JIMMY VALIANT vs. OX BAKERI am going to blaze through this group of eight match-ups, because I feel like blazing. This is a pair of wrestlers who were awesome when I was a kid. Jimmy Valiant was the greatest wrestler ever because he looked and talked and acted like one of the dudes that would be getting drunk and stoned with my dad, playing poker on Friday and Saturday nights. Ox Baker was the biggest, scariest dude ever.
As it stands, Jimmy Valiant is still a crazy dude, has a wrestling school in southwest Virginia, and drives weird bengali striped stationwagons, plus still rocks long hair, plus has ridiculous tattoos like pink roses in his ear and "COME TO PAPA" on his belly. Shit man, there's too many pluses to even list. For most of my life, if you could pick a famous person to be your fake dad, Jimmy Valiant would be my choice.
Advantage: Jimmy Valiant.
JOHN WATERS vs. ROBERT CRUMBA pair of artistic freaky-dekes. I do not like John Waters' movies too much, because they are either shocking just to be shocking, or slightly pretentious. But I have never really seen anything John Waters has cosigned that hasn't been at least worth my while. Robert Crumb is a perverted old comic strip maker, born from the '60s, but pretty up-to-date with modern fetishes throughout his time putting ink to paper. If I was picking a guy to lead a tour of retarded shit scattered throughout a strange city on a bus tour, it'd be Waters. But if I was going to pick a guy to kick it in the minds of my teenage Rojonekku trainees for the rest of their lives, I'd want Robert Crumb's thumbprint in there.
Advantage: Robert Crumb.
AFRIKA BAMBAATAA vs. KOOL DJ HERCTwo of the three founding fathers Fly Trinity of hip hop (along with Grandmaster Flash), yet two very different dudes. Kool DJ Herc was a guy that liked it loud, carrying a big ass Jamaican-inspired sound system in his late model convertible to blast cats with back in the early days. He was a party rocker. Meanwhile, Afrika Bambaataa was on some other shit, somehow morphing from gang leader back when NYC still had old school The Warriors-style gangs into a space commander making strange danceable cybertronic musics from the future. And really for me, it all boils down to the fact that Herc, though a pioneer, lacks the post-pioneer days resume of retarded shit that Bambaataa has, starting the Zulu Nation (of which you can fill out an application form online, though their website is like a geocities website or some shit), and leading the charge to turn the housing projects he lived in and used to rock jams in the basement of into a historic marker and a sort of temple to hip hop, although most likely it will be torn down and turned into a condominium like the rest of New York City.
Advantage: Afrika Bambaataa.
BILL MURRAY vs. ROBERT DUVALA pair of actors, neither of which I imagine will make it even close to the Final 5. Bill Murray has always been one funny motherfucker, and still regularly does wacky shit like get DUIs while driving a golf cart. Robert Duval is a great actor, but more of a serious business actor. Plus, I'm watching Lonesome Dove the last couple nights, and the special effects on that thing are so goddamned stupid looking, it's actually leaving a bad taste in my mouth for all the actors involved, regardless of how good they are. Also, so far as I know, Duval never did a movie with Rodney Dangerfield.
Advantage: Bill Murray.
DAVID MANN vs. SONNY BARGERThis is a battle between American outlaw biker influences. David Mann is the artist who drew all the crazy white trash centerfolds that were in Easyriders magazine throughout the '70s and '80s. Sonny Barger was President of the Hell's Angels. Having had an uncle who rode in the Pagans back in the day, plus all the crazy fuckers my old man knew, who would actually have Easyriders laying around for me to just thumb through when no one was looking, biker shit is a small thread in the bizarre fabric of my life. I actually remember seeing David Mann centerfolds stapled to walls back in the day. And the drawings are so goofy, like it raining on a biker dude and his old lady taking off for the road to catch a ride with a trucker, or a giant close-up of a pair of freaked out eyeballs in a sideview mirror with four burly motorcycle dudes riding up behind him. Quality art.
Meanwhile Sonny Barger took outlaw biker and made it sort of corporate, although still criminal. And as much as I enjoy the whole sub-culture of proud dirtbags on motorcycles, I am more for the shitty yet wonderful art that would come from such a sub-culture than the intellectual property ownership or whatever stupid shit has happened ever since the Hells Angels trademarked and copyrighted all their shit. That does not mean I want you guys to fuck me up though, because I know there's crazy biker shit going on in Virginia right now. My uncle was called Littlejohn. I also spent a week in the hospital with a dude named Smurf who knows you guys too. We both got our faces caved in at the same time fifteen years ago or so, mine by a concrete stairwell after a gallon of wine, his by a 2x4 after a riverside bonfire party fight.
Advantage: David Mann.
ATSUSHI ONITA vs. EL HIJO DEL SANTOMore wrestling bullshit, but of an international variety. Atsushi Onita is a Japanese hardcore legend who got blowed up, wrapped in barbed wire, and generally mangled for years, and long before anybody else did it to quite the extent he did it. Also he became a successful politician in Japan, and wrestled in Afghanistan after 9/11, for the children. He truly is an amazing human being.
El Hijo Del Santo is the offspring of the most famous Mexican wrestler ever, and has carried that tradition on almost exactly, except just not quite so much. I don't think 100,000 people will line the streets of Mexico City when he dies like they did his father. Yet lucha libre is one of the most bizarre and wonderful sub-cultures on this blessed Earth. Still though, El Hijo Del Santo never got elected to Mexican Congress.
Advantage: Atsushi Onita.
COLONEL BO GRITZ vs. TED KACZYNSKIAhh, yes, a pair of anti-American influences, from the right and left wings. Colonel Bo Gritz was involved in trying to go back to Vietnam and recover POWs, and it is said the character of Hannibal on the A-Team was based on him (although he sold the rights to his life story to William Shatner back in the '80s). He was the go-to man when it was negotiation time with Randy Weaver or the Montana Freemen, and I think he ran for President a couple of times. He was connected to Ross Perot somehow. And the best thing is he was never even an actual colonel.
Ted Kaczynski is the infamous Unabomber, a super smart Ivy League genius who wanted to disappear into the wilds of Montana to live a simple and unseen life. But motherfuckers had to go and start building shit into the wilderness, and just generally wreak their "let's make order out of all the chaos with our dominion over the earth" bullshit on everything. We destroy everything. So he started mailing bombs to select motherfuckers.
Now I do not endorse killing motherfuckers, not at all, but I do endorse abandoning society completely and getting pissed at them if they won't let you alone and growing your beard long and hair shaggy and writing long-winded explanations about everything that's happened to have ready once the authorities finally close in on you.
Advantage: Ted Kaczynski.
BILLY JOE SHAVER vs. WILLIE NELSONIn the process of filling out the field of 80, just like with March Madness, there's going to be some mismatches in the beginning. Billy Joe Shaver is a crazy fucker, and an outlaw country original, and shot his wife like so many country people dream about doing. But he is not Willie Nelson.
Advantage: Willie Nelson.
