On Learning To Do Without What You Never Needed In The First Place

If I may paraphrase Mick Foley, I’m not Old School; I’m from the school that burned down before the Old School was built. To continue the lucha metaphor -and my regular listeners do know my fondness for the squared circle- , anyone out there remember Paul E. Dangerously? That was Paul Heyman’s late 80s heel manager character in the indies and WCW, prior to his ECW heyday. The name was a reference to Michael Keaton -who Heyman resembled- in the film Johnny Dangerously. The Paul E. character was a stereotypically abrasive, loudmouth, yuppie New Yorker, of the sort vilified anywhere West of the Hudson. He carried a cell phone -which in those days was quite uncommon- that was the size of a brick and had a telescoping antenna. Paul E. yapped incessantly into that contraption at top volume, during promos, announcing stints, even when members of his stable were in the ring. It also made a handy ‘foreign object” for those frequent times when the referee’s attention was diverted. Even though I’ve always considered myself a smart mark who was in on the kayfabe, Paul E. annoyed the hell out of me, specifically because of that Goddamned cell phone. In the 80s, nothing screamed “Inconsiderate Self-Important Pompous Asshole” more than a cellphone. Did anyone in their right mind think that ostentatiously lugging a squawk box everywhere was a good idea? What an annoyance. I lived for the moments when face opponents clobbered Paul E. and smashed his yuppie toy to bits. Unfortunately, as we all know, Paul E. wasn’t just a villainous buffoon, he proved to be a prophet of sorts, for an age now passed. The perpetually plugged-in millions are all gone now, and while the microwave silence has left millions out of sorts, for me it’s a case of addition by subtraction….

2 thoughts on “On Learning To Do Without What You Never Needed In The First Place”

  1. Mr. Lenox, now that the plugged in millions have returned to dust, have you people out there come up with a new use for the verb “twitter?”

    Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.

    1. Mr. Majestic (That would be you, not the spelled-slightly-differently eponymous Charles Bronson character): I don’t see a need to come up with any new meanings for the verb twitter; I’m just damn glad -now that the TechnoApocalypse has silenced all PDAs to dust- that the word can revert to its original meaning: “To utter a succession of small, tremulous sounds, as a bird.” That from a well-thumbed copy of The New Century Dictionary, published in 1927. (Unlike most computer hard drives, that tome remains solidly intact.) The “small” in that definition refers to volume, but it could just as well be referring to cellphone-, rather than avian, generated tweets, which were small, quite small, in significance. And about as deep as a puddle of piss. If one wants to hear -rather than read- truly blissful twitters, I suggest a trip to the mound of rotting produce in Red Hook that used to be a Fairway Supermarket.
      We should also rejoice that “friend” and “google” have returned, hopefully forever, to their original noun forms. The age of doing everything at once while focusing on nothing is dead.

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