NAME: Loretta
AGE: 33
OCCUPATION: Professional Wrestler
CANON: WWF Smackdown 2: Know Your Role
Technically, this seven-foot tall Amazon doesn’t belong to me. When I was a teenager living in Chehalis, Washington, my brother James, our friend Nathan, and I played a lot of videogames. WWF Smackdown 2 for the Play Station just so happened to have a create your own character mode.
And boy, did the three of us make a lot of characters. My most noteworthy character was a seven-foot version of Guile from Street Fighter II. Nathan’s character was a soldier slash hippie named Me (and yes, Nathan took full advantage of the jokes that came with that name). James had a seven-foot diva named Loretta, who happens to be the subject of this journal.
Guile can’t be an unemployed character because he’s a staple of the Street Fighter franchise and using him would result in a legal shit storm I’m not prepared for. I can’t get a hold of Nathan these days since he phased out of our lives in late 2002, so I don’t even know if I have permission to use Me in a story (save your jokes, people).
I have no qualms, however, about adding Loretta to my roster since my brother James doesn’t have aspirations of being an author nor does he take wrestling seriously anyways. If I stole Loretta out from under his nose, he’d be so oblivious to it that he wouldn’t even care if he found out. If he does care, I’m happy to give her back.
Loretta wasn’t just a big chick in a long skirt, high heels, a sports bra, and sunglasses. Being big isn’t everything. Being skillful is what matters most in professional wrestling. Loretta was part of the same videogame that had Chyna on its roster. Remember Chyna from the Attitude Era of WWE? She was fucking huge. She wrestled men and looked good doing it, which is why Chyna was the only woman to have held the WWE Intercontinental Championship. Loretta makes this woman look like El Torito in the ring. She could crush Chyna underneath her high heels and scrape her off like chewed bubblegum.
In addition to being a badass in the ring, Loretta was also slated by James and Nathan to be the storyline lover of Guile, who as I said earlier was a seven-foot version of his Street Fighter self. At first I didn’t agree with that since I had a shallow bias against overly tall women back then. But the more I think about it, the more I think Guile and Loretta should tie the knot and make seven-foot babies.
You know what’s even scarier than a seven-foot baby? A seven foot baby who was made taller and heavier by a pituitary disorder. If The Big Show and The Great Khali were a part of this videogame, they’d be insects among this world of giants. It wouldn’t be a WWE arena anymore. It’d be an ant farm. What if Daniel Bryan and Rey Mysterio were a part of this game? Guile and Loretta’s children would need a microscope just to compete against them!
Several Women’s Championship matches and beauty contests later, the videogame disc for WWF Smackdown 2 was scratched and broken from overuse. It was a fun game to play, but with a broken game disc, a sold Play Station, and a lost memory card, Loretta’s adventures in the digital world are over. Which is why I’d like to bring this giantess back to the digital world for a round of literary action.
The way I see it, Loretta’s character, should I decide to use her, can play out two ways and both of them have to do with her height advantage. Either she will be an unlikely hero who gets picked on for her size or she will be a villain who crushes villagers underneath her stilettos while breathing fire on them. Both alignments are believable for a woman like this. After all, being seven feet tall is not a guarantee for a happy or beautiful life.
Would you believe it if I told you The World’s Strongest Man and WWE legend Mark Henry was bullied as a teenager? He may have been big and strong, but he was still flawed in the eyes of everyone around him, especially those who called him names. Bottom line: if Loretta ever makes it into one of my stories, she won’t be winning a Most Overrated award from the Wrestling Observer Newsletter anytime soon.
It’s easy to create art out of the remains of destruction. Just a few posts ago, I created three new characters based on the internet arguments I had with the members of Play By Web in 2002 and 2004 over age limits: Zeal, Chakko, and Natron (The Undertaker doesn’t count since he’s copyrighted by the WWE). Three new characters are all well and good, but their births don’t change the fact that I still had depression and anger within me. Creativity is a great healing agent, but it doesn’t solve everything.
Music, on the other hand, is a very powerful drug that can be taken with any dosage of creativity. Creativity can be Prozac and music can be Abilify, if you really understand the power of medicine metaphors. In the case of 2002, the song that laid those fiery feelings to rest was “Om” by The Moody Blues. They already have a reputation for being peace-loving, leftwing hippies, but now that “Om” is on the market, they’ve taken it to a whole different level. “Om” is a word yoga masters use whenever they want to achieve a quiet mind through meditation, so it’s not much of a coincidence.
It’s a gorgeous piece of music complete with flutes, bass bongo drums, sitars, and of course, Mike Pinder’s Melotron keyboard (where would an early Moody Blues song be without it?). I’m not sure if it would put me to sleep due to the relaxation, but it definitely put my demons to sleep back in 2002 after the verbal battles were over. I was able to concentrate on my schoolwork and get the good grades I rightfully deserved.
If you have a fiery mind, “Om” by The Moody Blues is the tidal wave that will put out those destructive flames. If nothing else, it reminds us all that life is too short to be pissed off all the time. Metal fans will probably argue against that point since anger is a huge part of that aggressive genre of music. To those people, I argue there’s a huge difference between being psyched up for a metal song and pissed off at the world. When you’re psyched up for a metal song, it’s positive energy that will lead to having a good time. When you’re pissed off at the world, nobody wants to be around you and you will ultimately destroy yourself.
Not every situation calls for grinding, loud, explosive heavy metal. Sometimes you have to take a moment to calm down and assess the situation. Sometimes you have to lock yourself in your bedroom and let peace wash over you like warm Hawaiian beach water. You don’t necessarily have to do the whole “hippie-dippie” meditation routine in order to achieve this moment of peace. All you need is a moment to yourself and a deep look into your thoughts. Thinking is the best way to travel and it’s reiterated in “Om” by The Moody Blues. And once you’re done thinking, you can go back to the real world without unnecessarily spilling blood, especially your own.
***WRESTLING QUOTE OF THE DAY***
“People on the internet like to take cheap shots at me, but they’ll never be more critical of me than I am of me.”
-Dave Batista-
New Rule: ice cream should stay nonpartisan. Some right-wingers came out with an ice cream to counteract the hippies at Ben & Jerry’s with flavors like “Smaller Govern-Mint”, “I Hate the French Vanilla”, and “Iraqi Road”. I know, anything to get Ann Coulter to eat. But these guys are missing the whole point of Ben & Jerry’s. Hippie ice cream is fun because you eat it when you’re stoned.
New Rule: wing nuts have to stop saying that they’re going to boycott Oreos because they made a gay cookie. In fact, this giant blob of vegetable oil and corn syrup is the perfect symbol for gay pride, because when I look at it, I’d rather have a dick in my mouth.
New Rule: couples who make out in public have to bring a bucket for me to throw up in. I didn’t come all the way to Applebee’s to be sickened by your dry humping. I came all the way to Applebee’s to be sickened by the food.
New Rule: parents have to stop telling me that their little daughter is going to be a heart-breaker or that she’s flirting with me. It’s just plain creepy. Plus, it makes me regret having lunch alone at Chuck E. Cheese’s.
New Rule: if churches don’t have to pay taxes, they also can’t call the fire department when they catch on fire. Sorry Reverend, that’s one of those services that comes with paying in. I’ll use the fire department that I pay for, you can pray for rain.
New Rule: if you protest motorcycle helmet laws by not wearing a helmet and you get into an accident, you deserve to die.
New Rule: Chinese restaurants have to stop being judgmental whenever I ask for a fork. It’s not a hate crime. Give me a fork before it dawns on me what the fuck I’m really eating.
These examples are just a few of what you can expect from Bill Maher’s two books “New Rules” and “The New New Rules”. If you need current examples, watch his show on HBO every Friday night. We’re going to overtime!
***TELEVISION DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***
MORT: Peter, you’re swallowing those suppositories?
PETER: No, I’m shoving them up my ass. Of course I’m swallowing them!
-Family Guy-
Close your eyes and picture the following scene. You’re eating dinner with your family and everything seems peaceful. And then all of the sudden, like a tuba blast to the ears, the phone rings and it’s an annoying and obnoxious telemarketer trying to sell you shit you don’t need. Now picture that the person answering the phone as a crazy woman who hasn’t been on her meds in a long while and is capable of the worst kind of erratic behavior imaginable. Then picture the telemarketer as a vulgar hack with the charisma and personality of an orange peel. Put all of these images together and you’ve got the makings of a Carl Hiaasen gem known as “Nature Girl”. But wait, there’s more to it than a crazy lady trying to get revenge on a clown of a telemarketer. You’ve also got the near-fingerless ex-husband of said crazy lady who wants to kidnap her as a slave to his disgusting perversions. And you’ve got an Indian who just wants some peace and quiet out in the Florida Everglades. And a drunk and horny college chick who won’t leave said Indian alone. With so many angles to keep track of, you’d have to wonder how an author doesn’t drive himself insane trying to mesh them together in a creative and entertaining way. Not Carl Hiaasen. For him, crazy plotlines and humorous detective work are all in a day’s work. He alone has perfected a genre of literature known as the “environmental thriller”. In short, someone out there is trying to screw with mother nature and whoever does it gets what they so dearly deserve in the end. With this kind of wit and knowledge on his side, Carl Hiaasen should do a book on BP and the cluster-fuck they’ve caused in the Gulf Coast. I bet he’d have a field day with those corporate thugs! Or a heart attack, depending on how bad it really is out there. With these environmental thrillers, including Nature Girl, Carl Hiaasen not only entertains, he also raises awareness of all the harmful things happening in his home state of Florida. Oh, and did I mention that he’s also known for writing at a breakneck pace? You’ll probably blow through “Nature Girl” in record time because he doesn’t mess around…aside from when he’s peppering his books with reasons to LOL on your Face Book page. If you need an influential author to cling to, make it Carl Hiaasen. He’ll never let you down.
***PSEUDO-TWEET OF THE DAY***
Why is it that whenever a pundit says something offensive on the air, someone from the opposing side wants to have lunch with him? Judging from all the nasty things I’ve said about Tea Partiers over the years, I’d better keep the knives off the table.
