Day: August 23, 2023

Happy Trails, Funker

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

TL;DR: Wrestling legend, Terry Funk passes away at the age of 79

Admittedly, I can’t say that I was really ever that big of a fan of Terry Funk the wrestler, but if ever asked to name my Mt. Rushmore of professional wrestling, I do put Terry Funk on it.  The guy transcended multiple generations of the business, made money and elevated others around him, and did it in every major territory around the globe.  

As much as I wasn’t that big of a fan of his hardcore brawling style, I respect the hell out of his business acumen, and from what I’ve learned throughout the years from his peers and admirers in the industry, he’s always been perceived as a good guy, long before the parade of tributes in his passing started coming out.

And that’s just it, when it comes to the names in the history of the industry that I admire, actual wrestling talent isn’t always the number one criteria.  I like it when guys are respectable, and operate in the manner that puts the business first and understands the importance of elevating everyone around you so that not only you prosper, but everyone prospers, and that’s the kind of performer I’ve always heard Terry Funk always was.

I actually don’t have a tremendous amount of memories when it comes to Terry Funk himself, because almost everything I know about the guy stems from his relationship with Mick Foley, his long-time friend and rival, and almost all of my exposure to his in-ring ability is almost entirely in hindsight, watching videos and highlights in retrospect versus ever seeing anything he’d done in the present, save for some of his later time in ECW and the WWE.

Obviously you can’t talk about Terry Funk and Mick Foley without bringing up the legendary IWA deathmatch in Japan where the two of them basically attempted murder on each other in front of a really paltry crowd, that Foley himself has stated in his books as being really ironic that they had such a legendary match to such a small crowd.  But even then, he was long past his physical prime, but just on grit, old country man strength and the general insanity that he looked like, it was still a grueling and brutal match that was entertaining in its own way.

But as I said, I always had more admiration of the guy that people loved to say was hanging around too long, but even I could tell that sure, he was around long past his physical prime, and he wasn’t doing his body any favors in doing such, but he was always hanging around, to give back, and pretty much nothing else.  No matter the age, his name carried weight, and working with younger guys and be it cutting a promo on them, or taking some ridiculous bumps for them, he was always working his ass off to try and get talent over.

Paul Heyman has been on record reminiscing about how important Funk was to the inception of ECW, and that without his involvement, there would never have been ECW, primarily because of Funk’s willingness to help talent become made, and those are the stories that I always found most endearing about the Funker, regardless of his actual ability in the ring.

All the same, even though it doesn’t seem like I have anything really substantial to say about the passing of Terry Funk, I still wanted to write something about it, because I acknowledge his contributions to the industry I’ve been a lifelong fan to, and I always admired that everyone thought he was such a good guy, which holds a lot of weight in my mind, above all else.  And I genuinely feel like the industry has lost one of the most important icons and cornerstones of it with his passing, and with that, happy trails Terry Funk.  Forever.

Car Week: Is there anything dumber than putting Instagram handles on your car?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Maybe it’s a symptom of getting older, cars coming out of the box better, or a byproduct of where I live these days, but I hardly see any slammed (modified) cars anymore these days.  This isn’t to say they don’t exist anymore, I still see large groups of them every now and then on the roads or in a parking lot, but they’re clearly organized and don’t put themselves in the public eye as perhaps I once recollect, in Northern Virginia, where a stock Honda Civic or Acura Integra was about as rare as seeing a Ferrari in the wild.

But for the few instances where I see a noticeably slammed car on the road, I’ve also observed a trend that these car owners do that I’ve found quite puzzling, which is putting an Instagram handle on their rides.

Now it’s presumptuous to say that all people in slammed, riced-out cars are doing questionable, often times illegal vehicular behaviors, but let’s not kid ourselves either.  Whether it’s speeding, practicing power slides on public streets, burnouts in parking lots to illegal mods, emission-altering exhausts to tinted windows too dark, it’s usually people in slammed, riced-out cars doing it.

That being said, why in the world would people who occasionally exhibit in misdemeanor activity willingly put an additional identifier on their car that they can be possibly tracked down in the event that they’re seen doing dumbass shit?

Like I really don’t understand it; if you’re making videos doing burnouts or street racing or participating in a flash mob of other tricked out cars, and then putting it on your Instagram, doesn’t that make it even easier for cops to track and identify you?  Or say some rando is walking through a parking lot, sees your ‘gram, checks it out, and there’s videos of you racing or practicing donuts in a parking lot; and this rando just so happens to be a police, or reports your shit to the police, and now there’s an APB out for your ride.

Whatever though, even if these clowns had the wherewithal to sign up everything with dummy info, covers their plates before videoing themselves, and have gone through the trouble to minimize prosecution before putting their Instagram handles on their cars, they’re still pathetic in my opinion.  So attention-starved and narcissistic that they willingly go to the trouble to put an Instagram handle on their cars so that random strangers might possibly check them out online.

I’d really love to know the numbers of police busting people for car-related dumbass-ery on account of being able to track them from Instagram handles on their cars, because any number higher than zero validates the notion that it’s not really a particularly smart idea to advertise yourselves on your cars when you’re participating in some questionable public behavior.