The Nostalgia Spot

I’ve always had this theory that for most males there exists a time in their life where the world of professional wrestling seems really appealing.  And by professional wrestling I am of course speaking of Vince McMahon, Hulk Hogan, steel chairs and that sort of stuff.

Eat your vitamins, do your pushups, and take your steroids, Brother!

For my generation this theory is easy to understand.  When I was a kid in the 80’s Hogan was the biggest star in wrestling along with Macho Man Randy Savage and The Ultimate Warrior.  These muscle bound larger than life characters seemed like super heroes to me.  Combine that with the theatrics and violence of the WWF and you had a recipe for success.  I was young enough to consider the possibility that what was happening before me was real and not scripted.

At some point things get old.  As I got older I was more aware that the whole thing was fake.  The most obvious being The Undertake and his dead man persona being lead around by the bulbous Paul Bearer who supposedly controlled him via an urn he carried everywhere.  I’m not sure if anyone could be expected to fall for that.  And after awhile the storylines begin to repeat themselves.  For a show that has no off season it does pretty well to keep things going but eventually roadblocks are hit and things get a feeling of “haven’t we been here before?”

Though the word was never used on WWF programming, The Undertaker was basically a zombie.

I suppose the nail in the coffin of my early wrestling fandom was Hogan departing the WWF for WCW, continuing a mass exodus of talent from one brand to the other.  WCW had this stigma about it, I don’t even recall what it was specifically, but for some reason I could not even consider watching it.  The WWF was left with Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart as the only legitimate main event talent.  I remember one title match later on at Wrestlemania featured The Undertaker against Psycho Sid.  Anyone who can remember how awful Sid was in the ring can understand why that was a huge low point.

It wasn’t long after that the WWF figured out it’s audience had outgrown it, so they had to “grow up” with it.  I use that term loosely as growing up just meant increasing the amount of cleavage and profanity across the board.  The thumbs up was replaced with the crotch chop and the squeaky clean baby-face was no longer in vogue.  Now the biggest name in the game was a foul-mouthed, beer swigging, anti hero.

Stone Cold Steve Austin brought me back in late 1997 which began the second act of my wrestling obsession.  This time it was more intense than ever, partly because I was able to make it through two hours of Raw each week.  In what is now known as the Attitude Era, the WWF gave its wrestlers more freedom to be themselves which helped get rid of the stupid gimmicks that had dominated the scene.  In hindsight though, this just meant everyone was some tough badass.  The bad guys weren’t much different from the good guys, it was just all about who was with the character of Vince McMahon, and who wasn’t.

Stone Cold liked beer, middle fingers, and hitting Vince McMahon with steel chairs.

Stone Cold kicked off the era and The Rock sustained it.  I suppose the era ended when the whole WCW invasion angle began.  Or maybe it ended with Stone Cold went heel.  In reality, it was mostly on life support until The Rock departed for good to pursue his movie career.  Mick Foley, a guy who never would have been popular in another era, was also gone and Stone Cold had left earlier due to health reasons.  Shawn Michaels would make a surprising return and the Undertake was still kicking around but the whole thing was done and over with.

I lost interest long before any of that stuff took place.  I don’t remember exactly when I tuned out but it was sometime around the Austin “What?” gimmick.  I hated that, but it was probably just the last straw.  At some point I realized I was watching out of habit as opposed to enjoyment and other things began dominating my free time.  What doomed it for me was the same thing that had doomed it before, it just grew stale.  After two or three years of intense interest on my part I realized I had seen it all.  Little actually surprised me and the actual wrestling matches usually weren’t entertaining enough on their own to keep around.

Stone Cold and The Rock would face each other many times during the Attitude Era.

I have never gotten back into it.  Now the WWE trends young once again and a whole new generation is getting hooked.  It seems to be doing well, though there also seems to be less instance of the wrestling world reaching into the mainstream.  John Cena is the biggest name but I don’t see his image in other places as often as I used to see Hogan, Rock, and Austin.

That said, this is The Nostalgia Spot and my affinity for such things does affect my long abandoned wrestling interest.  I’ve made a few DVD purchases over the years, but most of them were for the matches.  I have the three disc Mick Foley set which is just entertaining.  While it’s not even close to being all inclusive, it does contain a lot of his wild matches that still resonate today.  For pure technical wrestling, I have the Eddie Guerrero and recently released Chris Jericho sets.  Both guys made their name in WCW where I tuned in infrequently so for me there was a lot of new on these sets.  Both guys are in-ring acrobats, though Jericho was one of the best characters ever.  For pure nostalgia though I have the Stone Cold set.

Steve Austin was not a great in-ring performer.  Often derided by wrestling purists, he mostly was a brawler and his arsenal did not possess anything even remotely flashy.  I do think he was an underrated worker though, and for someone who was arguably the biggest wrestler of all-time, he was willing to put guys over during his matches (keyword being during).  He’d take chair shots to the head, let guys work him over, and took numerous bumps on the unforgiving concrete.  He didn’t go as far as Foley, but he certainly wasn’t some wimp.  And when the situation called for him to shed some blood and blade during a match he gushed.

The legacy of Stone Cold Steve Austin.

Re-living his matches was actually better than I thought.  The actual purchase of his DVD set was one of those purchases where I regretted it immediately after its completion as I felt it would not do what I wanted it to do.  Which is to say, I wanted to get that old rush of excitement I would get when Austin dominated the screen.  While it wasn’t quite the same, it was still there.  As a result, the best matches are on discs 2 and 3 when Austin was wrestling under the Stone Cold gimmick as opposed to his earlier days.  Before that gimmick, he was pretty boring.  A boring wrestler with an ordinary repertoire is not much fun to watch.  If I have one complaint about the set it’s with the lead-ins by Austin before each match.  It’s as if he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be in character or not.  As a result, sometimes he comes across as Stone Cold, and other times he sounds like he’s being candid.  He also doesn’t touch upon any of his real-life antics when his star was fading.  Austin famously wouldn’t let anyone get a clean victory over him and had a couple of walk-outs on the WWE.  Though expecting him to go into such detail on his own DVD set might be asking for too much.

The current face of the now WWE, John Cena. He pretty much sucks, but apparently the kids like him.

Even though my interest in the television product is now non-existent, I still enjoy the videogames.  Which is kind of amusing to me because overall my interest in videogames is at an all time low for me.  I just like creating my own characters and scripting my own events in these games.  They’re pretty fun to actually play, though inherently flawed.  I don’t buy a new one every year but when I do I get a lot of milage out of it.  I’m still waiting for the perfect wrestling game to be made, but that’s probably another post by itself.

I do not anticipate ever getting back into wrestling full time.  As my post started out I mentioned I think every guy has his wrestling phase or phases and that’s it.  Sure some are lifers who are hooked on the soap opera routine.  And there’s something to be said of having a new episode to watch every week, something only soap operas really offer.  Because of the nature of the game it will always be able to stick around.  It’s overall popularity will rise and fall with the times but there’s always a new generation ready to get into it.  I often wonder if the current more PG approach the WWE takes will eventually change over as its audience, once again, gets older.  I’d actually be surprised if it didn’t.

When the internet came along it changed everything.  Such a statement is usually hyperbole but in the case of the internet its impact could not be overstated.  I’m sure most people remember their first internet enabled PC.  I do.  I was in the seventh grade and while this was my first PC it wasn’t my first experience with the internet.  My best friend growing up had such a toy for awhile.  His dad was a tech-minded person that always wanted to have the latest and greatest so they had all of that stuff.  I had already seen a good amount of what the internet had to offer a 12 year old boy, and it was mostly porn.  For a kid at that age, having the ability to access adult media was like having a key to the Garden of Eden.  And back then all that was really available were still pictures.  They would be labeled something generic such as “big boobs” or “lesbians” and you’d sit around for a couple of minutes waiting for the thing to load.  And it was awesome.  I can’t imagine what the kids of today must feel with high-speed connections and streaming video.  Talk about sensory overload.

Of course, the internet isn’t just for pornography.  Arguably, one of the internet’s greatest gifts to mankind is that glorious website full of people’s unwanted junk, eBay.  Depending on how you engage eBay, it’s either the greatest thing ever or a necessary evil.  As someone who never sells on eBay and doesn’t have to deal with the myriad of fees and obvious favoritism towards buyers, I love it.  Sure when I lose out on an auction with three seconds to go I utter every curse I can think of at my screen but in the end I always come back.

Since eBay’s obvious successes many have tried to imitate it.  Amazon lets people sell their stuff on its site, though not auction style.  Craig’s List is even more open serving as more of an online classifieds section, just hope the people you meet on there aren’t maniacs.  I don’t think any other sites have done as good a job as eBay though.  The auction format is fantastic as it allows demand to dictate the price.  Unless you’re completely inept when it comes to listing an item you’re going to get a fair price for your it.  Granted, it’s not always apparent at the time and some sellers may even try to manipulate the price of their item by having dummy bidders jack it up.  And even after the auction has run its course, some sellers may feel like they got the short end of the stick, but that’s not really true.

Baseball cards were huge when I was a kid.  My cousins and I would make pilgrimages to the local convenience store for packs of cards.  We would tear through them tossing aside the mediocre players in search of our favorite stars or anything that said “Rookie,” because you never knew who the next big star would be.  At the time, numerous price guides existed that kids would read as gospel.  If the magazine says the card is worth fifty bucks then its worth fifty bucks.  Over the years though, people soon realized that 99% of baseball cards were worthless.  Over-produced and cheap to begin with, the demand was never there.

Most people still have a card mentality when it comes to their wares but really an item is only as valuable as the market dictates.   And in this case, eBay is the market.  If you own a rare piece of music and want to know what it’s worth, don’t consult a price guide just look it up on eBay and see what it’s going for.  That’s what you can expect, give or take, your item to fetch if you were to sell it that day.

Whenever I’m in the market for something of that nature, I like to first do my homework by letting a few auctions go just to gauge an item’s worth.  Sometimes though an item is so rare it becomes difficult to do so.   Just today I was tempted to place a bid on a trinket of sorts I had been eye-balling for years.  Just another piece of music memorabilia.  The problem was the seller started the bidding at $350.  Now, I would expect this particular item to go for a couple hundred, but $350 was on the extreme end.  It had been a long time since I had seen one of these so I really had little to fallback on in terms of pricing and old eBay auctions are only viewable for about 90 days so it’s not like I could go back through their archives to figure it out.  I decided to wait it out and see what happened and, lo and behold, the auction expired with no one placing a bid.  The market had decided that, while this piece is rare and normally in demand, $350 was just an unreasonable price.  The decision to not bid was a wise one on my part.  While I don’t have an item I covet, I also didn’t needlessly pay a premium for said item and if I’m patient I may be rewarded down the line.

Instances like the one described above make me shake my head.  Why would a seller post an item at anything other than zero to kick off their auction?  Well, I know why and it’s because they have a pre-conceived idea of what the item’s worth is and are afraid to sell it for less.  Perhaps the person paid close to what they’re offering it for and are trying to avoid taking a loss, which is inherently foolish.  As someone who collects vinyl I can safely say it’s actually not the greatest investment.  Sure there’s a lot of records out there worth a lot of money but I’m going to let you in on a secret – it almost never appreciates.  If you go out and spend $500 on a rare piece of vinyl today, chances are that five years from now it’s going to be worth about $500 give or take a few bucks for inflation.  Even in today’s crummy economy, most of these items are still selling for what they commanded a few years ago.  So long as the item is kept in good condition, it is unlikely to depreciate but appreciation cannot be expected.  That’s why it’s inherently foolish to make hobby type purchases as investments.  The only instance where something like a record will increase in value is if you do something to increase its value, like getting it autographed for example.

In a perfect world, eBay wouldn’t allow listers to place a starting bid on an item.  It just defeats the purpose.  If a seller truly wants to sell their item that’s what they should do.  Guaranteed, even your most useless piece of junk will get at least one person’s attention who’s willing to buy it for a pittance.  If you’re scared that your item isn’t worth what you think it is then don’t list it.  Or do what everyone else does and gouge people with shipping costs.

Ask someone what their favorite color is, or ask yourself.  Mine is blue, why?  I have no idea.  How can someone answer that?  Perhaps a psychologist might try to draw parallels between a color’s properties and your personality.  Blue is kind of funny in that it can be both dark and bright.  I trend darker in my preference but does that say anything about me?  I don’t think it does, but I don’t have a degree in psychology.

Some people might give a reason.  Maybe their favorite color is tied to a fond memory.  The color of the wallpaper in their first room, a favorite shirt, or something that reminds them of a departed relative.  When I look at things in my past it’s easy to find the color blue.  I am, after all, a male and blue is often the color most people associate with young boys so blue was everywhere in my childhood.  I had a quilt my aunt made me that was my favorite blanket, but was it my favorite because it was blue or for another reason?  I was a devoted fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and my favorite was Leonardo because he wore a blue bandana and wielded twin katanas (that looked nothing like actual katanas, just had to get that off my chest).  I can even remember getting my first TMNT action figures, the original Leo, Donatello, and Krang (who came with that walker and not his “body” that would show up around episode 5 or 6 of the cartoon).  When I bought them I had yet to see an episode so I knew nothing about the personalities of the characters and was going strictly based on visuals.  Why anthropomorphic turtles appealed to me and an entire generation of boys is beyond my comprehension.

Which takes me back to my initial question of why we like what we like.  When the question is asked of something more dynamic than a color we as human beings can often give a reason but how often is that opinion just revisionist history?  Sometimes things just appeal to us for no reason beyond that they just do and only when thinking about it in more detail do we find reasons to ascribe to our thoughts.  I don’t trust these reasons and consider most to be revisionist in nature.  That’s not to say our likes and dislikes are a total mystery.  A person may like a particular band because it sounds like another he or she is familiar with.  Or someone may enjoy a film because it’s from a genre, director, or actor they have enjoyed in the past.  It’s when you try to get to the root of all tastes that things become muddled.

My earlier thought that a psychologist could potentially yield some light may have come across as dismissive but in truth I do feel some of what we like is dependent upon personality.  Maybe something as simple as a color preference cannot be traced to a personality trait, but how about music?  For me personally I tend to be somewhat rebellious in thought, though not always in action.  If someone tells me I have to like something my initial reaction is to dislike or find fault with that something.  This thought process is probably why I enjoy heavy metal so much, or is at least partially responsible.  Metal is rebellious in nature so it makes sense.  Maybe my hypothesis is totally wrong but I doubt it.

All of this leads me to think that why we like what we like is mostly a pointless question.  It serves little purpose why someone likes something, as long as that something isn’t destructive who cares?  Are some people just born to prefer vanilla to chocolate and vice versa or did something in their life influence their, in this case, literal tastes?  My sister used to use the excuse as a child when she didn’t like how a particular food tasted was to say that she had different taste buds.  Perhaps that is true, after all, no one can trade tongues and see how things taste for someone else but my assumption is to think that’s a bunch of bull.  Vanilla is vanilla, chocolate is chocolate, no matter who the taster is.

A popular and seemingly endless debate in the world of politics and religion is in regards to homosexual lifestyle and marriage.  Homosexuals contend they’re born the way they are insisting their sexual preference is biological.  Lots of funding has been devoted to scientific study to try and find a biological consistency to explain this and still the question is unsettled.  The Religious sect, or those often referred to as homophobic, contend homosexuality is a behavioral choice not unlike any other choice we encounter daily.  There are even camps, usually religious in origin, devoted to “curing” homosexuals and are designed to cleanse them of their wicked ways.

My completely unscientific opinion is that homosexuality is not unlike my preference for blue over red.  It’s just something that is a part of me that I cannot explain, much like a woman’s preference for other women is a part of her.  I think if homosexuality were strictly a biological matter then those that are biologically exact copies of one another would share the same sexual preference.  I am speaking of course of identical twins and while there are cases where twins both are homosexual, there are also instances where one is and one isn’t.  For the ones that are not the same in their sexual preference one could always make the argument that the twin identifying him or herself as heterosexual is living in denial, but there is no way of proving that.

In the end, we like what we like.  I could start telling people I have a new favorite color, I could even get rid of everything blue I own, but why should I?  Just the same, why should someone who is attracted to the same sex only date people of the opposite sex?  It seems silly to me for someone in that position to do something that doesn’t appeal to them.  Now I know the conservative sect argues why stop there?  Why not love a dog if that’s your preference, or children?  My response is that we are logical, rationale beings gifted with such mental capabilities that allow us to create boundaries.  I also do not see the reason to defend homosexuality by pointing out its differences from pedophilia, they should be obvious.

In conclusion, I see no reason why there is such hostility by some people towards homosexuals.  I personally may not be able to understand why a man would prefer another man to a woman, but I also don’t know why someone would prefer yellow to blue.  I do know that I have nothing against the individual who prefers the color yellow, and that’s how it should be.