Saturday, April 21, 2018

Entry 419: Hurt Legs and Acromegaly

Lil' S1 has complained a couple times in the past few weeks that his leg hurts.  It's tough to tell if it's real or not, because he only does it in the morning when he doesn't want to go to school.  He collapses in a comically overly dramatic fashion, and then crawls around, insisting he can't so much as stand up.  But then once he gets bored or something comes up that he wants to do, for which he needs use of his leg, it's magically better.  So, obviously it's not hurt that badly.  But what I can't quite tell is if he's basically making it up whole cloth, or if it really is bothering him, and he's willing to ignore it when he gets to do something fun, and then overselling it when it's time to go to school.  Anyway, something to keep an eye on.  And maybe we need to sign him back up for soccer.  He might be a natural.





Speaking of injuries.  I watched HBO's Andre the Giant documentary last night.  I thought it was excellent.  Andre was a big deal (get it? big?) when I was a kid, because I was a huge wrestling fan right at the time of his infamous heel turn.  We bought the WrestleMania III pay-per-view and had a little party at our house, so I watched Hulk slam Andre in real-time.  In fact, I think I can still name every match from the event, like, literally every match.*  It's tough to overstate what a big deal this seemed to be at the time.  It helped that I was 10 years old -- the perfect age for wrestling -- but even the adults watching were getting kinda sucked in.  (I remember my dad being like, "I'll say this, about it:  It might be phony, but it is entertaining.")  That was just the allure of Andre the Giant.  What was amazing to me watching the documentary was how bad of shape Andre was in physically during the match.  He could barely walk, which is why they used these little mini-ring shuttles to get wrestlers to and from the locker room (seen in the video below).  The match itself was a technical dud because Andre was so limited, but it still totally worked as a spectacle.  Another interesting thing is that Andre kept everybody in the dark about how it was going to end until it actually happened.  It was some sort of power trip or joke or something on his part, but he just refused to commit to anything -- he refused to even really talk about it -- and Hogan didn't even know for sure that he was going to win until the final bell rang.  Crazy.

Something else just popped into my head about Andre.  I have a friend whose older brother worked in the Tacoma Dome as a teenager, so he would be backstage with the wrestlers sometimes when wrestling events came to town.  And he said that before a match Andre would polish off several boxes of wine by himself, and that he was so big and immobile, he couldn't clean himself properly, so he had drabs of crusted shit stuck to the back of his legs and his wrestling shorts.  I was always dubious of this story, but after seeing the doc, I think it's properly true.  The wine part totally checks out, and seeing footage of him and hearing about him at the end of his life (which is when my friend's brother would have seen him), seeing what bad shape he was in, it seems very likely he would not have been able to wipe his ass properly.  It's sad.  But then again, he had an amazing prime.  He got be somebody special, and do amazing things nobody else got to do.  He knew he was going to die young, and in a way, he chose to do so, as he opted not to receive treatment for his acromegaly when he had a chance.  Given the hand he was dealt, having a flash-bang of a life, seemed the best option.  I would have done the same thing.  (But he was only six years older than I am now when he died, so I reserve the right to change my mind about this in six years.)



Anyway...

Concerning other things I've consumed recently that I recommend, this article about our lovely president is really good.  It's not anything we didn't know, but it's fascinating to read in such explicit detail nonetheless.  We actually get to hear audio of the president of our country, as a younger man, pretending to be somebody else so that he can con a reporter into putting him on a list of super-rich people, on which he doesn't actually belong.  Think about that.  And as somebody on Twitter mentioned, it does make you wonder if the main reason he opposes Mueller getting close to his finances is simply because he doesn't have the amount of money he says he does, and he doesn't want it exposed.  It makes sense.  His supporters wouldn't care -- they will immediately forgive/deny anything negative about him -- but he would care.  I suspect he cares more about being perceived as super-rich than he does about not being perceived as a criminal.  Like, if you gave him the option to either go to prison and have everybody think he's the richest man in the world, or stay out of prison and have everybody think he's a pauper, I suspect he would pick the former.  Now, if only we can find a way to make his hypothetical wish a reality...

That's all I have time for today.  Until next time...

*Here are my guesses at all the matches, roughly in order: 
1.  Can-Am Connection vs. Bob Orton and Don Muraco
2.  Hillbilly Jim and two little people vs. King Kong Bundy and two little people
3.  Fabulous Rougeaus vs. Greg Valentine and Brutus Beefcake
4.  Junkyard Dog vs. King Harley Race
5.  Roddy Piper vs. Adrian Adonis (loser gets their head shaved)
6.  Ricky Steamboat vs. Randy Savage (for the Intercontinental Belt)
7.  Heart Foundation and Danny Davis vs. British Bulldogs and Tito Santana (for the Tag Team Belts)
8.  Nikolai Volkoff and the Iron Sheik vs. the Killer Bees
9. Butch Reed vs. Koko B. Ware
10. Jake the Snake vs. the Honky Tonk Man
11. Hulk vs. Andre (for the Championship Belt)

Let's see how I did... Damn!  I missed one -- Hercules vs. Billy Jack Haynes.  Still, 11-for-12 ain't bad, considering the event happened 31 years ago.

3 comments:

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  2. Maybe S1 is having growing pains? Our boys get those off and on and it's usually worse when they first wake up.

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    1. That could be it. I thought about that. Thought those were more associated with older kids. It also could be he gets Charley horses and bruises and whatnot from roughhousing and then he rounds it up to a major injury when he's trying to get out of something he doesn't want to do.

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