The Lost Weekend

• So.
• Thursday the Net was just being uppity, Friday it continued to be this way. Thus, my Barometer post went up around dinner time instead of lunch. But by that time, I was already out of the house.
  I'd been looking forward to seeing Jesus Is Magic ever since I'd seen the trailer during the leadup to the Aristocrats. Part of it is because Sarah Silverman's hot, and part of it is because she seems to be one of the few-standups left who works blue to make a point instead of working blue because Richard broke the door down. So I went to see it, and it was probably the funniest movie I'd seen all year. It's a limited release, so if you can, hurry up and go. I think the birth control line's worth $7 on it's own, and in the hour and a half you should find some other joke or 37 to make up the difference from there. Plus, the hot mirror scene at the end, which went from ha-ha funny to ha-ha-uh-oh real fast.
• Get home. Modem doesn't work at all, apparently. Replacement tomorrow. All right, fine.
• Pay some of my big-ass cell bill with my pissant check. Go to work. Natalie, as I write this, is still a road apple. If I'd known that would've been the result I wouldn't've paid. What good is text if you can't get any? Come home and find out they couldn't change it out, so someone's coming (today). Had I been on on Saturday, you would've seen this at some point:

THANKS, THAT WAS FUN:
"Play" (11)
"Brand New" (13)
"Unbreakable" (15)

15) Green Day ¤ Wake Me Up When September Ends (9)
14) Chris Brown feat. Juelz Santana ¤ Run It (debut)
13) Ying Yang Twins feat. Pitbull ¤ Shake (12)
12) Fall Out Boy ¤ Dance, Dance (debut)
11) 50 Cent feat. Mobb Deep ¤ Outta Control (4)

10) Franz Ferdinand ¤ Do You Want To (7)
09) Coldplay ¤ Fix You (10)
08) Common ¤ Testify (8)*
07) All-American Rejects ¤ Dirty Little Secret (14)*
06) the White Stripes ¤ My Doorbell (2)

05) Black Eyed Peas ¤ My Humps (5)
04) 50 Cent ¤ Hustler's Ambition (debut)

03) Pharrell feat. Gwen Stefani ¤ Can I Have It Like That (6)*

02) Juelz Santana ¤ There It Go [The Whistle Song] (3)*

01) Kanye West feat. Jamie Foxx ¤ Gold Digger (1) [3m]

• What's making things more frustrating is between my cold and everybody off for the 3-day weekend, I can't get into a zone where I can write something, anything for the novel. I can't come up with some necessary bridge to get me into February, even though I do have some options. I literally sat here Saturday night for 45 minutes. Thought of stuff, subplot ideas. Chucked the lot.
• Yesterday I walked around, and that actually helped a bit to get ideas. Was able to finish out the month, at any rate. I think one thing I think I like the Internet over TV--especially on weekends--is everything replays forever on TV. I was flipping the dials, looking for something to watch. (It was the hope something seen on TV would spark me to get something else down, but instead it just reaffirmed Eva Longoria is hot and Veronica Mars is a good show. Nice, TV. Nice.) I saw Eddy Guerrero, and thought maybe Telemundo had rerun SmackDown. Since I'd missed it going to see JiM, I was psyched.
  

Then I saw it was the news station.

The last wrestler I saw on the news was Owen Hart.

I've been watching that cursor blink for 3 minutes trying to get my head right. It's why I'm not watching RAW right now--the last time I cried before the terrorists was RAW is OWEN and I'd much rather not have history repeat itself. I keep thinking maybe I can unlearn what I know, that maybe if I don't watch, Eddy will be all right. I know it's wrong. I still hope I'm right.

What it is, is that Eddy Guerrero was a perfect wrestler.

I love watching Samoa Joe hit the shit out of people. I hope I never hear him talk. It'd sort of ruin things for me.

I love watching Monty Brown cut a promo. Oh, sure, it's bingo: Alpha Male Serengeti POOOUUUUUUUNNNNNNCEEEEEEE....period. I don't want to see him wrestle a match longer than 2 minutes.

Eddy...

Eddy was a whole different story. Eddy would make you care about the match. Then he'd go out and put out a good one. If you were lucky, it'd be a great one.

It didn't matter which side of the coin Eddy was on, either. In fact, towards...what's the end. Shit. Jesus. Towards the end he was working with Batista. The plan was originally for Eddy to play babyface and turn even more dickish heel. There was only one problem: nobody wanted to boo Eddy Guerrero. So they remained an Odd Couple tag team. In fact, Eddie might've been set to win the injured Batista's title last night due to the big man's injury.

Who knows. Who can say.

Eddy was so popular he had to pick on the smallest wrestler on the roster and go after his family to get jeered. And that was only by most--people still cheered, anyway. It was Eddy, for god's sakes. What sort of self-respecting fan who thinks independently is going to boo a wrestling god like Eddy Guerrero?

It started with one simple, shirt-friendly motto.

Lie, Cheat, and Steal: It's A Family Tradition.

So he and his cousin Chavo--before he became that thing that he is now--did. They did all 3 of these things. A funny thing happened on the way to heel heaven: the fans began cheering. Both of them deserved credit, but it was usually Eddy leading the charge. Whacking the opponent with the chair, then ditching it and pretending he got hit, too. Throwing them the foreign object and holding his head so they'd get DQed. Fake clap tags. Tight-pulling. Fake injuries, fake illness. It was hilarious. It was brilliant. This is how they evened the odds. And after a while, nobody cared about them being "bad". It was all about what were they going to get away with next. And how? Had we seen it? Was there going to be some new trick out of the bag to knock us all on our ass? It was great.

Jump a couple months. For the first time, Eddy got pushed as a #1 contender. We all thought the same thing. "It'd be cool. But it'd never happen in a million years."

I was busy with my first date that night when I got home and found out.

15 minutes past a million years.

Little Eddie Guerrero was the WWE Champion.

WCW had screwed him over, and the WWE hadn't done much better by him despite the beloved Latino Heat character. But Eddie Guerrero was the WWE Champion?

Anything and everything seemed possible now. A world where I dated and Eddy was allowed to run with the ball--what an age we lived in. It was rumored he'd cracked due to the strees and his daily fight against alcohol and drugs he'd been in since '01, but it didn't stop us from loving Eddy any less, didn't stop us from watching his matches--

--and this is what kills me. I saw Los Guerreros once, against the World's Greatest Tag Team. December '03, if I'm remembering right. They were slowly turning Chavo heel, but as of tonight Eddy was still riding shotgun in the lowrider with him. Chavo started the match.

And everybody--everybody--was chanting for Eddy. Of course we were. We were just a wrestling crowd; that was Eddie Fucking Guerrero standing on that apron, in the heart of the real new Mexico. And Eddy, as he always did, made the crowd work for him. He looked out at us.

He began to chant for Chavo.

What else could we do? Us, wrestling crowd. He, Eddie. We chanted for Chavo. And then, some group came up with an entirely different tactic. I remember it for the innovation. I remember it for the uniqueness, because I never heard another crowd chant it. I remember how perfect it was on both the level of the match and in the long-term storyline.

We chanted...for Guerrero.

In my mind's eye, I see a lot of Eddie right now. I should be crying. It just makes me smile, honestly. I remember the smirk, the evil look he had on his way to the epic Halloween Havoc match against Rey where he was getting nuclear heat--because that's what the news showed last night--, the Scarface-style shirt I got after that date didn't lead to a happy ending (THANK YOU, BEN MORROW), the Guerreros coming down to the ring in the Sports Arena, the slingshot senton bomb...

...and the last thing.

...during Vengeance a few years back ('03?), Rhyno had run down to the ring. Instead of spearing Eddy, he speared his then-partner and longtime friend of Eddy Chris Benoit. Eddy covered up as much as he could, suddenly realized he hadn't been hit. Rhyno roared. Eddy shirked back in fear two steps. Rhyno left. Eddy looked at Rhyno departing, looked down at Benoit (still down), then looked at the center camera and gave a perfect "Fuck it, I'll take it" look complete with shrug. All those little things made Eddy awesome. But even more than that I remember now, is him flying through the air with the frog splash.

Once upon a time, Eddy had partnered with a man named Art Barr. They were the biggest heels in Mexico, quite possibly in lucha history. Eddy turned heel and renounced his heritage. This wasn't America, where our idea of getting back at you is a sign and the word "BOO!"--this is fucking Mexico, where lucha is treated like a sport, and little old ladies swing purses at you when you fall in the front row and their grandsons, if they're feeling particularly vengeful, come at you with a knife.

One day before a show, they called Art Barr's hotel room.

He didn't answer either.

They found him dead, too.

32.

That's obscene.

Enlarged heart, too.

After his death, Eddy changed finishers.

Rob got higher. D'Lo got more air.

But nobody ever, ever, did the frog splash better than Eddy Guerrero.

What happened to his partner happened to him, you could think. But Eddy at least got to taste the fruit of his labor. He got to shine. And we all loved him for it.

All I know, is that if heaven exists, Eddy and Owen are making the most devious tag team in wrestling history in the ring and laughing with the angels outside of it.

I guess what I'm saying is I should pick up Cheating Death, Stealing Life.

Because the obvious is sort of hard. Eddy was one more for playing on subtleties.





So, that's where I was.

Orale.