War

So, the United States is at war… again. We are attempting regime change… again. Lives will be uselessly lost once more. It seems that when it comes to history and geopolitics, our so-called leaders never learn their lesson. Korean War. Cuban Missile Crisis. Vietnam War. Gulf War. Iraq War. War in Afghanistan. The list just keeps piling up like empty whiskey bottles after a long night. We haven’t successfully changed a regime since World War II, and even then it was a Herculean effort assisted by the Soviet Union, a nation we would almost immediately spend the next half century locked in a Cold War with once the dust settled.

I hate war. I really do. It gives me nightmares and anxiety, which is kind of weird when you consider that I’m also obsessed with dystopian and apocalyptic imagery. I love the aesthetics of it in music and film, the ruined skylines, the cold synths, the sense that civilization is hanging on by a thread. But there’s a huge difference between imagination and real life. In a movie or a song you can turn it off when it gets too heavy. In real life, people die, cities burn, and whole generations get fucked over for decades. Maybe that’s exactly why I’m drawn to those genres in the first place, because I hope those things never actually happen.

The fear-mongering over Iran is nothing new. I remember when I was embedded with the Republicans years ago and they simply could not shut the hell up about Iran. It was like the boogeyman they dragged out every time they needed to scare people into supporting another war. I remember attending an event in Pasadena where Barry Goldwater Jr. was the keynote speaker. He told the audience that Iran had the capability to launch an electromagnetic pulse, often called an EMP bomb, against the United States. According to him, they could fire one off, knock out the entire electrical grid, and basically send us back to the nineteenth century overnight. This was around 2008, and he said our only choice was to attack Iran before they could do it to us. Do unto others before they do unto you, I guess.

For anyone who doesn’t know, an electromagnetic pulse weapon, usually referred to as an EMP bomb, is a device designed to generate a massive burst of electromagnetic energy. That energy spreads through the atmosphere and fries electronic systems over a wide area. Think power grids, computers, cars, phones, satellites, hospital equipment, and basically anything with delicate circuitry. The most powerful EMPs come from nuclear detonations at very high altitude. When a nuclear warhead explodes dozens or even hundreds of miles above the Earth, it interacts with the planet’s magnetic field and creates a wave of energy that can knock out electronics across an entire continent.

The United States actually demonstrated the effect back in 1962 during a nuclear test called Starfish Prime nuclear test. The explosion occurred hundreds of miles above the Pacific Ocean but still knocked out streetlights and communications equipment in Hawaii nearly a thousand miles away. That test scared the hell out of military planners because it showed just how fragile modern electrical systems really are.

These days, several countries either possess or are suspected of possessing the capability to deploy EMP weapons. The obvious ones are nuclear powers such as the United States, Russia, and China. Any nation that can loft a nuclear warhead into the upper atmosphere technically has the ability to create a high-altitude EMP. Other nuclear-armed states like North Korea, India, Pakistan, and Israel are also frequently mentioned in strategic discussions. Some analysts speculate that even countries without large nuclear arsenals could theoretically attempt an EMP attack if they acquired a single warhead and a delivery system capable of reaching high altitude.

There are also non-nuclear EMP devices, sometimes called high-power microwave weapons, that can damage electronics in a much smaller radius. Those are believed to exist in several advanced militaries as tactical tools. But the nightmare scenario people talk about is the high-altitude nuclear EMP, because the scale of destruction could be enormous.

If a large EMP were detonated over the continental United States, the immediate blast would not kill people the way a ground-level nuclear explosion would. Instead, it would quietly annihilate infrastructure. Power transformers could burn out. Electrical grids might collapse. Water treatment plants would stop working. Fuel pipelines and refineries could shut down. Hospitals would lose critical equipment. Transportation systems would fail. Within days or weeks you would start seeing cascading humanitarian disasters, including food shortages, medical crises, and mass panic. It is the kind of slow-motion catastrophe that dystopian novels love to imagine, but in real life it would be absolute chaos.

Now, whether Iran actually has that capability is a completely different question. Intelligence agencies have debated it for years, and a lot of what gets said in political speeches is speculation wrapped in worst-case scenarios. Iran has missile technology and an active nuclear program that has worried Western governments for decades. But turning that into a reliable EMP strike against the United States would require several extremely complicated steps. They would need to develop or acquire a nuclear warhead, miniaturize it, and successfully deliver it to high altitude. That is not exactly a weekend science project.

And this is where things start to feel like déjà vu. We have heard these kinds of warnings before. Claims about weapons of mass destruction were used to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and we all know how that turned out. Thousands of American lives lost, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives lost, trillions of dollars burned, and the entire region destabilized for decades. That war was sold to the public with a mix of fear, speculation, and outright bullshit.

So no, I do not pretend to know what the answer to the problem of Iran is. But I do know that every attempt at regime change in the modern era has landed us, and often the rest of the world, in a giant geopolitical quagmire. I do not support the current leadership of Iran. Their government has committed serious abuses against its own people, and that is putting it mildly. But I also do not trust people like Donald Trump and the various warhawks orbiting around him to guide us safely away from the edge of nuclear catastrophe.

I think the current leadership of this country has far too much of a love affair with Israel, and a lot of that relationship is tangled up in theology that I personally do not buy into. It has become such a toxic political environment that even the smallest criticism of Israel or of our foreign policy toward that country is immediately labeled antisemitic. That shuts down honest discussion before it can even start. I think it is absolutely disgusting how people use religion as a shield to deflect from their own misdeeds. When that happens, it starts to look an awful lot like the behavior of the very regimes we claim to oppose.

I do not have neat answers for any of this. My only consistent position is condemnation of violence no matter who it is coming from. I do not know what to do about the possibility of Iran developing nuclear weapons, assuming they are actually doing that. What I do know is that we have a president who promised no new wars. He is a proven liar, and people voted for him anyway based on that promise.

What I do know is that countries like ours, and Israel for that matter, should be peace-mongers instead of war profiteers. What I do know is that civilian life everywhere is in jeopardy whenever the drums of war start beating. And what I worry about, deep down, is some kind of second September 11 attacks that harms even more innocent people.

It is a rocky road ahead. I have a sinking feeling this is not going to be some quick, tidy, month-long military adventure. Those almost never exist outside of Pentagon press conferences. I hope peace somehow manages to conquer violence. And I hope that one day we are able to go to sleep at night without wondering whether we will be jolted awake by air-raid sirens or, worse yet, a mushroom cloud blooming on the horizon.

Grappling With The Wrestling World, The Epilogue

I genuinely thought my professional wrestling career was dead and buried with its ashes scattered, tombstone etched, funeral long over. But in the summer of 2005, while I was still half-assing “work” at LeisureLink, a little spark flared back to life. Out of nowhere, I got a message on AOL Instant Messenger, yes, AIM, the digital equivalent of sending smoke signals, from a Los Angeles wrestling promoter whose name I’ve long forgotten. That’s not shade; my alcohol-addled manic brain just genuinely deleted him to make room for more important memories, like the entire discography of Front 242.
You have to understand: by then, I had pretty much nuked my standing in SoCal wrestling. I’d screwed over PCW after skipping out on a show and skipping into a new life, gotten into my final message board war, and gotten myself rightfully banned from the forums on SoCalUncensored.com. Banished. Excommunicated. Digitally executed. So when a promoter actually reached out to me, I half wondered if it was a prank.
But he insisted: he ran a new promotion called Hybrid Pro Wrestling, and he wanted me to appear on his shows. He said there was a wrestler named Xtreme Loco who needed heel heat, which is what you try to accomplish by getting the audience to boo a villain, because his promos were about as effective as a broken Speak & Spell covered in Cheeto dust. I was cautious because once you walk out on a company in wrestling, you’re not just blackballed… you’re blackholed. I let my ego and untreated mental illness take the wheel, and naturally, I said yes.

The Return That Nobody Asked For

My first appearance that summer was an in-ring segment titled “The Aaron Proctor Show.” Who came up with that name? Me. Obviously.
The promoter was planning a DVD release, so he had an actual camera crew and a commentary team. I’ll never forget hearing XPW alumni announcer Kris Kloss excitedly calling my entrance like I was a returning legend instead of the community theater villain I actually was.
The segment was a half-work, half-shoot (read: half real, half fake) explanation of why I left PCW and why I was suddenly back, allegedly managing champions. I ran down Brawlin’ Bo Cooper in a scripted promo until he stormed the ring and dropped me with a Death Valley Driver. It was cool because the crowd always loved seeing me get beat up. This was meant to set up the next show, where I’d manage Xtreme Loco in his feud with Cooper.
But the crowd reaction?
Oh, they booed, but not the good kind.
Not the “You’re such a dastardly villain!” boo.
More like the: “Oh great, this clown is back,” boo.
And the boys in the back? Most of them treated me like I had the plague and an IRS audit all at once. A few were friendly, but most remembered what I’d done at PCW and wanted nothing to do with me.
Wrestling has traditions. Some are good, some absolute garbage, but one of the most sacred is you don’t walk out on a show. It makes you unreliable. It puts people at risk. And I had done exactly that.
Which always made me wonder: Why the hell did this promoter want me on his shows at all? Did he lose a bet? Was this a dare? A social experiment? We’ll never know.

The Second Act Nobody Needed

I came back the next month, this time calling out Bo Cooper again while accompanied by a punk rock valet with a pink Mohawk the promoter named Roxy, who had the personality of a Hot Topic store mannequin who’d come to life. I think he wanted me to head up some villainous stable of misfits, which piqued the interest of the rebel in me.
Bo came out to kill me again, but this time Xtreme Loco hit the ring and brained him with a steel chair. Beautiful. Classical. Shakespearean, even.
This set up my planned third appearance, which would end up being my final wrestling appearance ever.
Because someone, no idea who, but I have theories, got into the promoter’s ear. Suddenly, Roxy was managing someone else, and the promoter invited me to the show but said he “didn’t have a spot for me.” Classic wrestling speak for: “Hey kid, creative’s got nothing for you.”
The match went on without me: an ambulance match between Loco and Cooper which was pretty high-concept for an indy fed. Meanwhile, I was backstage, awkwardly wandering around like the ghost of a wrestler who died of embarrassment.
I talked to John Webber, aka The Stepfather from this saga’s second entry, for what’d be the last time ever save for a Facebook argument we’d have about 8 years later when I was in conservative cosplay mode. Of course, like all the other shit I’ve pulled, I regret breaking that friendship, too. 
I sat in a corner quietly until the show ended. Then I went home and drank a whole bottle of Scotch straight, no mixer, trying to swallow the truth: My wrestling career was over. For real this time. And I’d done it to myself.

The Backyard Epilogue

There was one little footnote to my days in pro wrestling. Everything ended up coming full circle. During my 2006/2007 Pasadena mayoral campaign (because my life is a series of genre shifts) a twentysomething backyard promoter emailed me through my campaign website. He’d heard about my wrestling background and asked if I could referee his main event at a backyard wrestling show over on Los Robles.
Backyard wrestling. Despised by the pros. Participating in it was the same reason we never booked The Young Bucks. During a mayoral campaign. Sure. Why the fuck not? Who did I have left to piss off? Maybe I’d win the coveted Unhinged Teen Vote.
So there I was, in full goth regalia, standing on blue gym mats in some kid’s front yard, with garden hoses tied up as makeshift ropes attached to trees. I refereed a match between two completely untrained, dangerously enthusiastic kids who used barbed wire, light tubes, and thumbtacks like they were filming a low-budget remake of ECW’s infamous Mass Transit incident. Look it up. During the match, I tried to channel my inner Charles Robinson, but with more eyeliner and existential dread.
Maybe twenty people were there. Maybe they voted for me. Probably not.
I never told a soul about that show until years later. But that was the real end. Back where I started: the backyard.

The Part Where I Grow Up… Sort Of

These days, I’m just a fan and I’m finally okay with that. I have an encyclopedic knowledge of wrestling history, and when I’m not watching Tully Blanchard, my favorite wrestler ever, absolutely cook someone on the mic, or binging Mid-South, WCW, ECW, or Attitude Era WWE, I’m usually converting my wife into a wrestling nerd, one current storyline at a time. My favorite wrestlers these days are probably Gunther and Rhea Ripley but Ethan Page and Trick Williams sure have bright futures ahead of them.
I’ll never fall out of love with wrestling. And I’m glad the backstage culture, from what I hear, is more accepting, less toxic. People always ask me if I’d ever try to go behind the curtain again, maybe take the good parts of my wrestling resume to some small indy promoter as a weekend hobby. I tell those people that I’m 44 years old and I had a wild reputation of physical participation in the quasi-sport. If I took a bump now, I’d end up in the hospital or the morgue.
I keep in touch with a few of the wrestlers, managers, ring announcers, refs, and fans I’ve met along the way. Reminiscing about old times with Benjamin Tomas can be quite therapeutic at times. Sharing an old story with TARO or Disco Machine still makes me feel like I was one of the “boys”, that I belonged to a family for a short while. I lost contact with a bunch of people, sadly. If you’re out there, Scott Abeyta or Thunderbird or any others who I’ve not named, hit me up. I’d love to hear how you’re doing.
Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if I’d gotten control of my drinking sooner, gone to therapy, gotten medicated, stopped blowing stuff up for sport. Maybe this blog would be written by a WWE superstar. Maybe not.
But I like this version of me. And I like being a fan. The story’s still good, it just didn’t go the way 24-year-old me imagined. Speaking of stories, I have a ton of those. An old, comforting memory of a car ride to a show in Fresno or a backstage blooper at the South Anaheim Marketplace pops into my head all the time and I get to relive it over again.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Grappling With The Wrestling World, Part 6

It was the summer of 2004 for PCW, and the sun was setting on our attendance numbers. We’d done all we could with the venues we had, so in one of our many grand ideas fueled by stubborn optimism, we decided to move our shows to the Fraternal Order of Eagles hall in Altadena, California. It sounded poetic, “Eagles” hosting wrestling like my favorite football team, the Philadelphia Eagles, or famous KROQ DJ, The Swedish Eagle. It was like fate was giving us one last shot, at least for me. We thought a change of scenery might breathe new life into our fan base: families looking for a cheap night out, kids mesmerized by bodyslams and dropkicks, lapsed fans nostalgic for the old days, maybe even curious newcomers who’d never seen independent wrestling before.

It didn’t work.

Despite the new venue and our hopes, we were still getting the same faces (loyal but few) and we weren’t putting on the kind of shows that drew the attention of the increasingly hard-to-please internet fans. They had a new obsession: Pro Wrestling Guerrilla. PWG was the new king of California indie wrestling, the West Coast’s answer to Ring of Honor. Founded by six wrestlers who actually knew how to book and draw, PWG could afford to fly in top-tier talent from across North America. They had energy, attitude, and money. We had… a banner, a ring, and misplaced confidence.

Not that we were ever trying to compete with them, at least not out loud. But it stung. We couldn’t even run on the same weekends as PWG without being crushed attendance-wise, so we often settled for Friday shows that maybe, if the moon aligned just right, drew seventy-five people. Seventy-five if we were lucky, fifty if the Dodgers were playing.

Still, there were bright spots. One of the funnier stories came from a random night when NWA legend “Ragin’ Bull” Manny Fernandez showed up at one of our shows. We didn’t even know he was there until after he paid for a ticket like a regular fan. Mace and I just stared at each other: “Manny Fernandez is here? Why the hell did we charge him to get in?” Pete’s brother, who was working the door that night, wasn’t a wrestling fan and had no idea who Manny was. When we found out, we announced his presence at intermission. Manny stood up, gave a wave, and got a respectful cheer from the crowd. Looking back, it was surreal to be performing in front of one of the toughest men to ever lace up boots.

But that was one of the few highs during a period of slow decline. The Philly Connection storyline was fizzling out. We couldn’t afford the fly-ins anymore, and guys like Messiah were increasingly unhappy with how things were going. So, I pivoted. I reinvented myself as the babyface commissioner, the nice guy, the crowd’s friend, and started a “feud” with Mike Vega. It kicked off during our Halloween show, where I dressed as one of the Spartan Cheerleaders from Saturday Night Live. Mike hit me with a spike piledriver right in the middle of the ring. The crowd loved it. My neck, not so much.

Outside of wrestling, though, my attention was slipping. The clubs, the nightlife, and my goth friends were far more fun than dealing with wrestlers and the constant message board wars. I was tired of the online fighting, though, to be fair, a lot of it started because of me. I had no filter and way too much time on my hands. The internet trolls hit back hard, taking shots at my appearance, my sexuality, my personality. It wore me down. I was either well-liked, despised, or tolerated… rarely in between. I got along great with the lower and midcard guys, but most of the main eventers big-leagued me. My heart wasn’t in it anymore.

So, I shifted gears again. I joined a goth band called Venus Virus as their keyboardist. I wasn’t good at keyboards (not really) but somehow, I was better at that than at the wrestling game. And just like that, I made one of my trademark impulsive moves: I walked out of a PCW show at intermission one night in the fall of 2004 and never looked back. Mace and Pete called me several times afterward, but I ghosted them. I was angry, burned out, and full of self-righteous pride. In hindsight, I should’ve handled it better, but at the time, I didn’t care.

For the next two decades, I didn’t talk to those guys. I was devastated earlier this year when I learned from Ben Tomas that Foob had recently passed away. Although Foob’s wrestling style didn’t go over well with the internet smart marks, he knew a lot about wrestling and passed it on to younger people getting into the business. Foob always tried to entertain the kids as best as he could, too. I always teased Foob about his wrestling style and his unwillingness to never turn bad guy or “heel” and I kind of regret all of that.

So wrestling was in the rear view. I convinced myself I was destined for something bigger like a band that would blow up in the L.A. goth/industrial scene. I even snagged a temp job with Yahoo for a while, but that didn’t last. They found out I’d dropped out of high school and never earned my GED. (That came later because I didn’t get it until I was 33.) Another self-sabotaged chapter.

Still, there was one genuinely fun story from that time. PWG needed to borrow a sound system for a show, and Pete volunteered ours. I tagged along and suddenly found myself backstage, surrounded by indie wrestling legends and future WWE Superstars: the Briscoe Brothers, Christopher Daniels, AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, El Generico, Kevin Steen, and Adam Pearce. Daniels even seemed impressed that I knew his entrance music. For one fleeting night, I felt like I belonged. I felt like I was part of the big leagues. A few fans even recognized me from PCW and said hello. It felt good, but deep down, I knew the truth. I didn’t belong there. I’d never make it to TNA or WWE. I wasn’t a wrestler, a decent booker, or a promotional visionary. I was just a guy chasing attention, chasing fame, chasing validation.

When the band fizzled out (surprise, surprise!) it was partly because I got romantically involved with the lead singer. That ended as dramatically as you’d expect. Of course I was impulsive, emotionally chaotic, and completely unmoored and she was sick of my shit. I was a ticking time bomb wandering Pasadena, haunting L.A.’s goth clubs, high on my own delusions, pretending I didn’t care about anything. Wrestling had failed, the band had failed, and I was left wondering what the hell came next.

A sensible person might’ve said, “Time to get a stable job, maybe plan a future.” Me? I thought, hell, maybe I’ll run for mayor of Pasadena or something.

But before that ridiculous idea took shape, there was LeisureLink: the best job I ever had, until it became one of the biggest meltdowns of my professional life. As you’ve read in the previous entry, I fucked that up royally.

Loud Quitting At LeisureLink

[All events are described as I personally experienced and remembered them. Some names and details have been compressed, altered, or fictionalized]

If my resume were a movie, it wouldn’t be some heartwarming underdog tale about rising through the ranks and achieving greatness. No, it’d be a black comedy with an absurdist script, recurring themes of poor impulse control, and a protagonist who never quite figures out how to keep a job longer than a season of any show on The CW. And that protagonist? Me, stumbling through each professional chapter like a drunken tightrope walker, juggling sarcasm, social awkwardness, and a profound distaste for anything resembling a spreadsheet.

From the jump, it’s been clear I wasn’t built for corporate life. The cubicle, the morning stand-ups, the soul-hollowing buzzwords, all of it felt like I was being slowly smothered by a throw blanket woven from HR manuals and passive-aggressive email threads. It wasn’t that I was incapable of doing the work. Technically, I could. But my brain always had other plans. It was perpetually hijacked by ideas that had nothing to do with performance metrics and everything to do with making people laugh, blowing up dumb office conventions, or mentally drafting a one-man show nobody asked for.

I was the guy in the corner dreaming up fake movie trailers based on our client onboarding process. Or writing a monologue about my boss’s obsession with “low-hanging fruit.” I couldn’t help it. Give me an empty Microsoft Word document and an overlong staff meeting, and I was off to the races. And the thing is, I wasn’t trying to tank my career. I just had a tendency to follow whatever wild thought occurred to me at the moment, usually at the precise time I was supposed to be updating a CRM or compiling average daily rate reports. I was a liability with a decent vocabulary.

That brings us to LeisureLink: the startup where I almost, almost found my footing.

This was in Southern California, circa 2004, back when tech startups still pretended to be fun and “innovative”. LeisureLink was a primordial VRBO or AirBnb, signing contracts with vacation rental owners for their extra inventory and promising to get them bookings. Vacation rentals were not a “thing” yet so it was a real challenge to get consumers to stray from a hotel. I was in charge of uploading the information about the properties to all the major travel websites and, occasionally, going to properties to take photos and meet with property managers.

We had a pretty relaxed culture when I got there: headphones were fine, jokes were appreciated, people actually laughed at my sarcastic remarks instead of reporting me to management. The office fridge was stocked with drinks that were probably violating some minor health code, and we had a whole “work hard, play hard” thing going on that, for once, wasn’t just bullshit on a brochure. I even met my best friend Jason there, he was my manager and taught me so many things like how to work just hard enough not to get fired. It actually felt like a place where I could be myself and still get shit done. Sort of.

The company was founded by a Canadian serial entrepreneur who was very soft-spoken and kind-hearted but may have been part serial killer, too. “LL” was funded by venture capital from angel investors. Those investors thought I was a hoot even though I didn’t meet their ideal appearance for an employee. The corporate structure was pretty bare bones. We had a CEO, a CTO, and a CIO. 

And, oh, the side characters we had aka my fellow coworkers. We were all confined to one room in a tech startup incubator. There was the Kim Kardashian-obsessed travel agent who I got mad at one time because she didn’t know who David Bowie was. There was an IT guy who drove a different fancy car every week. The sales guy who grew up in Quakertown so I had the sorta Philly connection. Who could forget the former travel agent turned director of sales who worked across the hall and would run into our little lean-to every time someone wanted to know an airport code. They should have made an “Arrested Development”-esque sitcom about that place… if TV wasn’t so overcrowded with office sitcoms.

Everything was running smoothly and didn’t need outside interference or any kind of shake up. Or so I thought.

Along came Larry. The Bulldozer. The destroyer of joy. The human wet blanket with a clipboard.

Larry arrived in 2006 like a cold front sweeping in from the Land of Micro Management. The serial entrepreneur I mentioned earlier? He’d made his money and was on to another project. Larry would become the new CEO. He was the guy who read Harvard Business Review unironically and thought “team synergy” and “Six Sigma” were legitimate spiritual paths. Overnight, things shifted. Headphones? Banned. Apparently they were hindering “team cohesion.” Lunch parties? Shut down. We were now encouraged to eat alone at our desks like Victorian orphans. The vodka-stocked fridge got sanitized into oblivion. Water and sad yogurt became the new normal.

Worst of all, Larry brought performance evaluations into a workplace that had been gloriously evaluation-free. Suddenly, there were metrics and rubrics and vague discussions about “alignment with company values”. He also said Jason and I were too “collegiate” with each other. I was fucked.

It didn’t help that Larry and I got along very poorly. He told me to quit wearing eyeliner, even though I was balancing that look with all black dress shirts and slacks, something that would probably get you sued for gender discrimination in today’s world. He didn’t appreciate my flexible approach to attendance. Mondays, for me, were often optional, the unofficial long weekend was a sacred ritual. Larry called it a “pattern”. I called it mental health preservation. He didn’t see the difference.

Still, it all led up to an explosive event that ended things. At first, it was a slow death by a thousand paper cuts. Passive-aggressive post-its. Dry emails. Eyebrow raises when I wore the same clubbing outfit for the third week in a row. And sure, I didn’t make it easy. Larry was handing out new policies and hiring all sorts of prehistoric tech bros and a new sales director that was always coked out of her mind. Meanwhile, I was busy turning our department white board, which I’d peppered with drawings of the Einstürzende Neubauten logo, into a hub of nihilist memes and writing Letterman-esque Top Ten lists just to amuse myself and stay sane.

One day, even though disaster was creeping, it still seemed out of the blue: I just lost my shit. That’s just part of being bipolar, I guess. Not that it’s an excuse or anything. I’d had enough of the draconian policies and wanted my old LeisureLink back. It wasn’t gonna happen so I sent off a delightfully scathing, most likely drunken email to Larry and his little cabal he’d formed, peppered with sarcasm and veiled threats of existential dread. My modus operandi. 

From the comfort of my home computer, I said Larry wasn’t capable of running a Jack In The Box and all of his changes ruined our company. Larry, who had clearly heard that I had a pro wrestling past and noticed my 6’3” frame, became convinced I was going to show up and throw him into the mini-fridge. It didn’t help that I said I’d love to chokeslam him through a table. I quit. 

Jason allegedly stormed into Larry’s office and lambasted him and his policies for driving me off. Our CTO, who I always played silly pranks on, wondered if I could come back. They even brought the serial entrepreneur back to call me in. I don’t remember what happened after this but Jason says I answered the phone drunk in the middle of a weekday afternoon and declined.

All of that behavior made Larry think I was gonna pull a Columbine. A few days later, a neighbor said she saw that the Pasadena police had knocked on my door. The CTO called and gently suggested I not return to the West Altadena Business Technology Center “under any circumstances”. Not the first time I’ve had a run-in with the law for making an electronic threat (I got arrested the first time!) and not the last time, either.

And just like that, another bridge caught up in my nuclear fallout. Habitual line-stepper, me.

The truth is, I’ve never been cut out for the beige, buttoned-up corporate world. My mind resists it like a cat being shoved into a bathtub. I crave meaning, mischief, connection and not another god damn all-hands meeting about quarterly projections. But at some point, I had to admit that part of the problem wasn’t just them. It was me. My chronic self-sabotage wasn’t cute anymore. It wasn’t some misunderstood genius thing. It was a pattern. And patterns, if left unchecked, become prisons.

It took a lot more burned bridges, awkward exits, and uncomfortable silences in exit interviews to realize that. But once I saw it clearly, I could at least start untangling the mess.

So yeah, I’ve loudly quit or have been fired more times than I care to count. I’ve talked myself out of good gigs, ducked responsibility, and prioritized daydreams over deadlines. But I’m also learning how to own my weirdness without letting it destroy me. I’m figuring out how to channel that inner chaos into something that actually builds instead of breaks.

Years later, I found out Larry abruptly moved the company to Salt Lake City and proceeded to run LeisureLink into the ground. They shuddered their doors one day out of the blue and left a lot of people hanging… even after they scrounged up, per the Wall Street Journal, 17 million fucking dollars in venture capital. I reveled in that company’s demise. 

I guess there’s always a balance, though. That CTO who would always put up with my hijinks and went to bat for me after my manic, alcoholic email? His name was George Wu and he died a few years ago after falling off of Tahquitz Rock in Idyllwild during a hike. True story. Look it up.

So, even now, after all the meds and all the therapy, I’m still working on how to behave when an authority figure tells me what to do, especially when that someone wants to change things around or fuck with my routine. Doubly special if that person happens to sign my paychecks. Always will be.

Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail ’07

I jumped into campaigning for mayor of Pasadena the same way I used to cut promos back in my independent wrestling days. I was not just full of hubris. I was having a full-on manic episode. I was also completely full of myself (and alcohol) and I figured people would love that about me. I believed that posting YouTube videos and MySpace memes and throwing names at the current mayor and all the other city council candidates would take me somewhere big. 

I said the Mayor was a 170 year old man. I made up nicknames for City Council people and candidates like “Stone Cold” Margaret McAustin, Sid “Vicious” Tyler, and “Sexy” Steve Haderlein. Who could have guessed that those same selfish tactics would one day put a man inside the White House for two non-consecutive terms?? That man just happens to have a pro wrestling background and happens to be a WWE Hall of Famer. Like I always tell my close, personal friend (shout out to “Mean” Gene Okerlund) and the managing editor at Pasadena Now, André Coleman, over and over again: Trump stole my whole gimmick but he left out the quixotic parts and the altruistic elements that I had attached to it. Some of those altruistic elements — like free buses and rent control — worked for other candidates of the future, however, like Zohran Mamdani.

There were no real debates between Mayor Bill Bogaard and me at all. That simply was not the Pasadena Way of doing things. Instead we had “candidate forum” after candidate forum after candidate forum. Those events were basically just panels set up for questions and answers with short opening speeches and closing speeches all held in a town hall format that everyone followed. We visited every single hot spot where people engaged with local politics showed up. That meant about a million different senior citizens centers with names that I cannot remember right now no matter how hard I try. Still, that did not mean those forums lacked any comedic moments at all. Especially when confused seniors started wondering out loud why some guy wearing eyeliner was standing there mocking the Crown City in front of everybody.

I remember one specific interaction with a voter like it happened yesterday morning. Bogaard and I sat on a panel alongside candidates running for the Pasadena school board. That group included the late, great, affable Bill Bibbiani. He might have been grizzled in appearance but he had a heart of gold. He was a man totally obsessed with motorcycles and going against the grain. Let’s say a hypothetical Measure A was on the ballot. He’d be against it while everyone else championed it. I thought to myself that he was pretty cool for going his own way and standing out. He and his wife lived down the street from me and always called themselves my Pasadena parents because they looked out for me and checked in on me. 

Anyway, there was this sweet, kind lady in her seventies sitting in a wheelchair all the way in the very back row of one of those senior citizens centers. When the time came for people to ask questions, she did not even bother to raise her hand or anything. She just started yelling out “Mayor Bogaard! Mayor Bogaard! When you win the election, what are you going to do about all the crime in Northwest Pasadena?”

That was a formidable question without a doubt and showed how much people in Pasadena care about the entire community, even about neighborhoods other than their own. But I could not help myself and I started laughing quietly to myself right there during the forum while sitting on the stage. “WHEN you win…” I kept thinking over and over in my head. That was the exact moment I knew my entire campaign was dead in the water and had no chance. This happened long before any surge of young people began caring about elections across the country. It was way before the AOCs of the world came along and energized young voters to maybe think about supporting more radical candidates or more fringe liberal candidates. I ended up as nothing more than an afterthought and a total joke to everyone. After Bogaard trounced me and took 89 percent of the vote, I still did not realize for about two whole decades later that maybe if I had taken things a little more seriously and stopped running a publicity stunt just to make myself famous, I could have cracked 15 percent or maybe even 20 percent of the vote.

That is the thing I find so hilarious: even now. People back then, and a lot of people, saw right through my facade without any trouble. I swear the 1,472 votes I received were mostly protest votes. I would get tons of voters coming up to me and asking if I was serious about this or if I was just doing it all for attention. I would always answer them with the former option even though deep down inside I was really just seeking acceptance and attention that I never received from my parents when I was younger or really anybody else growing up. I am not saying my goth aesthetic is the culprit or was the culprit back then, that’s me being myself. I am saying my motives were the real problem.

Still, that whole “WHEN you win” thing struck a deep chord inside me. On one hand, and a heavy hand it is, it’s fucking hilarious. I still regale people with that exact story to this very day whenever I get the chance. I even heard later that one of my old bosses, the guy I used to call The Bulldozer when I worked at LeisureLink, actually saw my face on the front page of the Pasadena Star-News. This is the same Bulldozer who fired me in 2005 after I threatened to beat him up, so yeah, small world. He later told a coworker he’d sat down to breakfast, seen me and my campaign staring back at him from the paper, and almost choked on his cereal. For one ridiculous, glorious second it felt like vindication: the kid the Bulldozer once dismissed was suddenly newsprint famous.

On the other hand, it reminds me of this one time my dad ran into my eighth grade art teacher, Miss Fenstermacher from Chichester Middle School, at the bank one afternoon. She saw him standing there and said “aren’t you Aaron Proctor’s father? I am his art teacher.” My dad responded right away with “Art teacher?! Aaron can’t draw!” Not that I could draw or anything like that but it was still mean and hurtful. So mean that when she told me about that interaction later she almost had tears in her eyes while recounting every word.

So while my campaign for mayor of Pasadena actually had a real platform and some altruistic intentions behind it, all it was was a big “look at me” statement to everyone around… not to mention the actions of an unhinged, undiagnosed bipolar basket case.

“Look at me, Dad! I am the new Mayor of Pasadena.” I just wanted someone to impress and someone to accept me through all of my horrible faults. It didn’t work in my pro wrestling career so maybe, I thought, it would work in the political arena. There was not a chance in hell winning the election was ever happening but I took a chance anyway and for a few solid months in 2006 and 2007, I became a local legend in my own mind and around town.

Conservative Cosplay (And Some Rants About Conservatives)

In the sweltering summer of 2008, I made what I selfishly deemed a triumphant return to Pasadena, California, a place I had once regarded as a stage for reinvention. I had just spent an unceremonious three-month exile in St. Louis, Missouri, holed up at my parents’ house after a swift and brutal collapse: the loss of both my job and my apartment in quick succession due to being more distracted with my drinking, clubbing, blogging and my post-mayoral campaign than doing any actual work. It was a humbling retreat, made all the more bitter by the oppressive Midwestern humidity and the sense of regression it brought. But California called to me again, with its sun-drenched boulevards and the illusion of opportunity.

Through a friend of a friend, I secured a modest living situation. I got a roommate willing to tolerate my eccentricities and I ended up back in the same apartment building I used to live in, just a different apartment. More importantly, I landed employment, however meager, at Pasadena Weekly, thanks to the generosity and friendship of author André Coleman, who was on the staff at the time. My role wasn’t glamorous. I wasn’t being paid to pontificate on civic life or deliver scathing columns.

No, I was assigned to the advertising department, making minimum wage as part of a small team dubbed, somewhat pitifully, the “tear sheets.” My primary duty? Tearing out printed advertisements from each issue of the paper and mailing them to the respective advertisers as proof of publication. It was rote, uncreative work, but it kept me tethered to the media world I so desperately wanted to be part of.

All the while, I maintained my blog which was originally a campaign mouthpiece for my brief foray into mayoral politics and now a pressure valve for my spiraling ego. Each post brimmed with increasingly incendiary rhetoric, sharpened vitriol, and an unmistakable hunger for attention. Still, amid my growing agitation, the late, great editor of the Weekly, Kevin Uhrich, saw something in me. Maybe it was potential, perhaps it was just entertainment value. Either way, he offered me a reprieve from my drudgery: a weekly column titled “5 Questions.”

It was a refreshing deviation from my usual firebrand persona. Each week, I was allowed to interview a local figure. Be it a restaurateur, a civic leader, or a small business owner whose ads graced our pages, I was allowed to send them some questions. The questions were deliberately lighthearted, often bordering on the absurd. It was, in essence, a harmless diversion, a humanizing touch in a paper otherwise immersed in local politics and culture. One of my most memorable pieces, and a personal dream realized, was a lunch interview with none other than California television legend Huell Howser. That article, modest as it was, still gets cited today as a snapshot of an improbable moment in my chaotic timeline.

Yet, while I smiled for photos and made small talk with local luminaries, darker currents swirled beneath the surface. In the smoky backrooms and hushed conversations of Pasadena’s conservative fringe, I was becoming a figure of interest. My penchant for sharp-tongued criticism and relentless self-promotion had caught the attention of local Republicans, an unlikely alliance, given my previous progressive leanings and theatrical persona.

One night, I was invited out for drinks at The 1881 Club, my favorite dive bar on Washington Boulevard. The drinks flowed freely, all courtesy of a local GOP operative who assured me I had a “bright future” in politics if I was willing to pivot. The promise? A potential City Council run, financial support, public recognition. The cost? Abandon everything that made me… me. The eyeliner, the unconventional wardrobe, the flamboyant defiance. All of it had to go.

I wish I could say I hesitated, but the intoxication, both literal and metaphorical, was overwhelming. I was seduced by the notion of relevance and influence. The transformation began subtly. Another handler-type took me to Ross and helped me select a wardrobe of khakis and ill-fitting polo shirts. I chopped off my hair, packed away my makeup in an unused suitcase, and started performing a sanitized, conservative version of myself. Within weeks, I was reborn… at least on the outside.
Friends expressed concern about “the new Aaron,” but I had no time for sentimentality. I was too enamored with my reinvention. I embraced the persona of a conservative blogger, launching attacks on Pasadena’s predominantly liberal establishment with the zeal of someone who had nothing left to lose. The Weekly humored me at first, perhaps thinking it was a harmless phase or a cynical publicity stunt. But my ego, ever ravenous, could not be contained.

I began to target people in my blog who were not only community figures but also friends and contributors to Pasadena Weekly. My criticisms grew more vicious, my commentary more unhinged. Meanwhile, my new political patrons showered me with symbolic gestures of appreciation like free meals, drinks, even a burger named after me at a local GOP-friendly joint. I was drunk on validation and blind to consequence.
Inevitably, the reckoning came. My invective had grown so poisonous, so disruptive, that the Weekly had no choice but to sever ties with me. I don’t blame them. I was a liability. I was both a walking contradiction and a ticking time bomb. Especially the latter when I started to literally threaten to fight people. And when the conservative benefactors who once courted me saw that I had become more trouble than I was worth, they faded into the background, retreating to their dusty corners of the “Crown City” and leaving me to implode on my own.

In a final fit of drunken rage and indignation, I threatened the Weekly’s publisher. The next morning, I found both the Pasadena Police Department and LAPD at my door. The message was unambiguous: I had outstayed my welcome. My friends, well, the ones I had left, said I had managed to orchestrate a “modern exile”, a digital-era self-destruction fueled by ideology and ego.

I was 27 years old, disillusioned, and done with California. My head now full of right-wing talking points about how the state was “going to hell,” I left for Pennsylvania. My parents had recently relocated from St. Louis back to the Philadelphia suburbs, and I followed them in October 2008 just in time to watch the Phillies win the World Series. For a fleeting moment, I felt the warmth of homecoming. But it wasn’t enough.

I was lost again, trapped in the facade of a persona I no longer recognized. The new me wore sweater vests over graphic tees and neckties emblazoned with GOP emblems. I looked like a parody of the very world I had once mocked. I thought it was how everyone who had criticized me, all those people, say, certain figures in the pro wrestling world, who publicly called me the “f” slur during my days around the squared circle, had wanted me to be. Maybe this is how my father and mother wanted me to be. And though the ideological shift was complete, the rhetoric didn’t die with my return to the outskirts of the City of Brotherly Love. There’s more to this story, a lot more. But that chapter comes later.

I can only look back with equal parts shame and astonishment. Mostly shame. The metamorphosis, the betrayal of self, the manic detour into political cosplay—it all reads like a fever dream. And yet, every bit of it was real.

I’d also like to take this time to submit my current opinions of conservative politics…

I watched “The Perfect Neighbor” on Netflix the other day. It was both heartbreaking and profoundly unsettling, yet it should also stand as a powerful call to action against systemic racism in the legal system, particularly within Florida’s so-called “Stand Your Ground” law.

Honestly, fuck Florida. That place is utterly broken due to conservative and MAGA takeovers. I’m just thankful I saw the light years ago and walked away from the conservative poison I once allowed myself to believe.

When I got drawn into conservative punditry, it was under the false banner of “libertarianism.” I’ll write more about it here someday, but the short version is that I became a mouthpiece for hateful people. I deeply regret the words I once spoke and the ideas I once promoted. These days, I try to make up for it by showing kindness, by being an ally, and by standing in solidarity with marginalized communities and even marginalized ideas.

One of the greatest lies conservatives ever told me was, “We just want a smaller government and for the government to stay out of your business.” Then why do they make exceptions when it comes to a woman’s right to choose or about a million other deeply personal matters? That’s how they lure people in.

And maybe they do want lower crime and lower taxes on the working class, which I want, too, but those viewpoints and ideological standards come with caveats. I don’t want to be associated with Evangelical Christian Stepford Wives lecturing me about “morality” and “masculinity” while simultaneously saying they care about the problems in my neighborhood from the gaze of their gated communities. And look at all the people’s lives they are hurting with the government shutdown.

Conservative policies protect the very rich and hurt everyone from the very poor to the middle class. They pretend to care about people who are struggling, but what they really care about is the stock market. The conservative powers that be are also afraid to voice their opinions because they know how unpopular they are, so they often use gullible mouthpieces like me to do their dirty work. I practically ruined my life selling out to those so-called luminaries.

Now there’s this absurd new line floating around: “Conservatism is the new punk rock.” That is completely delusional. What so-called “mainstream” are they rebelling against? It’s nothing more than a hollow attempt to hijack the spirit of rebellion for their own agenda. You can’t be “punk rock” and act like Charlie Kirk was Jesus. Selling out the true meaning of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness isn’t punk rock. It’s the opposite. Trust me, I know. I sold out once. It’s a disgusting feeling.. one I’ll never forget.

Grappling With The Wrestling World, Part 5

[Some names have been changed.]

2003 was, without a doubt, the high-water mark of my professional wrestling career and simultaneously, one of the lowest, most emotionally frayed years of my personal life. It was the kind of year that leaves scars, tattoos your psyche, and yet fills your chest with a sense of nostalgic fire when you look back on it. Everything felt big, loud, fast, and burning and I wouldn’t trade it for anything, even the fuckups.

I had a halfway decent job at the time. I was a customer service rep at a call center for GlaciPure, a water delivery company that sounded like a rejected 1980s sci-fi beverage brand. My heart was never in it. My real passion, my real oxygen, was the chaos of professional wrestling. Specifically, Pacific Championship Wrestling, or PCW, the indie SoCal promotion I was helping promote. I was also getting neck-deep in the online wrestling world. I was getting too addicted to message boards, gossip threads, burner usernames, the whole seedy digital underbelly of the scene.

At one point, I got into a drunken flame war with a rival promoter, not realizing, or not caring, that he was affiliated with a Northern California outfit run by none other than Roland Fucking Alexander, the carnivore behind APW and the infamous “King of Sleaze” in “Beyond the Mat”. One day, bored and cocky at GlaciPure, I poked around in the customer accounts and, lo and behold, there was Roland’s name. Past due. I gleefully posted about it on SoCalUncensored’s message board like it was a win in some cosmic wrestling war. Juvenile? Sure. Satisfying? Extremely.

Karma came swinging. I skipped a day of work to film a local cable access promo for PCW on a wonderfully bizarre show called “The Netherworld VideoZine”. Hours later, I got the call that I was fired. Honestly? I was pissed. But deep down, I knew it was my own fault. I had this delusion of invincibility, this messianic arrogance that wrestling had somehow given me. I thought I was untouchable. Turns out I was very, very touchable.

My girlfriend had had enough by this point. One day she just packed up and left, moved into a new place without me. So there I was: single, jobless, and living in a shoebox studio apartment in Pasadena. Granted, it was a nice shoebox. It had charm, and I made it work. But I was alone with nothing but my eyeliner, my over-inflated ego, what seemed like unlimited alcohol, and my obsessive love of wrestling.

Eventually, I landed a job at Nexava Analytics, a market research firm with a vibe that screamed “Reagan-era startup that forgot to die.” Fun fact: Gwen Stefani’s dad, Dennis, worked there, but I think Gwen sucks so I didn’t care. I did data entry on one of those ancient CRT monitors that felt like it weighed more than my car. We processed feedback from focus groups about candy bars, TV ads, movie trailers, the kind of stuff that could rot your brain if you thought about it too long. I made a few fast friends there, but predictably, I’d get fired from that job too. That’s a story for another day. Just know it involved mischief, sarcasm, and me being me.

But the wrestling? The wrestling was alive. PCW was trucking along, and my world expanded beyond the SoCal scene. I’d struck up a friendship with our ring announcer, the affable Scott Abeyta, and his wild-eyed, unpredictable buddy Thunderbird. Now Thunderbird was a character. He was a journeyman wrestler with a gravel-voiced charisma, a man who had been slated to debut in XPW under the “Doomhammer” gimmick before that gloriously depraved promotion went up in flames. When he wasn’t in the ring, he had a habit of working gimmicks that toed the line of brilliance and madness. Around this time, he was doing a “prisoner” shtick which included wrestling in a bright orange jumpsuit, complete with handcuffs, shouting that he was on the lam from some fictional penitentiary. The referee would pat him down LAPD-style before his matches. It was nuts. It was perfect.

Scott, Thunderbird, and I became our own little nomadic tribe, hitting the road together for Central California shows. Bakersfield, Modesto, Fresno, Stockton, Sacramento, we ran Highway 99 like we owned it. The drives were long and dusty, the kind of stretches where the air smelled like hay and cow shit and you passed more fruit stands than gas stations. But those car rides? They were the stuff of legend.

We’d blast 80s mix CDs I had burned which had everything from Front 242 and Depeche Mode to Gary Numan and Berlin. Mean Gene’s Burgers was our unofficial roadside headquarters. One time, just outside Merced, Thunderbird convinced us to stop at a run-down swap meet where he tried to trade a replica wrestling belt for a used VCR and a bootleg DVD of “The Pest”. Another time, on a fog-soaked drive back from Stockton, we got pulled over by CHP because Thunderbird had duct-taped “PRISONER TRANSPORT” signs to the side of Scott’s car “for realism.” The cop let us go after Thunderbird cut a promo in character. I swear, he almost got us booked at the officer’s kid’s birthday party.

We started calling ourselves “CenCal Censored,” a parody of the SoCalUncensored crew. We even had a little clique hand gesture which was a bent-fingered “C” we’d flash backstage like our own warped version of The Kliq. Wrestlers, valets, managers… we were like a misfit mafia of dreamers in suits and spandex.

I managed some absolute characters on that circuit. “Ridiculous” Mike Rayne, who lived up to his name and then some, and “Angry” Andrew Wright, whose commitment to kayfabe was so intense that when I asked why he was angry, he barked, “Because I’m ANGRYYYY!” with his veins bulging, eyes wild. He once headbutted a locker just to prove it.

One night in Bakersfield, I was managing Rayne in a no-DQ match against a high-flying technician named Dante. I was doing my usual schtick of interfering, shouting, clowning around until Dante had had enough and hit me with a spike Michinoku Driver right onto the mat. I rolled out to the arena floor, safe as houses. The referee, Aaron Hernandez, leaned in and whispered, “Are you okay?” But I was laid out in front of two wide-eyed kids who were watching every breath I took, so I groaned, “No, I’m not okay.” Big mistake. Hernandez freaked out. After the match, I dragged myself down the ramp, sold the injury like a champ and then popped up backstage like it was nothing. Hernandez screamed, “Are you shitting me? I thought you broke your neck!” I just shrugged. The locker room gave me a small ovation, but the promoter pulled me aside and told me to never do that again. I was trying to preserve what they call “kayfabe” in the wrestling business but apparently I overachieved.

Back in SoCal, I was telling Pete, Mace, and Foob Dogg about the talent up north. Guys they’d never seen. I pitched booking a few of them. We made it happen but the turnout was a bust. Eighty people. Tops. No money to pay the guys who drove five hours south. Mace said, “You have to tell them we can’t pay them.” I said, “Why me?” And he said, “Because you’re the one who vouched for them.” Man, the looks on their faces when I told them all they were getting was pizza and a handshake: it killed me. I never asked them to work for us again after that. The guilt just hung around my neck like an anvil.

But damn, those shows, those trips, they were electric. I felt more alive on a dusty highway than I ever did behind a desk. I was “The Noticeable One,” a character named after the Missing Persons song, drenched in eyeliner and sarcasm. I got real heat up in places like Merced and Modesto, good heat, not the “go away” kind I’d get in L.A. I felt like I belonged in Central California. They embraced the absurd. They respected hustle. I seriously considered just relocating and starting over as a full-time wrestling degenerate.

But I didn’t. I stayed loyal to SoCal, to PCW, to Pete and Mace and Foob. Even though I knew my run was winding down. As 2003 turned into 2004, I could feel the walls closing in. My personal life was still a mess, my employment record was a trail of smoldering wreckage, and I was too proud to ask for help. Wrestling had been the one constant but even that, I could feel, was about to slip through my fingers.

Still, I’ll always remember 2003 as the year I lived. Like a fireworks display in a dark sky, very loud, very bright, extremely chaotic, and over too soon.

A Campaign to Remember: The Manic Episode That Was My 2007 Run for Mayor of Pasadena

I often joke that running for mayor was a bad idea but it wasn’t just any bad idea, it was my bad idea, a product of manic thinking, unchecked bipolar disorder, and, in retrospect, a healthy dose of misguided ambition. I look back on the 2007 Pasadena mayoral campaign with a strange mix of fondness and embarrassment, kind of like finding an old photo where you’re wearing a terrible haircut but are too caught up in the nostalgia to throw it away (I have those, too). But hey, not a lot of guys wearing eyeliner get to run for office in a city whose politics were as staid as Pasadena, and that alone is a badge of honor, right?

Let’s rewind a bit. You see, I’ve always had this peculiar dream of running for office, ever since I sat in Mr. McKnett’s AP Government class in high school. I was 17, all rebellious energy and half-baked idealism, and I promised myself that one day I’d run for mayor of a place I lived. It didn’t matter if that place was a town or a city… I’d put myself on a ballot and let the chips fall where they may. It felt like my destiny, a natural step for a guy who liked a good argument, idealized the democratic process, and was more than willing to wear a heavy dose of eyeliner in the middle of it all.

Fast forward to Pasadena in 2007. I was living in a small apartment, and at the time, I had this special lady friend. She’d been spending a lot of nights at my place. Every night she’d park on the street (I didn’t own a car so I didn’t get my own parking space at my building), only to get ticketed due to Pasadena’s parking permit rules. Every. Single. Time. I hated that my little slice of paradise was being soured by the city’s relentless bureaucracy. It was this unyielding injustice that pushed me to my decision. I needed to fix this. In my manic state, I thought: What better way to fix it than running for mayor? That way, I could not only challenge parking regulations but change the city for the better in general.

Now, let’s get something straight: when I talk about my mental state during this time, I’m not looking for sympathy. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was in the midst of an unchecked manic episode, part of a larger pattern I wouldn’t even begin to understand until later. My brain was a whirlwind of ideas and optimism, fueled by way too much caffeine, alcohol, and lack of sleep. I was convinced that if I could just get enough people to listen, they’d see I was the man to lead this city out of the darkness. But here’s the kicker… I was drinking heavily and only surrounded myself with people who enabled that behavior. The last thing I wanted was someone telling me how to better my life.

Enter the campaign. Turns out that when it started in late 2006, at 25, I was the youngest candidate to ever run for mayor of that town. I hit the streets, wearing my eyeliner and delivering speeches to anyone who would listen. People thought I was a joke. Some called me a socialist, a communist for some of my ideas, like the one where I proposed the idea of more free public transportation funded by a progressive tax. Yeah, that went over well. But then there were those who gave me respect for putting myself out there. After all, I was a young guy, probably not the right fit for city politics, but who could blame me for dreaming big?

Most people, though, were just kind. Mayor Bill Bogaard, my opponent, was one of those people. He could have easily brushed me off or dismissed me as a quirky oddity, but instead, he was kind to me. There’s even a story where, in the middle of a public debate, I got a little carried away and called him a “165-year-old man.” He didn’t blink, just laughed it off and kept his cool. That was a bit of a low point for me, but he took it with grace and I respect him for that. I wasn’t really in the right state of mind, but he treated me with decency, which, considering the circumstances, meant a lot.

The campaign was a whirlwind, and I had zero understanding of how it was affecting my job. I was so absorbed in my mayoral bid that I neglected my responsibilities at work, which led to me being fired. I spent my days answering emails, plotting my next campaign strategy, and telling anyone who would listen that I would fix Pasadena. Meanwhile, I ignored the bills piling up and the nagging feeling that maybe I was running out of time. The consequences hit me hard. Without a job and no clear direction, I lost my apartment. I ended up moving to St. Louis with my parents for a few months, hoping for some semblance of normalcy to help me regroup. And oh, by the way, I resigned from my post as Human Relations Commissioner after the election. That position was a strange gift Bill Bogaard had offered me after the race, but it felt like just another thing I couldn’t hold onto in my unraveling life.

By the time I was back in St. Louis, away from Pasadena and all the chaos, I had a moment to reflect. And the reflection was a mix of pride and regret. I had stepped out there. I had put myself on the line. But at what cost? I was dealing with so many mental health struggles that I couldn’t even begin to name them all. I was living in a haze of manic delusions, and yet I still believed I could change the world. Stupidly, I didn’t learn from my mistakes by that time and went back to Pasadena a few months later to do more stupid shit.

Looking back now, I can’t help but laugh a little. My 2007 campaign is part of my story, a weird, wild chapter I’ll never forget. I’ve come a long way since then, through therapy, medication, and a lot of self-reflection. There were no great triumphs in the mayoral race, but I like to think there was something to be said for the audacity of it all. Maybe it was just a manic episode playing out in real time, but damn, I went for it. In a weird way, I’m proud of that.

And hey, not a lot of guys get to run for office in Pasadena, especially while rocking eyeliner and a chip on their shoulder. So, for better or worse, I did it. It was a moment. A brief, shining, chaotic moment that I’ll always look back on, fondly, yet with a little shame. But that’s okay. It’s all part of the ride. The best part? I still wear makeup every day, I still listen to the same music that fueled me back then, and I still hold many of the same progressive views I did in 2007: human rights, rent control, and a belief that we can always strive for better. After all, I may have been a manic mess back then, but I still care deeply about the issues that matter.

Grappling With The Wrestling World, Part 4

[Some names have been changed.]

The January 2003 PCW show went off without a hitch, on paper, at least. In the tag team title match, The Backseat Boyz dethroned Blaze Vandal and Max Mercury of the so-called “Excellence Foundation.” It was a spectacle of glorious cheating. I got to choke Mercury on the ropes when the ref had his head up his ass, then lured him out of the ring so the Backseats could secure the win by whatever underhanded method they favored that day. Even after a smug heel promo aligning themselves with me, the crowd popped for them like it was a homecoming. The Backseats weren’t just over, they were indie wrestling royalty.

That night, The Philly Connection was born and ran roughshod over the rest of the card. Messiah won the PCW Championship in the main event, and we closed the show standing tall with our stable triumphant, arms raised, a perfect visual to slap on a VHS cover. We even produced commentary in post and hawked VHS tapes and DVDs at the gimmick tables and online. A handful of fans actually bought them. Not a windfall, but it gave us something tangible, something real.

But of course, the internet is the internet. You can’t please the message board mongrels on SoCalUncensored.com. The undercard didn’t scratch their itch for high spots and workrate: they wanted Super Dragon, not storylines. And to make matters worse, I didn’t “gel” with the smart mark illuminati. Led by keyboard warriors, some who would later have their own run as a promoter, they mocked my lifestyle, threw around homophobic slurs like punctuation, and made it clear that a guy like me didn’t belong in their wrestling bubble. This wasn’t heat. This wasn’t an angle. It was open rejection. They hated me for existing in their space.

Behind the curtain, though, things were different. I was mostly well-liked by the wrestlers or at least tolerated. I’d become tight with Pete, Mace, and Foob, enough that I was treated like one of the boys. I even struck up genuine friendships with guys like Ben Tomas, who wore more hats than a circus monkey… referee, ring announcer, photographer. Ben tried to guide me through the minefield of online backlash, but I wouldn’t hear it. I was too drunk on hubris and just plain drunk most of the time.

Someone once said the only time they ever saw me without a cigarette in one hand and a stiff drink in the other was when I was asleep, and even then they weren’t sure. My solution to criticism wasn’t grace or maturity. No, I went full scorched-earth. I hit the message boards with venom, tossing insults at faceless trolls who (spoiler alert) had way more time and venom than I did. I’d get cyber-jumped after every post. It wasn’t fun. It wasn’t cathartic. It was stupid. Even Mace and the others told me to knock it off because it was making PCW look bad. But I didn’t care. I was in the business. These dweebs were just noise.

Spring and summer 2003 came, and the Philly Connection storyline limped along. The Backseats only managed one title defense, against Preston Scott and Matrix aka Damage Inc., before dropping the belts. At least I got to hit a triple superkick with the Boyz, which remains one of the coolest moments of my life. But PCW’s financials were an open wound. Drawing 200 people was a good day. More often we were lucky to hit 75. Eventually we moved operations to the Anaheim Marketplace, a flea market venue where a lucha promoter let us use his ring for free if we booked a few of his guys.

And then we got a call from two brothers who’d been training themselves in Rancho Cucamonga. Called themselves The Young Bucks. Mace told them, flat out, “We don’t book backyarders.” Legendary fuck-up, that. Wonder if it still keeps him up at night. It would haunt me.

During that period I was mostly involved in the Mace vs. Mike Vega feud. Vega was a talented Canadian gimmick guy who was really from Whittier but running a Bret Hart homage, right down to his red-and-white singlet and a fleur-de-lis tattoo. I interfered in their matches like a good manager should, but I screwed up a Philly Connection beatdown once and legitimately busted Vega’s mouth open with a mistimed clothesline. He was gracious about it. Too gracious, probably.

Mace, Pete, and Foob wanted me deeper in the fold. Promoting, designing flyers, scouting talent. They also wanted me to become the show’s heel commissioner replacing the uninspired babyface Vance Hartman. Our brilliant storyline solution? Me vs. Hartman in a weapons match. I hadn’t taken a real bump since Maverick’s school and hadn’t “wrestled” since my backyard days. We told fans to bring weapons, and they delivered: keyboards, vinyl records, someone suggested a refrigerator “so we could wrestle in it and not be seen.” Real riot, that one.

I entered wearing Adam Ant face paint, a Mace T-shirt, black tights, and purple kneepads. The match was an absolute disaster. I broke records over Vance’s head like a maniac. He crushed my throat on the guardrail. I got thrown into the post and bruised my shoulder so badly it stayed purple for a few months. Mace ran in to help me win. A botchfest from bell to bell. Vance, disillusioned and facing personal struggles, vanished from wrestling after that.

Now I was the heel commissioner. I relished it. Backstage, my responsibilities grew. We needed a new venue, and I found it: The Eagles Hall in Altadena. Gorgeous layout, better access for LA fans, could fit 300 if we pushed it. Around this time, I started financially backing PCW, too. That meant more drinking, more smoking, and even less time for the goth-industrial clubs I once haunted. My girlfriend was increasingly fed up, understandably. I was neglecting my job at GlaciPure, a water delivery company, because I was too busy chasing dreams in black attire and eyeliner. When people would ask what I did for a living, I’d tell them I was a pro wrestling promoter, not a customer service representative. My girlfriend would roll her eyes but she saw I was having fun even though I was losing most of her support for the venture.

There was no shortage of drama. Other promoters took issue with me like with my flamboyant presentation, my mouth, my reputation. I’d attend other shows for free because, well, that’s how it worked once you were “in.” One night I almost got into a fight with another promoter. We were both plastered and puffed up with alpha nonsense. That was me: ego first, consequences later.

By the end of 2003, PCW had found its home in Altadena. The Philly Connection angle was unraveling, as most of the actual Philly guys were gone. Nick Berk was a highlight… he brought in the Blue Meanie and Jasmine St. Claire to hang out backstage. Meanie was generous and professional. We begged him to dance for the fans, but he politely declined, not wanting to steal thunder from the locals.

And still, somehow, I didn’t see the fire I was building with my own hands. I just knew it was getting hot. I wish I’d recognized how much damage my arrogance and unchecked behavior were doing. I wish the fans hadn’t been so cruel. But truth be told, I gave them reasons. I didn’t help my case. I’d log onto the message boards looking for feedback, only to find “f—-t” plastered everywhere like graffiti. Maybe I didn’t belong in wrestling. Maybe I was too thin-skinned for that world. Maybe the demons were always going to win.

But man, it was one hell of a ride that was almost over before it even started.

Grappling With The Wrestling World, Part 3

[Some names of people and organizations have been changed]

There were exactly three weeks left until the next Pacific Championship Wrestling (PCW) show in January of 2003. It was scheduled to go down in a sectioned-off corner of Frank & Son’s Collectibles Show, a sprawling nerd bazaar in City of Industry, California. Think a flea market mashed together with a comic con, but instead of cosplay meetups and trading cards, we were setting the stage for body slams, blood feuds, and broken egos.

And I had a serious challenge on my hands.

I’d already been running my mouth to Pete, Mace, and Foob, the trio who ran PCW, that I had connections to some of the most buzz-worthy independent wrestlers back East. I told them I could put together a stable, a unit of East Coast killers that would not only turn heads but elevate the entire card. It wasn’t just hype. I truly believed I could pull it off. The only problem? I hadn’t actually lined anyone up yet.

But I had an ace in the hole: Derek Soren. Derek was an up-and-comer on the Philly wrestling scene who would go on to achieve some pretty cool things. By night, Derek was a DJ on Breeze 104.5. That was Philly’s go-to station for smooth soul and quiet storm classics. He had ties to everyone that mattered in our circles, and more importantly, he owed me a favor. I called him and said, “I need talent: real names. Guys who can work, who the smart fans will recognize, and who won’t embarrass me or themselves.”

What I got back almost knocked me out of my chair.

Trent Acid and Johnny Kashmere. The Backseat Boyz. Arguably the most electric tag team on the independent circuit at the time. They were fast, fearless, and impossibly charismatic. Cult heroes in Combat Zone Wrestling, staples in Ring of Honor, and darlings of every message board that mattered. These weren’t just guys trying to break in, they were already stars in their own right.

I pitched them to Pete and the crew, and within a few days, they were officially booked. Not only were they coming in, but I was going to manage them. And not only was I managing them, we were booked to win the tag team titles that very night.

Suddenly, my pipe dream had grown teeth.

But two wrestlers don’t make a stable. We wanted a full-scale invasion. So we gave it a name: The Philly Connection. I suggested the name after eating a cheesesteak at a restaurant with the same moniker in Monrovia. That’s when Mace (who, to his credit, had a knack for booking with nuance) suggested we mix in SoCal guys who had also done time on the East Coast, especially in CZW. That way the Philly brand would feel legitimate, not just imported.

First up was Messiah. A lightning rod of controversy and charisma. Messiah had a persona that felt biblical and blasphemous all at once. He wrestled like a man haunted by demons, the kind who looked like he enjoyed the pain almost as much as he dished it out. He had history with CZW, XPW, and a reputation that made people whisper before they cheered. Booking him added an edge to our faction, a sense of danger that you couldn’t fake.

Then there was B-Boy. He was the contrast and the grounded technician, the streetwise brawler who didn’t need flash because he had fire. Every match he was in looked like a fight, because to him, that’s exactly what it was. His style was crisp, intense, and brutally effective. He was respected on both coasts, and the fans knew he was the real deal. No gimmicks, no posturing and just lots of impact.

We also added Lil Cholo, which, honestly, started as an inside joke. The name felt so hyper-local, so distinctly SoCal, that putting him in a Philly-themed stable felt absurd. But Cholo had presence, and he could work with anyone. He brought a kind of laid-back menace that made him a wildcard in the group.

And finally, Mace himself joined the stable with a clever twist. His new gimmick was that he had “sold out” to the East Coast. He leaned into it hard, mocking the SoCal fans for their loyalty while adopting our Philly bravado like it was tattooed on his chest. It was meta, it was timely, and it made the whole thing feel a little more self-aware which always plays well with the jaded fans in California.

Bringing the Backseats out West wasn’t cheap. We had to drop a few thousand dollars to cover their flights, hotels, and other travel expenses. But from the moment they walked into the venue, it was clear we made the right call. Total pros. Johnny Kashmere was calm and focused, already visualizing the match before the ring was even set up. And Trent Acid (RIP) was magnetic. He carried himself like a rock star, but he treated everyone like family. He didn’t just tolerate me as a manager, he encouraged me, gave me tips on timing, ring presence, how to work the ref, how to position myself during tag spots. He understood the psychology of the whole act and helped make me better at mine.

The chemistry we had was instant. We weren’t just running an angle. We were building a movement. The Philly Connection had a mission: to walk into PCW and take it over from the inside, not with brute force, but with swagger, work rate, and calculated disruption.

But there was one looming question that hung over us like a smog-filled California sky: would the fans buy it?

These were Southern California diehards. Jaded, fiercely loyal, obsessed with message board lore and notoriously hard to impress. They’d seen everything. They had seen deathmatches, lucha hybrids, shoot-style throwdowns. Were they going to accept an East Coast invasion, led by a loudmouthed manager in eyeliner and a bunch of Philly imports?

We didn’t know. But we were about to find out.

And one way or another, it was going to be unforgettable.