Waiting For You On Fountain And Fairfax

Fire Fly With Me

“I was the color red in a world full of black and white.”

RIP Windham Rotunda “Bray Wyatt” 1987-2023

This has been a tragic week for wrestling. Yesterday, Terry Funk, a 79 year old second generation legend. Funk had a 52 year career spanning practically every promotion and continent. A first ballot Hall of Famer in every sense of the word, who even had a little sideline in Hollywood; Terry Funk was an old man who had done everything you can possibly do in wrestling and then much more. He accomplished his goals.

Today, a third generation wrestler, the son of Mike Rotunda, grandson of Blackjack Mulligan, and nephew of Barry Windham; Bray Wyatt passed away. After an electric return last fall it felt like there was either an unclear plan for his run or a creative difference between the performer and management. Following a match that was a neon splattered gimmicky promotion to sell Mountain Dew at the January Royal Rumble; Bray Wyatt once again took his leave. Rumors swirled that there were creative differences, Bray having personal issues, and even one of a prolonged illness. Today Bray Wyatt passed away of a heart attack caused by COVID-19 exacerbating existing heart problems.

Bray Wyatt, and another legacy talent - the son of Mr. Perfect, Joe Hennig made their WWE debut with the very unfortunate and puzzling ring names of “Husky Harris” and “Michael McGillicutty” respectively. The pair floundered after debuting in a big angle and returned to the developmental territories for repackaging.

Rotunda created the character Bray Wyatt, a sort of backwoods cultist who harkened to the character Max Cady in Cape Fear; portrayed by both Robert Mitchum and Robert DeNiro on screen. Wyatt also paid homage in his presentation to another Mitchum character, Reverend Harry Powell from Night of the Hunter. The character was awash in cinema; with his followers reminded attentive fans of The Last House on the Left and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Despite some fans initially heckling the repackaging with chants of “Husky Harris” when he debuted; Wyatt made a splash quickly and very soon erased the perception left by his failed first WWE tenure. Before he even had spent a year in the organization he was poised as the next generation’s supernatural, eerie badass - an elder millennial replacement to the aging, semi-retired Undertaker.

His first Wrestlemania match could not have been bigger for the character. One on one with John Cena at the 30th WrestleMania he was poised to go to the next level. Everything pointed to a Wyatt victory; after defeating The Rock at the most bought WrestleMania ever the previous year it was clear Cena was winding down and leaving his prime. He had one foot out the door for a film and television career and many fans who had grown up cheering his white meat kid friendly act had outgrown Cena.

WrestleMania 30 was held in New Orleans, clearly a town that has more in common with Wyatt than Cena. After an epic entrance with a band of plague doctors playing him to the ring as the crowd held their phone flashlights high the audience sang “He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands” cheering Wyatt to victory. Inexplicably, Cena defeated the rising star clean in the middle of the ring. This did nothing for Cena’s already sky high profile but did not seem to take all the wind out of Wyatt’s sails.

Wyatt’s popularity persisted and he marched towards a WrestleMania match with The Undertaker the next year. The Undertaker’s WrestleMania win streak had ended the year prior and if there ever was a moment for a changing of the guard it was their match at WrestleMania 31. Instead of holding that torch aloft, Bray looked up at the lights of Levi’s Stadium as The Undertaker pinned him with his signature Tombstone piledriver.

This was not the final resting place of the Wyatt character though, he captured the WWE title in 2017. This unfortunately led to a series of comically awful matches with Randy Orton and a baffling feud and then pairing with Matt Hardy.

It was clear that the character had been derailed by 2018. Wyatt was taken off TV for a prolonged absence; but soon vignettes featuring a corrupted children’s television show of evil puppets began to air. These led to Wyatt returning in a brilliant dual character; the sweater clad children’s entertainer Bray Wyatt; who hosted his Firefly Fun House; an homage to Mr Rogers’s Neighborhood, Blues Clues, and especially Pee Wee’s Playhouse (eerily hosted by the recently passed Paul Reubens.) The show would feature the puppets being sadistic to each other, Bray barely containing his rage and bitterness beneath the calm, sweater-clad veneer he put forth. Bray would work through his personal issues via bizarre skits with his cast of demented puppets. Huskus the Pig Boy was an effigy to his resentments about his debut; Mercy the Buzzard was a sly homage to Dan Spivey’s short lived Waylon Mercy character who was an antecedent of Wyatt. A devil horned muppet version of WWE chairman Vince McMahon would guest on the show.

The sweater barely strait jacked his other personality, The Fiend. A psychopath in a human flesh mask bent on torture and cruelty who could not be stopped inside the ring. The Fiend adopted Mankind’s Mandible Claw as a finisher, itself a reference to killer Samuel Sheppard.

Wyatt’s new character was unstoppable and took the WWE by storm capturing the title and minting money for the company on their merchandise site. Wyatt was back and living up to the promise of his debut. He was headed towards the Undertaker level.

Then in February 2020, in a widely derided decision, The Fiend was soundly beaten by ancient, creaky Goldberg to build to a later canceled match against Roman Reigns that was violently rejected by fans.

In March 2020 the world shut down due to the pandemic. Fans could not attend WrestleMania and we were in for a bizarre and surreal show in an empty soundstage. Wyatt was set for a rematch with John Cena for the show initially set for a football stadium in sunny Tampa Bay. If ever there was a moment for the kind of wrestler that has guitar playing plague doctors set the stage for his entrance, it was now.

The match with Cena was to be a “Firefly Fun House” match. Nobody knew what this entailed. What we were about to witness, is in my opinion, the greatest match of the 2020s. The Firefly Fun House is a beautiful expression of a “post wrestling” era we live in. By 2020 most fans who have been following wrestling for decades pay cursory attention to the modern performers and their storylines and matches in the ring. Backstage drama, old timers sniping at each other on podcasts, fan nostalgia and review shows, and twitter beefs had supplanted modern wrestling to most fans.

In a cinematic match, a new wrestling format that would become a trope of the pandemic era, Bray and the WWE created a surrealist nightmare that had more in common with a David Lynch film than a grappling bout.

Bray had an axe to grind with Cena for his disappointment when Cena poured water on his burning hot career six years earlier in New Orleans. Ever the psychological sadist, Bray crafted a dream logic nightmare for Cena to enter that makes him confront his failures, insecurities, and disappointments just like Wyatt had for Cena-related setbacks going back all the way to 2010.

It also takes us on a tour of wrestling history; using beloved totems of different generations like the “Big Blue” cage and the Smackdown fist to play mind games with us, the fans about why we love this stuff and why we care.

Cena’s iconic theme plays before the empty soundstage to an eerie and uncomfortable silence that does not belong with it. It feels so alien and wrong without explosive dueling boos and cheers. Cena walks out on the stage as a broken montage of WrestleMania 1 clips cut to Bray inside the Firefly Fun House, giving a Rod Serling introduction to the insecurities made manifest within.

“You’re about to face your most dangerous opponent yet, yourself,” Wyatt threatens with unseemly glee. Wyatt departs and Rambling Rabbit points Cena towards Wyatt’s whereabouts.

Cena enters a black room and looks around briefly until a puppet McMahon lays down a gauntlet similar to what he did for Cena way back in 2002. Cena begins on an A Christmas Carol like visit of the ghost of Cena’s past. Wyatt stages a reenactment of Cena’s debut loss to Kurt Angle; which a much older Cena responds to in his rookie ring gear. In keeping with the dream logic Cena is unable to hit Wyatt as he mocks him with a cartoon soundboard and a series of verbal potshots.

Cut to the iconic introduction of Saturday Night’s Main Event in its heyday complete with the classic “Obsession” by Animotion. Wyatt cuts a standard shouting 80s promo behind the big blue cage, introducing Cena as “Johnny Largemeat” - Cena cannot stop curling dumbells and starts maniacally thrashing them until he loses control of his arms.

We then flash to Cena reprising his early freestyle rapper character, who is cursed with a strange form of mutism where he can only speak in raps. Cena attempts to turn the tables on Wyatt verbally; but Wyatt quickly rebuttals him and changes the narrative to remind Cena of those he stepped on climbing the ranks and that it’s lonely at the top. Cena still cannot physically attack Wyatt, and his attempt gets him knocked out.

Cut to a sermonizing Wyatt, regressing to his 2014 form, revisiting the heartbreak of WrestleMania 30.

Wyatt taunts Cena to hit him with a chair, he’s unable to.

Cut to Cena and Wyatt in nWo t shirts and black jeans, a visual even more bizarre than Cena’s grand WrestleMania entrance on an empty soundstage. Cena can finally attack Wyatt and tackles him and brutalizes him with punches, until Wyatt is replaced with the Huskus puppet.

The Fiend appears in the ring, materializing behind Cena to deliver the mandible claw. The Fiend pins Cena as we show sweater Bray gleefully counting the pinfall, Did Bray right his wrong? Was Cena swayed to some sort of dark side - there are moments where it feels like Cena has become the alternate Dale Coopers from Twin Peaks The Return with character flourishes akin to the evil “Coop” and the strange, simple “Dougie.”

There is so much packed into the editing and storytelling of this match that I could not possibly do it justice. When everything has been done that you can do in a wrestling match - what’s next? Instead of a wrestling match where you wrestle, hold a “wrestling match” about wrestling.

Elvis Costello once quipped that writing about music was like dancing about architecture. I assume he doesn’t own any 33 1/3 books.

A wrestling match that replaces contesting wrestling with being about wrestling was perfect for the turn of this new decade and many years of fan ennui. At a time where fans are more curious about all the things that happen outside of the squared circle that lead to the action inside it, it was the most perfect match for the time. I recommend giving this, alongside the excellent Wyatt Family vs The Shield bout from Elimination Chamber 2014 where you also see Wyatt’s partner Luke Harper, aka Brodie Lee in action. Wyatt is pre deceased by Harper.

Sadly, that was about the peak of The Fiend character. An ill fated partnership with Alexa Bliss that never quite struck the right tone was a miss during the empty arena era. At WrestleMania 37, the first show in a year before live fans, The Fiend lost to Randy Orton in a match that was widely panned. The two third generation stars had a toxic anti-chemistry with each other and WWE kept returning to the pairing for reasons that feel like sabotage in hindsight. Wyatt was off TV for several months and shockingly released outright in the summer of that year.

After a prolonged absence and various hints at a comeback; Wyatt returned last fall at Extreme Rules in a thrilling segment to an explosive response. Sadly, the creative direction for Wyatt never found its legs. Behind the scenes it’s unclear if there was a creative struggle before Wyatt fell ill.

Bray was supposed to be the next Undertaker, and he wasn’t. He was the first, the only, and the inimitable Bray Wyatt. A backwoods preacher of doom and mayhem, a sadistic Ed Gein type killer, and a smiling, laughing, but unhinged children’s TV host. Already having demonstrated a knack for reinvention, Bray could have been many more things. He will have to be those in the imagination of the fans now.

What he did leave was important and memorable. I believe he had a Hall of Fame career, and though that claim may be controversial and contentious; that is the nature of the Wyatt character. He may have been polarizing, but everyone had an opinion on him, and not indifference; and I know wrestling fans universally feel like wrestling is suffering a tremendous loss. Even if he didn’t do something that connected with your tastes, he had something in his bag of tricks that would some day.

Blow (2001) - Ted Demme

I Am Heavy, But He’s My Brother

“Is that how would describe your job, Cliff, carrying his load?”

“Yeah, that’s about right.”

Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is a special movie to me for a lot of reasons but what I love so deeply and sincerely about this movie is the way it portrays friendship between men with such an authentic, heartfelt earnestness.

I have been blessed and cursed with a lot of things in my life but one of the biggest blessings of my life has been deep and meaningful friendships with the men who I choose as my brothers. I say choose as brothers because my brother by blood destroyed my family and broke my heart. That was almost four years ago and things have never been the same. It wasn’t too long after this film came out but the tracks were certainly being laid down.

This vague double entendre joke is made by an interviewer at the expense of one Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) because he finds nothing about his friendship, loyalty, or even second banana status behind waning television star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) uncomfortable or humiliating. He’s proud to be his friend and has a stoic’s embrace of his role.

Dalton for his part is an insecure alcoholic wreck who desperately relies on Cliff, not just for rides but affirmation, confidence, and love. Even when his flagging career takes him to Italy to make “Eye-Italian” westerns and he finds a wife; he relies on Cliff’s love to a very real and serious extent.

It’s a testament to Tarantino’s skill as a director that he was able to get these two megastars to completely bury their egos and be so giving and vulnerable to each other to tell the story of their lives. They feel like very real people, with very real problems that I would like to have a margarita with…even though there is a chance Cliff mayyyy have killed his nagging wife. I love who these two are for each other. As men we have a responsibility to our friends to care this much.

I have a friendship; and I hope that is never past tense that was this kind of brotherhood. There are elements of both Rick and Cliff to us respectively even if we may not look like these two. 17 years ago I met a man I could not love any more and I still do; and I think if I weren’t comfortably heterosexual I could never say that because I simply do not feel love like that in my romantic relationships.

We were a country mouse and city mouse, we had different socioeconomic and family situations, we were opposites on paper and completely the same in our hearts. Bonded over our obsessive lifelong love of professional wrestling, our off kilter senses of humor, and the decency, kindness, and respect we showed each other. It’s the only friendship of my life where I had never had a fight or disagreement. I’m not easy to get along with, and I’m completely estranged from my biological brother. I’ve had some friendships that long wither and crumble under the pressure of the years. But not this one, he’s a married family man but I know outside of his family and his mother and sister nobody could love him more than I do.

I’ve been through a real rough patch of the last four years. A lot of my woes self inflicted, some external. I’ve been out of work for months for the second time in three years. I’m hurting. Financially, emotionally, and spiritually.

I had an opportunity to go to an event I would have loved to have had him go to with me. It could have been something we never forgot. There was an opportunity that would let me go but not him, and I took it. I thought I could find a way to get a sign with his name on television and let him know he was there with me in my heart.

It hurt him badly; and I apologized. And I meant it. I am not sorry for going. I need to live my life forward. But hurting him hurt me, I am sorry for that. So deeply, so sincerely. If there was any way to physically include him I would have and he has to know that. I said I’m sorry and plead my case.

Since then there has been almost two weeks of radio silence between us. I am not going to add, I am not going to prod. If he wants to forgive me for how he feels I wronged him he will need to find that but damn it hurts. It hurts a lot. I love him and miss him and I can’t do this all by myself. I need my brother to carry the load, and when the shoe is on the other foot I will too. I have before and will again.

This movie presents an alternate history where the good times of a golden era continue to roll instead of ending in tragedy and heartbreak. The 2020s have been a brutal, cruel decade. A completely miserable time of plague and famine in every sense.

I turn 38 in 8 days, and frankly, all I want to do is get silly drunk and laugh my ass off and share a hug with the man I love as much as I ever could love another person. He won’t be able to see this post, but I hope he feels it’s in the universe and knows how I feel.

“When you come to the end of the line with a buddy who is more than a brother and less than a wife, getting blind drunk together is the only way to say farewell.”

“So guess what I want.”

“A new brain!”

“No. Your bike.”

Everybody on? Good! Great! Grand! Wonderful! NO YELLING ON THE BUS!

You're a mouse fighting a gorilla. Kennedy's as dead as that crab meat. The government's still breathing. You wanna line up with a dead man?