– I received a tip from a friend that I should record the soap opera Days of Our Lives this week, that I’d really enjoy it. Now that struck me as odd, because Days of Our Lives is one of my most hated TV shows ever. I try to avoid it as much as possible, but sometimes I’ll go to Little Rock to visit my mother and she’ll have it on.
But curiosity got the best of me, so I set the DVR to record it this week. I came home, hit Play and was immediately reminded why I hate this show so much. Super-couple Bo and Hope were sitting around the Christmas tree with their stupid son Zack, who is about four years old. To tell the truth, Days of Our Lives wouldn’t be a half bad show if it wasn’t for Hope. I think she’s supposed to be the ideal woman that all the soccer moms who watch this show are supposed to dream of being – smart, classy, perfect marriage and family. I hate Hope. I want bad things to happen to her.
So they’re sitting around the damn Christmas tree, and Hope is hugging Zack, and Bo is hugging Zack and calling him “Tiny Man,” and Zack is saying “I love you mommy” and I’m sitting on the sofa thinking how cool it would be if Zack would die.
Sometimes TV can be pretty cool.
Just as I was contemplating taking the TV up to the roof and pitching it onto Main Street (and hopefully hitting a bum as a bonus), I realized something – the lovey-dovey Christmas moment wasn’t current – it was a flashback from a prior episode. In the current episode, Zack was having a sleep-over at a friend’s house, and had wandered outside to look for the cat.
Meanwhile, this chick was driving a truck down the road and it was New Year’s Eve and she wanted to party and she reached for her cell phone to call a friend and
* THUD! *
“AAAAAHHHHH! What was that?”
It was ZACK!!!!!!
Cool!
And it gets even better. Guess who ended up finding Zack lying there in the street?
His mother, HOPE!!!!
Man, TV hasn’t been this good since Kelly Bundy was parading around in a miniskirt in 1988. I fast-forwarded through the other crappy storylines (actually, I did watch part of the one involving Sami; when Sami’s on the show it’s actually worth watching) and cued up the next day’s episode to see what would happen.
The chick driving the truck didn’t realize what she had done. She thought she had just hit a pothole. Messed up the truck pretty good though. Oh, by the way, the chick in the truck, guess who she was?
She was Zack’s SISTER!!!!
So the stupid brat is whining and whimpering and I’m thinking, “Damn. He’s going to make it” and I nearly deleted the rest of the episodes and went out to a bar. But I didn’t. The next episode showed them wheeling Zack into the hospital and Hope is bawling, “I can’t lose him! I can’t lose my baby!”
And then I fast-forwarded through a day and a half worth of crap involving them talking about what a great kid Zack is, until I got to an operating room scene. They were trying to do everything they could to save him. I was jumping up and down on the sofa yelling, “DIE Zack! DIE!!!!!!!!!!”
And the doctors said they had done everything they could, and it was too late. One of the docs was a family friend and she kept trying to push on. “No!” she cried. “There are more things we can do…” The other doctors had to restrain her. “We’re too late. It’s over.”
Zack was DEAD!!!!!!!!
WOOOOOOHOOOOOOO! First I get an iPod
And in the last scene of yesterday’s episode, Hope and Bo got the news. “NOOOOOOOOO! WAAAAAAAHHHHHHH! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
That was just some great TV. I guess I’ll tape next week too, since they’ll probably have the kid’s funeral. Next week? Who am I kidding? The way soap operas work, they probably won’t be done burying that kid by March.
– Then last night, I went out and went to a bar. Then I went to another bar. Then I went to another bar. The third bar was Big Foot Lodge and I sat down with my friend Angie, one of my ho’s from the pimp and ho party. The great thing about Big Foot is they have 6 TVs over the bar, so you have your choice of things to watch.
One of the TVs was tuned to the ESPN Classic channel, and a show called “Cheap Seats” was on. I’d never seen it before, but it appeared to be these two guys sitting on a couch making fun of bad sports TV. And for last night’s episode, they were watching an episode of Mid-South Wrestling from 1980. YES!!!
Man, that brought back memories. TV host Boyd Pierce’s suit looked like it could generate 220 volts of electricity. Gotta find out where Boyd Pierce shopped so I can get some new clothes to wear to Raiford’s.
The other announcer was “Cowboy” Bill Watts, a former wrestler who owned the Mid-South promotion. I heard Bill Watts was a real asshole to work for. There’s a story that one of the top guys, Jake “The Snake” Roberts, legitimately broke his arm in a match. According to the story, Watts told him to cut off the cast and get back in the ring the next week, or he’d lose his spot.
Then they had the first match. It was the Iron Sheik (which Mid-South Wrestling misspelled, “The Iron Shiek”) vs. Buddy Landell. Buddy Landell still had brown hair at this point. Later in his career he’d dye it blond and become “Nature Boy” Buddy Landell, a second-rate version of Ric Flair. The Iron Sheik would go on to win the WWF title a few years later, and then drop it to Hulk Hogan, marking the beginning of the Hulkamania era. The Sheik took the win. He had those pointed boots that he brought with him from his hometown of Teheran, Iran, and people claimed they were loaded. This was 1980, in the middle of the hostage crisis, so I’m sure the Sheik was quite the villain.
The next match featured The Great Kabuki (misspelled “The Great Kabuiki”), managed by “Playboy” Gary Hart. Kabuki was a Japanese wrestler who painted his face. He was known to spit green mist in the face of his opponents, blinding them. Sometimes he’d make some kind of adjustment to his throat and then spit red mist, which was even more lethal. Kabuki got an easy win over some jabroni.
Then they had an interview with Ted DiBiase, who at this point was a good guy or “babyface” in wrestling terms. A year later he would turn on the fans and become the most hated guy in Mid-South Wrestling, and a few years after that he became the “Million Dollar Man” in the WWF.
Great stuff… great memories from my childhood. I know they sell DVDs of 1980s Mid-South Wrestling somewhere on the Internet. I’m gonna have to look into ordering some.
– I haven’t watched much WWE wrestling in a while, but there’s a new guy who I think is going to be big… The Boogeyman. You know, the monster who hid under your bed or in your closet when you were a kid.
Here’s a link where you can see some video of the Boogeyman. He paints his face red and black and most of his teeth are missing. He’ll sing a few lines of some random song, then he’ll pick up a handful of worms (yes, real live worms) and eat them. Then, as a few stray worms fall out of his mouth, he goes, “HA HA HA! …The Boogeyman… is coming to getcha!”
Great stuff. I predict that this is going to be the WWE’s most successful gimmick since the Undertaker debuted 16 years ago.
– Really crappy reality TV has come to Romania. I was doing some web searches this morning, looking for some information a friend gave me on how to find Romanians in Memphis. Never found the site she told me about, but I did find this: Big Brother II, Romania. If Romania is going to copy American culture, couldn’t they find something better to copy than Big Brother? Looks like some of the girls on the show are pretty hot, though.
– Off to enjoy the rest of my weekend. I’ll have pictures from my plate party at the Saucer online sometime next week.