The best there ever will be.

"You can be a good person and do everything right and it doesn't guarantee you anything." - Owen Hart


I can place the era that I started watching wrestling again, when I was 13, and it was mostly because of two events: the return of the Undertaker at SummerSlam 1994, and the fact that Bret Hart was the reigning WWE (then, the WWF) champion.

It's astonishly easy to admit: Bret "Hitman" Hart is a hero of mine.

I can blame Andrew for my renewed interest in the Bret Hart's career. His video collection is stock-piled with classic WWE pay-per-view events (including all the SummerSlams and Wrestlemanias). We spent a good portion of my time in L.A. - at least at night - watching classic matches from the '90s.

I watched wrestling religiously back then, after taking time some time off in my pre-teen years. From 1994-1998, I watched almost every pay-per-view event with my buddies Josh and PJ, and caught many of the weekly TV shows in college. My interest traces as far back as the rivalry between Hulk Hogan and Randy "Macho Man" Savage in the mid '80s. At least that's as far back as I can remember.

No matter who came and went, Bret Hart was always my favorite.

Mostly, I think it was his work ethic and overall "averageness" that made me a fan. His Hitman character was simple: technical, proficient wrestler who took on all comers. Bret wasn't big, he wasn't flashy, and he didn't have quite the charisma guys like Hogan or, later, The Rock, had.

But man, he knew his stuff. I just finished his autobiography, and the biggest thing that sticks out is that he was a consumate professional who worked hard and gave everyone an opportunity to shine. His success came as it should have: through dedication and sticking it out. It wasn't his size or his ego that got him to the top. It was his skill and professionalism. His co-workers respected him for that.

"There was always something different about my fans," Hart writes in his autobiography. "They really believed in me as a person."

And that's true. The Bret Hart in the ring was the same guy as the Bret Hart in the locker room.

Bret Hart was one of the few wrestlers to use his own name. He didn't appeal to the crowd during his matches. He was a loner, a history buff, and true to the friends who didn't betray him.

That kind of thing appeals to me. I always respected how Bret Hart's character, as World Champion, gave everyone a title-shot opportunity - even guys like Doink the Clown. He was an egalitarian.

And good lord, what an excruciating finishing move. The Sharpshooter, a modified Scorpion Death Lock, was intricate and beautiful to watch.

The Undertaker, always my second favorite, had the mood and the atmosphere and the spooky persona down. He was talented, yes, but it was his theatrics that made me a fan. Bret Hart appealed to the average guy in me. When you don't have a lot of charisma or athletic gifts, you try to out-work everyone. I understood that.

Bret Hart's hard work paid off in a lot of ways. He's, by far, the most decorated wrestler of all time: two tag teams championships, two intercontinental championships, seven world titles, two King of the Ring tournaments, various other championships, and so many fan and industry awards (including induction into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2006) it's impossible to list them all. Again, it's something I see in myself. Overachievers get my respect.

What's tragic, however, is what has happened to Bret Hart since November 1997 - the infamous "Montreal Screwjob" that served as his inglorious ousting from the WWE. Since then, it's been one misshap after another: a so-so career in rival WCW, the death of his fantastically-talented brother Owen in a freak accident, the drug abuse of his fellow comrades, a concussion, a divorce, and - in 2002 - a debilitating stroke after a bicycle fall.

In other words, my childhood hero is human, just like the rest of us, and that's helped me to respect him even more.

His autobiography lays the imperfections out there: infidelity, a bit of drug and steroid abuse, a chaotic family life. Still, when seen against the tableau of what was going on in the rest of the wrestling world, Bret Hart's life was pretty tame. That's why it's such a shame to read about what's happened to him since the glory days.

My fear, like his, is that his legacy will somehow be erased - that people younger than me won't remember what a great performer Bret Hart was.

I suppose that's why, after I returned from Los Angeles, I immediately hit Amazon and bought his book. For my own mind, I wanted to hear Bret Hart's story. Maybe it's my dread that my best days are behind me now, or some strange need for nostalgia, when I watched a purer form of wrestling entertainment than what's on TV now.

Whatever. It's been great to relive the days of my boyhood hero. After all, when you grow up with few male role models around, you look up to what's available at the time. Bret Hart, a hero in his home country of Canada, was one of them.

Of course wrestling is staged and the outcomes are pre-determined. Telling that to a wrestling fan is like telling your parents Santa Claus doesn't exist. It doesn't take away the fun, and it doesn't take away the real people behind all the hooplah and exhibition. They get hurt and they have problems and they deal with real life just like the rest of us do.

To me, Bret Hart was more real than most.

Here's to you, Hitman.

Winning the fucking Newbery

Author Neil Gaiman, after finding out (via speakerphone at 5:45 a.m.) that his book won the Newbery Award:

You are on a speakerphone with at least 14 teachers and librarians and suchlike great, wise and good people, I thought. Do not start swearing like you did when you got the Hugo. This was a wise thing to think because otherwise huge, mighty and fourletter swears were gathering. I mean, that's what they're for. I think I said, You mean it's Monday?

I like his Twitter response even better.

I got to know Gaiman for his work on the Sandman comic books, and got turned on to books like American Gods and Neverwhere. Now he's got a new movie coming out, and his The Graveyard Book won the Newbery. Thing about Gaiman is, he writes really creepy kids books. And they gave him an award for it.

Couldn't have happened to a better bloke.

The ice cream truck turns left, then right

Were it not for the presence of the unwashed and the half-educated, the formless, queer and incomplete, the unreasonable and absurd, the infinite shapes of the delightful human tadpole, the horizon would not wear so wide a grin."

- Frank Moore Colby, "Imaginary Obligations"

---

Today is the perfect day, an 80-degree June wonder, a great afternoon to scribble out the American Dream, brittle and dry after so many years in a senseless war, who comes out to chase the ice cream man, but finds the truck turning right instead of left. It leaves this lonely writer alone to sit and sun and dream of Rocket Pops.

Here in the grass of Ella Sharp Park, the few remaining honeybees in existence buzz in vain for nourishment. Across the softball field, rocket hobbyists and radio-controlled plane operators engage in all-out war - the plane is zooming, whipping up a terrible frenzy in the tranquil bee population. If the rocket guys aren't careful, they could blow that plane out of the sky. Things might come to blows.

A whoosh, and a puff, and a trail of smoke follows the exploded rocket down to the earth. Across the street, families are putt-putting, and downtown is full of the constant roar of motorcycle men and women, leather-clad even in the heat.

I stood at the corner of Blackstone and Michigan Ave. for twenty minutes as the parade of beards and noise and chrome thundered by.

"...a local attorney drove his car across the sidewalk and over the ledge of my entranceway, where he leaned on his horn and tried to knock down the door with his bumper. A visiting poet hurled a garbage can under the wheels of a pssing bus, causing a noise like a bad accident. My upstairs neighbor said it sounded like a Volkswagen being crushed. 'It jolted me right out of bed," he said. "But when I looked out the window all I could see was the bus. I thought the car must have hit it head on and gone underneath. There was an awful dragging sound. I thought people were mashed down there in the wreckage.'"

...and so it goes in Dr. Thompson's amazingly funny "Hell's Angels," just like I'm sure it happens all over this great country...at this exact hour...on a perfect June day.

If only we could engage in our world as often as Mr. Bush engages in the world, we might be a sunnier people.

Like the families that bring their lawn chairs and coolers and watch their daughters battle on the soccer field just across the way.

Soon the smell of cut grass will ride this cool breeze over to me, and the bi-plane circling overhead will land somewhere for lunch. If only that goddamn ice cream truck would stop this way...

...blast! He again avoids me, turning into my own damn apartment complex instead of passing by the sun-drunk field where I sit. He won't get away with this. It's times like this I wish I had a metal Frisbee that I could throw and shatter his teeth like glass.

It didn't have to be this way, Mr. Ice Cream. It would've been the easiest $1.75 you ever made in your life.