The Anti-Essay

This is the original piece of writing that eventually produced the traditional essay that is posted in the entry below this:

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It’s hard to imagine a fourteen-year-old boy inventing television. When I was fourteen, I was too busy wasting my time to come with such an idea. But in the spring of 1921, Philo T. Farnsworth was hard at work on his father’s farm, while an idea tossed around inside his head. Philo had been an avid reader of Science and Invention and he had read about the early developments of the television and at the age of fourteen, he knew the techniques they were using were wrong. He was convinced that cathode-ray tubes, electron beams, and magnetic fields were needed to transmit pictures.
Tattoos date back nearly four thousand years, having been found on Egyptian and Nubian mummies.
What began as a carnival sideshow has now evolved into a new breed of entertainment that stands alone in its genre – professional wrestling, “sports entertainment.”
Carnival brawlers would take on challengers from the crowd, marks, or they would fight one another. They couldn’t afford to injure one another, so they rigged their matches and conned the public – a simple task for a group of criminals hiding from the law.
Something else I find hard to believe is that professional wrestling, as an organized event, has roots in Iowa and several other midwestern states. During the summer of 1948, five men who ran territorial federations in Des Moines, Iowa; Columbus, Ohio; Kansas City, Missouri; Omaha, Nebraska; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and a sixth man, an ex-sportswriter, that had called them together for a meeting in Waterloo, Iowa. In that meeting, they decided to join forces to form the National Wrestling Alliance, an organization that still exists today. I find this all hard to believe because now, Iowa is lucky to get one big wrestling event every eighteen months.
It’s always been a con, or a work, but back in the ‘50s and ‘60s, it was sold as real and believed as real. Babyfaces, the good guys, and heels, the evildoers, were not allowed to associate in public, because “blood enemies” calmly socializing created scandal.
Growing up was hard. Not “hard” in the sense of being poor, or black, or homeless. There’s a level of difficulty to everything that I don’t think can, or should, be measured against completely different ideas. I’m sure growing up poor is “harder” than growing up, just like I’m sure growing up poor and black is “harder” than growing up poor, and so on. There are all these different levels and if you think you’ve got it bad, there’s always someone who has it worse. Of course, eventually, you’re going to reach the bottom of the pit and the most miserable person in the world…but at least he’s alive, right?
I’m not trying to say I’m the guy at the bottom of the pit, but growing up, it certainly felt that way. High school, “the best years of my life,” were actually quite bittersweet, as I became an antisocial introvert who was very untrusting of people; my “teenage rebellion” which still has a stranglehold on my life.
Tattooing was forbidden in Europe after the rise of Christianity, but it persisted in many other corners of the world.
Some people have visions of God, others have contact with aliens, but at fifteen, Farnsworth experienced a vision while working the fields – he saw television images, formed by an electron beam scanning a picture in horizontal lines, much like he had just “scanned” the hay field with his team of horses. The electrons would scan so fast that the human eye would not detect each individual line; instead, it would see one, instantaneous picture.
Vincent Kennedy McMahon, Jr., known then simply as Vinnie, revolutionized professional wrestling. Promoting sporting events and huge spectacles runs in the McMahon bloodline – his grandfather, Jess McMahon, worked as a boxing matchmaker at Madison Square Garden during the 1920s. Jess’ son, Vincent James McMahon, Sr., would follow in his footsteps, becoming a wrestling promoter, loyal to the NWA for the first twelve years of its existence. But Vincent and NWA Champion, Buddy Rogers, grew tired of the NWA and decided that they needed to pull out and form a breakaway faction. So in 1963, Rogers was forced to do the job, lose, to Lou Thesz and shortly thereafter, McMahon pulled Rogers from the NWA and formed the World Wide Wrestling Federation. Rogers appeared immediately as the federation’s Champion, winning a phantom tournament in Rio de Janeiro.
What strikes me about telling this story – the story of the beginning of a phenomenon now known as World Wrestling Entertainment – is for a spectacle as fake as professional wrestling, with its phantom tournaments, make-believe characters, and fabricated feuds, it certainly was very real and cutthroat behind the scenes. Promoters cheated performers out of money; as superstars grew old and were forced to retire, they were left for dead, broke and sick; wrestlers, living by their strict code of kayfabe (maintaining the image that everything is real), wouldn’t even tell their own families the big secret, which led to tense situations. It’s an amazing paradox that continues to exist today.
Europeans rediscovered tattooing when the age of exploration brought them into contact with American Indians and Polynesians.
I was fourteen or fifteen when I experienced my first downward spiral. A bitter family feud was brewing and I was straggling along in No-Man’s Land between the two sides: my family and Tim and Jeff, my uncle and cousin. My family is my family, I don’t need to explain myself there, but on the flipside, Tim and Jeff were just as much my family – they were blood and they were my friends. With them, I felt as though I could truly be myself, and I could say whatever was on my mind. I felt free and I felt happy and I belonged.
As the war waged on, I struggled, attempting to keep the peace until a striking blow sent me deeper into my own personal abyss – I was dumped by my first girlfriend. All I distinctly remember about that day is that I was supposed to be home for dinner, but I was hurting so badly that all I wanted to do was hang with my boys. So I didn’t go home until midnight.
My mother was livid and I wasn’t talking. This only infuriated her more and she threatened to slap me across the face – I was so empty and cold and uncaring that I simply pointed at my chin, giving her a target. She grounded me for that small act of defiance.
The word tattoo itself was introduced into English and other European languages from Tahiti, where it was first recorded by James Cook's expedition in 1769.
Farnsworth’s television design differed from any other designs being developed at the time as he planned to use an “anode finger” to scan the image, as opposed to an electron beam. The electrical image formed on the cathode end would be emitted and sent to the anode. Magnetic coils moved the image over the anode finger’s aperture and the electrons would become a current. An electrical “picture” would form corresponding to the original image; this output would create another electron beam that would cause the end of another cathode-ray tube to glow. Because of “persistence of vision,” the human eye would see this “moving” image as a solid picture.
Philo was sure that everyone in America would someday own one of these receiving tubes. Science is beyond me, so I can’t even begin to understand how his design works, or how he came up with it at the age of fourteen, but I can understand the effects of his idea.
Fast-forward to 1996 and professional wrestling was as much the same as it was back in the 1940s. A ruthless, cutthroat business that still swore itself to secrecy and often found itself mired in controversy.
On May 19, 1996, a single moment would spawn the greatest movement in professional wrestling: a real-life group of friends collectively known as The Clique broke character at a non-televised event as a send-off to two of the five members. Kevin “Diesel” Nash had just lost a cage match to the WWF Champion, Shawn Michaels, when Scott “Razor Ramon” Hall came out to the ring, followed by Hunter Hearst-Helmsley. The four men, who were feuding amongst themselves as far as the fans knew, shared hugs and poses in the ring in their final night together as a unit.
Hall and Nash would leave the company, forming a renegade faction in World Championship Wrestling, claiming to still be WWF employees – a “takeover.” In reality, Hall and Nash were now WCW employees, and this was an elaborate angle, or storyline. Helmsley would take the fall for the group in the WWF, as his push (being put into higher-profile matches) was put to a stop – he was replaced by “Stone Cold” Steve Austin who, in turn, coined a catch phrase that would make the WWF millions of dollars in merchandising. Helmsley was eventually paired on television with Michaels and another storyline mirrored reality, as they rebelled against the WWF in an attempt to join their friends (Hall and Nash) in the other company.
This one moment where four friends said their good-byes spawned the WWF “Attitude” era when the line between fantasy and reality was blurred. Wrestling was a scripted event and they acknowledged this fact, no longer wanting to treat their fans as second-rate citizens. I learn more about wrestling history every day and the intricacies are amazing. It isn’t necessarily “important” history, in the sense of the history of racism or the history of the Holocaust, but it holds a special value to those who are interested in it.
In the 19th century, released U.S. convicts and British army deserters were identified by tattoos, and later the inmates of Siberian prisons and Nazi concentration camps were similarly marked. Members of 20th-century street or motorcycle gangs frequently identify themselves with a tattooed design.
I learned how to be my own person when I was fifteen, by spending as much time as I did with Tim and Jeff. Tim was definitely not the standard-bearer of humanity, but he knew how to get things he wanted done, done. No one else dictated his life. And these are the things I learned when I was fifteen. You have to play your cards right with your parents. They’d like for you to become them, or they’d like to vicariously live through you. I don’t want to let my mom and grandparents down, but at the same time, I refuse to let myself down. And sometimes, that means you have to say, “Fuck off.”

***

I'd love to sit here and ramble for a long-as-shit time, but I gotta shower and hit the sack. This weekend has been...uneventful, but pretty cool. Done a few things, like I played cards with the fam' tonight, me and Tim were actin' crazy as shit. I think we're goin' drinking next Saturday night - for free - but we'll see. I have to shoot a basketball game on Sunday afternoon and Frankie's having a few issues with work hours, so I don't know if things will necessarily work out, but I hope. Also, the Royal Rumble is next Sunday night. w00t!

Tim very well may be moving at the end of the week...once again, we'll see. I gotta try to get up to the gym at least 3 days this week. I went twice this past week and ran for 30 minutes and then played basketball.

Man, I know this is so extremely impossible that I probably even shouldn't write it down, but I'd absolutely love to build myself back up into decent shape and at some point in my life, try out for a semi-pro basketball team. Basketball has, is, and will always be my #1 love...I remember at 5th grade graduation, we held up these goofy-ass "what-I-wanna-be-when-I-grow-up" placards and mine read "basketball player." And it's always something in the back of my mind...and no matter what I do to bide my time, be it wrestling-related or TV/radio/video editing-related, or writing, or what-the-fuck-ever...I still love basketball. I'm so out of shape and I was never that good in the first place, but it's an absolute rush to get out on the court and run and dive and rebound and scrap.

That was my role, always and forever...I was the scrapper. Grab the rebounds, hit the putback shots, dive for loose balls, save the ball from going out of bounds.

And I will always, always, always love the pain. Sickening as it may sound, allow me to explain: I'm not a big fan of painful pain...I wouldn't want you to break my arm just cuz I said I like "pain"...I wouldn't cut myself just for the fun of it, cuz I like "pain"...what I like is going out there, giving it my all, and then going home only to find scratches, bruises, sore knees, jammed fingers, etc.

That...that...is an amazing feeling. It's not good, and yes I complain, but the complaining really is a mask. Or even beyond it being a "mask," it might be the way I express my contentness with being sore...by complaining about being sore.

I currently sit here with a small gouge/scratch on my right arm. One of my knees has been noticably sore (I'm not sure at the moment which one it is). My ribs are potentially bruised (at the very least, sore) on the right side of my body. And a recovering jammed ring finger on my right hand.

It was, quite possibly, the second worse jam I've experienced...the two bottom, uh, "segments" of my finger were lightly purple - the only other time I've actually had bruising involved in a jam was in 9th grade, which was the same two finger segments (I think it was the same finger)...except they were maaaajorly purple.

Anyway, I said I wasn't going to write much, but I'm watching the opening match of SmackDown before I take my shower...so I have a few extra minutes of typing and as you can see, it's a good thing, seeing as how I went on a basketball tangent.

I can't stress it enough, though, I love basketball. What makes it better, currently, is there's a couple of guys up at the gym that are there frequently/regularly and whenever the three of us are up there, we always try to get a game going (be it 3-on-3, 4-on-4, full-court 5's, or just a game of 21) and when I'm actually going to the gym regularly, this helps me immensely, cuz it works me out as well as allows me to do something I love and enjoy myself.

Alright, folks...gotta pee, so time to end this shit.