As a Manhattan kid growing up in the Tri-State Area, I often spent my weekends in Princeton, N.J., visiting my older cousin, who was almost like an older brother to me. In addition to helping wash the cars, mow the lawn, clean the pool and help him at his golf course job (all the hard work things that we all had fun doing as kids before we had to actually work for money), and after we went out to Good Time Charlie’s Steak House and then to Dairy Queen for desserts, and checked out the incredibly hot Princeton co-ed’s on campus, finally driving home while scanning the FM dial for the great 70’s music hits, late Saturday nights were always Wrestling Night for us, when we collapsed into the old sofas downstairs in the basement, turned on WOR Channel 9 TV and watched Vince McMahon’s mock indignation and outrage at the antics of yet another week of even more bogus and contrived over-the-top-silly wrestling fiascos.
Now, I gotta admit. Wrestling in the 1970’s was not exactly what you would describe as refined, elegant, cultured entertainment. No, I didn’t mention Wrestling Night when I was visiting Grandma or when I was interviewing for my private High School admission applications. But when I look back on it now, that 70’s wrestling age was probably the pinnacle of sublime adolescent schticke. And the whole grotesque spectacle of it all, with the wrestlers in their tight primitive spandex tights, the announcers wearing their conservative dark nylon ties and blazers and shocked expressions, and the cheering suburban white trash fans in the stands driven to the very brink of insanity, was somehow utterly beautiful, graceful, and breathtakingly captivating.
I have two lifetime favorite wrestlers very dear to my heart. The first I’ll mention is George The Animal Steele and his brilliant portrayal of Tor Johnson in Tim Burton’s immortal film masterpiece, "Ed Wood" (1994). I can still see George taking that big greedy bite of the poor Oven Stuffer Roaster and eating his watermelons in the dressing room. And of course, my first love in wrestling, as a young, bright-eyed amazed kid, was the incomparable 7′5″, 500 lb. Andre the Giant. Andre the Giant was frighteningly big, so much so that he made the other giant, hulking wrestlers around him look smallish and somewhat weakly. But Andre had a special personality, he was a gentle, sensitive giant who only crushed people and decapitated them when they were being bad and misbehaving. When Andre the Giant was not pulverizing his opponents or tossing them into the back bleacher seats, his special mellow humble persona was winning over admiring kids like me and my cousin and our friends. Andre had a special ability to make you feel good inside and love him.
Well, it turns out that on all those late 70’s Saturday nights, after Andre was finished with performing in the wrestling shows that we watched on TV, he was going out with his fellow wrestler buddies after work and drinking up the town. It turns out that Andre the Giant was probably the most prolific boozer, alcoholic and serial drunkard in all of human history, at least the history after the dinosaurs were wiped out. Anyway, Modern Drunkard Magazine has a great story this week on Andre and his drinking exploits. I think it’s required reading for any true, loyal native New Yorker, and any transplanted New Yorker who really wants to be a real official New Yorker (and especially New Yorkers who like to drink, you know, booze). I think anyone with the proper breeding and sensitivities will appreciate this one. A special thanks to Dan Gislao, still-honorary past-Manhattan LP member now living in Seattle for forwarding me this story.
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