AT&T's Old House

← I might have been better off moving into my favorite Polly Pocket compact.

I still have my compact, which was found at random on the ground one sunny day in 1994.

I couldn't believe my great fortune, I had wanted that compact since I first heard the PTA make a formal complaint about it. You see, the little blue see-saw has a secret. If you place a regular Polly Pocket on the see-saw with the Fairy Polly, and then teeter her really fast, the regular Polly will be launched into the air after 7-8 teeters, making Fairy Polly the owner of a cleverly disguised catapult.

The PTA moms hated the toy, and accused Polly of being a murderous 7 year old, and a bad influence on the other kids.

So naturally, I wanted this toy.

But no store carried the little lavender compact, so imagine my surprise when not only did I find it lying on the ground, totally intact, but it came with a second, regular Polly, just the right size for launching. I'm happy to report that I still have the compact and both Pollys, despite hundreds of launchings.

Why do I bring this story up? Because most of the places I've lived in ~ just like Polly ~ feel compact, full of holes and bursting with surprises.

And just like "Regular" Polly, those "surprises" are not always fun for the surprise getter.

Since the summer, my internet has done a fantastic job of cutting out on me. When it first happened, it took the phoneline with it. because just like dial-up, DSL goes through the phone. And the wireless service in my house goes through the DSL modem box... which goes through the phone. I keep getting the feeling that for as fast as we're running with technology here, we're still not going anywhere.

So anyway, I had a few months where my landline crackled and popped. This led to oh I dunno, 100 phone calls to AT&T.

"Go online, we have the solution there."

... Gee um... if I don't have any internet... how exactly am I going to get to your website??

This always led to plenty of dead-end conversations with people ~ who had English as probably a third language.

"Yes I can see that you are having a problem. A problem is what you are having. We have established that you are having a problem. Thank you and have a good day."

HAH????

Now the phone was fixed for a while, but the internet was still popping in and out. So from the summer until yesterday, I had the internet cutting up left and right. This is inexcusable.

Every time the weather gets slightly bad, it cuts out. If someone from AT&T climbs one of the poles and plays with it, the internet kicks on just fine ~ for three hours. Then it's out again.

The wind blows ~ it cuts out.
It rains ~ it cuts out.
It snows ~ it cuts out.
A dog sneezes ~ it cuts out.

Then we started having a ton of suicidal squirrels. I don't know what their problem was, bust aside from drowning in my pool, they also kept gnawing on the line and shocking themselves to death. If you have no idea what this looks like, there's a ton of Squirrel Snuff films on YouTube, all of them with the same issue. Maybe they're coating the lines with licorice now. Who knows?

So now we're in late February, and this is still going on.

Monday, we get another tech guy to come over. Without even saying his name or badge number, he shoves his foot in the door.

"Hi! I be from AT&T. I'm here to reset your password to match what I wrote down in my book."

Suspicious much??

Wow AT&T I have no idea what you're teaching your techs lately, but you should know that your dude just passed Creepy Guy 101 with flying colors.

So Mama explains the problem, and sends the guy outside.

Couple of hours later, he says he'll be back to replace a wire. But he swears we'll have internet for the night.

... Not only did we have no such thing, he somehow managed to jack up my phone too. Perfect, now it sounds like I'm deep frying popcorn AND I can't stay online. Thanks for that. >_O

So while the phone is crackling, Mama calls AT&T, letting them hear all the static on the line. And since the landline is dropping worse than a cell phone signal at a rave party for Boeing Airplanes, this turns into repeated calls to the conglomerate.

From what little I can gather, apparently he never should have said he'd be back with a new wire ~ because that's not his job. His job is to troubleshoot internet, not mess with the wires. Great. You sent the wrong guy for the wrong job, and he's creepy too. Thanks for that.

So yesterday afternoon, AT&T sends another truck out. This time, the dude goes in through the house, and searches the property.

He comes back with a blackened cord. This is the phoneline, and it's older than my house. Here's a timeline.

Starting in 1820, my city started putting in cords and attaching them to poles, insisting that they wanted the town to be ready for the "future". At some point, the phoneline was added.

1915 my house was built around the cords, and the pre-existing phoneline was attached. Originally this was meant to be a farm house.

Sometime after 1915 but before 1920, a tub and toilet were randomly added to a room that was intended to be either a closet or a tiny bedroom. The window was kept, despite it being directly on top of the tub. The tub and toilet were only added because someone thought it would be more "fancy" to have plumbing.

Sometime during the 20's, a shower head was added, and then the room my bed is in.

Sometime after the stock market crash of 1929, all hopes of this ever becoming a true farm were lost.

At some point, an attic was kind-of built onto it. I say kinda because it's unfinished, and is actually one half of the master bedroom. You can't go in without a mask, because the floor is made of 6 beams of wood and a ton of lung slicing fiberglass, the latter of which was added when pink panther became a spokesman.

After World War 2, the electrical sockets were modified. In case you're curious, the house still has it's outdated red and yellow stick-out wires. Yay.

Then sometime in the late 90's, early 2000's, a drunk, dyslexic "handyman" named Danny bought the house from the little old lady who had lived here since birth.

Shortly after purchase, he screwed up the floor tiles, put in new stairs ~ upside down and backwards, and then turned the light switches upside down. My house is full of NO/FFO switches.

Then in 2003 a car slammed into the front of the house. A porch was added to cover up the damage.

A year later a second car slammed into the porch, prompting Danny to build a replacement porch. It's enclosed and totally hollow on the bottom.

Sometime after that, and I have no idea how this happened, he stripped the phoneline half-way, and then braided it (you read that right) with 3-4 other cords that are attached to... well nothing, actually.

The cord was then placed near a newly built vent, where there used to be a coal shaft. And then he took a nail gun and blasted the house inside and out.

I wish I had made that up, but sadly this is all true.

So AT&T replaced the old cord, refusing to let us have the antique. (I'm searching eBay for it, that thing must be worth something.) And the internet stopped kicking out.....

.... Until 5 hours ago.

I need to move.

Thank you Tommy Dreamer. ^_^ An Ode to the man from Yonkers.

NOTE: I originally wrote this on March 2, 2010 on my MySpace account. I am re-uploading this with a brand new cartoon, because Tommy Dreamer is still an inspiration to me. The wrestler from Yonkers served as a beacon of light to me during my darkest hours as a child, and I want to share this story again, in honor of his birthday. ^_^

ECW to me growing up wasn't just another wrestling company. It was hope. It was comfort. It was an hour here, two hours there that made my whole little world a better place.

Once upon a time, it was 1994. I was 7 years old and life was a daily nightmare.

As you've read briefly before, my dad moved me all over the East Coast, in pursuit of one piss-ass retail goal after another. Just one measly year earlier, I was a happy Chicago girl, who lived close to family. But my dad was never happy in Chicagoland. Always wanted more.

He worked retail for Lee-Wards, and in 1993, he was offered a choice. Stay in Chicago and be promoted next year, or move to Virginia and be promoted right now.

He chose the latter, promising to move us back in a year. All the while, he refused to let me live down how expensive my brother and I were on him, how our clothes and our food put such a damper on the family budget, and that if we didn't exist, he wouldn't “have to” move the family out to Virginia.

I didn't actually realize how much he was lying about our finances until I was 18, when I learned that a majority of the cost of living was NOT mine or my brother’s fault, but dad’s fault. Apparently he had been “entertaining” a string of other women behind Mama’s back, and had tried to pawn the financial guilt off onto Orion and I. Nice going there, pops!

So I spent almost a year in the heavily military based Virginia Beach. My dad refused to let my mother homeschool me until I was 8, so I went to a school out in Virginia Beach, which was filled with kids that resented me. The children were jealous, because I was the only little girl, whose mother loved her enough to NOT force her into every after-school program in existence, and the only girl who had BOTH parents living with her full time. Everyone else had either one or both parents working on a base somewhere. I was also picked on and teased because I was the only mixed girl in class, and the smartest one.

Not helping were my growth spurts. I was growing much faster than a normal child, and my mom had me tested for gigantism. My tests always came back negative, but I was growing at an alarming rate. (I reached my adult height at age 12. At 5’4 you wouldn’t guess that my nickname at school was “Gulliver”)

So here it was, the early Spring of 1994 (I believe March). I was pulled aside by a teacher from a class I never went to, on my way to lunch. She pulled me into the teacher’s lounge, and poked fun at me, calling me a “freak” because I was a 7 year old, and almost her size.

I cried all the way home. My mom sat me in front of the TV, handed me my favorite snack (Cheese sandwich with Maggi) and we watched wrestling together.

Wrestling has a way of making everything better. Initially that day, I watched WCW, then WWF right after, and I saw other wrestlers like The Undertaker and Giant Gonzalez (El Gigante), dealing with the same criticism I had faced in school. Seeing them cope with being different, made me feel better.

But later that week, I would stumble upon something amazing.

I don’t remember what channel this was, or even what time it was, but on a fuzzy cable channel (which NEVER came in clearly) was an oddball wrestling program called ECW.

Mama and I sat closer to the TV, until we saw the picture clear up some.

There in the ring, stood Tommy Dreamer.

Sort of lanky, with a small build frame, Dreamer looked more like the average business man next door than he did a wrestler. He wore suspenders, had somewhat of a pretty boy image when not in regular clothes, was poked fun at on a weekly basis, and at the time he was involved with a program against Jimmy Snuka ~ whom had rediscovered a love of the Indy scene.

Dreamer had trouble taking out the more experienced Jimmy Snuka, but something about this underdog wrestler held my attention. I was actually upset to see the episode end, because now… I wanted more.

While all two of my classmates who watched wrestling with their uncles were raving about Shawn Michaels’s impending match against Razor Ramon, I couldn't stop wondering what would become of this new wrestler from Yonkers, New York. I equally liked seeing Terry Funk, Sabu and Sandman, wrestlers who really didn't care what society thought of them, nor did they appreciate the rules and standards for wrestling of the day.

I didn't really care that my classmates thought I was speaking another language when I talked about these other wrestlers. By now, I was getting used to being the outsider, and at least I could gloat that I knew where the hell Yonkers is on a map, while the other kids all thought that Yonkers was a brand of popcorn snack.

It had been 9 months since I moved to Virginia by the time I had seen Dreamer. I thought that in just 3 months, I would at last be able to go home to Chicagoland. But life took an unplanned turn.

My dad’s company got swallowed whole by Michael’s, and they opted to NOT honor dad’s previous agreement. So in lieu of the agreement to go home, Michaels gave my dad three options:

A. Move to New Jersey
B. Move to Long Island
C. Move to Buffalo, New York
D. You are fired.

Yeah. Riiiiight. Now at the time, Long Island was a no-go because there was an increase in crime there. I almost moved to Buffalo, but when my mom placed a down payment on a trailer out there, she was sent her money back, because we weren't the “right” people. I’m going to let you guess what that meant. Dad getting fired (again) was clearly not an option, so with heavy reluctance, we ventured to New Jersey.

We made a trip out to Wayne, and from there Mama handed over a first month’s rent to a seedy person in upstate New Jersey. I thought we were moving to a really nice place up there. Gorgeous scenery, cute neighborhood, I didn't feel too bad about the house.

Mama, Papa, Orion and I went back to Virginia to pack everything up. As Orion and I are waiving “bye-bye” to the truck with all my stuff on board, Mama gets a phone call.

The check was being mailed back. Apparently the home owner changed her mind on that “weird Mexican looking lady” and her “odd children” moving into her pristine neighborhood. I didn't get it at first since Mama and I ARE NOT HISPANIC!!

So everything was emergency thrown into storage, and we spent the next four months living in a hotel room.

My dad and I fought over the TV, the better bed and the better blankets constantly. Not helping was his consistent flirting with the pool lady, or the endless stream of real estate agents, who NEVER freaking helped Mama, only sucked up more and more money.

But late at night, dad would pass out, so Mama and I had rule over the remote. I got to watch ECW, and up in Jersey it came in CLEAR. J

This would be the year that I would decide once and for all that ALL wrestlers must be black, because ECW (and a few of the better WWF shows) only came on during black programming blocks. 1 and 2 in the morning, I had my choice between Miss Black USA, ECW and What’s Happening’ Now.
(An UBER militant show, with a dude who wore the biggest Afro I've ever seen.)

I lived vicariously through Tommy Dreamer, who was still very much an underdog. Life just shit all over Dreamer, as he was thrown into fights with Stevie Richards, Hack Meyers and Rockin’ Rebel. But he fought through every obstacle imaginable. Watching Dreamer beat the odds every week, made me feel better.

August came mercifully, as a sweet angel named Bea found us an apartment in Wharton. Almost two weeks after I moved in, came the match heard ‘round the world. August 13, 1994. ECW Hardcore Heaven

Sandman and Tommy Dreamer locked up in a Singapore Cane Match. Sandman would go on to win the fight, but what happened after the match was what would change the world as I knew it. “August 13, 1994--Hardcore Heaven: The Sandman defeated Tommy Dreamer by DQ in a "Singapore Cane" match.” Is how some wrestling sites remember the night. But this was NO brief one liner incident.

The next day, Mama was reading the newspaper. “Outlandish! Grotesque! Dangerous!” Screamed the morning newscaster as I was eating my morning bowl of Malt-O-Meal Cocoa Roos. There were people on every channel discussing the fight on every news station, including CNN. “What about the CHILDREE~EEEN who may have been watching this fight at home? They may fling their grandfather’s canes at each other, this is imitative behavior!!” wailed an out of control analyst as she was waiving papers at a “concerned adult” in a black suit. People were aghast, there was screaming in the streets, schools were closed, busses rode on only half their wheels, riots were organized in front of public places. It was mass chaos everywhere I turned!!

And all the while, my mother sat stone faced, reading the newspaper, when suddenly she leaned over and said “Oh look Princess! Tommy and Sandman’s fight made the paper. And LOOK they got such a nice shot of him, right as Sandman struck him the third time. Awwww. ♥”

A few months passed by, and I was regretting the move to Jersey. Apperantly I was the only little girl in all of Wharton who loved Wrestling, Power Rangers, Cartoons, Anime, reading buuks wifout da purdy pitruez, and generally being good. I was the tallest girl in my class, the only mixed child in class, and I was correcting the teacher constantly ~ which is a lot more embarrassing than it sounds.

Needless to say I got my ass beat every day.

I suffered a concussion, deep spinal bruising, and nearly lost a kidney in one fight. I had a black eye and more bruises than I could count, and I spent more time in the nurse’s office than I did in class.

Making matters worse, everytime I would go shopping with Mama, we would get harassed. There were adults ~ people old enough to know better ~ strangers I didn’t even know, ridiculing Mama because of the “more than size 6” frame she had at the time, and picking on me because of my height. We both got harassed because neither of us had a “Jersey” accent (one lady kept asking me if I was from Canada) and I even dealt with people questioning Orion, who as a baby had blonde curls and blue eyes and thus didn’t look like me. (Mixed kids change colors. FYI.)

No matter where I went, I was treated less like a child and more like a monster. So if there was ever a time that I needed an underdog hero to look to, this would have been it.

Watching ECW during my “medically induced vacations” made the struggle seem less depressing. Raven and Dreamer were working a storyline that really shone a light on my life at the time.

Raven portrayed the anger I had inside. Dressed like a grunge-era rebel, he voiced all of the hurt I had in me. How society was a failure, how he couldn’t find a place in the world, so he had to carve one out. How the mainstream world as we knew it had no love for misfits and outcasts. He dealt with all the same hatred I had, and he acted it all out.

But across the ring was Tommy Dreamer. Even though Dreamer dealt with the exact same crap as Raven, he viewed the struggle as a challenge to overcome, not a reason to bemoan his fate. Every rejection from mainstream society was just one more hurdle to jump, one more reason to keep going. Dreamer’s message through his matches was that you could be a screw up, you could be an outcast, but you could still be somebody. If you were willing to fight for yourself, and anything you stand for, then you can become a champion.

I sat wide-eyed, holding my Power Ranger plushies as they fought. I wasn’t just watching a well booked storyline, I was watching Raven and Dreamer give me something I desperately needed. A voice.

Now somewhere along 94 and 95 came the crossing of the paths. This is where the story takes a surprising turn.

Mama used to order from different pizza places in the tri-state area. One such place (though I can’t remember which) had an interesting pizza boy.

This dude always came to the house EARLY with our food. He was never late and was very humble. Very polite, didn’t ask for a tip, always had his face covered with a baseball cap with the brim tipped down.

Until one night….

Mama had ordered pepperoni and mushroom and I think sausage. She barely had enough time to get the money ready when the guy showed up at the door, hot pizza in hand. So Mama went downstairs to the door, still counting change.

Mama opened the door, got the pizza and handed the man some money. He tipped his hat and started counting. “Will that be all Ma’am?”

Mama looked under the hat. “……….. Tommy? O_O Tommy….. Dreamer???”

“Will that be all ma’am?”

“You’re… Tommy Dreamer. You’re Tommy Dreamer!”

“o///o;; …… *oh shit* Um will that be all ma’am?”

“Didn’t you fight Sandman not too long ago?”

I came downstairs, wondering why it was suddenly freezing, and eager to help Mama bring in the food.

“Hey Mama! Didja need any-OHMAHGOD IT’S TOMMY DREAMER!!!” I stared up in awe as Tommy was trying not to act like this was a big deal.

Orion came downstairs. He was still in diapers and didn’t really talk yet, but wanted to help out too. He grunted through his pacifier. “Mmm Hmm Mmm mmm !!!! *Shock* Mmmm Mmmm Emmm Heemmm????” (Translation: Do you need any-!!!! Tommy Dreamer???)

As Orion and I freaked out, Tommy continued counting. Mama took a deep breath.

“……. DUDE!! Awesome match.”

Tommy smiled. “Thanks.” He soon darted off into the night. I don’t even think he had all of the money with him! (Free Pizza ish good.)

A few years later, Dreamer confirmed that he really was a pizza boy back then on the “Rise and fall of ECW set”. ^_^ Who knew that the first wrestler I would meet came right to my door, and bearing good food on top of that!

Summer of 1995, Mama was finally able to start homeschooling me. The ridicule at school was now over, but at home it was just starting up again. Dad and his branch of the family thought my mom was stupid for homeschooling me, claiming that I was now “guaranteed” to never make friends and to be a social outcast, because after all, school was there to make friends, and little more.REALLY??? :D
I laugh at this memory, every time I think about the day I graduated high school a year ahead of my peers, while I was doing pre-collage work for the hell of it. I also laugh, because my cousins on my dad’s side only have two friends a piece, and can’t even maintain relationships with each other, much less their former schoolmates.

But still, any time my dad’s family picked on me for ONCE AGAIN being the oddball, I took solace in knowing that there were other misfits right in ECW, who thumbed their noses at the “norms” of society.

I would spend the next few years on the East Coast, with ECW being my saving grace. Certainly watching people being bludgeoned with barbed wire baseball bats took the edge off of my oncoming hormones, and it made life more tolerable after hour long arguments with my dad over schooling and chores. In May of 1996, I moved to Reading, Pennsylvania, into a W.A.S.P. infested country club. Oh way to go dad, you sure know how to pick great living areas. NOT!!

I had Neo Nazi’s down the block, and W.A.S.P. elderly living across from me. Oddly enough, the Neo Nazi’s never caused me any trouble. Their worst crime? Rollerblading and skateboarding at 2 in the morning. (Oh scary.) It was their non-Nazi parents I had to worry about.

Their parents would hack into the cable on certain days of the week, because they didn't want ANYONE in their neighborhood watching “those” kinds of programs. So there was no more BET, no more Science channel, and almost nothing wrestling related.

Oh… at this point I was jonesin’ for WCW. Oh yes it DID get this bad.

I’m sorry, I like football, I like hockey, but no other sport cuts it for me than wrestling.

Mama and I used to play different games with the TV set, so we could hack back wrestling. Mama even dug out the bunny ears, just so we could see Dreamer fight Justin Credible.

PPV channels back then, did NOT go to a black screen the way they do now if you couldn't pay for something. Instead, they would let you hear the audio, but the picture would be scrambled. So if you jumped up and down hard enough, then left the remote TOTALLY alone for 20 minutes, you could get the PPV in sorta clear. So I dealt with the purple, green and static white scribbles and the blue and yellow skip patterns because dammit, Guilty as Charged was on, and I was NOT going to miss Tommy Dreamer and Justin Credible in a Stairway to Hell ladder match!

1999 came, and that May I finally moved back to Chicagoland. But by this time, most of the family I had left behind and badly wanted to see again…. Died. At the time, the few relatives I had left who lived in Chicago full time were elderly. Much of them have since passed since I moved back, and they really didn’t remember me that well. The few who are still alive have all moved away, so I came home to an empty town pretty much.

ECW was on TNN at the time, so I no longer had to worry about jumping up and down to get a picture in. But grasping ECW again just wasn't so easy.

Unbeknownst to me, TNN had started screwing around on Paul Heyman’s boys by moving ECW all over the flippin’ place. Most nights I could catch ECW at 1 in the morning, but as 2000 rolled in, the tapings came in sporadically in my area. Soon it was 1:00 am, 1:34, 2:17, even 3:45 in the morning before I could see ECW again. (Me? Sleep? Why should I?)

I really didn't know what was going on. Wrestling sites back then were such a joke, and rarely did they cover anything that wasn't WWF or WCW, and even then the “backstage news” was relegated to whatever storylines were on TV that week. So I didn't realize the problem, until a few ECW alumni started cropping up on Raw and Nitro.

Paul Heyman delivered one of the most startling, and heart wrenching shoots I’d ever heard one night. I sat up straight and paid attention. (YouTube pulled the video. Sorry!!)

I had to resist throwing up. I couldn't believe what I had just heard. It was unconscionable what TNN had done, and I hope Paul yelled “I TOLD YOU SO” at the Spike TV building the day WWE went crawling back to USA.

February 2001 came much too quickly. It had been a few weeks since I’d last seen an ECW taping and now I was beside myself, wondering what had happened. Monday came, the day after No Way Out, and my mom and I just held each other, sobbing as Paul Heyman walked to the announcer’s booth. We both knew that if Paul was here, then ECW was done.

Over the next few months, I saw many of the ECW wrestlers make their way to WWF. “Blue chippers” I heard J.R. call them. “Now it’s their time to play with the big boys!” He said boldly to Paul Heyman, just before the Invasion angle started. I watched McMahon strip down all the greats in bizarre and stupid storylines.

Raven (who used to be able to dress himself) was soon wearing gold man-skirts and tagging along with Terri as they picked on Perry Saturn’s emotions towards the ill-fated Moppy. The Dudley Boyz were now ripping each other apart because someone told them that Spike needs to break away from these bigger people. Lance Storm was barely able to keep a spot in WWF, and in under a year’s time would be seen on camera as a janitor. Justin Credible was deciding whether or not he liked holding hands with X-Pac, Taz was now spelled with two “Z’s” and was reduced to commentary status, Paul was stuck with J.R. behind the booth, and the icing on this cyanide cake was Stephanie McMahon-Helmsley-Levesque parading herself as the new “Princess” of ECW.

Excuse me. I just had to resist the urge to jam ice cold razor blades into all of my finger and toenails at that last thought.

For the next several years, I endured watching WWE make a mockery of the original ECW, and no harder did they try, then with Tommy Dreamer.

Dreamer truly is the heart and soul of ECW. He fights for everything they stood for. Honor, courage, perseverance, determination, he put up with ridiculous storylines that most wrestlers would have quit over. *Ahem* Undertaker and the chewing tobacco. On top of the craptastic storylines and the de-push after de-push after de-push, came the ignorant poo flingers behind the desk. “Oh the underdog Tommy Dreamer just doesn't have the body for the championship.” “Oh Dreamer doesn't have the look, oh Dreamer doesn't have the size we need” what the hell was this, a wrestling-WAIT “Sport’s Entertainment” company, or a gigolo pen? (Right size, right look, HOW does that help a man beat the Undertaker?)

WWE Confidential would show a less than glamorous background, when in one episode, cameras showed Bubba Ray Dudley, Spike and Tommy piling into a rental car too small for the Divas, just to make it to a WWE show on their own dime. The special showed the ECW alumni eating lettuce and carrot sticks backstage, cramming into teensy-tiny hotel rooms together, and trying to survive on LESS THAN $100 a week.

This was not a storyline. This was WWE’s second “reality” show. And the reality I saw looked very painful.

I never stopped watching. Never stopped reading the behind the scenes articles, such as the time Dreamer told a news agent that if Sabu was leaving WWE, that he would soon follow, because WWE’s version of December to Disappoint Disaster Disgust the ECW Alumni Dismember 9_9 went on to put a fowl taste in the mouths of the wrestlers who actually spent the gas money to show up early for work that day.

WWE’s new version of ECW lasted an extra 3 years longer than I thought it would. Once it became apparent that Paul as not going to be in charge of the one hour weekly show, I knew the alumni were now easy pickings.

One by one, the ECW originals were wished all the best in their future endeavors, until at last there was only Dreamer.

Dreamer was allowed a short reign as ECW champion, shortly after threatening to quit. The next few months, he just bided his time, until he got tossed into a “win or retire” storyline, with a young, naive Zach Ryder.

What could have been a classy “book this man into retirement” angle, turned into a nightmare for Zach.

Yes, Zach won over Dreamer. Yes, Zach had now retired Dreamer from WWE. But now Zach has to endure wrestling in front of silent, no-pop crowds, until he either gets fired or can somehow overcome this. Zach got screwed by WWE’s booking team, who ignorantly thought that ousting the heart of ECW would prove beneficial to the young Ryder, who was already being punished enough with that silly assed outfit.

Meanwhile, I don’t think Dreamer has ever been so happy.

In the days following his release, Dreamer got himself a Twitter and bookings galore in the Indy world.

January 23^rd, I got to see Dreamer live again at DragonGate’s Fearless. I came in early enough to see Dreamer bringing his luggage into the Congress theater, and I even spotted him with Gabe during the early part of the show.

Before I knew it, Jon Moxley was acting a fool in front of Jimmy Jacobs, and Dreamer came out to beat Moxley.

The fight went into the crowd, so naturally I ran over with my camera. Moxley’s body goes “FLADUMP” onto some chairs, just as I’m racing over. I didn't actually see Moxley as I was trying to get a good snapshot of Dreamer.

Then as I go for another shot, Dreamer puts an arm over me and says “Don’t step on the body, okay sweetie?”

So I look down. “Oh hey there IS a body here. Smiles!” So Dreamer returns to whompin’ the crap out of Moxley.

The fight goes right over to my mom and brother. Orion holds up a folding chair, yelling “HIT HIM WITH THIS!!” Dreamer says “OKAY!!”

*BAM*

Moxley does the eyerolly thing.

I don’t know if Dreamer recognized Mama as the lady who couldn't stop raving about his fight with Sandman, and I’m sure he wouldn't remember Orion and I, but it was cool to see him again. No longer is Dreamer the lanky, suspender wearing young boy I saw so many years ago. For now Dreamer is a broad shouldered legend, finally able to follow the wind and wrestle as himself.

So since I’m not sure if I’ll have the chance to say this in person, I’d like to say this here.

Dreamer, if you’re reading this, I want to say thanks.

Thank you, for giving me one hell of a fight, every time you enter a ring.

Thank you for giving my family memories they won’t forget.

And most of all thank you, for giving a little misfit child somebody to believe in.

Save Olympic Wrestling

776 B.C. in Olympia, Greece, The entity we now know as The Olympics began. The ones who started it wanted to not only honor their Gods and Goddesses, they also wanted to see who exactly was the best athlete in the world.

To both appease their Gods and to definitively decide who was the best in the world, they needed a sport that could act as a showcase for humanity's best points. A contest to show agility, smarts, speed and brute strength. Something that could captivate a restless crowd while still giving scholars something to muse over.

The prime choice of course, was wrestling. Albeit it took them until at least 706 B.C. to come up with such an obvious answer.

Wrestling began with humanity as a way to settle differences among cavemen, start and end wars, to hunt and was even used as a way to show the opposite sex the absolute best a combatant had to offer. As the Bible was being penned, it was still being used as a way to help attract mates. The stronger the wrestler was, the smarter he was in combat, the more attractive he seemed as a protector, mate and father. Without a doubt, the people behind the Olympics had chosen the best sport in the world to headline what was to become a history changing event.

While cavemen and early humans had grown comfy with the version of wrestling we have on television today (the kind that has you both grappling and using weapons on unsuspecting victims), in Greece, a freestyle form of grappling (that would evolve into Greco-Roman) was the in-thing of the day, and wound up being the focal point of the games.

Of course, wrestling has never been on the card without it's jealous naysayers. In Egypt by this point, they had already declared it "dying" or a "dead fad", having already had it as a pastime as early as 2400 B.C., but then again, nobody really paid those marks any attention, because those people were obsessed with spamming pyramid walls with cat memes.

Although, I can give them credit for inventing MoCap Wrestling:

Other detractors denounced this new form, heavy on mat grapples as an excuse to be seen lying with another man, but the Olympic committee denounced this notion as nonsense, and continued to have wrestling as a main attraction.

The Olympics continued on for several hundred years before being suppressed off and on, starting in the 300's B.C. Finally, in 1896, the games resumed like none of this ever happened, and with the exception of the games in 1900, wrestling has always been on the card, though in recent years, NBC has moved the televising of said sport to ungodly o'clock in the morning.

So considering the historical importance of wrestling to the Olympics, imagine my shock and utter disgust when it was announced today, that the Olympic committee wants to drop wrestling from their games.

... I'm sorry WHAT?

Rumored reasons give little credence to the proclamation. One rumor is that they want to start capping how many athletes can attend the games. Another states they feel wrestling is "too old" and can't connect with people in these times. But the #1 rumor is that they want to drop wrestling, because it's no longer "up to par" with the quality they want to have on these shows.

... Excuse me, quality?? Quality?? For real?? We are talking about the same committee who...

1. Allows coaches to starve teenage girls into near anorexia, stunting their growth and stopping them from finishing puberty, so their 4'7 frames can better fit the ever shrinking bars.
2. Allows coaches to work underage athletes from 2 in the morning until nearly midnight, to train for competitions that require said athlete to perform acrobatic stunts off of a beam not even the same width as a VHS tape.
3. Insists that gymnasts, ice skaters and swimmers wear skin-tight, revealing costumes in front of children.
4. Actually thinks that Golf, an event that requires you to swing a club at a tiny, white ball, and then leisurely walk or ride a cart across a stretch of land, is more of a sport than wrestling ~ where you actually DO put your body on the line.

Who exactly are they to decide what quality is?

Reality check time.

If anything, the Olympics themselves are an outdated concept that is struggling to stay relevant. Even releasing a video game series based on it, starring Sonic and Mario has done absolutely nothing to make the Olympics seem worth the 2-3 weeks they bombard television.

With that said, they need wrestling.

Yes, wrestling is as old as our species is, perhaps even older, as scientists believe that dinosaurs used wrestling as a way to hunt for food. But it speaks to a human need we still have. The need to see who really is eligible to say he/she is the best in the world.

As humans, we crave the competition, the art, the drama, the graceful athleticism. Wrestling delivers these basic human needs and desires like no other sport can. Be it Pro, Greco, Technical, Lucha, Freestyle, Sumo, Turkish, Hardcore, Arial or any other kind you can think of, Wrestling is part of the human experience. And it is a crime to think for even an instant that there is no version of it that can still hold a relevance to humanity.

And Wrestling has a passion to it, rivaling that of such great pastimes as Baseball and American-style Football. When people think about the 1996 Olympiad, they don't remember the SNES game (I have it), who won that year's skeet shooting event (you shoot guns at a disc... that's NOT a sport, that's a HOBBY) or even who won the gold for track or swimming. They remember Kurt Angle, breaking his neck while wrestling in the memory of his mentor and murdered wrestler Dave Schultz, and still somehow, some way, being able to win the gold for the United States. A boyhood dream that could easily make a theater full of muscular, American men WEEP should it become a theatrical film, and yet this is what the Olympic committee wants to leave in the dust?

And just like wrestling itself, Kurt Angle has been passionate about that day, being one of the only Olympians to keep alive the glory and rich history of the games. While you have your Olympic committee approved and praised athletes like Bruce Jenner, openly ignoring the Olympics and using their medals simply as decoration or as something to propel them into crappy reality shows and as an excuse to bully and belittle their daughters, Kurt Angle holds his medals with pride, talks about the struggles the other Olympians faced to get anywhere near the things, and he never lets himself or anyone else forget that the games hold meaning. A wrestler, a pro wrestler does this. Most Olympians do not hold their history in the same honor.

The power wrestling has is so strong, TNA and WWE are rumored to be dropping their differences for a moment, just to see to it that the sport has a fighting chance this year, as the committee makes their final decision this May. Bitter rivals, on speaking terms, even if only temporarily, just to fix the damage an out of touch committee has done.

The committee has it all wrong. We need wrestling.

We can live without the Olympics.

A Toon Makers Arrest? Sailor Moon Mystery!

November 17, 2012 I posted a blog filled with new details about the dreaded Toon Makers Sailor Moon pilot, that has dominated the nightmares of Sailormoon fans since 1994. If you want to know what Hell looks like, look no further than this video:

At the time I wrote that article, hundreds of cels from the doomed project began flooding the internet, so I started keeping a log of them on Moon Sisters, devoting an entire section of the page to Toon Makers.

But the main thing that kept bothering me was simply... why? Why are all these cels coming out right now after all these years? Is this because Toei Animation is working on a new anime? Is this because the manga has become one of Amazon's top sellers? Is it because there's new merchandise or because it's retro? And why are all these cels being sold off with non-Toon Makers cartoons, such as The Simpsons, BraveStarr, She-Ra, He-Man and Darkstalkers? And why would Toon Makers take credit for several post 1994 cartoons that the company NEVER produced??

Well six hours ago, I found a few answers.

An eBay seller posted a new picture of a pencil sketch of what would have been Queen Beryl in the ugly and rightfully doomed Toon Makers pilot:

Attached to her is a note from the seller, which is repeated for several of the other cels:

"Sailor Moon Animation Toon Makers Fox Pilot Cel Art Drawing rough Saban Queen Beryl E. These come from a Folder that is titled Project Y and Toon Makers/Fox Animation was trying to make an Live Action/Animated version of Sailor Moon for the US Market, only a pilot was made. That makes this Drawing extremely rare. This Drawing has the notation A1 on the bottom right. 

These come from the collection of a supervising animation producer Raymond Iacovacci whom worked for DIC Star Com, Film Roman on the Simpsons, Warner Brothers on Rover Dangerfield Graz on Darkstalkers, TMS on Little Nemo, Toon Makers/Fox Sailor Moon Live Action/animated American series Pilot and Sunshine on Street Fighter 2."

Raymond Iacovacci is listed as a key member to Toon Makers. But until this moment, I knew absolutely nothing about him at all. So i decided to do a little snooping.

The first place i found with any kind of completed data on him was the Tampa Bay Times. Clearly proud to have someone of this level speaking to them, they ran a full article, that to this day provides much more in-depth and human information on him than his IMDB profile:

"Profile: Raymond Iacovacci

Director, producer, production manager, Tri-Dimensional Studios, Tampa

By FRED WRIGHT
Published August 7, 2006

---

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

2001-present: Animation supervisor, director, producer, production manager, Wildfire Inc., Manila, Philippines.

2004-2005: Production manager, Toon City, Manila. Worked on Fox and the Hound for Disney Studios. Also worked for Isaac Shepherd Productions in Los Angeles.

1990-present: Toon Makers Inc., Los Angeles, Manila and Seoul, South Korea. Director, producer, production manager, overseas supervisor.

1998-1999: RICH Entertain-ment, Seoul. Overseas animation supervisor, production manager, The King and I for Warner Brothers, The Scarecrow for Warner Bros., Trumpet of the Swan for Columbia TriStar.

1992-1994: Film Roman Inc., Los Angeles. Production manager, The Simpsons.

1990-1991: Hyperion Animation Co., Los Angeles. Studio production supervisor, Bebe's Kids for Paramount Pictures and Rover Dangerfield for Warner Bros.

1989-1990: TMS animation, Los Angeles. Office manager, production coordinator, Little Nemo.

1987-1989: DIC Animation City, Los Angeles. Production coordinator, Ghostbusters; Dennis the Menace; Hello, Kitty; Barbie and the Rockers; Heathcliff; and The Little Archies.

PREVIOUS POSITION: Writer, director, producer, Empire Motion Pictures, Manila, Philippines

Raymond Iacovacci has had a very animated life, and his love for animated motion pictures has taken him to exotic locations around the world. Now he's in Tampa, taking on a role as director, producer and production manager for the final series of half-hour episodes of an animated children's TV series.

His new duties at Tri-Dimensional Studios are focused on Story Teller Cafe, a series that will begin airing on the Christian Broadcasting Network in 2007, Iacovacci said.

"This TV series that we're doing seemed so valid to me," he said. "It's a children's series where toys come alive at night in a cafe ... and they act out Bible stories."

Iacovacci has worked on a number of popular animated films and TV shows, from Street Fighter to The Simpsons. He has lived in the Far East for most of his career since 1993, and he has a home in the Philippines.

The series has been plotted out in a series of scenes. Iacovacci has the job of overseeing the computer-generated animation at Tri-Dimensional.

"A half-hour episode can generally take six months, sometimes more," to animate, Iacovacci said, "depending on the complexity. Animation is departmental. The series has to flow down the departmental river, and it can only go so quickly with X amount of people."

Iacovacci has other projects at Tri-Dimensional and other clients for which he writes and produces animation. There can be five to 10 projects under way at a time, he said, and the studio also generates architectural renderings for clients.

"I've got my hands in every aspect of it," he said. "I oversee the team of artists. I make sure the work is up to snuff."

Born and raised in Syracuse, N.Y., Iacovacci said animation "has been a lifelong career. When I was a child, I wanted to get into television and animation. When I was a teenager, I moved to Hollywood and studied voiceovers. And then I just went ahead and got a job at an animation studio."

Iacovacci soon found himself learning the production skills required for animated films and TV episodes, working for production houses in the United States and overseas. "I wanted to supervise the animation," he said.

As a result, he worked on American films that used animation facilities in South Korea, the Philippines and other Far East countries. Many times, Iacovacci would work on more than one project in more than one studio.

Even though he lives most of the year in Tampa, Iacovacci said he is simultaneously involved in animation projects in Australia and the Philippines. His company, Empire Motion Pictures, is incorporated in Florida and he has offices in Manila, Los Angeles and Sydney. His company also has live-action projects.

"I see myself dividing my time 50-50, having a home in Tampa and retaining my home in Manila," he said. "The weather is real similar to Florida, a little more humid. When I came here, I was kind of relieved. It's cooler and more pleasant."

Iacovacci, 44, is single. In his spare time, he likes to visit garage sales for antiques from the 1930s and '40s, something hard to do in the Philippines, he said.

"There are no garage sales in the Philippines," he said. "People tend to hang on to their belongings.""

Wow, sounds like a fun story right? 

Well I was still curious. This article is from 2006. What has he done lately? Has he moved onto feature films? CGI animations? Direct-to-DVD? Children's Books? Surely someone with this background must be in Hollywood, right?

Wrong.

Apparently in May of last year, he was arrested for battery. A record for him is available online. Initially, an internet rumor tied him to a girlfriend beating issue, but the report lists this as an issue between himself and another man. Arrests.org lists the incident as "Sealed or Expunged" with a note to the webmaster to remove the piece, but the notice was not posted until after Raymond Iacovacci argued with a stranger who commented on the arrest. (Why is there a comment board for arrest records?? This ain't YouTube!)

Now whether or not you believe him, this still means court costs either way.

Which means that during this time, plenty of things became public.

Which leads me to a little storage room in California.

For years, cels and other goods that Raymond Iacovacci stayed in a storage unit in California, virtually untouched. But last Fall, all of the items inside that unit became public. Since the sellers are all different people, it's highly unlikely that he's selling them all on his own, or they would be going for a far higher price.

It could mean either that he's allowed the unit to be sold off, or someone has repossessed and auctioned it all off. The TV show Storage Wars comes to mind.

Either way, this is a sad chapter in the sordid history of Toon Makers, and in American Animation on a whole.

Professionals email back. Posers don't.

You know what makes you look professional? Actually emailing people back within the same week they emailed you.

Email is free. There's no excuse not to do this. Email also takes no time at all to complete, as there are small children doing it every day with their eyes closed.

You know what else makes you look professional? Giving people immediate "yes" or "no thank you" answers.

And yet so many businesses ~ even the ones covered by Forbes magazine ~ don't feel the need to do any such thing.

They put out long winded job listings, using at least 15 buzz words and terms to describe a mundane position, offer you a salary worth less than the poverty line (which is at $20,000 per year here) and then they don't even have the common courtesy to call or email you back when you apply for work.

On occasion, they'll email you a horridly misspelled text or email that says "I'll git bak to u" and of course, that's code for "I will never email you again". It's pitiful.

You wouldn't accept that out of your best friend, so why should you accept it from a business? What, are you chicken enough to think that because they have money they should automatically get a free pass? Of course you are not, you expect better than this, and logically that is what you should receive. Better.

We hear every day in the news that these businesses (such as Walmart & even privately owned companies) are "constantly" creating more jobs, but you'd never know that just by actually seeing their stores.

Take a look at this meme. As true and funny as it is, it's also the main problem with most of the businesses in this country. 45 checkout lanes tells me that Walmart can easily send out 45 cashiers, one for each lane. At large grocery stores which also produce between 8-20 lanes, they require extra people to bag the groceries. So if you have 20 lanes and 20 cashiers, you'd also need 20 baggers, making a grand total of 40 people working all at one time. Most of these stores can afford that and more with great ease, and yet they choose not to. So instead of employing 40+ people to work all the lanes at one time, they only send out 4. Inexcusable  considering that the average bagger or cashier working full time still makes less than the poverty line. ($7.45 an hour does not help me to pay all my house bills AND allow me to save up.)

When you apply for the job seen here, you're almost guaranteed not to ever hear from Walmart ever again. And like I stated, IF they hire you, you'll be making less than the poverty line. You won't be able to afford rent, bills or even be able to save up. And yet they expect that of you, even with less than a Teacher's salary:

But expect this they do.

They also expect you to look as "Leave it to Beaver" acceptable as possible. No Tats, no piercings, no wild hairstyles, and of course, they want you to wear their uniform ~ but on YOUR dime.

And yet they can't be bothered to pick up a phone and call you back??

They can't be bothered to email you a basic "yes we'll hire you" or a "no, thank you" ~ which a child can tweet out in about 10 seconds.

But "we" are the unprofessional ones.

Riiiiight.