A Funny Thing Happened on Our Way Out of Walmart...

First and foremost, this isn't a blog about an experience I had with a Walmart so much as it is a blog about an experience I happened to have had while I was at a Walmart. There is a difference, obviously. While I've had plenty of reasons to develop a sense of disdain for Walmart over the years (case in point, this post from all the way back in March of 2011 - "Reason #340,781 to avoid Wal-Mart") I'm not going to drag the company into the mud when it's not deserved. No, this is more of a look inside the minds of the kind of people you encounter while at Walmart.

My wife & I have something of a routine on Sundays. We typically get up around 7:30 AM, get ready for church, go to church, and then when we're dismissed from the worship service we go to Walmart to pick up our provisions for the week. (Occasionally we'll have lunch out with my Mom as well but that doesn't happen every week.) We attend Cornerstone Community Church in Orangeburg, South Carolina so, of course, we go to the Walmart in Orangeburg. Could we shop elsewhere? Sure we could, but we go to Walmart because of the same reason everyone else goes to Walmart - it's convenient and, generally speaking, the prices are better there.

This past Sunday (September 21, 2014) was different than usual as that particular day we were on our way back from a brief overnight trip to Myrtle Beach, SC. Our plan was to drop off our bags at home then come into Orangeburg to get our supplies as well as pick up our dog, who was being looked after by my Mom.

It was around 3 PM by the time we made it to Walmart. I know my wife well enough to know that she wasn't looking forward to being there at that time of day. Going to Walmart early on a Sunday morning as we normally do (almost invariably we're out of church by 10:30 AM) is ideal for a number of reasons, primary among them being the fact that there aren't as many people there, meaning it's a bit easier to get in and out than it would be otherwise. Judging by the volume of cars in the parking lot, it looked like a fair segment of the population of Orangeburg had beaten us to the punch. To show you how different my wife and I are in regard to our individual attitudes about this shopping excursion, my only fear as we made our way into the store that day was whether or not there would be any good bananas left.

Because, priorities.

We rounded up our supplies (Jill gathered sustenance while I went in search of wheel & tire cleaner and other necessities), paid our bill (just over $80), and made our way to the exit. Heading out of the store I had command of our shopping cart, as I do more often than not. After having walked past the salon, the manicure/pedicure shop, and a cavalcade of oddly positioned merchandise displays (we're not certain but it appears as though some sort of renovations are being done to this store) I navigated past the first set of sliding doors, on into the void between the store and the outside world, then finally I passed through the final set of sliding doors.

Before I go further, I feel as though a visual aide is in order.

What you see here is an image taken from Google Maps of the entrance/exit we were using that day at the Walmart in Orangeburg. There is nothing unique about it as this is an example of what you can expect to find if you were to look at a similar view of pretty much any Walmart. You can see the building, the cars, the parking lot, and most importantly the white painted (albeit faded) lines on the asphalt directly in front of the store. If you weren't aware, these lines denote a pedestrian crosswalk, a construct that is also made noticeable to oncoming motorists via accompanying signage (yes, this is one of the actual signs at the Walmart in question).

For guidelines regarding how the operator of a motor vehicle is to conduct themselves when they approach a pedestrian crosswalk, let us refer to section 56-5-3130 of the South Carolina Code of Laws, which states:

When traffic-control signals are not in place or not in operation the driver of a vehicle shall yield the right-of-way, slowing down or stopping if need be to yield to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within a crosswalk when the pedestrian is upon the half of the roadway upon which the vehicle is traveling or when the pedestrian is approaching so closely from the opposite half of the roadway as to be in danger.

I looked both ways as I exited the store that day to make sure there weren't any oncoming cars nearby. I saw one to my right but it appeared to be far enough away that I would be able to begin crossing the distance from the store to the parking lot as I, being a pedestrian, would've had the right of way. As I got about halfway between the store and the lot I noticed this car didn't appear to be slowing down - it wasn't going all that fast but it also wasn't showing signs of yielding.

I kept walking.

The car slowed a bit but was still coming towards me.

I kept walking. By this point I'm probably 75% of the way to my objective.

The car keeps coming - slowly, but it's still coming.

I'm about 85% of the way across the crosswalk. The front bumper of the car (a black Ford Focus sedan, similar to the one my wife owns oddly enough) is now so close to me that I had to angle our buggy out of its path else it would've struck the cart. I stop dead in my tracks then turn my head so that I'm looking directly at the driver of the car, a black woman wearing sunglasses (the kind that make the wearer's eyes look like that of a bulbous insect). She looked back at me, expressionless - we were in something of a duel at that moment, waiting to see who would make the next move. Suddenly her passenger, a black male, shouted at me through the open window on his side of the car, saying "You need to look around!" I began pushing our buggy out of harms way and as I was doing so I pointed at the ground then said back to the passenger "It's called a pedestrian crosswalk..." It was meaningless effort, but it made me feel a little better.

I know what some of you are probably thinking. "You idiot, that woman could've run you over and you just kept walking in the road!" Yes, that's entirely possible. I could have stopped at the moment I first noticed she wasn't going to slow down and let her pass. I didn't do that because I had decided there was a point to be made in standing my ground, however chauvinistic it may have been. I'm not the one who deserves to be chided for their behavior in this scenario because the driver of that car had decided, willfully and without provocation, that she had no problem with hitting another human being with her vehicle.

Why? I'm a 34-year old white guy. I'm speaking directly to the driver of that car here - would you have been so bold as to aim your car at me if I were a black guy of the same age? (Oh yeah, I'm going there.) Or perhaps if I were a little old black lady who was just out to pick up a gallon of milk and some bread? Do you still want to run me over or do you yield? Likewise, what if it had been my wife in my place or possibly a child? Are you still alright with potentially killing someone or does the race, age, gender, etc. of your potential victim have something to do with your decision?

Would it have been worth injuring me or damaging the buggy and our groceries to say "I belong here and you don't"? I don't think there's a personal injury lawyer in this state that wouldn't have been knocking at my hospital room door had she actually done harm to me. I can only assume she would've been fine with going to jail for that act. I don't know what kind of jail time a vehicular assault conviction carries but I'm sure it's not pleasant (or so I would hope). What would her defense have been, "He shouldn't have been walking where I was driving..."?

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that people like this woman exist. I think we encounter people of poor character every day, unfortunately, but they reveal themselves in varying degrees. Sometimes they might drop an empty soda can out the window of their car, then sometimes they might cheat on their husband with one of their co-workers. Sometimes they might eat a few grapes off the bunch they intend to buy while walking around a store, sometimes they might beat their son with a broom handle when he wets the bed. Sometimes they might take an extra newspaper from the box, sometimes they might bring a pistol into a crowded movie theater. My point being to say that we never know what evil exists inside of a person until it's let loose into the world and by then it's too late. You just have to hope you're not the one who winds up on the receiving end when the levy finally breaks.

Wrestlers & Promoters vs. South Carolina's Athletic Commission

It goes without saying that these days in the United States our government - be it on the local, state, or federal level - likes to have its hands in whatever it is we, as citizens, are doing. Indeed, it seems as though there aren't many aspects of our lives that aren't in some way regulated by Uncle Sam or one of his subordinates. Even though that presents a set of issues in terms of "the land of the free" feeling more like "the land of big brother", the fact of the matter is that it's not all bad. I, for one, am happy with the fact that because I pay my taxes I'll be able to dial 911 on my telephone, should the need arise, and get assistance from someone who knows precisely what to do.

There are, however, a lot of things that government does that make me rub my furry chin and wonder "What the heck are they thinking?" And so it goes that, typically speaking, government regulations fall into one of two categories - useful or mostly pointless. It isn't often you find something that gets wedged in between the two but in my eyes that's where things stand right now in regard to a new batch of licensing requirements being imposed upon professional wrestlers, promoters, and other individuals seeking to participate in good, old fashioned rasslin' events here in the state of South Carolina.

The South Carolina Athletic Commission is a division of the state Department of Labor, Licensing, and Regulation. In a nutshell, the SCAC exists for the same reason as other governmental bodies having to do with providing protection for members of the workforce through a code of laws from employers who would potentially put their employees in at-risk conditions or environments. They're something of the enforcement branch when it comes to keeping things in line as far as regulations pertaining to professional sports like boxing, mixed martial arts, and pro wrestling are concerned (yes, you read that correctly - according to their logic pro wrestling is, in fact, a legitimate combat sport).

There are a couple of states that do not have an athletic commission, period, and yet there are also states with an athletic commission that does not include professional wrestling in its scope. North Carolina falls into the latter category and Georgia did as well up until around 2008 when that state enacted a sweeping set of changes that put it in line with South Carolina's operating policies in regard to pro wrestling. (Some believe their abrupt adoption of such regulations was a reaction to the murder-suicide involving Chris Benoit who happened to have been living in Georgia at the time he committed the heinous acts that have forever tarnished his legacy as a wrestler.) This would seem to be because of the fact that (*SPOILER ALERT*) professional wrestling isn't an actual sport but more akin to performance art such as theater or ballet. Yes, I just compared pro wrestling to ballet - because comparing it to clogging or the symphony would've been too silly, although now that I think about it clogging is an applicable analogy seeing as how both it and wrestling require specialized footwear.

The SCAC has been in the business of regulating such things as boxing and pro wrestling for as long as I have been following the independent professional wrestling scene in South Carolina, which I began doing back around 1999. (MMA wasn't big enough to have been worth the trouble back then, however the SCAC does now also oversee those events as well.) Wrestlers and promoters alike didn't seem to have much use for the SCAC fifteen years ago, and matters between the two sides have mostly only gotten worse.

So what does the SCAC require of boxers, MMA fighters, professional wrestlers, individuals promoting such events, and certain members of staff? Paperwork and money, naturally. What else would you expect from the government?

When it comes to professional wrestling, all wrestlers (which is kind of a blanket term for anyone who will be performing in the show as characters who are managers also fall into this category), announcers, referees, and promoters have to be individually licensed. "What good is the license?", you ask. That's an excellent question.

When we see the word "license", it more often than not is an implication that the person holding said license has qualified to act in whatever capacity the license permits. Medical technicians, truck drivers, and many other folks working in all kinds of specialized trades are licensed professionals. In each of these instances the license indicates that the holder of said document has been legally recognized as being able to perform whatever task (or tasks) to which the license applies because they have received training on how to do it and that they more than likely have passed some type of qualifications process. All a license from the SCAC insures is that the holder of the license got a physical, filled out some paperwork, and sent in a check to cover the cost of the salary of whoever it was that had to take the time to verify their information. There is no assurance that the individual has received proper training, just that they were willing to jump through a series of hoops to appease the powers that be.

Promoters must also go through the process of obtaining a license but for them it's more of a business license. In addition, promoters must submit permit applications on a per event basis to the SCAC. What this boils down to is the that the SCAC, as a regulatory body, is keeping tabs on who is running what shows, where, and when.

You might be wondering "Why is the SCAC so interested in this kind of data?" It goes back to what I said before about the SCAC being an offshoot of LLR and acting as an overseer for the sake of maintaining safe working conditions. A promoter is an employer and as such they are responsible for the safety of their employees - it just so happens that in this example an employer can justifiably ask one of their employees to jump off a 15 foot high steel cage.

Everything I've covered heretofore has been in place for quite some time. The paperwork, the physicals, all that stuff has been standard procedure for anyone who wants to legally run a show in the state of South Carolina for at least a decade (more on "legal" versus "illegal" events and how the SCAC has been used by competing companies to combat one another later). What's different now are the fees associated with these filings and as you might expect it's what's really gotten under the skin of quite a few people involved with indie pro wrestling here in South Carolina - but it's also being heralded as a long overdue move by others.

A new fee structure was put in place this year for individuals seeking licensing from the SCAC regarding being able to promote or participate in pro wrestling events. The filing fee now stands at $75 per year for all wrestlers, referees, and announcers. You would hope that they'd be able to recoup that money fairly easily - one good night at the gimmick table for a wrestler could take care of it. (Referees and announcers aren't so lucky, I'm afraid.) Fees for promoters were increased as well. A promoters license will set you back $150 per year. On top of this, promoters are expected to pay $150 per event to receive a permit plus 2% of the gate (ie, profit from ticket sales) is supposed to go directly to the SCAC within 10 days of an event. That last one is important because on the eleventh day after an event the SCAC can levy a $250 fine against the promoter as well as an additional $250 fine every ten days until the gate fee is submitted.

Hitting someone in their wallet is one of the most effective ways of making them take notice of the situation at hand. This is why fines for traffic violations are what they are - because they make a lasting impression. People who perform at these events aren't being affected nearly as much as promoters are. When you consider the fact that they're looking at $300 in expenses before they even sell their first ticket and that they'll still have to cover things like the cost of flyers & promotional materials, building rental, payroll, and more, the prospect of being a wrestling promoter in South Carolina suddenly doesn't seem like a very rewarding occupation. And no, I don't think there are any promoters out there who do what they do because they think it's a worthwhile hobby. If they have that much money to burn, they should try contributing to society in more worthwhile methods.

[SIDE NOTE: I have noticed that World Wrestling Entertainment, Total Non-stop Action/Impact Wrestling, Ring of Honor, and other companies do not hold events in South Carolina with any sense of frequency anymore. WWE, in the past, has run 4-6 shows in South Carolina in a single year, some being televised and others being house shows. I'm working off of memory here so I may be wrong but I recall only two WWE events in South Carolina during 2014. The last WWE event I attended was in November of 2013, that being a non-televised show at Colonial Life Arena in Columbia, SC. Certainly there are other factors at play in their decision making scheme but I sincerely believe that this trend is at least in part due to the fact that these promotions would sooner tour in other states than have to deal with the SCAC.]

The topic at hand now becomes how these changes may affect the state of indie professional wrestling in South Carolina. There are those in the wrestling community who have made it very clear via social media that they feel like this is the SCAC's way of milking promotions for all they're worth, leaving the SCAC to count their money and promoters to count their blessings. (For their input on the matter, search "SC Wrestlers Unite" on Facebook or click this link - https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100004846577863) Meanwhile there are others who take this in the opposite direction, that it will serve as something of a cleanse for indie pro wrestling in the state of South Carolina, the idea being that those who can't afford to be in business probably shouldn't be in business.

Personally, I can see things both ways.

On the one hand, there are quite a few dirt bag promoters operating in South Carolina giving our scene a bad name who could likely be shut down by this new batch of regulations. That sort of thing has happened in the past, though, as every so often a little bird would drop a message to the SCAC about a promotion running in a given town that didn't have proper approval for the event. Those "little birds" were more often than not sent out by other promoters who'd gotten wind of a rival moving in on their turf. The target of such attacks might have been an inexperienced promoter who didn't know any better, or it might have been some lifetime carny who just wanted to see how well he could do in a new part of the world. How better than to take out the competition than by having a government regulator close them down? Why expend the energy needed to beat them when you can send Johnny Law after them (so long as you yourself are up to snuff, obviously)?

Then on the other hand you have the fact that this turn of events will likely leave only the cream of the crop in terms of promoters and talent to operate in South Carolina. I don't have a problem with this because, as I have said in the past and as you can likely tell from the wrestling-related content I share via this blog and other means, I am most definitely what you would consider a wrestling snob. As a fan, I don't care to blindly "support indie wrestling" as some who exist in the community would encourage me to do. (That's like saying you should go to restaurants you know are mediocre because they're mediocre.) "Upward wrestling", if you will, where everyone gets a championship belt and everyone feels like they're on the same level as John Cena. Give me a break, for crying out loud!

The law of survival of the fittest applies in all aspects of life. Some people (wrestlers and promoters alike) need to have their egos squashed because they've been allowed to gluttonously sit at the fattening trough of absurdity for far too long. They've become accustomed to having their posterior kissed by others who believe, falsely and for whatever reason, that doing so will amount to their advancement.

The truth is that a cull, for lack of a better term, wouldn't be the worst thing to ever happen to professional wrestling in this state. Even so, my biggest problem with the status of things regarding how the state of South Carolina wants to be involved in the professional wrestling business now is the same as it has always been, that enforcement of these regulations doesn't seem to be even. Despite the fact that this is 2014 and that government likes to tout itself as being more transparent than it has ever been, in a lot of ways this is still very much a good ol' boy state. It has been my experience that some promotions would seemingly get shaken down every time they tried to have an event whereas others never seemed to ever get so much as a visit from an SCAC representative. Perhaps that's different now but it certainly wasn't in the past.

Labor Day Weekend 2014 in Pigeon Forge, TN

After the events of the past couple weeks, my wife and I were both at a point (emotionally, physically, and whatever other words you can think of that ends in "ally" that would imply having experienced a whole bunch of stress) where we needed some time away from home to rest, relax, and hopefully get our minds back to where they needed to be. The Labor Day holiday presented us with an opportunity to do exactly that as we whipped up a plan with haste to get ourselves to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee for the three-day weekend.

My family & I used to go to Pigeon Forge quite frequently when I was a child. I have many, many fond memories of having stayed at a hotel there called the River Lodge and of floating down the river behind it in a tube. (What, you expected there not to be a river near a joint called the River Lodge?) Even so, I want to say it has been more than 15 years since I was last there. I was certain that a lot would have changed to the town in that time but I was also confident that the quaint nature of it would still be intact.

Since this was a spur of the moment trip we had a few issues finding accommodations. Nothing major that put a chink in our plans, we just had to take what we could get instead of what we would've typically looked for in a hotel room. As an aside to this topic I'd like to say that it boggles my mind how a hotel room with a normal nightly rate of $45 suddenly becomes $100 a night just because of the demand created by a holiday - all I can say to that is I am most definitely in the wrong line of work. After having looked at condos, cabins, and rooms (some of which were recommended to us by friends and family), we settled on the Ramada Pigeon Forge South as it would be where we would call home for the next few days.

The estimated time it would take us to get there made it seem like we'd be able to make it without our arrival being too late in the evening, which is why we decided to hit the road after work on August 29. My wife & I work similar schedules so we packed up her car in advance to be ready for when the final whistle of the day sounded. After we dropped off our dog Roddy at my Mom's house for safe keeping (she's always willing to do anything for us and I can never be thankful enough for the fact that she's as generous as she is in this regard), we began to make our way along I-26 towards the upstate of South Carolina. We stopped along the way for supper at a Taco Bell - and yes, all you single guys out there, that's how you woo your lady right there. Tacos.

Having ingested our sustenance, we continued onward and upward (an accurate description if ever there was one seeing as how we'd be going up into the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee). I was in the driver's seat as Jill did not want to face the task of handling the winding roadways ahead. I have to say that the drive wasn't too challenging at first but as the sun set and darkness took over those mountain roads became a real test. Add in the volume of cars on the road due to the holiday as well as having to navigate in amongst the big rig trucks that dominate the highways and you can understand why my hands were cramping from having had a vice-like grip on the steering wheel.

Things took a turn for the worse along I-40 as we neared Pigeon Forge. I say that as if we had car trouble or something of the sort - in reality we had GPS trouble. Not in that it stopped working and we had no idea where to go, rather that the Google Maps application on my phone we were using to get us to where we were going decided that we would be better off to leave the interstate and take a road that wasn't much more than a goat path! (If you're ever going to Pigeon Forge or somewhere nearby and your GPS suggests that you take Hartford Road, DON'T DO IT.) I am not exaggerating when I tell you that this was the most insane stretch of road to encounter at night. It was barely wide enough for one car. There were a lot of hairpin turns and absolutely zero signage to indicate that you were coming up on them. You've heard the term "low shoulder"? Well in this case, "low shoulder" equated to a 20 foot drop off the side of the road into some random field. It was a terrifying ordeal but even so we eventually did get to our destination - we were mentally frazzled and in need of a good, stiff drink but we got there!

We checked into our room just shy of 11:30 PM. Seeing as how we got on the road around 5 PM, that meant we'd been at it for almost 6 and a half hours and my tailbone was feeling every bit of it. The rooms at the Ramada might not have been the most luxurious we've ever stayed in but the beds (yes, beds - try as we might we couldn't find a room with a single king) were quite the welcome sight for a pair of weary travelers like us.

The next morning we got up relatively early, as in around 8 AM, got ready for the day then wandered over to the breakfast area in the hotel lobby. (I use the phrase "wandered over" because of the fact that our room was on the first floor not more than 50 feet away from the lobby.) Continental breakfasts are a crap shoot - sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you wind up with a gut full of doughy carbohydrates. In this instance it was the latter, but we at least got to enjoy some tasty biscuits & gravy. Any meal that includes gravy is a victory in my eyes.

After breakfast we roamed around some of the shops near the Old Mill District, which (as you might assume) is a cluster of merchants set up around an old corn mill situated on the banks of the Pigeon River. The shops are, for the most part, all filled with the kind of wares that appeal only to tourists - baubles that will help someone remember the time they spent in Pigeon Forge. T-shirts, pottery, engraved word work, that sort of thing.

Moonshine distilleries have become a real draw for the area as there are quite a few of them set up along Pigeon Forge as well as in nearby Gatlinburg. One such operation is in the Old Mill District, that being the Old Forge Distillery. Seeing as how I had a stomach full of biscuits and danishes, I ponied up to the sampling bar and partook in a few selections. I have to say that if you're not a fan of whiskey no amount of trying it is going to change your mind. I happen to like it and I was really caught back by how many diverse flavor profiles the cooks behind the scenes in these operations have been able to come up with. I fell in love with their chocolate moonshine and purchased a jar of it!

After we'd been around the shops we decided it was time to eat lunch. On this day, that involved us visiting the Old Mill Restaurant, an eatery that came very highly recommended to us. Trust me when I say that we were not lead astray by those recommendations!

Everyone who eats at the Old Mill is greeted with a serving of their corn chowder and a basket of corn fritters served with maple-infused butter. I probably could have made a meal out of those alone! For our main courses, Jill selected the catfish fillets and I opted for the turkey & dressing. All meals off the lunch menu come served with two side items, green beans and mashed potatoes. I want to share the following photos of our meals before I tell you how much they cost us.

How much do you think you'd pay for a couple plates like those? Because they cost us $10.50 each, which is what every lunch menu item will cost you at the Old Mill. I had close to a pound of turkey on that plate - I cannot begin to tell you how tasty it was, and what an awesome value!

After that great meal we decided an adventure was in order. We had seen several advertisements and brochures for the Forbidden Caverns - I remembered visiting them from when I was a child but Jill had never been to a set of caverns, period. Getting there was easy as it's not much more than a short drive out of town and you're there; if you should decide to visit them yourself just be mindful of the fact that the road to the caverns is like a lot of the rural roadways in the area, that being narrow and winding.

The name "forbidden caverns" comes from a Native American story of a princess who died after she became trapped "in a hollow mountain of two streams", and because of this they considered the cave to be a place not too dissimilar from what other cultures might refer to as purgatory or Hades. Later on the caves were used by moonshiners as the constant flow of fresh spring water therein made it an ideal locale for their bootlegging operations. These days the caves are a popular tourist attraction that brings in visitors from all over the world.

After we toured the caverns we played what will hopefully go down as the most expensive game of putt-putt we'll ever play, that being a round of 18 holes at Old MacDonald's Farm Mini Golf. (It cost about $32 for the two of us!) The course was a lot of fun with its theming being all about Old MacDonald and the animals that make up his farm. Pigs, sheep, goats, and more will entertain you along the way. We played the Porky Putts course which was a par 43 - Jill & I both played quite well as we both finished under par but I got the Duke this particular round, besting her by the score of 41 to 42.

After our round of putt-putt we did a little bit more shopping before eating dinner at Blue Moose Burgers & Wings, a local sports bar & grill we happened upon that seemed like as good an option as any given that by that time of day the Clemson/Georgia football game was on television. Ironically enough, Jill & I were on a trip to Asheville, North Carolina last year when that game took place and we watched part of it from a Buffalo Wild Wings location. And just like last year at that restaurant, there were Clemson and Georgia faithful seemingly separated into their own sections at the Blue Moose. I half expected a knife fight to break out at any moment! The game was interesting, the crowd mostly civil, and the wings were tasty, which made the whole thing a great way to cap off our first full day in Tennessee.

For breakfast on the morning of Sunday, August 31 we decided to try another local favorite eatery, that being the Applewood Restaurant which is one of the primary components of the Apple Barn "campus" (for lack of a better term). The Applewood Restaurant is built out of what was once an old farmhouse - it's been modified since then, obviously, but the qualities that made it a home are reflected in the fact that everyone who dines there receives an experience crafted from the traditions of food, family, and fellowship.

We arrived at the restaurant very early as I thoroughly expected to have to wait an hour or more to get in. As it would turn out, we walked in and were seated immediately. (Jill says she never gets to sleep in on our vacations; I can't say I'm not at least partially responsible for that.) All guests at the Applewood Restaurant are initially treated to a basket of apple fritters and muffins served with their homemade apple butter (I could drown myself in apple butter, just so you know; it's one of my favorite things in the world) and a tasty concoction they call an apple julep - a combination of apple, pineapple, and citrus juices. For our meals, I chose the Farmhouse Special Breakfast and Jill had the Wild Blueberry Pancakes.

 

They are certainly selections meant to stick-to-your-ribs because you're going to be working in the fields all day - or, in our case, because you're going to be walking around Gatlinburg all day.

If you've never been there, the best way I can describe Gatlinburg, TN is to try to have you imagine a Walmart that sells nothing but tacky, themed merchandise chopped up into individual storefronts and stretched out along both sides of a roughly two mile long highway. If you've been to Ocean Boulevard in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina during the peak season when all the shops there are open you've more or less also been to Gatlinburg. Just swap out all the YOLO and SWAG t-shirts for ones with black bears or University of Tennessee logos. There are other attractions in the area, of course, like the Ripley's Aquarium and a number of fantastic restaurants (the highlight of our time there, for me, was seeing the Ole Smoky Moonshine Holler production facility and store), but they seem to be dwarfed in comparison to everything else. What blew us away was the sheer number of people and cars that were in town the day we were there. (Fortunately we got into Gatlinburg around 10 AM and were able to find a parking space.) The congestion seemed especially horrible, which I can only blame on the fact that we were there on a holiday weekend.

Once we'd had our fill of Gatlinburg we came back into Pigeon Forge to knock around town a bit before our dinner date - an evening of music, laughs, and food at the Hatfield & McCoy Dinner Show!

The Hatfield & McCoy Dinner Show is a comical take on the historical family feud that also involves dancers and bluegrass musicians. It's kind of odd that a rivalry so violent as to have spurred on a number of grisly murders could be turned into the subject of a comedy act - I'm sure the descendants of those families have been rewarded handsomely, monetarily speaking, for their involvement in the production.

Even so, the show itself was a fantastic presentation. You're fed a meal consisting of fried chicken, pulled pork bar-b-que, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, cole slaw, and biscuits before the performance begins. In my opinion, this is an area where they are doing things better than similar shows like Medieval Times or Dixie Stampede as I've always felt at those arenas your attention isn't on the performance because you've got a piece of chicken in your mouth. The whole event runs about 2 hours in length. If you enjoy comedic storytelling and country cooking, you won't get a much better combination of the two than at the Hatfield & McCoy theater. (That said, I will add that this show has a lot in common with the Hoop-Dee-Doo Musical Revue we saw at the Fort Wilderness Resort on the Walt Disney World property. It's close but I'm going to give the edge to Disney in comparing the two.)

Before we knew it, Monday morning rolled around and our time in Tennessee had drawn to a close. All there was left to do was check out of the hotel and deal with traffic. I'm not kidding when I say that it took us just shy of an hour to make our way along the stretch of I-40 where it connects with I-26. Other than that, the ride back was mostly uneventful which was great considering how stressful the ride up became.

Looking back on our time in Pigeon Forge, we sure did cram a lot into just two days worth of vacation. That seems to be how we live our lives, though - doing the best we can to take advantage of every opportunity we have to enjoy that with which we've been blessed. I wouldn't trade times like these for anything in this world.

Our Road to Building a Family - A Lesson Learned

To make a long story short, the foster-to-adopt placement with the three children I've written about previously in this blog series did not work out the way we'd hoped it would.

The children came to our home for a weekend visit August 9 and were taken back to their previous foster home the morning of August 11. This was part of the plan as we wanted to get a sense of what having them around our house would be like prior to them moving in for what we assumed at that time would be a permanent arrangement. The visit went well, as we had a cookout that weekend and spent a majority of it trying to acclimate to one another while also working towards establishing rules, boundaries, expectations, and something of a routine. They came back to us on August 13 and got fully moved in over the course of the next few days. My wife took that time off from work to spend with them, to get them better acquainted with their new surroundings, and to handle a variety of errands.

If I've never told you how strong of a woman my wife is allow me to do so right now. During those three days, she took the children for eye exams and hair cuts. She did every bit of the leg work involved with getting them enrolled in school. She made Lord only knows how many phone calls in an attempt to get them seen by a local pediatrician as we wound up in something of an emergency situation seeing as how by the time they got to us they were each in need of refills on their ADHD medication. (This was one of the first bits of evidence we would uncover that their previous foster home was inconceivably inept at providing adequate care.) She wound up having to take them to a facility at which they'd been seen previously (in a town 90 minutes away from where we live, mind you) to make sure they wouldn't run out. All this on top of making sure we were fed a hot meal at supper time every day - yes, I include myself in that category because while I do cook she's always been the primary preparer of sustenance around our house, and a damn good one at that.

We began to face challenges with the children almost immediately in terms of their behavior. This wasn't unexpected obviously as they're children after all; as a parent, they're going to test you to see how far they can get with whatever it is they're up to in the moment. Our friends and family who are parents kept reminding us of this and I can't say they steered us wrong as these three were certainly excited and lively. In hindsight (I'm going to use that phrase repeatedly in this entry), I think those were labels my wife & I used as blinders early on to make it seem as though things were going to get better.

The first few days we had the children in our home were full of revelations. We didn't have a lot to offer them in the way of toys as we were expecting them to have had some items of that sort. We were surprised as we unpacked their belongings to find out they were sent to us with not much more than a few stuffed animals. Some friends of our family had been kind enough to give us a basketball goal and we had gotten a few outside toys as we thought they'd enjoy being able to play together. That idea went out the window when they realized this new house they were in was stocked with things like an Xbox, tablets, cable TV, and the Internet.

My wife & I had gone through the paces of trying to shore up our multimedia devices to do the best we could at making sure the kids wouldn't have access to questionable content. (I've had my share of fits with Time Warner but I will say that their parental controls are quite good.) We let them use our tablets as it seemed like they were pacified when they were each individually engaged in a singular activity. They would watch programs on TV or Netflix, and I believe they managed to download more games than I knew existed from the Android marketplace. We allowed them to use YouTube (which, in hindsight, wasn't a good idea) but this became an issue as we noticed they weren't watching what either of us would consider kid-appropriate content. (YouTube's content ratings are looser than a Zeta Tau Alpha pledge during rush.) They wanted to watch videos by Rhianna, Nicki Minaj, Chris Brown, and other artists whose material isn't exactly PG.

This would turn out to be the tip of the iceberg in terms of our learning what kinds of material to which they'd been exposed in their previous foster home. We found out through casual conversation one evening at dinner that they'd seen Django Unchained. It came up as a result of our talking about the buildings that are near our home and how they're used by a cotton ginning operation; the topic of cotton brought up a question about slavery and that lead to them saying they'd seen a movie about a slave. I thought they might have seen something historically relevant like Roots or Glory - nope, Django Unchained. Quinton Tarantino. Blood, guts, violence, nudity, harsh language, and more. They also had some knowledge of the Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween films as they knew who Freddy Kruger and Michael Meyers are.

Keep in mind these kids are 10, 8, and 7 years old. And yet the people who were caring for them before they got to us couldn't figure out why they were afraid of the dark and had nightmares?

Seeing as how the weekend of August 16 presented the kids' last real opportunity at having a good time while still out of school, we decided it would be nice to take them to Chuck E. Cheese's for an afternoon of fun and games. For about $100, the three of them got 3 and a half hours of all the games they could play - Jill & I got a chance to sit around, eat horrible pizza (in hindsight, the salad bar would've been a much better option), and drink soda. I had never been to Chuck E. Cheese's before so the whole experience was new to me. It's about the same as the midway games at any given state or county fair in terms of its gimmick; huge prizes get dangled out in front of the kids as they walk in the door and they spend every ounce of energy they have trying to get the giant panda (that being a metaphor in this instance for a Nerf gun that the 10 year old had his sights on) only to be disappointed when they find out they have earned enough tickets to get a plastic slinky and some glow-in-the-dark vampire teeth. Toys that will last about as long as the drive home, in other words. But hey, they enjoyed themselves and got to interact with other children, and that made it worthwhile in our minds.

Bed time wasn't the most difficult thing with these three as it seemed like they enjoyed sleeping, particularly the 8 year old. We put them to bed around 8:30 PM the Sunday evening before their first day of school and story time followed. My wife would read Diary of a Wimpy Kid to the boys meanwhile I read a Junie B. Jones book to the girl.

The boys would usually stay up for 30 minutes to an hour after their story, just talking to one another about gosh knows what. The girl was a real talker as well - always asking questions and chiming in with her two cents, never with any sense of a filter or consideration for how what she was saying might affect others. Of course it's not unusual for a child (especially a little girl) to be chatty, so I don't want that comment to come off as me complaining. It's just that the kind of things she would say often caught me off guard. It dawned on me in the days to come that what we had been told about the boys being in a sibling rivalry was exacerbated by their sister as she would say things to them that would send them into a fit of rage. I don't know that she understood what she was doing but the fact of the matter was that she was most certainly a trigger to their minor behavioral issues becoming a much more profound problem. The anger they exhibited during those moments was startling to me, and there were many of them over the course of time that we had them in our home. This is why I began to feel as though I wasn't being a parent to them so much as I was a referee in a mixed martial arts fight, only in this particular arena the fighters sometimes hit the ref simply because they feel like it.

Monday morning rolled around and my wife & I were forced to come to grips with the fact that our schedule would consist of getting up at 6 AM for the foreseeable future. That said, the school day routine never became an issue for us because I feel as though we knew what we had to do to get everyone ready for the day. Make sure everyone is up by 6:45 AM, teeth brushed and dressed by 7:15, and ready to go out the door by 7:40 as my wife would be dropping them off on her way to work (it was a perfect fit as she kicks off her work day at 8 AM). The first day was slightly different in that we had them there earlier than normal seeing as how we wanted to walk them to their classrooms and hopefully meet their teachers (we hadn't had a chance to do that yet seeing as how open house wasn't scheduled until some time in September). Once we had them at school we were sure that the pacing of the day would lead to breakthroughs for the group. They'd make friends, get into the swing of things, adapt to this new culture and surroundings, and we'd be off and running as a family, onwards and upwards.

In hindsight, that was wishful thinking.

My Mom was a blessing to us as she was willing to pick up the children from school, bring them back home, and then begin doing whatever was needed with them in the afternoons (homework or what have you) so that our work schedules wouldn't get disrupted. I knew this was going to be a tough assignment for my Mom but I also knew she could handle it - she taught children their age for 30+ years, for crying out loud. If anyone we knew was up to the task, it was her!

It seemed as though frustration set in for the kids the very first day of school. The oldest boy in particular had a tough time because I don't think he was quite ready - academically, socially, etc. - for the experience or the fact that he'd have homework. The after-school period became a trial each day as none of them wanted to do their homework, rather they just wanted to play with the tablets or video games. My Mom did what she could to keep some sense of structure for them, to no avail.

Before I go further, I want to make sure that I don't make our home life or the way we were trying to parent these children come off as though we were running a military operation. We were not expecting them to be perfect children. We were very keen to the idea of "picking our battles" in that we knew we didn't need to call them out for everything. We were trying our best to instill in them things like respect and consideration as these were qualities they'd been introduced to at church and we wanted to further re-enforce them at home. Simple concepts, but clearly ones that they had never been asked to take on before now.

The challenge we faced with these three in terms of trying to correct their behavior was that there wasn't much we could do realistically. We tried to establish a points system whereby they could earn points for positive behavior. These points could then be cashed in for things like bonus electronics time (we set them all at a limit of 1 hour per day), a movie night, or even money. The points could also be taken away for bad behavior. I hate to say this but none of them had a chance to cash in their points because they couldn't maintain any long enough to have earned anything of "value" in our system. When the taking away of points didn't work, it became a matter of having to take away privileges like toys, electronics or TV time. All this did was to make them more defiant.

They repeatedly called my wife "mean Mama" and said that they wanted to go back to where they'd been previously. We tried to press on in spite of this because we still wanted this to work. In my mind, they were like wild horses; I felt like it might take them being "broken" before they would realize that there's a right way and a wrong way to conduct yourself (because clearly wherever it was they had been before never tried to put over such things to them). The difference being wild horses don't scream, yell, kick walls, slam doors, and tell you how much they hate you.

I feel like the moment when my wife began to have doubts about our relationship with these three working out came one evening during supper. My wife has a recipe for shepherd's pie that is from her mother and it's a favorite of ours because it's a hearty meal that's easy to put together. If you don't know what shepherd's pie is, it's a dish that consists of layers of mashed potatoes, seasoned ground beef, and cheese that's baked to a warm and bubbly consistency. We thought it was something the kids would enjoy seeing as how it is what it is - potatoes, meat, and cheese. My wife served us all up a helping and I began to dig in. The kids took one bite and they all began to make noises and faces as if they were going to vomit on the table. (This is an example of how none of them had a sense of gratitude about anything we tried to do for them.) You would have to know my wife to know why that action in particular was so troubling but I think that was when the dam began to crack, for lack of a better phrase.

So long as they were on an individual task the boys weren't that difficult to deal with. The moment you inserted them into a situation where they were in any form of competition was when their attitudes shifted. (This dynamic of how they were fine on their own but problematic when put together verified what we had been told in regard to reasons why their previous adoptive placements didn't work out as those families tried to adopt one or two of the group but not all three.) It didn't matter if it was us throwing around a football in the back yard or playing video games, if they could have a disagreement over what was going on they were going to wind up in an argument. And since I know you're probably wondering, the games we had for them were intended for children. No Call of Duty, Gears of War, or anything of the sort - just titles like the Lego games, a few old Super Mario selections, and Just Dance. They did have a WWE game but it quickly "went missing" after they repeatedly got into shouting matches, usually over the fact that one wouldn't let the other win, no less. The Lego games are fun and actually quite challenging, even for an old gamer like me. To them, they became frustrating. One would blame the other for their not being able to complete a task and it was all down hill from there. The shouting would ensue, then one would draw back as if he was going to hit the other in an apparent act of intimidation (the girl would argue with her brothers and she, too, would draw back her arm as if she was going to strike them).

The girl's behavior became progressively worse throughout the week. She would not listen to us, refused to take direction, and acted in a way that was so blatantly defiant that it boggled my mind. (A learned behavior, in her case; all kids act out but what she was doing had to have gotten in her mind from another source, likely from watching people she had been around previously.) When we would attempt to correct her she would turn it around on us as if she were in charge. Concepts like restriction or being grounded prompted an "I don't care" sort of response, as if to say I'm going to do whatever I want in spite of you. At one point when we were trying to play outside she became upset and tried to lock us out of the house. On another evening she walked out of the house saying that she was running away (she got about as far as the stop sign at the corner of our property before coming back). Again, this wasn't a response to any kind of difficult request from us, rather it seemed to be because she felt as though she wasn't getting her way 100% of the time. All the while we were trying to plan a birthday party for her as she turned 7 while she was in our care. We threatened to cancel the birthday party if her behavior didn't improve and in hindsight we probably should have gone ahead and canceled it because she was a true terror to deal with.

I mentioned how our hands were mostly tied when it came to discipline. It goes without saying that spanking wasn't an option, so we did what we could in trying to show them that if their behavior was unacceptable they would lose privileges. First off the list was access to things like tablets, TV, video games, etc. The boys seemed to get the idea as they would become apologetic and try to get back on our good sides, whereas the girl just plain went into a massive fit. She continued to be disrespectful so we began taking away her toys. The same attitude persisted and we were to a point where there was nothing left in her room but her bed. She wailed as if she were crying but she wasn't genuinely upset as my wife saw her smirk at her at one point, as if to say "I know if I do this long enough you're going to cave." We never did and she kept at it until she finally went to sleep. To their credit, her brothers tried to calm her down, telling her that all she had to do was "act right" and she'd get her things back.

We had her birthday party on Saturday, August 23. We invited a number of our friends and family over for the occasion, all with children roughly the same age as the three for whom we were caring. The goal was for each of them to see that they were surrounded by loving, kind folks who are concerned about their well being and who want to be involved in their lives. The events of the day wound up being the final straw in our decision to officially disassociate ourselves from the children.

The party went off well, for the most part. Jill's Mom was staying with us and she had organized a painting activity for the children to do. The youngest boy had slept most of the day and his demeanor reflected this as he was grumpy, especially when the other boys at the party went outside and began playing with some of the balls and sports equipment. I tried to encourage him to share and be friendly, he acted like they'd disrespected his territory. The oldest boy was the opposite, seemingly overjoyed at the fact he suddenly had a whole bunch of new playmates. He could be the most docile, innocent kid - he really was the most agreeable of the three as he would often try to take the role of parent in trying to get the other two to settle down when they would fight. The girl was a whirlwind of activity and emotions, excited one minute, disappointed another, outgoing then suddenly shy. Through it all the underlying attitude she exhibited was one of ungratefulness. Nothing seemed to be good enough for her, which was in stark contrast to the theme of the event as she was dressed in a Cinderella costume.

A couple who are close friends with my wife's family had graciously given us money to use to purchase a new bicycle for each of the children. They enjoyed riding their bikes and we, of course, tried to keep an eye on them at all times while they were riding them. They went out for a ride that evening after the party was over and all our guests were gone. My mother-in-law was outside watching them play and my wife had gone into Orangeburg to pick up a pizza for supper as we were going to eat then watch Frozen together. I didn't see the incident but something happened that lead to an argument between the girl and the youngest boy. My mother-in-law tried to get them to settle down and come inside; before she could, they began tossing around each others bikes. This lead the youngest boy to say to his sister "I wish you were 16 so you could die in a car accident."

At that moment, this family we had tried so hard to keep together fell apart. We called one of the adoption workers we'd been assigned and made arrangements for them to be picked up the next morning. I had it in mind before then that there were two reasons why I would pull the plug on this effort: 1) If they hurt our dog Roddy (he was "on vacation" during this as he was in recovery from being neutered), and 2) if they did damage to property. I didn't think that the third option would wind up being us just plain having had enough. My wife and I decided we couldn't do this any longer as we had had 10 days of almost non-stop fighting and unruly behavior with no sign of things changing.

I know some people will say we didn't do enough or that we didn't give it enough time. The fact of the matter is that until you've lived with children like this you have no idea how difficult our lives became. I was to a point where I did not want to come home from work because I knew that they were there waiting for me. My nerves were shot because I felt powerless to try and remedy the situation. (Truth be told, I left most of the attitude adjusting to my wife, opting instead to keep up with the logistics of keeping the house in order. Why? Because I'm good at that sort of thing and I'm also the type who would just as soon drop a proverbial nuclear warhead on a situation and walk away as opposed to trying to handle the matter constructively.) Our bedroom became the only sanctuary we had as we'd retreat to it each night in the hope that things would get better the next day. I'm sad to say that they never did. We could not allow them to ruin our home, our relationships, and certainly not our marriage.

They were picked up the morning after the birthday party. Not wanting to out and out make it known they wouldn't be coming back, we told them that we had some things we needed to work on before going forward and that they'd be going away for a few days.

I know that I've levied some harsh criticism at these children in this blog entry but the truth of the matter is that I do not blame them for being who they are. These children have been in the foster system for better than 4 years now. They are a product of that system's failure to cultivate a network of supportive, nurturing homes throughout the state of South Carolina. They are the unfortunate victims of predatory adults who see foster children as a means of earning a paycheck instead of an opportunity to help raise a well-adjusted, productive member of society.

To all the people who donated time, effort, clothing, prayers, or whatever else to the children, you have my most sincere gratitude and thanks. You are each examples of the fact that agape love exists and that goodness will always outshine the darkness of the world. Anything that was given to the children while they were with us will be staying with them. Hopefully they will someday be able to appreciate those gifts and the people who cared enough to give.

So where are we now? We're hurt, deeply, and we all need time to heal from this. But we will use this as a lesson learned and try again someday because our goal is still the same - to build a family of our own.

The Sudden Proliferation of Bad Wrestling Posters - Part 3

I may have developed a personal problem via this series of blogs. (If you'd like to get caught up, you can find part 1 here and part 2 here.) I find myself browsing random wrestling-related Facebook groups and pages specifically looking for horrible posters promoting independent professional wrestling events. Trust me when I say that there are plenty of examples out there. So many in fact that in gathering material for this post I had to create a directory on my hard drive especially for bad wrestling posters, going so far as to then create sub-folders. (Make fun of me for my organizational skills all you want, at least I know where my stuff is.) I'm doing my best to not acknowledge those actions as being detrimental to myself or my well-being; instead I persist in the notion that I'm doing a good deed here by alerting the rest of the world to the fact that not all posters are created equal. The goal here, after all, is to make the world a better place filled with high-quality posters that do justice in representing the men, women, and companies with which they are associated.

Our first poster this go-round is from Premiere Wrestling Xperience. Unfortunately this event wound up being cancelled (from what I saw there were concerns about the venue and its location), but despite that the poster is certainly top notch. I love the color scheme, the graphics are beautiful, and the stock photos of the talent featured make them all look like superstars. Since I started this series, PWX posters have been the precedent for which all others have been compared and so long as they're publishing material as good as this they will continue to be.

Up next is an offering from Champions With Attitude Pro Wrestling, a company that will celebrate a decade of running shows at the event promoted on the poster below. Not many indie wrestling promotions make it past year 2 much less year 10, so the fact that CWA has been around for as long as it has is a real testament to the folks working behind the scenes there.

Champions With Attitude has long been known for production value as their events feature staging, lights, custom entrance videos, and other elements that you just don't see on the independents. Their posters fall into that category as well as they are always vivid pieces that deliver information while being eye-catching. The only problem I have with CWA's posters is that they could be described as repetitive. The layout you see here is what they seem to use month to month, the only variation being the talent featured. Even so, theirs are still better than 98% of what's out there.

If you've been following this blog series and some of the other content I produce (Rasslin' with Redbeard, specifically), you'll know that I frequent WrestleForce shows because I enjoy them very much. I would go so far as to say that if they're not the best promotion in South Carolina they're at least in the top 2. With that in mind, this poster for their "FULL THROTTLE" event coming up in September is by far the best they've produced in quite some time. It would be gosh-darn near perfect if not for two things.

1) Lack of any discernible logo - no, "WrestleForce presents" is not a logo. This goes along with what I've preached before about branding, marketing, and how it's important to establish an identity.

2) The stock photos look great, but I take umbrage with the fact that Cedric Alexander (middle-right) isn't at the forefront of the featured wrestlers. Why? He's the current WrestleForce champion, that's why - John Skyler's talented, don't get me wrong, but if he's not the champ he shouldn't get top billing over the man who is.

Speaking of brand identity issues, I hate to say this but I have no idea what company the following poster is for - all I know is that there was apparently an event called Summer Smackdown 2. It bothers me that a group could put together a poster with graphics like those but then not try and establish themselves with a logo or even a name. That's just odd, quite frankly. There's a guy with a belt (albeit a replica belt): What belt is that? What division does he command? Or did he just wander in with it when photos were being taken and insist he be able to hold it?

Also, there are 16 members of the roster featured on this poster, 17 if you count the fellow with a question mark where his face should be. That's about 10 too many in my opinion as they could have certainly gotten by in making the event appear desirable by way of presenting a core group of attractive athletes.

Anarchy Wrestling in Cornelia, GA has seen more than a few stars come through the confines of their arena over the years. (If you didn't know, Anarchy Wrestling began as NWA Wildside and later transformed into NWA Anarchy before eventually settling as Anarchy Wrestling.) They are one of the most successful promotions in the southeast and yet their posters have consistently gotten on my nerves because of the fact that they are usually overcrowded with talent. Such is the case with this poster for their "HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT" event. For the life of me, I do not see the point in trying to get your entire roster on the poster. Draw people in with 6-8 of your best looking talent, men and women that will sell people on your event and make them want to pay money to be there.

Of course I say that then I have no choice but to refer back to my comment about the success of Anarchy Wrestling over the years. A great poster helps but it's icing on the cake if people already know they're going to have a great time at a show because of past experiences.

Ultimate Combat Wrestling in Union City, TN isn't a promotion that I've ever had the chance to see in person. Be that as it may, judging by this recent poster, I'm going to hazard a guess that they are a company with means and ideas but that may need a little bit of a boost to get them onto the next rung. This poster is of the sort that screams to me "I want to make something more interesting, I just don't have the tools to get what's in my brain onto paper". The stock photos look good. The information fans need is all there. The fonts and letter spacing could be better but I would much sooner look at a poster like this that's clean and minimal in what it's doing than something that's bloated with unnecessary material.

As the final example of a "tweener" for this entry, I present to you a recent poster published by Southern Wrestling Association operating out of Forest City, NC. For starters, I have no idea what's going on in the background. I'm guessing here but I think it's a trio of images from horror films (the top third looks like it could be from Let the Right One In/Let Me In, and the bottom third might be something from The Ring, and the middle could be anything). The title of the event is "HALLOWED GROUNDS", but even so the horror film imagery doesn't make sense - all it does is create a muddy palette. The talent stock photos are mostly suspect and they're much too small to be effective at selling the athletes as being the reason why a fan would want to come to the show. (Again, when making a poster you have to sell the talent; graphics and fonts are great but people aren't paying to see your juiced up copy of Photoshop, they're paying to see wrestling.) This isn't a good poster by any means but it's not awful either. With some edits it could actually be a solid piece of work but as it is it's mostly displeasing to look at and, to me, it doesn't do a good job of making me want to come to the event.

You may have noticed that this image is actually a photo someone took of the poster. For the record, I don't think I've never seen a pure digital copy of an SWA poster. Needless to say, that is rather odd.

Have you ever encountered something that you want to dislike but can't for whatever reason? Pickled ginger comes to mind; it tastes like Pine-Sol smells yet I enjoy it immensely! As another example of that, I give you the following item from Milestone Wrestling's July 2014 event. A poster that has so much patriotism and American pride going on that it's a Ronald Regan reference away from being perfect - perfectly insane, that is. The artist must be a fan of westerns because he stuck John Wayne in there. Was John Wayne a fan of professional wrestling? Could you imagine John Wayne in a wrestling match, especially in one against any of the guys on this poster? He'd probably whip the lot of them all at once then say something like "You boys rassle about as well as a one-legged horse trots...How 'bout you do yourselves a favor and learn from that critter by staying on the ground."

I know I harp a lot about stock photos and the importance of having good ones. I persist that if you're going to be in this line of work you've got to do your best to make the talent look desirable, and you can't do that with stock photos of your roster that look like images printed from a cell phone photo on an inkjet printer then scanned on low resolution settings. Even as a stylistic choice where filters could be used to create certain looks it's still a bad idea to me to do something to make your talent - who are hopefully guys & girls who look like athletes - come off poorly. In that regard, take a look at what South Carolina Wrestling has done for their "STILL STANDING" event. The graphics aren't bad but here again they're there for the purpose of accentuating the talent. Do any of those guys look like wrestlers you would pay money to see perform? If the answer is no, then I'm afraid I've got some bad news (get well soon, Wade)!

The poster below from Southeastern Pro Wrestling in Double Springs, AL is an awful wrestling poster because it, like seemingly so many others I've torn to shreds in this entry, has way more text on it than it does vivid imagery of professional wrestlers. I don't know how many more different ways I'll be able to say the same thing - it makes no sense to me that the folks who design these things don't consider the fact that WRESTLERS are the reason why fans come to pro WRESTLING events. As a fan, I don't really care about "special challenge" matches. And for that matter, I don't think I've ever in my life seen a promotion point out what the "opening match" will be. It's as if to say, "Yes, the show starts at 8 PM but Douche Haven and Chris McCantwrestle are on first so you've got til 8:20!"

Perhaps more offensive than the poster itself is the fact that SEPW is using a replica of the World Wrestling Entertainment intercontinental title as their intercontinental title as well as replicas of the World Championship Wrestling tag team titles as their tag team titles. Nevermind the fact that an indie company having an intercontinental title is silly to begin with. Does no one know the etymology of the word "intercontinental"? Does anyone know what etymology is, for that matter?

I must preface my comments about this next poster with the fact that I did, in fact, attend the event it promotes. It was a fun show with some great talent from the region featured on the card. (It was a bit bizarre in the fact that Gangrel - a vampire - and Dr. Creo - a voodoo practitioner - who work together as the tag team "The Sons of Midnight" were fan favorites. Seriously, children were cheering for a guy with fangs & blood dripping from his mouth and a guy who brings a smoking skull to the ring.) Plus, any reason to go to Charleston, SC is a good reason because Charleston is awesome regardless. Niceties out of the way, Old School Championship Wrestling needs a lot of help when it comes to their posters. I've followed them for years and I can tell you that this is more or less what you get with their promotional materials - weird, solid colors for the background and stock photos that often make the wrestlers look dumpy and somewhat misshapen. OSCW has been around for a long time and they've never gotten better than this. It makes me think the hamster is asleep in the wheel, as in someone cares enough to keep it alive but doesn't care so much that they want it to be more than it is.

Southern Fried Championship Wrestling. Do I really need to say anything else? The guy in the upper-right looks like he doesn't eat anything unless it's dipped in batter and deep fried. And is it me or does has he have bits of processed cheese slices wrapped around his fist? As for the guy in the top-left, I can't decide if that's an obscene hand-gesture he's making or not. I'm leaning towards it is because his presentation of being half Jeff Hardy mark/half Juggalo is an obscenity in and of itself.

Operating out of the upstate of South Carolina in Gaffney, 3CW - which is short for Carolina Christian Championship Wrestling (that name is something of a mouthful) - has drawn my ire previously and I'm sad to say that matters have not improved since the last time I saw one of their posters. This looks like it was put together by an infant, or possibly a grown-up with an infantile sense of what a wrestling poster should look like. If it had been put together by an infant, I'd probably compliment the child on the fact that they could make this because their skills will hopefully continue to develop. Since that more than likely wasn't the case I'm just going to sit here and shake my head for a moment because I don't know how else to react to a wrestling promotion that bothers to add its referees to their posters.

Before I get into commentary on this next poster, I feel as though I should shed light on two acronyms that are present here. First, AIWF, which stands for Allied Independent Wrestling Federations. It's something of a facsimile of the National Wrestling Alliance in that member promotions share talent and there are championships sanctioned by the AIWF that may be defended at events falling under the AIWF banner. Second, EDGE Wrestling, short for Extremely Dangerous Grappling Entertainment. Sounds kind of like someone might have borrowed from GOUGE (Gimmicks Only Underground Grappling Entertainment) or even OMEGA (Organization of Modern Extreme Grappling Arts) on the name, but I digress.

As for the poster itself, your guess is as good as mine as to what's going on here. The talent featured on the poster appear to be guys who take their craft seriously as from their builds they do look like athletes. Even so, the photos are too small and so poor quality that I can't make out much about them. There appears to be a planetoid in the upper third of the poster, which may or may not be the moon, and to its immediate right there's a tiny graphic of the continents of planet Earth. There could be some message of world domination in there but you'd have a hard time convincing me of it. But hey, at least they have a logo!

I have to point out that I'm fairly depressed right now. Having written this post in mostly one sitting and thereby having forced myself to dwell on the subject matter herein for a fairly lengthy amount of time, I will tell you that my mind is in a place where I feel as though I could benefit from certain types of pharmacology. And grain alcohol. Do they make whiskey flavored anti-depressants? No? Darn.

In wrapping up this entry to my Sudden Proliferation of Bad Wrestling Posters series, I bring you this poster from C4W Xplosive Wrestling from Myrtle Beach, SC. From my perspective, this is an example of how to do everything wrong in regards to a pro wrestling poster.

The text at the top of the poster states that C4W is "Myrtle Beach's #1 professional wrestling attraction". I'm somewhat offended that they chose to refer to their product as an "attraction" because the term plays into the tourist vibe of that area and in so doing cheapens the product. Also, to my knowledge, they are the ONLY pro wrestling company operating in Myrtle Beach. Is there a point to telling people you're number one when there isn't a number two, three, four, five, etc.? The text goes on to tout their having been voted the "Best New Promotion in the Carolinas" in 2011. That's cute, but that was three years ago. What have you done since then?

I've preached about the importance of logos in terms of an emblem being a great way to market a brand. In contrast, I never thought I would have to preach moderation in regard to logos but here I am about to do exactly that. There are 5 logos on this poster - three that have to do with C4W, one for AIWF, and I'm counting "The Civil War" graphic as one as well. The asinine nature of the name "C4W Xplosive Wrestling" aside (I can only imagine the creative process in picking that name had something to do with the fact that it would allow for the usage of words like "xplosion" and "xplosive", because of course any word that starts with an X is edgy), why use three of your own logos? Did whoever designed this think people were going to get lost while viewing it and forget they were looking at a C4W poster? "What, where am I? OH, C4W...I like potatoes!"

Let me take a moment to criticize "The Civil War" logo. I don't want to come off as a person who's easily offended by this sort of thing but I feel like using the phrase "the civil war" in relation to something like promoting a wrestling event is absolutely classless and in horribly poor taste. As if we don't have enough reminders of that bloody, tragic era of American history still being flamboyantly displayed here in South Carolina, I can't think of any good reasoning why a company would choose that as the title for one of their events. Use some other reference to warfare if you really have to, but not that - especially not here.

If you look closely at the ribbon running behind "The Civil War" logo you can see that the dates 1992 and 2010 are on either side of it. Refer back to the text at the top of the poster; "2011's Best New Promotion in the Carolinas". Either that logo is a piece of stock clip art someone at C4W found and decided to use without thorough inspection or an attempt at modification, or someone's timeline doesn't make sense. Could be a little of both in this scenario, but I digress.

Finally, I cannot leave out from my criticism the most inane aspect of this entire poster. The text beginning with "Battle Lines" and down from there is printed in a font called Comic Sans. Comic Sans is a font that was originally created for use in speech bubbles for help assistants in programs like Microsoft Office. (Remember Clippy the paperclip? Comic Sans is his native tongue.) Because of its cartoony, somewhat goofy nature, these days it is widely regarded as a font that should be reserved for use only by people who are 10 years old and under. People who don't know any better, in other words. The reason for that is because it looks silly and unprofessional, "silly" and "unprofessional" being two things one should try to avoid at all costs in the realm of professional wrestling.

I'm tapping out from this entry - I've had enough for now, but trust me when I say there will be more to come in the future.