It's Gonna Be Exciting, and It Might Even Be a Little Frightening

This may surprise some of you, since I come off as being so erudite and cultured, but the twin passions of my misspent youth were comic books... and professional wrestling.

Please make your "men in spandex" jokes at this time.

I've watched it off and on since I was a kid, which is pretty unavaoidable when you grow up in the South, but I haven't caught any of it for a while. Mostly, that's due to the absence of personal favorites like the Rock and Mick Foley. Still, I've got a lot of fondness for the world of Sports Entertainment, and between Brandon's fanatical man-crush on Shawn Michaels and the hours I've whiled away at the Wiz recounting my favorite matches, I still consider myself a casual fan.

That's why I was pretty excited when Mike Porto, who's been giving me stuff this week like the ISB pledge drive was in effect, hoooked me up with a copy of the new WWE documentary, The Self-Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior.

It is the single greatest DVD ever made.

That's a bold statement, I know, but allow me to explain. For thsoe of you who spent your Monday night sdoing something productive, like, say, needlepoint, here's what you need to know. Back in the mid-to-late 80s, there was a guy named Jim Hellwig, who went by the trade name of "The Ultimate Warrior," and he was huge. He was steroid-pumped, face-painted rock 'n' roll, man, with fringe on his boots and a power mullet that would make Patrick Swayze weep.

He was also completely fucking nuts.

And this isn't your garden variety craziness I'm talking about either. This is some serious "Buddha has a ghost penis that lives in my cereal" type of madness. It's gotten more pronounced recently, too. I thought he'd hit his peak when he had his name legally changed to Warrior, but earlier this year he spoke to a group of college Republicans, called a Middle-Eastern student heckler a "towel-head," and told them "Queerin' don't make the world work." Then he allegedly tried to sue SomethingAwful. Then he refused an invitation to come on the weekly WWE online broadcast ByteThis!, refering to hosts Todd Grisham and Droz (who was paralyzed in a wrestling accident) as "the queer and the cripple." Wow.

And then there's the comic.

Written by the Warrior and put out in 1996, these are unquestionably the worst comic books I have ever read. I've flipped through them before, but today I got a full run for thirty cents and actually read all 72 incomprehensable pages.

I'd give you a plot summary, but I'm not even sure what the hell happens. All you really need to know is that the Warrior wrote it, some guy that makes Liefeld look good drew it, and it's atrocious.

But back to the matter at hand: The DVD. It's great. There's a lot of Chris Jericho in it, and since he's the only professional wrestler to regularly appear on VH1 programming, you know you're in for a good time when he shows up. The best part, though, is when they play clips from the rambling, borderline psychotic interviews the Warrior used to give where he talks about spaceships, and warriors floating in his veins, and the gods above. They are transcendent. Here's a few of my favorites, complete with awesome screen-shots:

"How must I prepare, you must ask yourself! Should I jump off the tallest building in the world?! Should I lay in the lawn and let them run over me with lawnmowers?! Should I go to Africa and let them trample me with raging elephants?!

"Exit stage left! Exit stage right! There is no place to run! All the fuses in the exit signs have been burnt out!"

"History tells us, Hogan, that a man's legacy is built from the premise that within his life, the moments lived, once lived, become a piece of his history."

"NOW YOU MUST DEAL WITH THE CREATION OF ALL THE UNPLEASANTRIES IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE AS I FEEL THE INJECTION FROM THE GODS ABOVE I ONLY KNOW THAT THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR IS TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROOOLLLLLLLLL!"

The word, old son, is awesome. And that's not even getting into the one where he says he's going to hijack Hulk Hogan's plane, kill the pilots, and crash it.

Seriously.