DEJ Experience District Jeremy’s DEJ WrestleMania Weekend Diary, Day Two: Terrible Traffic, Terrible Children and Meat Buffets Apr 7, 2008 - 12:19:41 PM

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By Jeremy Maes, DEJ Experience member

As we head back towards “Big Pimpin,” head still hung with embarrassment, we ran across some of the ROH wrestlers loading up into the bus back to their hotel or the rec center for tonight’s show. I figured it was the hotel since it was much too early to hit the show being it was four hours away and it wasn’t a WWE event.

I was digging in my shorts pocket for my cell phone when we see Delirious heading for the bus. We all say hello and in character he mumbles and ends it with “Hi.” His gimmick hasn’t gotten old one bit in my opinion and the crowds at the shows still seem into it as well. Eric yells to Emily who was looking the other way that her boyfriend was walking to the bus and she turned in to a schoolgirl.

“Hey Delirious, you pulled her pig tails last year in Detroit.” Eric yelled.

Delirious turned towards us and Emily grinned like an even more in love schoolgirl. He had a blank look to his eyes and clearly didn’t know how to react as he just mumbled. “Ahhhh, hella hel mumma bamba.” He then smiled, waved and headed back towards the bus. We had officially stumped Delirious. It provided a good laugh back to the car as I listened to CaptainEvers’s voice mail.

“Hey I just wanted to let you know how much I am looking forward to being in your guys’ presence tonight. I bow down to you all humbly and with great humility. If there is anything I can do for you guys let me know. We are in town so let us know how we may serve your needs.”

It was a strange voice mail for sure but whatever. Okay, I made it up. The actual voice mail was much more to the point and totally uninteresting. So I called him back, we made plans to meet at the show and that was that. The original plan was for us all to meet at our hotel and go together from there but the plan was flawed as it was totally out of the way for them.

The car ride back seemed to last about ten minutes, as we hit no traffic for the first time all trip. We pulled into the MetroExpress and darted for the all you can eat steak and meat buffet. It’d be nice to plug the place here but neither Mel nor myself can remember the name.

We walked in the place and it smelled like Heaven. Having not eaten in over fourteen hours the Bennagin’s across the street would have smelled like Heaven at this point. This was not the highest quality place but none of us cared. We all agreed the beef stroganoff was the best thing on the bar but none of us said a lot once the food started being mowed down like a prisoner in front of the firing squad.

Sufficiently full we all headed back to our rooms. Mel took a nap, Emily crashed out and Eric, Kevin and I went back to the task of trying to get the audio uploaded and sent to Wade for posting. Once again, though, frustration set in. Nothing we tried would work. We finally came up with the idea of taking the regular input jack on the computer and plugging on to the camera. Problem, we had no such cable for this.

Being on International Drive does have its advantages. No matter where you are on this road a camera shop is within fifty feet. So we walked down the street and met a kindly gentleman who was more than happy to help us. He stared at us like aliens when we said we were just looking and then was overjoyed to help us out when we described our needs. The first thing this camera shop clerk said was, “We have it but it won’t work.”

Internally I wanted to tell this guy to cram his opinion but I withheld. We may actually have to buy this cord from this douche and giving him the satisfaction of taking our money after being a smartass wasn’t going to sit well. He then told us the price and the choice was easy. This place wanted $31.99 for a three-foot RCA cord. We actually debated purchasing it, well, I didn’t offer, it was solely on Eric, and we decided we could always come back.

Afterwards we hit a small souvenir store full of the richest, trashy and delectable trinkets, shirts and luggage you can imagine. It is the kind of store you could purchase a lacquered plaque with topless women on it that says “Florida” in embossed gold. It is the kind of gift you give your grandfather for his bar in the basement or your cool uncle.

After grabbing a purple flavored Mountain Dew Amp and some Fritos and we headed back for more frustration.

Eric pulled the interview audio from the camera and it kept failing after about forty-five seconds. It was still playing it seemed but there simply was nothing there. The audio we recorded with the laptop and the Bob Barker mic came out ok but at different times we all sounded distant. It is then that it occurred to me that when you close the window on the video camera that the stupid piece of garbage stops recording. Why in the world would this be a feature if you have the camera still rolling? Maybe the person using it doesn’t need the window for recording. Just outstanding.

Eric than gave in and called a friend of his. They worked on some things over the phone and actually made some progress. We had finally done it. (By we I mean Eric but I was on the bed pretending to help.) By the time all of this went down it was nearly time to head to the ROH show. This was the night we had all been looking forward to, as the card was superior to the night before.

So we get on the road about 6:15 and of course we ran in to some stalled traffic on International Drive. We were all prepared for the traffic so it came as no surprise and it was this reason that we left incredibly early. What did surprise us was the fact we got off on International Drive in a mere ten minutes.

We hit I-4 East in what should have been smooth sailing. No less than one tenth of a mile did we hit stopped four lane traffic. We had gotten through the roughest part of our trip only to be sabotaged by Orlando traffic once again. The minutes passed by and we were doing a constant clip of streaks between five and ten miles an hour. Kevin did his best “Office Space” impression as he switched lanes in the hopes that it would decrease our travel time.

CaptainEvers calls me at some point asking where we were as they had arrived at the rec center already. I told him we were stuck in traffic but we have no idea why. He then dropped a bombshell that none of us expected. He told me that WWE is holding the HOF inductions at Amway Arena, which is right across from the Orlando Rec Center.

See, since we knew we were not attending the HOF inductions we put it out of mind. A little forethought could have prevented this catastrophe. As we sat in traffic, now stopped, I relayed the news to everyone and it was met with a collective, “Oh great.”

At least we realized our fate was sealed and we were probably going to be late for the show once again. At 7:30 the captain called again and let us know he can hear the show has started and I reiterated we are still stuck.

Finally around 7:45 we got to our exit and we realized there was no long line off of it. We had been stuck in traffic for absolutely no reason we could discern other than people in the other three lanes were stopping or slowing down to look at the cars getting off at the exit.

We all quickly formulated that where we parked the night before was probably full so we spit in the wind and tried finding parking on our own. Luckily we found a small lot, more like someone’s back yard, and paid the kind gentleman his five dollars. We hightailed it over to the rec center.

We walked behind the center and caught one of the Dragon Gate wrestlers taking a smoke outside before his match. We finally got to the entrance and were quickly patted down by ROH’s crack security and we saw the motley Captain and his crew still waiting for us.

Being late for the show really helped my phobia as we all made quick introductions and hurried inside. We were late enough that we missed nearly the entire opening bout with Delirious and Go. Somehow we ended up with almost the exact same bleacher seats as the night before. One thing that stood out though was the clientele for this evening was significantly different than the night before.

It appeared the more die-hard ROH fans had come out this evening as opposed to Friday’s show. There was one thing that stayed the same between shows and it was the fact there were kids in the audience. Behind us in the bleachers were two small tots between seven and ten-years-old. Their exasperated mother was resting like a frog on a rock in the corner and did not appear to be at all interested in the action, her kids, or even air.

We finally got settled in and we had a good night of wrestling unfold in front of us. It became very clear though that the booking was giving wins to everyone who lost the night before and vice versa, except for Nigel and Delirious.

As good as the action was, and believe me, it was good, most of the matches became so ridiculous that no ending was really just. So many moves should have ended the match that when the finishes finally did come it was either unsatisfying or it included a ridiculous move. Even then, the ridiculous move just happened to be the final move of the match. If they had been given more time it was clear that another more dangerous or more unsatisfying move would have ended the match. It is unnecessary to go about things this way.

We all discussed why anyone in ROH considers any move they do to be a finishing move. By its name a finisher is the final move you make to beat someone. It seems that most of the guys in the ring have a plethora of unique and intense looking moves but no finishers. Nigel McGuiness has The Tower of London but he used it three times on Aries to get the victory. It is hardly a finisher.

This brings us to the weirdest part of the night. At the beginning of the Nigel/Aries match the crowd started chanting “F--- you Nigel” and “Austin Aries.” This is pretty much the norm for any ROH show. What made it different was hearing two squeaky voices chanting the exact same thing. One of the kids kept yelling “F--- you Nigel” at the top of his lungs. At first it was funny but after ten minutes of hearing that, mixed with “Nigel sucks horse balls.” It became very annoying.

The crowd around us was quickly becoming restless with these kids. Several people turned around to see where the mother was but she was right there, slobbing in the corner oblivious to it all. Someone around us, and I am giving the credit to Kevin, tried getting a “Past your bedtime” chant going but no one picked up on it.

Finally our section took someone else’s lead and started chanting, “Wash his mouth out.” I never chant at shows, I rarely cheer as I like just sitting or standing and taking in all of the surroundings but I felt compelled to chant along.

The chant grew loud enough that the referee in the ring looked over in our direction and some of the floor level seats even turned around to see what was going on. No one was trying to hijack the show, but everyone had just had enough of this kid and if his mother was oblivious to this fact, we were going to make sure someone did. Apparently the kids’ grandmother was there as well. We saw her walking up the bleacher stairs towards the two menaces shaking her head. Once she got up there and combined with the chant the kids finally shut up.

These kids were annoying but I cannot say they ruined the match in the least bit. In fact they covered up a relatively slow period in the match as Aries and McGuiness felt each other out. Having something to laugh at and rebel against passed the time faster.

Finally things settled down and it was time for the main event. It was every bit as good as we all anticipated. One thing that Mel pointed out and I agree whole-heartedly with is that when the Dragon Gate wrestlers slow down their spots look choreographed. When they are moving full speed and have clearly done a spot before it is a thing of beauty. It looks natural and fluid. When they go in to just three-quarter speed the moves are clearly telegraphed. It didn’t really affect the match but it was noticeable. In their defense, when you are moving that fast it is amazing they can slow down at all.

Once the match ended we stuck around as long as we could cheering and applauding before we all made a break for the parking lot. We all agreed to meet at O’Shucks back on International drive and celebrate the fact that we, um, all had four appendages. We planned on using the two top appendages in full force Saturday night since we had little to do the next day. We had finally gotten the audio issues out of the way and they were being dubbed as we were having some cocktails.

Our drive home took all of fifteen minutes. We had beaten the Hall of Fame traffic and hit I-4 in no time flat. We got back to the Metro Express and watched the finale of Ric Flair’s speech and no one was saying a word. It was riveting television and a damn good watch. Once it was over we headed out.

We met CaptainEvers, his lovely wife and his buddies and we all shared a laugh. We looked around for more wrestlers but no such luck was to be had that night. We were left on
our own devices and it was still a good time. Once we got kicked out of O’Shucks for the second time in as many nights we hit our favorite late night food stand and chowed down. Kevin chatted up a fellow Pittsburgh sports fan and all was right with the world. We had finally overcome all of our problems and everything seemed to be on the upswing. What could possibly go wrong now?

Jeremy Maes is the “J” of the DEJ Audio Experience. You can listen to that group of organized crime perpetrators every Wednesday night on the member’s portion of PWTorch.com. You can read Jeremy’s thoughts every Sunday on PWTorch.com. You can even contact Jeremy or any member of the DEJ faction on the PWTorch VIP Forum, or by email at torchmaes@yahoo.com.

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