Like Any Other Day

The post it note stares back at me as my hand rests on the fridge door. Each day it changes. A new spark of guidance as Buddy Roman circumnavigates my spacious home with small paper cuts of inspiration. Pockets of draconian wisdom that run along the spine of the former three story apartment block like a snarling, hemorrhaging mind. I think about Patton's words as water drips down from the ceiling and pelts the sink; the rain never seems to stop these days. The leaky roof weeps constantly; like an unwavering drum beat, reminding me that time doesn't stop in this crumbling world.

Beachmania is approaching. Howard Black, is approaching. All his jealousy and hate will soon arrive at my door. A tormented, contorted failure looking to gasp the fresh air of victory above the chem-trails of disappointment and failure that haunt him.

“I will not defend. I will attack.”; I mutter to myself as I open an IPA and guzzle down my first cold one of the day. The early morning rays fumigate the Holabird & Roche designed darkness with an orange mist that drapes the kitchen with a dreamlike quality. In some ways though, this is a dream. I died. I was reborn. Now I share an apartment block with the greatest manager in Wrestling history. And my Judas, my disciple turned traitor, is out for blood. Under any other circumstance that last notification would be a negative, but in this business? It's a badge of honor. You're no one until you can turn someone against you. This will be my third betrayal. Wade. Cairo. And now Howard Black. I am, if nothing else, an overachiever.

Attack, my mind double-backs on this idea again; it seems like a logical strategy. Maybe Buddy feels he needs to remind me of the basics for old times sake, considering my past associations with Howard. Our former friendship might have blunted my killer instinct once, but that once was a very long time ago now. Lost in another, distant place, that existed before 1he Wav3 washed sanity away and left damaged men like Howard behind in it's ghastly wake. He's driftwood now, unable to see the good that surrounds him; unable to comprehend the danger that will soon face him.

Howard is a wounded lamb, that thinks himself a wolf. A hero playing truant on his beliefs; pushing his faith away as each day fails him in some small, trivial way. God can't fix the year he lost, the nerve damage in his arm that plagues him still; driving him further into madness and despair as events play over in his anguished mind on a kind of constant, infinite repeat. The snap. The laughter. The slow hand clap of the mountain. Then, back to the snap as the loop unravels once more. Snap, repeat.

Snap, repeat.

Joey Flash didn't just break bone, he broke spirit and decency when he attacked Howard. Joey would probably shrug it all off today if you confronted him. After all, it's what a Joey Flash does (or did) what he'd been programmed to do from his teens. To destroy spirit. To take away from a man his ability to rise up. To question. To fight. That's how mobs control districts. It's how a Joey Flash controls Howard Black still. Forever the marionette is Howard. The strings never cut, even if Joey is missing, presumed dead; the song still plays, and Howard still dances.

Listen closely and you can just hear an audible mumble of “how high” as Howard falls into line. Brainwashed. Regimented. A slave to the cruelty of others.

SWOOSH!

I find myself slamming the fridge door with an extra amount of effort. My bare feet shudder with the aftershock on the marble floor; the occasional small black tile directing guests back into a spacious living room. Buddy is already up; it's barely six in the morning and yet I can hear him knotting his tie into a delicate Windsor as the shape admires the navy blue sharpness of his suit in a full length mirror.

“Derech machshavot el toch chalom...Lo al tisa rachok...Lo timtza emet beshum makom acher...Ani itcha hayom kmo bechol yom”

Buddy is singing a Hebrew song, he can't carry a tune particularly well, but it's the heart he has for it that smooths the cracks. “Kmo Kol Yom”, it goes...

“Like any other day”; that's the translation. And in that brief epiphany a truth rises to the surface, that each day of my “un-life” brings threats. Some wear the faces of former friends, others march armies against me. Some whisper they love me as the dagger finds the base of my spine. Yet while fire engulfs my eyes, as bodies burn at my feet, I still have to accept that this, this is just another day. Another moment to prove to myself that I'm worth a damn. That the faith I have in myself and the faith a malevolent old man has in me is not misplaced.

So I get ready. I shave. I bathe. I undertake a metamorphosis of sorts as I attempt to drag my dead cadaver back into a state of acceptable denim clad dishevelry. Today is a visit to the local television affiliate. I'm the guest of honor; I even get to read out the weather report for the day ahead. Crow McMorris: meteorologist Zombie. Seriously, you can't make this shit up.

Kmo Kol Yom...

...Like any other day.

THE BUDDY SYSTEM
07/06/16: The Chasm

No one can catch us. We're too fast, too quick. I can't shake the idea, that we move at a different speed to the rest of the world. Hubris you say, facts I say. Facts that resonate from every edition of Overload like a bugle call for reveille. Stand to attention people of the UCI! Salute your Champion! Water is wet. The sky is blue. Crow McMorris rules over each and every one of you. That shadow by the way, it does not discriminate; the Mayor can't escape it, the empty headed adventurer's of time and space cannot outrun it. The shadow remains. Uncaring. Unliving. With the World Heavyweight title firmly in it's grasp.

Now steps up the Honey Prophet. The Lost Boy who is not Corey Haim. Like a thief in the night; a man who thinks he has conquered the hate. He dreams of harnessing it's power. This is, of course, utter lunacy. Howard does not possess the acumen nor the determination to rise above his ordinariness. But idiot farm boys with broken wings do like to dream. Don't they?

This week Howard gets to dream while we, the true masters of your fate, are afforded time to observe and reflect. Our opponent this week is a triviality named “Logan Demon Joker”. A Juggalo nincompoop, who cuts promos via google translate and his first shots of absinthe. This cut and paste chimera of odderties shall prove, however, to be a useful sacrifice. His boundless enthusiasm we shall drain from his eyes like a syringe. The husk we'll leave behind shall act as a portent for what is to come, of what Howard Black shall loose in just three weeks. Howard thinks himself to be at his lowest ebb?

Tut, tut, farm boy...that is a place you cannot reach through mere self loathing, you need us to guide you there.

We shall guide Howard. Just as this week, we shall guide a Logan Demon Joker to that final resting home where all failures reside. To that pit. Thrown into the chasm that separates a man such as Crow McMorris, from a nothing like Logan Demon Joker.

What is Logan to us this week? Hope, that's what this Demon Joker represents, an effigy of hope. A hero for slim possibility. His Gemini Battle spindle frame bounds onto the screen to the sound of thunderclaps and a comedy trombone. His limp wrist holding that playing card high and proud. And as he does so, you can't help but wonder about the backstory of this small, little man. Failed circus clown perhaps? The fool fell in love with the wrong bearded lady, and was summarily drummed out of freak town for his crimes? So now he wanders, sleeping in the back of his cold clown car. Kids tooting his horn and throwing dead rats into his front seat as he wakes, bleary eyed to a world that nether knows him nor cares to.

And in that moment, hate arises. It boils in the pit of Logan's stomach and churns with the bile. The sickness germinates and blossoms with each passing day as his name fades further from memory. The chasm has arrived, it wants to be fed. To swallow whole the life of a meaningless man, a man with no reason to exist. Logan is the filler in a cluster-fuck sandwich. A DNA strand stitched together from the collective high spots of others; a curb stomp here, an F-5 there; but there is no sum to these parts, just erosion and decay; the hate holding the shambles together, but it is a skeleton we can easily snap.

For while hate fuels Logan, it does not bend to his will, he is it's puppet; a fool at it's mercy. A victim of it's raw, unbridled power, rather than a warrior enhanced by it. That's the difference between a Crow McMorris and a Howard Black. Look at what defines the farm boy, despair, loss of faith, blind-siding attacks that scream of desperation. That, in truth, is the chasm; that lack of control telegraphs movement and tactics. While Crow is calm, measured; thinking always. This I have instilled into him, the calmness at the center of the storm. ICE had it, ZMAC has it, and now Crow has it. A hushed stillness, able to evaluate and improvise when needed.

Wrestling is an art form, each week we paint upon a square twenty by twenty canvass with the agony of our enemies, blood dripping from our compositions. Pain and torment dripping from the landscapes we imagine. This week Logan Demon Joker will be lost upon the horizon of a new masterpiece. A lonely six foot three, two seventeen pound figure, distant and fragile as he lies dead and broken somewhere in the background of a new instillation. Dedicated to the memory of Howard Black; the boy who cried wolf.

CHICAGO TODAY!
08/07/16

“So tell us, Crow. What did you think of the Ghostbusters remake?”

Chad Klopek and Miranda Cole sit opposite me on that bright orange couch; their ugly spay tans and bleached white teeth glare at me like manufactured sharks. Interchangeable hosts that blend seamlessly into the garish backdrop of a fake sunrise, illuminating a hand painted Chi-town. I contemplate my answer under the stage lights, the weather report went well; concentrating on church yards and cemeteries for the report was cheesy, but with a touch of improvised sarcasm it worked. Now my second stint of the day.

Crow McMorris: The problem with remakes is that half the world can't let go of the past; while the other half want to see originality above all. So from the off you're stuck on the back foot. This cinematic misstep however can't please either. It's drab and uninspired. The acting performances are for the most part knitted together by an extraordinary bad script, one that buries any chance of genuine wit beneath a hack story and poor pacing. Hemsworth is okay, however the rest of the cast seem bored and disinterested. The effects are perfunctory at best; which is a travesty compared to the outstanding work of the original. On the whole, once you strip the controversy away from this effort? What you're left with is a marketing machine that's cobbled this together through focus groups and boardroom meetings. It's soulless and cynical. A four quadrant vehicle to sell merchandise. Avoid.

Well, they asked.

Miranda Cole: Any pluses?

Crow McMorris: Well, It's only two hours. I could go on, but it would be a lie.

A small outbreak of laughter erupts, it's tempered by a understanding of what is to come.

Miranda Cole: Changing gears, Crow. I hear there's something serious you'd like to add before we sign off today.

I shift in my seat as I hear the camera lens zoom in on my stone faced expression. I can tell this is a little awkward, but they know in the gallery it makes good television. Drama such as this often does. So I just say what needs to be said. I hate the words that I utter, but I made a promise to Maisy that I would keep her relatives safe, until I can unravel the core of corruption that turns this good city, ugly.

Crow McMorris: Last week, before my match at Overload. I was involved in a tragic incident that resulted in the death of a young woman named, Maisy Dahmer. She was a reporter from the state of Missouri. Recently, she had become...unhinged, and, as a slew of police reports appear to suggest, was suffering with a long standing drug problem and bouts of depression. Due to my condition, I was able to walk away from the attack, but the lives she touched during her troubled life are not so lucky; her family and friends are grieving. And while there is no condoning her actions, we can, as a community, offer our support to those she has left behind. That is why this week, I dedicate my match to her family and will donate a portion of my revenue to SANE as we all attempt to heal and understand the last few days.

Heads nod, faces find their moments of sincerity. The pantomime is working. After the camera's stop. My investigation will begin. And answers will be found.

Kmo Kol Yom...

...Like any other day.

FIN.