I have always been one with the night. The sun kind of hurts my eyes. Some of my first memories include my mom wishing so badly that her 5 year old and youngest son would just sleep; but instead I wouldn't go rest on my Spiderman sheets until I saw Mr. Letterman's Top Ten list. This was a David Letterman that would come on the tube after Johnny Carson. The equivalent time slot of today's Jimmy Fallon. Pretty late for young man. Its not that I don't need sleep either. I have always had the ability to barely sleep for days and then make up for it in one long sleep session. To this day in a given week I will throw dice until 5AM at the casino and be up cooking breakfast for my boys at 8. Every once in awhile I'll make up for it by falling asleep after the lottery numbers get pulled and wake up when its time to make the donuts. I think my obsession with getting the most out of my time on Earth makes lists the way to make sure I don't miss anything. Like the character I pattern my life after Ferris Bueller says "Life moves pretty fast; If you don't stop and look around once in awhile...you might miss it."
There is something satisfying and less stressful about prioritizing and ranking items. I will not stir from my couch for hours by drowning myself in an NHL Playstation marathon on a gorgeous day if I don't have a set plan for my time. The great feeling of scratching pen across a paper to signal completion, erasing an item from the dry erase board, or hovering and clicking the mouse on the checkbox gives such a sense of accomplishment. My wife understands that I don't care how high the dishes are piled; I care about getting it off the list. The one list I won't make is a bucket list because I'm also superstitious and what happens when I finish it?
Cameron to Ferris (on the phone): "I'm Dying"
Ferris to Cameron (on the phone): "You're not dying. You just can't think of anything good to do"
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
The start of the show
I will start by describing the genesis of the name One Mason Nation...
In late 1998 into 1999 the WWF (now WWE) and WCW were at the height of their popularity and were entrenched in the Monday Night Wars for ratings. As a young man that was 18 and watched professional wrestling since I was 7. The show I got ridiculed for watching because it was "fake" was now mainstream, hip, and cool. I could talk in regular circles about what was happening with the DX and Stone Cold feud. Teenagers were wearing Hollywood Hulk Hogan NWO black and white T-shirts in public. The Rock was on SNL. At the time I worked at Showcase Cinemas North with my buddy JT. Less then 6 months removed from high school I was unemployed and he was able to pull some strings strings with "upper management" and get me a gig as a day-time concession worker and a weekend popcorn popper. Popcorn popping was the best job I've ever had. I hung out in crappy clothes, listened to dubbed mix tapes from a state of the art tape playing radio that I had to jam a pocket knife into to keep the cassette in place, and hung out with an irreplaceable ensemble cast of ushers and concession slingers. How a sitcom wasn't made from this cast of characters I'll never know. That's not my gig I'm not a sketch comedy writer but I know there is comic gold somewhere in there...so get on it Kulifay and JT. When I wasn't working I was watching wonderful tales at 2AM about how Jean Claude Van Dam saved the day from some form of Green fire in a cinema classic called Knock Off or Knock Out II or something like that. We got the occasional treat with timeless DVD must haves like Fight club, South Park the Movie, American Beauty, Enemy of the State, the Jar Jar Star Wars, Dogma, or the first Matrix movie. I love those movies but I had way more fun screening a stinker like Bowfinger with a Fourty ouncer, and proving what a bad-ass I was by smoking in the theater and throwing Mike and Ike's at the screen. So anyways, back to the squared circle. A large group of mainly male and bored National Amusement Employees formed a wrestling organization at work to kill some downtime. The arena was the lobby and supporting areas of the theater after hours or during slow parts of the day. Our league rivaled the talent in the major federations or at least our stories did. We had the UWO (Usher World Order), the jobber concession workers lead to the slaughter by the cunning tricks of the cerebral UWO champion. We even had a championship title made out of a weight lifting belt and some magic markers. Rumor has it the one and only UWO champion still carries the belt with him in the trunk of his car. The funny thing about this wrestling league is that it was a bunch of testosterone teenager and young 20 somethings legitimately fighting and jumping each other. Yet it was fun and welcomed by all(most). I remember seeing a flying cross body off of the Box Office performed flawlessly. Many of DDTs, Stunners, and Lion Tamers were everyday occurrences. As the popper of corn I had no allegiances to Usher nor Concession; so I emulated the one man that I watched since I was 7...The Ultimate Warrior. Except he couldn't be called the Ultimate Warrior legally because Vince McMahon owned the name so the writers for Ted Turner's league came up with a gimmick that was opposite of the NWO. The One Warrior Nation or OWN (not the Oprah Network). I stole the branding idea and deemed myself the One Mason Nation and promptly hit THE most legendary move in all of Showcase Wrestling...The Five-Man Spear. That's right 5 combatants toppled on each other like stacked Pringles when I positioned myself into the way-to-skinny hallway and rudely interrupted an already in-progress throw down with a blind side attack. Due to poor lighting I easily vanished mysteriously to my 15 minute break as I watched 5 men unwillingly pile onto each other from around the corner. After this move and the following it generated I felt it was my time to move on to the UWO title picture...I was big time and ready for my shot and my name in lights. I can't believe we never thought to put the champs name on marquee. Right before my shot at stardom there was some type of parking lot incident with other mid-carders involving a hubcap. After that everyone snapped back to reality to realize wrestling was meant to be a niche following and moved onto worshiping Eminem. I never competed for or won the fake title...but did get a cool name for my blog 12 years later.
In late 1998 into 1999 the WWF (now WWE) and WCW were at the height of their popularity and were entrenched in the Monday Night Wars for ratings. As a young man that was 18 and watched professional wrestling since I was 7. The show I got ridiculed for watching because it was "fake" was now mainstream, hip, and cool. I could talk in regular circles about what was happening with the DX and Stone Cold feud. Teenagers were wearing Hollywood Hulk Hogan NWO black and white T-shirts in public. The Rock was on SNL. At the time I worked at Showcase Cinemas North with my buddy JT. Less then 6 months removed from high school I was unemployed and he was able to pull some strings strings with "upper management" and get me a gig as a day-time concession worker and a weekend popcorn popper. Popcorn popping was the best job I've ever had. I hung out in crappy clothes, listened to dubbed mix tapes from a state of the art tape playing radio that I had to jam a pocket knife into to keep the cassette in place, and hung out with an irreplaceable ensemble cast of ushers and concession slingers. How a sitcom wasn't made from this cast of characters I'll never know. That's not my gig I'm not a sketch comedy writer but I know there is comic gold somewhere in there...so get on it Kulifay and JT. When I wasn't working I was watching wonderful tales at 2AM about how Jean Claude Van Dam saved the day from some form of Green fire in a cinema classic called Knock Off or Knock Out II or something like that. We got the occasional treat with timeless DVD must haves like Fight club, South Park the Movie, American Beauty, Enemy of the State, the Jar Jar Star Wars, Dogma, or the first Matrix movie. I love those movies but I had way more fun screening a stinker like Bowfinger with a Fourty ouncer, and proving what a bad-ass I was by smoking in the theater and throwing Mike and Ike's at the screen. So anyways, back to the squared circle. A large group of mainly male and bored National Amusement Employees formed a wrestling organization at work to kill some downtime. The arena was the lobby and supporting areas of the theater after hours or during slow parts of the day. Our league rivaled the talent in the major federations or at least our stories did. We had the UWO (Usher World Order), the jobber concession workers lead to the slaughter by the cunning tricks of the cerebral UWO champion. We even had a championship title made out of a weight lifting belt and some magic markers. Rumor has it the one and only UWO champion still carries the belt with him in the trunk of his car. The funny thing about this wrestling league is that it was a bunch of testosterone teenager and young 20 somethings legitimately fighting and jumping each other. Yet it was fun and welcomed by all(most). I remember seeing a flying cross body off of the Box Office performed flawlessly. Many of DDTs, Stunners, and Lion Tamers were everyday occurrences. As the popper of corn I had no allegiances to Usher nor Concession; so I emulated the one man that I watched since I was 7...The Ultimate Warrior. Except he couldn't be called the Ultimate Warrior legally because Vince McMahon owned the name so the writers for Ted Turner's league came up with a gimmick that was opposite of the NWO. The One Warrior Nation or OWN (not the Oprah Network). I stole the branding idea and deemed myself the One Mason Nation and promptly hit THE most legendary move in all of Showcase Wrestling...The Five-Man Spear. That's right 5 combatants toppled on each other like stacked Pringles when I positioned myself into the way-to-skinny hallway and rudely interrupted an already in-progress throw down with a blind side attack. Due to poor lighting I easily vanished mysteriously to my 15 minute break as I watched 5 men unwillingly pile onto each other from around the corner. After this move and the following it generated I felt it was my time to move on to the UWO title picture...I was big time and ready for my shot and my name in lights. I can't believe we never thought to put the champs name on marquee. Right before my shot at stardom there was some type of parking lot incident with other mid-carders involving a hubcap. After that everyone snapped back to reality to realize wrestling was meant to be a niche following and moved onto worshiping Eminem. I never competed for or won the fake title...but did get a cool name for my blog 12 years later.
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