Heroes of the Squared Circle Meta: Road Trips and Make a Wish
The WWE (which is the DCW in Heroes) is the undisputed top of the wrestling food chain (ever since Vince McMahon systematically destroyed any competition through the 80s and 90s...but Mr. McMahon deserves his own post). "The indies" are the lower-budget wrestling promotions that largely at this point serve as the minor leagues for the WWE, but have their own fiercely loyal breed of fans.
Working in the indies obviously is no way to get rich: wrestlers often make their own t-shirts (as Riddler does to promote himself) and almost everyone has to carpool together to get from venue to venue. Wrestling autobiographies often have as a theme the difficulty of finding a kindred spirit to carpool with--long hours on the road combined with soul-crushing tedium of bland hotel rooms have encouraged many a wrestler to pick up unhealthy lifestyles.
I based a lot of the road trips (with Clark-Booster-Beetle or with Clark-Bruce-Guy-Eddie) on a fantastic little documentary called Road Wrestling Diaries. RWD follows three indie wrestlers as they travel from place to place--as it turns out, this is one wrestler's (Brian Danielson) last hurrah in the indie circuit--he's just signed a contract with the WWE and will be moving on to (at least at the moment) a decent amount of success there. Another wrestler in the group, Colt Cabana, just did a brief stint with the WWE, but it didn't work out and he's back down in the indies. So there's a fair amount of understated tension between the two very good friends. What's great about the documentary is it shows everyday life on the road--scrounging cheap hotels or finding friends to crash with, trying to keep yourself entertained with a minimum of chemicals, getting lost on the road. The detail about reading jokes off bubblegum wrappers is from this documentary, for example. To be honest, I found it fascinating not so much for the look at wrestlers hanging out, but the way young guys hang out in general.
It also features Brian Danielson rolling over in the morning after sleeping on a friend's floor and mumbling to everyone in the room, "Everyone gets boners in their sleep," which made me love it forever.
You can see a couple of trailers for it here:
and here (this one has the boners line):
And while I'm on the topic of Bryan Danielson and his immense dorktacular awesomeness, let me take a moment to discuss the work the WWE does with the Make a Wish Foundation. WWE does a LOT of volunteer work with MaW (John Cena, one of their top wrestlers, is currently their most busy celebrity--he has done over 300 different MaW appearances), and seeing the wrestlers with ill children is, well, heart-melting. Some of them strike up long-term friendships (Mick Foley, who will get more meta of his own later) mentions his MaW friends often in his autobiographies.
So below the cut is a good example: Bryan Danielson (who is now Daniel Bryan, long story) visiting a kid who requested to meet him for MaW. The kid is a huge wrestling fan and has his own ring name of Stonecrusher.
OK, one more thing you need to know before seeing the video: Daniel Bryan has a tag team partner called Kane, whose gimmick is that he's...well, you can watch his intro here to get the basic idea of him:
So...yeah, a masked demonic telekinetic pyromaniac, basically. But he's been teamed up with Daniel Bryan (and the results were frankly adorable, they got couples therapy for their anger issues and ended up buddies who learned to hug instead of punch each other).
Here are some early vignettes of their friendship:
And here they discuss their Christmas plans together:
I AM GETTING SIDETRACKED BY HOW ADORABLE TEAM HELL NO IS I SHALL STOP NOW ANYWAY the point is that Daniel Bryan is kind of a normal-looking guy, but when Kane shows up at Make a Wish in a t-shirt and face mask and hangs around kind of bashfully I just about died. You'll note, however, the kid has eyes only for his hero, who allows him to get him in his own submission hold and sells it for all he's worth and my heart might just explode oh my God:
Right, this somehow became "Mithen has a crush on Daniel Bryan," for which I cannot truly apologize. *grin*
Working in the indies obviously is no way to get rich: wrestlers often make their own t-shirts (as Riddler does to promote himself) and almost everyone has to carpool together to get from venue to venue. Wrestling autobiographies often have as a theme the difficulty of finding a kindred spirit to carpool with--long hours on the road combined with soul-crushing tedium of bland hotel rooms have encouraged many a wrestler to pick up unhealthy lifestyles.
I based a lot of the road trips (with Clark-Booster-Beetle or with Clark-Bruce-Guy-Eddie) on a fantastic little documentary called Road Wrestling Diaries. RWD follows three indie wrestlers as they travel from place to place--as it turns out, this is one wrestler's (Brian Danielson) last hurrah in the indie circuit--he's just signed a contract with the WWE and will be moving on to (at least at the moment) a decent amount of success there. Another wrestler in the group, Colt Cabana, just did a brief stint with the WWE, but it didn't work out and he's back down in the indies. So there's a fair amount of understated tension between the two very good friends. What's great about the documentary is it shows everyday life on the road--scrounging cheap hotels or finding friends to crash with, trying to keep yourself entertained with a minimum of chemicals, getting lost on the road. The detail about reading jokes off bubblegum wrappers is from this documentary, for example. To be honest, I found it fascinating not so much for the look at wrestlers hanging out, but the way young guys hang out in general.
It also features Brian Danielson rolling over in the morning after sleeping on a friend's floor and mumbling to everyone in the room, "Everyone gets boners in their sleep," which made me love it forever.
You can see a couple of trailers for it here:
Click to viewand here (this one has the boners line):
And while I'm on the topic of Bryan Danielson and his immense dorktacular awesomeness, let me take a moment to discuss the work the WWE does with the Make a Wish Foundation. WWE does a LOT of volunteer work with MaW (John Cena, one of their top wrestlers, is currently their most busy celebrity--he has done over 300 different MaW appearances), and seeing the wrestlers with ill children is, well, heart-melting. Some of them strike up long-term friendships (Mick Foley, who will get more meta of his own later) mentions his MaW friends often in his autobiographies.
So below the cut is a good example: Bryan Danielson (who is now Daniel Bryan, long story) visiting a kid who requested to meet him for MaW. The kid is a huge wrestling fan and has his own ring name of Stonecrusher.
OK, one more thing you need to know before seeing the video: Daniel Bryan has a tag team partner called Kane, whose gimmick is that he's...well, you can watch his intro here to get the basic idea of him:
So...yeah, a masked demonic telekinetic pyromaniac, basically. But he's been teamed up with Daniel Bryan (and the results were frankly adorable, they got couples therapy for their anger issues and ended up buddies who learned to hug instead of punch each other).
Here are some early vignettes of their friendship:
And here they discuss their Christmas plans together:
I AM GETTING SIDETRACKED BY HOW ADORABLE TEAM HELL NO IS I SHALL STOP NOW ANYWAY the point is that Daniel Bryan is kind of a normal-looking guy, but when Kane shows up at Make a Wish in a t-shirt and face mask and hangs around kind of bashfully I just about died. You'll note, however, the kid has eyes only for his hero, who allows him to get him in his own submission hold and sells it for all he's worth and my heart might just explode oh my God:
Right, this somehow became "Mithen has a crush on Daniel Bryan," for which I cannot truly apologize. *grin*