEW, waiting to see if it's just another flash-in-the-pan or if it is on to something....



A Rhodes Legacy of Immense Proportions

I didn't know it was gaining the steam it was until only very recently. If I saw people talking it about on trends on social media ...I just thought it was another independent wrestling thing like the half dozen other ones out there. Then I saw something that blew me away .... big time.


Before I talk about this match, I want it to be known that I'm not a very big fan of extremely pointlessly violent wrestling. I don't understand why an entertainer needs to incur ludicrous amounts of personal human damage and suffering just to make a crowd go "Wowie!" for like 3 seconds. I really don't.

Historically it is the wrestlers who can't make fans go "Oh Wow!" in any other way who turn to needlessly hurting or bleeding all over themselves. A good example would be Captain Lou Albano who I think is a very entertaining man (both as Super Mario and as a Manager) but if you watch old clips of the Captain wrestling in the seventies ... you very quickly realize he was not really a terrific stuntman by any definition. So what did he do? He cut big huge holes in his face and bled all over the ring to make the crowd go "Wow!" which worked too but not in the same way a Bruno Sammartino could do it (by making you root for him to win) or an Andre the Giant could (by being a Human Wonder) or a Tiger Mask could (by being an acrobatic stuntman) ...  bleeding all over yourself is a pretty gruesome and exaggerated substitute when you think about it.

Hurting yourself excessively is not interesting to me either. I like guys like Mankind but I think it was guys like him that took hurting yourself to get applause by a crowd a bit too far. You really don't need to jam all your teeth into your nose just to make a crowd happy for a few minutes. You really don't have to go that far, guys. I feel extremely uneasy clapping or cheering people on who are doing this to themselves.

That being said, despite the excessive blood involved, I still will say with 100% honesty that Cody Rhodes vs. Dustin Rhodes at "Double or Nothing" was probably the most emotional match I've ever seen in Wrestling.

They had a few vignettes leading up to it, clips put on their youtube site, of the rift that had arisen between these two... and then the rift culminated in violence at Double or Nothing....  

Yes, the blood is pretty uhhhh.... bloody here. But this blood, it's telling you a story. It's the combined blood, sweat, and tears of two once-seperate but now-once-again-whole Brothers, both sons of the American Dream Dusty Rhodes ... their blood and sweat and tears of the once common bond of their Ancestor Dusty ... flowing .... and then Cody tells Dustin that he can't retire yet ... that he can't rest yet ... and with the spirit of the Dream in the AIR ... the common bond of Brotherhood is renewed! Ooooooooh.... it's too much. It's just too much for old me. I need a second, I just need a second to recoup after watching this again.

............................
..............
.....
..

Hard times. Hard times. There's always gonna be hard times. I know both of these men have seen Hard Times ... but with enough Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Trust ... they will always dig out of that hole, they will always swim back to the surface and learn to breathe again. There's still going to be Hard Times down the road for not only them but for all of us ... but I know in my heart that we will always find a way ... we will find a way to dig out, n' climb up, n' with nothing more than a deep love and trust in our hearts we can all walk past these Hard Times after Hard Times after HARD TIMES after HARD TIMES!

Now that they are a tag team, a united force, and with the triangulation of The Dream peering down from above ... can this triangulative force... this Tri-Force of a tag team possibly be bested in the squared circle? I'm not sure it can be.

Their next opponents are the Young Bucks, a brash youthful duo who are not to be taken lightly... who's high flyin' acrobatics, dynamic team work, cool outfits, and wicked tag finishers make for one of the most electric combinations in Sport.


Even if the Young Bucks wear the coolest of suits to the ring (which have included Street Fighter regalia and Elvis inspired regalia of late), even if their acrobatic tag maneuvers are both aesthetically awe-inspiring and equally physically devastating ... can they overcome a Tri-Forced Unity of Brotherhood and Ancestry bonded by the blood of previous struggles? I don't know...

.... I guess we'll have to wait for Fight for the Fallen to find out.



Kenny Omega

After being admiringly blown-actually-away by that match above... I started to look into the other athletes on the AEW roster and one that really really stands out is Kenny Omega.

I'm sure this name is severely familiar to wrestling afficiandos and the like ... but I haven't been following the wrestling world for over a good decade and he's not even on in America he's famous from Japan Proresu circles. There's a lot of good things in the Wrestling World in the last decade that are totally foreign and unbeknownst to me, it would seem.

Watching Kenny Omega matches from Japan over the last few weeks, I have to say that this guy is the complete package in Wrestling terms. He's a great stuntman, he has the look for the Wrestling World (that look that makes all the ladies go crazy!), he can be Good or Bad depending on what the situation calls for, he is incredible and synchronized with his cohort in tag team competition, and best of all ... he can do all this without really taking it super seriously ... which is a very unique ability that is usually only reserved to total stalwarts (such as Adam West).

I think along the way a lot of the actors in Wrestling start to forget that there is an inherent silliness to the art of Pro Wrestling and start to take it way too seriously. I think the most fascinating thing to me about Kenny is even though he is really a Complete Package in Wrestling proficiency all-across-the-board he is able to completely just break character and remind the audience that this is entertainment and you don't have to be taking it life-and-deathingly serious.

There's some very silly Kenny Omega matches in Japan. Very silly ones. There's one where he fights a puppet...


Personal Aside

I want to briefly interupt this section and relay to you a personal anecdote that is not related in large to the current section.


I used to make youtube videos with my friends in the day, zombie stuff, and we'd just go to a field and fool around. You start to notice when you make low budget entertainment that you need to be pretty inventive at times. If you're gonna make a short film on $0 dollars of budget ... you start to think of what you can get out of anything around you. You start squeezin' juice from turnips, bruddah.

One of the ideas I had for me and my friends to make fun but incredibly cheap youtube web-a-sodes was an idea called "Fruit Wrestling."

In my exceptional idea, the FWC (Fruit Wrestling Challenge), all we needed was some old matresses, a field, and some fruit from the grocery store. It's not hard to procure wares of this nature, you know? Now get this ... the FRUIT (actual fruits) are the Good Guys and us human actors would play the Bad Guys. We'd make some vignettes with Johnny Banana (an actual inanimate banana) where the banana would be all surrounded by ladies and being all cool ... and then we could film a short promo where one of the human actors would threaten to smash n' peel Johnny B. in the center of the ring! For the match you could have tied the banana to a string and like whipped it around and then it was incumbent upon the human actor to "Sell"* for the banana and LOSE to it.


This idea never came around to fruition, so to speak, but I think, as stupid as it sounds, it would have been funny.


(Note: "Sell" in wrestling means making an opponent's maneuver seem wicked and damaging when they preform it on you.)



Back to Kenny Omega

I was watching a Kenny Omega match in Japan the other day where he "Sold" for a puppet and it's basically what my idea of fruit wrestling was supposed to look like.

Man, Kenny can make a puppet look good in the ring, which is a skill, a skill that should actually be a prerequisite to be a Pro Wrestler. You should learn in wrestling training how to lose to a puppet.... you really should.

Those guys in those wrestling schools, who teach wrestling, should ask their flock of rookies the first day of class, "Yo, when you were a kid and wrestled your pillows in the basement ... were you ever able to LOSE to the pillow or did you just beat it up all the time?"... and any rookie who tells you that they were able to lose to the pillow should be shortlisted as having above-average Wrestling IQ.

You know who I would have LOVED to see wrestle a puppet? Mr. Perfect (Rest in Peace, My Perfect Friend)... Curt Hennig is maybe the best "Seller" of moves I ever saw. Ric Flair and Rick Rude (specifically selling the Atomic Drop in Rude's case) come to mind as well .... but man Mr. Perfect could sell those moves, man.

If you punched Mr. Perfect he was liable to do triple figure-skatin' lutzes all over the place, flop over the top turn buckle, looked dazed and disoriented for the briefest of moments, and then do it all over again. Mr. Perfect vs. A Puppet (or a banana even) could have been a "five star" match as they always say these days. I truly believe Mr. Perfect could have earned five stars losing to a puppet, 100%.

On the contrary, wrestlers who can't "Sell" are missing a valuable skill and have a huge flaw in their act. There's room on a roster for a few "impervious to pain" people ... you have a tag team like Road Warriors, a nut case like Ultimate Warrior, and a literal dead person a la Undertaker ... and that's enough impervious to pain people on a roster at any given time ... like three or four. I get it that if you punch Hawk, Animal, the literally titled ULTIMATE Warrior, and a Dead Person that they won't feel it... but once everyone starts being this character wrestling gets boring pretty fast.

The other thing in Wrestling I don't get in terms of "No Selling" is regional-specific No-Selling ... where people are like ... "Oh I won't lose a wrestling performance in Albuquerque." I see online there is a VAST tonnage of "Screwjob" videos and intense-takes and "shoots" on it ... I, to this day, have no idea why "the Screwjob" thing is a big deal. I don't.

Can you imagine a traveling theater group is going around North America doing "Hamlet" and the guy playing Hamlet's Father's Ghost one day wakes up and says ... "Hey, we're in Tucson! I don't want to die in Tucson! I have uncles here!" ... and he breaks script and doesn't die ... and then none of the other actors know what the heck to do because the play makes no sense now. The other actors are thinking ... "well now what do we do for all those ghost scenes?" ... and the guy's all "I don't care, all I know is I will not die in Tucson! I'll die and be a ghost again next week in Denver!"

Losing is surprisingly one of the biggest skills to accept and learn in wrestling. It's a performance, it's the emotion, the story, the acrobatic wicked moves, the colorful managers at ring side that make it what it is ... not if you win or lose... really. It's very different from say football or baseball where winning is everything. The storytelling in wrestling is more important than who actually wins or loses.

Kenny Omega can do it all ... and on top of all his talent he is still able to let a puppet beat him up. Someone get this man some kind of award. I was reading this guy plays Earthbound (History's greatest-most video game) once a year. That's cool. A lot of his moves are video gamed themed too. I dunno, man, this guy gets it. He really does. He gets it.

Kenny Omega is cooooooool. He's a very valuable asset on a Wrestlin' Wroster.


Conclusion

I'm weighing in with the opinion that the AEW is onto something and a lot of old fans are gonna get behind it and new fans too.

I don't think it is a gonna flash up for a few months and fizzle out. I think due to some of the financial security of the investors, the interesting personalities on the roster, and the brief glimpses of what it is going to be... that it is probably gonna have some lasting potential. When they start airing their TV show on old-school broadcasting I think it will tame down and add more reality-show elements but will still be good.

One thing I wanted to mention but forgot to is that the Updated 2019 version of Dusty Rhodes and Sweet Sapphire is about I'd say 10 million more times sexier than the 80s version. Brandi Rhodes and Cody Rhodes are going to produce some incredibly good-looking offspring if they mate, my word, and by gawd, are they ever. They're a real life couple, right? I don't think they are like a kayfabe-couple ... I think they are a real-life couple. 

I also think the competition is going to be a GOOD thing for the wrestling industry. I think we'll see some interesting developments in the wrestling world in general due to the initial hype of AEW.

I still want to make Fruit Wrestling Challenge which despite how dumb it sounds on paper it is actually very smart and good. How it plays out in my head is pretty cool. The things the human heels do to poor poor "Precise" Paul Pumpkin is virtually in the realm of the atrocious ... seeds and guts EVERYWHERE ... wait a pumpkin isn't even a fruit ... nevermind.



This article was pretty short ... I might do two this month.

Canadian Retro Shows

Alright, so I posted the current itinerary in the blog's intro portion above. As stated, we're not just gonna roll right on after Liberace and follow with Elvis.... that's heavy. It's too heavy.

Let's do some more jazzy fluff and some razzy-ma-tazzy filler to cleanse the reader's brain palette before we go Big Time with Elvis.

A few articles ago, I was talking about 80s and early 90s Nostolgia and how for people born in a very specific niche market (say 1977 to 1987) ... stuff from that era, even if just a simple commercial jingle, has the potential to really jog the mind into a nostalgia-laced adventure to the past.

I want to do one, a nostalgier, but I'm gonna add an extra caveat to make the article somewhat harder to do. I'm going to limit the choice to Canadian Content! Which makes the difficulty level for this article about 300% more harder to write ... which will then make it more funner to write.

If I did straight retro we could be here ALL DAY, gang. If I was let off the chain and just wrote about Ghostbusters, and Turtles, and Pizza Commercials from 1990 ... I could easily jam loose like 1000 words in less than twenty whole minutes. The Canadian Content Caveat not only limits the retro topics but it also, I think, makes the article more uniquer because I don't think the average retro 80s kid in the USA or elsewhere ever saw most of these "gems."

Alright so the conditions are to be from the 80s and/or early-ish 90s and it must have been aired in Canada Region.

I actually now think that some of these were seen by American audiences but not on a wide-scale. I know for sure some of the bigger Canadian Contented shows did breach the border. I think "Due South" where the Mountie (who's a very satirical version of a Canadian) teams up with a wise-cracking big city American detective to solve Can-Am connected crimes did. I know that was picked up and aired in America but I don't know as to what scale it was or if it was limited to obscure cable channels.


Let's write about what Canadian Content is first before we start:

Canadian Content, and I know this statement is going to maybe offend some people here, is basically American Content yet campier, cheesier, and with here-and-there mentions of Canadian geography or concepts (a la "Oh hey, let's go to Toronto this weekend" or "My cousin from Vancouver is coming over!")

So say you have an American thing and you want to Canadian-nize it ... It mainly involves making it cheap and campier... and mentioning a few Canadian landmarks. Let us now look at one of the first Canadian "sit-coms" entitled "The Trouble with Tracy" (circa 1971)...

This is competing with juggernauts in the USA such as All in the Family and the Jeffersons ... and what is the first thing you notice about Canada's Sitcom? It's.... it's..... funny for other reasons than the comedy. None of what the actors are doing seems like something that anyone would ever do in a situation that is comedic (i.e. a Sit-Com) ... they are doing forced bits that make very little sense.

That's not to say that all of them were cheesy... one that I liked was called "The King of Kensington" with Al Waxman ... that show was good. Even the intro shows it's good, look:

"Hey! Tikanis KING!"

That intro is fun, and the foreigners sound cool... everyone is happy and having a good time in Al Waxman's show ... and you can devise this simply from the opening. This show is a fairly rarer example of a good Canadian show. If you dig 70s sitcoms you'd like this one too. I wonder why no Ontario area rapper has never made a rap name called the "King of Kenzington" with a Z in it ... that would work as a rap name.

In modern times, now-a-days ... Canadian content varies .... there's some okay stuff like a "Corner Gas" which would be, I guess, a B- or C+ level sitcom in America ... and the most popular show now has got Eugene Levy and his son in it which is comparable to an Americanized sitcom in all forms ... it is called "Schitt's Creek" and is about these rich-wads having to live in some schitty Canadian town. Schitt's Creek is good enough to be aired in USA and probably is on some specialty streams or channels.

Anyways, now let's head into the specific time frame of Today's Article which is the 80s and talk about Canadian Shows from then!

 

Eighties Canadian Shows! 



Various Kids Shows (80s)

Let's talk about the two good ones before we make fun of all the other ones. Friendly Giant and Mr Dress Up were good shows. They hold up to others of their comparitive genre. I wouldn't classify like Captain Kangaroo as being a better show than The Friendly Giant or Mr. Dress Up ... but I wouldn't go as far as to say either of them are PeeWee's Playhouse caliber (which to this very day is the pinnacle and hallmark of Kid's Shows).

So if you are interested in 80s Canadian Kid shows that were good you can watch some The Friendly Giant or some Mr Dress Up ... The Elephant Show was okay too, I guess ... Fred Penner had his moments as well ... and some pre-80s older good ones include Johnny Jellybean and maybe the best one is The Hilarious House of Frightenstein (which had Vincent Price in it!) but let's move on to some of the more memorable ones that were way less good but more memorable for being cheap and weird.

I'm not gonna do Polka Dot Door again. I wrote on the Door a few years ago with a great paragraph, which was 100% true and 0% made-up, about how three-year-old me would literally watch Polka-Dot Door with my Big-Bird Hammer in my hand at all times just in case that 10 foot mutant monster Polkaroo exited the TV screen. I was ready for it. That monster would not get far if he came out of the screen and into to where I was. Not. Far. At. All. That puppet scared kids, man. It did.

Here's some new content for you... let's talk about Anana. Now there's a puppet that could wig kids out...

 Anana .... is not a friendly looking puppet.

Tele Francais was a show that was aimed at education and language skill precision acquisition rather than entertainment per say.... and it was fronted by a bird-beaked googly-eyed pineapple that lived in a garbage dump. I was older when I saw this so I was old enough to know that monsters can't exit the TV and murder you ... but I could imagine three year old kids being scared-to-the-bone by this thing. It's not a particularly well made puppet. That thing is no muppet, that's for sure.

The cool thing about Tele Francais though ... is they would show you this IN SCHOOL! Yes, and in the late 80s school televisions were gigantic! Not the screen but the apparatus that accompanied them. Some volunteer older kid from the media room would push in this rig that was about 7 feet high and loaded with VCRs to show the class videos ... the wheeling-in of the TV was an event in itself even if they were just going to show you a talking pineapple monster who lives in a garbage dump. Just the looks in the kids eyes when the TV rig was wheeled in was worth it ... we were all like "It's a TEEEEVEEEEE in school? Yes!" It was an EVENT ... watching TV in SCHOOL was always COOL!

The English language Canadian puppets of the era were no masterpieces either. Let's take a look at Today's Special (a show about a dept. store mannequin who would spring to life at closing time) and bear witness to some more less-than-muppet-calibre puppets:

Here we see a three-person bit where a security guard with a mop on his head, a rat, and a computer attempt to make children laugh. I'm not sure anything here is funny ... even to a small small child. I can see kids being scared by mop-man and rat-thing though. I've seen public-access American puppet shows from the 80s (David Liebe Hart style stuff) and I'd probably put Today's Special puppets in league with those shows if you're wondering what is of comparable aesthetics.

As time progressed Canadian puppets got a bit better with things like "Under the Umbrella Tree" which has better puppets but still gives off more of a David Liebe Hart puppet vibe than anything more muppet-esque. The Blue Jay puppet on Under the Umbrellla tree I'd rank as pretty decent.

The most popular kids cartoon which aired exclusively to Canada was The Raccoons ... which is a decent cartoon. To be honest though, I wouldn't place it in the top 20 even of 80s cartoons. It was okay ... but it was nothing to write home about. The writing and animation was good though ... it's not something you'd watch to laugh at, the Raccoons, was a top notch show in quality terms. The only reason I don't have the fondest of nostalgia for it is because when compared to its American or Japanese counterparts I don't think the Raccoons was close to being one of the best cartoons of the 80s not even by a long shot ... here's the intro if you are interested in what the show looked like:

I think they over-used the Burt character until he was an ad-nausea part of the show. I preferred the dog family, and the villain's son who was a nerdy character moreso than Burt who was really forced on you to like him ... he tried too hard, I think, Burt Raccoon. 

My Secret Identity (1988)

Oooooh you'll never knoooooow my Secret Iden-tity!

I would be pretty surprised if this great show didn't bleed its way into the USA and other regions globally... this show was GOOD and not just for a Canadian Show I mean GOOD by any standards.

If you're not familiar with this show imagine you took Kevin Arnold and Super Man and made them the same person. Yeah. It's a cool show.

I think it might even be the inspiration for Doogie Howser in the States ... which I will admit was a show I did not like very much. The premise to Doogie Howser was, I guess, a super smart Kevin Arnold but in the confines of reality where he had no outworldish powers ... just he was smart. I find Doogie Howser to be less-believable as a premise than My Secret Identity to be frank with you. The premise to Doogie Howser is a stretch at best and grossly negligent at worst. Can you imagine in real life you take your grandma or grandpa in to get open heart surgery and some kid walks out and pretentiously tells you "Your Grandpa's in good hands .. mine ... the hands of a pre-pubecent wunder-kid!" ... most of us would be like ... "No way, Jose!"

Jerry O'Connell was not just a smart Kevin Arnold here ... he was Super Man! He could fly! He could run fast! He could punch adults! YES!

Man, this show invaded my day dreams at school in the early 90s like no other. I'd be like in gym class playing european hand-ball or some crap ... and then boom.... day dream time! All these snake monsters, worm mutants, mecha-godzillas, and spider gremlins would just INVADE gym class ... and I'd start flying and suplexin' 'em like it was nothing ... all the girls would be like "woahhhhh" and I'd turn to everyone and be like .... "Well, I guess you all just didn't knooooooow about my Secret Iden-tity! OWWWWW!" and then gently moon-walk out of the gymnasium.

I can't be the only one that had that day dream at school ... I bet most if not all Canadian 80s Kids did. I would even venture a fairly educated guess that to Canadian 80s Kids Jerry O'Connell is much bigger than Kevin Arnold. Much bigger.




T & T (1988)

You also could have called this "Cheesy A-Team."

This time around B.A., oops I mean T.S. Turner was framed for a crime he didn't even commit but is saved by a savvy Canadian lawyer who's name also starts with T ... as to which T and T recruit a band of street smart orphans, ex-detectives, street urchins and family members to solve crimes together!

You see in the intro stuff blowing up right? So you think ... oh wow Cheesy The A Team is going to have several explosions here and there, right? No, wrong. Mr. T solves crimes with orphans more than anything and I don't think, if memory serves me right, he ever built one single sports van into a battle-mounted artillery vehicle to bust out of a cave he and his team were trapped in.

Even though it's a decent show, part of you yearns for something more as you watch it. You're thinking things like... "Oh, this is it! This is gonna be the episode I bet where George Peppard will show up portraying retired Canadian General Hawk DesJardins and he will inform T.S. Turner of a secret mission to overthrow the Guatamala Government that will require T.S. to mount a missile launcher onto a canoe!!!" 

....but no, the episode would just be like Mr. T helping one of the kids from Road to Avonlea find his dead beat dad or something.

I wish cross-overs were bigger back then. You know what would have been cool? A "My Secret Identity" and "T and T" cross over month where both shows combined. Jerry O'Connell would get into a mess he could not get out of, even with the help of Dr. Jeffcoate''s science.... and they'd hire the private investigation services of T and T ... and lo! Mr. T would trip over one of Dr. Jeff Coat's kooky experiments and re-gain the powers he had on the A-Team and MORE!

"Hey keed! I can fly!? I hate heights! I ain't gettin' on a PLANE let alone flyin' like a damned bird, SUCKAH!" 

"It's okay T.... you'll get used to it... just I like I did. I was a regular kid at school, think about I must've felt after tripping over Benjamin Jeff Coat's kooky science experiments!"

"Dang, keed. Oh well... I guess we better go stop those criminals now that we BOTH have incredible Super Powers!"

Again, that never happened on T and T.... which again makes you wonder what could have been.




The Littlest Hobo (1979)

This one creeks into the seventies but it's okay we'll let it through just as an excuse to get this song into this article....

Hmm... I'm gonna put the lyrics in Italics too...

Theres a voice, That keeps on calling me
Down the road, Thats where I'll always be
Every stop I make, I make a new friend
Can't stay for long, Just turn around
and I'm gone again

Maybe tomorrow, I'll want to settle down
Until tomorrow, I'll just keep moving on

Down this road, That never seems to end
When adventure lies just around the bend
so if you want to join me for awhile
just grab your hat, come travel light
thats hobo style

Maybe tomorrow, I'll want to settle down
Until tomorrow, The whole world is my home
so if you want to join me for awhile
just grab your hat, come travel light
thats hobo style

Theres a world just waiting to unfold
brand new tale no one has ever told
we've journeyed far but, you know it won't be long
we're almost there, and we've paid our fare with the hobo song
 
Maybe tomorrow, I'll want to settle down......
Until tomorrow, I'll just keep moving on.................

Yes, that's Hobo-Style, friends. I would rank this show's opening in the Top 10 of ANY region. This is up there with the best of the best in terms of openings not just limited to Canadian ones.

I saw a guy on Twitter last year or so have this big Canadian Content Tournament where it was head to head polls and the winner would advance to the next round .. I can't re-find it now ... I only saw it because members of the Kids in The Hall were commenting on it on Twitter. Anyways, The Littlest Hobo lost in the prelimary rounds to ... DEGRASSI HIGH!?

It was one of the most effronterous elections I had ever witnessed in the entirety of my entire life. The Little Hobo, the greatest dog, losing in the first round to Degrassi? No. No. Noooo. No.

The theme song alone for the Littlest Hobo is probably the greatest Canadian-based Content ever made ... it can't lose to a syrupy high school over-drama. If you've never seen Degrassi High it's like Saved by The Bell but if they touched on such obscene and silly topics at the drop of a dime in the corniest of methods. Like say, Screech wakes up one day and catches the AIDS ... and everyone has to learn what AIDS is for a half hour ... that's what Degrassi was. Just content that was sooooo over the top.

That guy who hangs out behind the Raptors bench and keeps them exceptionally motivated was on Degrassi, Drake, playing like a kid in a wheel chair, I think... I don't remember ... it was not a show I would watch by choice and don't remember much of it.

I am very surprised DeGrassi is so fondly remembered by Canadians to the point where it would easily defeat The Littlest Hobo in a King of the Ring style online vote. I always found it corny to the point where you'd laugh at it ... instead of beautiful and great like The Littlest Hobo was.

Teenager shows were really hit-and-miss in Canada. I wouldn't for the life of me have thought Degrassi had the fan base it did. Personally, I didn't like any of the Teenager Canada Shows. Though I do have a soft spot for the intro to Neon Rider which was a good song....

Get on up Off of them Streets!

Neon had a cool song but was aimed at a Central Canada demographic ... which means everyone has a horse on the show. Neon Rider was a guy who owned a ranch where he taught wayward deliquent teenagers how to ride horses ... it is one of a great deal of Horse Shows I can think of that have aired in Canada over the years. I think "Corner Gas" is the only show set in either Saskatchewan or Alberta where no one has a horse.

The Littlest Hobo transcended all demographics ... regional, geographical, age, everything else ... how can you not like the Hobo? He's the best. His song is the best, too. How he lost to Degrassi on an unscientific online social media tournament is so confusing for me... it really is.

Conclusion

  

Okay, So now you know what it was to be an 80s Kid .... In Canada! It must have been such an out-of-body experience for you that I will allot you a few seconds to recollect yourself.

It must have been fun to vicariously know what it was like to be a Canadian person and watch TV in the eighties! I'm sure it broadened your world view and made you feel more Wordly than you did yesterday.

Okay, bye.