One Fall

The News:

  Huge news on the Family Television Group vs. GWA battle front. Wrestlingdailytribune.com is reporting that Imagine Television Network (ITN) is going to make specific contractual requirements of GWA Burn before they renew the show, presumably in response to pressure from the Family Television Group. Specifically, ITN will require an outside consultant to sit in on all creative and production meetings regarding GWA Burn. This consultant will have the power to nix any storyline or segment idea if deemed inappropriate. Burn’s television contract is up for renewal next month, so presumably this new level of network control could start as soon as July.

  Slugs, our response to this horrendous idea must be swift and strong.

  Hence, the...

  Feature:

  As promised, I have spent the past week researching web sites and digging through public records (specifically IRS Form 990, a public domain document for non-profits like the FTG), and have collected a definitive list of the Family Television Group’s biggest donors.

  Rather than beginning an ineffective, uncoordinated spam campaign, I’d like for us to focus our efforts, one donor at a time.

  Our first target should be the biggest, and the FTG’s largest donor, by far, is some outfit called Americans For Productive & Responsible Entertainment & Media. Total contributions last year: $1,650,000. This group does not have a web site, in fact there is no mention of them on the Internet anywhere. Luckily for you, I’m a scrupulous researcher, and went off to the business library at Northeastern Illinois University, where I found this wily bunch listed in public domain IRS records. Here’s what I know: Americans For Productive & Responsible Entertainment & Media was founded two years ago by Andrew Smith and Jonathan Taylor, both from Calgary. Why two Canadians would start a group called Americans for blah blah blah is beyond me, but there you have it. Their headquarters are in Wilmington, Delaware, and their charter declares their purpose to be, “The promotion of psychologically healthy, socially responsible entertainment in the mass media.”

  Send your hate mail to this address:

  Americans For Productive & Responsible Entertainment & Media

  3412 North Hanover

  Wilmington, DE 74565

  Our second target is The Betsy Piper Foundation, whose total contributions to the FTG last year were $890,000. This group does have a web site, albeit a lame one: www.betsypiperfoundation.org. The web site proclaims the foundation as “a monetary advocate for those causes which Betsy held most dearly.” No mention anywhere on the web site of what those causes are, where the group is located, who is involved, or anything else that might possibly be of use to anyone. Just page after page about the lovely Betsy Piper, an old-world New England socialite, who apparently was the Martha Stewart of her day.

  Once again yours truly found more useful information at the library. Here’s where we might be onto something. Like Americans For blah blah blah, The Betsy Piper Foundation was founded two years ago, by two men from Calgary. The founders of this group are named Jeremy Washington and Peter Jackson. And, the Foundation’s headquarters are also in Wilmington, Delaware. Coincidence? I think not. My initial guess is that there’s a racket of Old School Canadians who want a return to carnie-style wrestling and have put together a huge consortium to shut down the Americanized product. Okay, that might be a little far-fetched. Nonetheless, there’s certainly something here worth looking into. Is there a connection between these two non-profit groups? Is there one supreme target to unearth, whom we can shower with hate mail so venomous as to make an actual impact on the FTG’s campaign against our beloved past-time? Hop to it slugs!

  In the meantime, here’s the address for mail to The Betsy Piper Foundation:

  The Betsy Piper Foundation

  PO Box 1212

  Wilmington, DE 75448

  And until next time, this is Steve Garcia. Peace.

  Return. Click. Send to FTP.

  Steve Garcia stood up and stretched his hands to the ceiling. It was now a little after six a.m. His mom would be waking up soon. Maybe she’d make him breakfast before he went to bed.

  His eyeballs ached. He had been staring at either his computer or his television for almost twelve hours now. All for that column, for his readers, the slugs.

  Steve began maintaining Wrestlinghotline.com in 1996, when the web was for nerds and wrestling was for losers. Back then, the web site was just an offshoot of the actual Wrestling Hotline, a 976 number that fielded 200 calls a day at fifty cents a minute. As a teenager, Steve was a regular caller to the Hotline (his mom allowed him two dollars worth of calls a week) and he was the first to answer the Hotline’s advertised request for a web site designer.

  Steve expected to work as a webmaster with a boss, posting and maintaining the web site to the specifications of the Hotline’s owner, a reclusive New Yorker named Ben Evans. But a week after Steve launched the site, the phone number went inactive and Ben Evans disappeared. That week Steve posted his first column anyway. No one seemed to care.

  So the next week Steve posted another column. His phone didn’t ring, his email box sat empty, the wrestling world marched forward and no one said a thing.

  The next week Steve posted another column. He received three emails from readers, flaming him for his opinions.

  The next week Steve posted another column, and his Inbox flooded. He had developed a following.

  In 1997, the wrestling boom began. In 1998, the web became mainstream. In 1999 Steve purchased software to follow the traffic on his site. By 2000, he was the most widely read wrestling columnist on the Internet, a title he still held.

  And no one thought twice that Wrestlinghotline.com was registered to Wrestling Hotline Associated, a sole proprietorship in the state of New York whose founder and owner had been AWOL since 1996.

  Several times Steve had considered trying to get ownership of the domain name, or moving the site to a different location. His readership was in the hundreds of thousands and he never made a cent.

  But he never got around to it. Making money with his site would be nice, and it might shut up his nagging mom, but it would require real work. He would have to file papers with the state. He would have to pay taxes. He would have to keep records.

  Someday he’d do all that.

  For now, he wrote. He also trolled the message boards and chatrooms, swam through thousands of emails, bounced ideas off of friends and Internet contacts, and kept abreast of everything wrestling that was published on the web or in the newsletters. All his work came to a head every Monday night, when he worked on The Tuesday Hangover, his site’s centerpiece. For whatever reason, wrestling fans on the Internet had grown to love Steve’s random musings and ramblings on the wrestling they had watched the night before.

  The universal “computer is done” bell sounded on the speakers. The file transfer was complete. Steve went back to his computer and sat down. The Tuesday Hangover was posted. He opened the web site and quickly double-checked his column for any errors he might have missed. When he got to the last word he felt a strong sense of relief. A whole night of work and play went into that column. Now he could sleep until mid-afternoon. By the time he was up again, he’d have at least 200 emails from his readers.

  The little envelope appeared in the lower right corner. Someone already had something to say.

  Steve double-clicked on the email icon.

  To: Steve Garcia

  From: Aaron Culley

  Steve,

  I was at the Houston GWA show last night. The shit rocked.

  But that’s not the point. After the show, my friend and I went to Houston General to see if we could get a look at Goliath, and we did! But he was on his way out. Some long-haired dude had taken him on a wheelchair out of the hospital and helped him get in a truck and they just drove off. This was at like, midnight. Goliath looked dazed, but was able to get into the truck without any assistance.

  Big deal, right? So he
got discharged at midnight. Probably a hundred people snooping around could have told you that.

  Here’s the shit though. My friend and I raced back to our car and followed the truck. They went to Houston Medical Center! Pulled right into another hospital! Goliath must be totally fucked up. I bet his brains are so scrambled that Houston General didn’t even have all the equipment they needed to fix him. Or maybe GWA wanted him to see someone specific at a bigger hospital.

  Thought you might want to know.

  Aaron Culley.

 

  Steve closed the email. Going back to his web browser, he took a quick trip to the competition’s site, www.wrestlingdailytribune.com. He scanned their story about Goliath’s injury in last night’s match. Taken to Houston General. Concussion suspected. Stayed overnight for observation.

  Perfect. He had a scoop.

  Steve re-opened TuesdayHangover0502.htm.

  At the top of the page, he wrote: “Breaking News: Goliath transferred from Houston General to Houston Medical Center.”

  Ten minutes later he posted his updated file, complete with an edited version of Mr. Culley’s email.

  He turned back and looked at his bed. It was so inviting. But now there was a new development. More had to be coming. Steve sat up in his chair, rolled his head around a few times, and settled in for a morning of surfing and digging.