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.