Mick Foley is missing part of an ear and a few front teeth. Known to some as “Cactus Jack” or “Mankind,” the pro-wrestler’s weapons of choice in the ring have included barbed wire bats, the mandible claw and a sock puppet aptly named “Mr. Socko,” which often found its way down his opponents’ throats. This bearded face, framed by haphazard curls, is not one that you would expect to proudly represent the movement to end rape and sexual violence. Read more
Countdown To Sponsorship [Childfund International]
by Cynthia Price, ChildFund Director of Communications
In Mick Foley’s latest book — his ninth! — he describes in great depth the six-week period leading up to one of the biggest wrestling matches in his career.
I know — you’re wondering what this has to do withChildFund. But hold on. It’s actually what Mick asks his readers to do several times during the book, including the chapter “A Sponsor for Alimany,” that brings the message home. Read more
The Wrestler Is Good [SLATE.COM]
A couple of years ago, I met with a respected and successful producer who believed that one day, the motion picture industry would finally make a great pro-wrestling movie … and that I was the guy to write it. I had written several books— fiction, nonfiction, and children’s —over the course of my 20-plus years as a pro wrestler, which apparently made me a credible candidate for this type of project. But I didn’t have high hopes for it. The wrestling business has been the source of more than one critically acclaimed documentary—I was one of the subjects of Barry Blaustein’s Beyond the Mat—but I worried that my vocation was not respected enough to merit a thoughtful fictional screen representation. The chances of seeing a great pro-wrestling movie seemed right up there with the likelihood of a Mickey Rourke career renaissance. Read more
MODERN LOVE: THE TALK [WIRED.COM]
My oldest son heads off to college tomorrow. He will do so in my old Chevy mini-van, his big graduation present—a vehicle he once proclaimed he would refuse to drive, until learning that the only thing less cool than driving one’s girlfriend to a date in a Chevy Venture, is having one’s dad drive him and his girlfriend to a date in that same Venture. I may have been a little tough on him about his grades during the high school years, but unbeknownst to me, he was quietly racking up an impressive amount of college credits while still in high school, so that he effectively enters his first year of college as a sophomore. Pretty impressive. Read more
The Wrestler and the Cornflake Girl [SLATE.COM]
I can still remember the first time I heard Tori Amos. It was the fall of 1993, and I was in the back of a colossal ’79 Lincoln Coupe Mark V, embarking on some otherwise forgettable road trip somewhere in the Deep South. On that night, my compatriot Maxx Payne—the wrestler, not the video-game character —unleashed an all-out audio assault: Megadeth, Rage Against the Machine, GWAR, and a few other offerings that made the guys in GWAR seem like sensitive stylists by comparison. Read more
