NP: The glorious sounds of a library.
This week, historians at the 30th Annual Meeting of the Social Science History Association took time out of their busy conference drinking and bad sportscoat-wearing schedule to discuss the hard luck story of one Richard J. Morton, professional wrestler and Southern icon. Although many of the individuals attending hailed from the West coast or the Northeast, the story of Morton's draconian incarceration had spread throughout academia.
"I don't understand the outdated justice system of Tennessee," said Prof. Lilly B. White of Boise Valley State A+M. "Ricky Morton is an important figure in the postwar history of the South. To keep him in jail is an outrage and a tragedy."
White, whose first book Left-Handed Lesbian Popcorn Vendors in Northern Idaho at the Turn of the Century recently won the prestigious Bruce Banner prize for a first book in Consumerist-Gender History, believes that Morton is a victim of a corrupt system that punishes white celebrities for simply being white.
"It's unfathomable," White said. "Morton means more to the South than Bear Bryant and Richard Petty combined. Now, he is forced to live out is days in the pen."
Not all historians agree. Colby P. Chandler IV, professor of Ethnography and Nematology at University of California at Muscle Beach, contends that Morton has got what is coming to him.
"The man deserves to be locked up for life," Chandler said. "The man has a 4 foot mullet. That hairstyle went out with Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam and the Sega 32X. He should remain in prison forever."
Chandler, while in the minority, found sympathizers on his trip to Portland. Gordon Clapp, professor of Social Justice and Carwashing at South Western Valley State, believes that Morton is representative of recent trends in the justice system.
"Historically, most of those incarcerated have been minorities," Clapp said. "Jailing such a prominent white Southern goes a long way to correcting the past 50 years of criminal history."
Owners of the website www.helprickymorton.org failed to make the trip to Portland, as their online benefit auction was moving at a rapid pace. The $20 picture of Morton and his lazy-eyed tag-team partner Robert Gibson had nearly cleared reserve, and the office was abuzz with rumors that Estes Johnson, also known as the 7-foot tall Waffle House chef, was going to autograph a restaurant menu and donate his work-worn uniform from last night's graveyard shift.
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Oregon Loves Ricky Morton
4 comments:
Sega 32X, ha! That reminds me of Acclaim's line of 16-bit WWF wrestling games.
There was a version of WWF RAW released for that system that had Kwang as a hidden character. I never played that version, but I spent plenty of time on the SNES/Genesis versions of RAW and Royal Rumble. You knock the ref down and go at it with the chairs and the bucket and after a number of knockdown the ref gets fed up with your bullshit and leaves, leaving it to "brawl" rules.
I've got the Sega CD game WWF Rage in the Cage, which had 20 wrestlers including the only known video game appearances of the Headshrinkers and the Nasty Boys. Inexplicably, there is no tag team match on this game, only one-on-one bouts (including the dreaded cage match). I haven't played this game, though; I bought it off of eBay for 10 bucks a few years back just for the hell of it.
On all of these games Shawn Michaels uses a Teardrop Suplex (back suplex) as a finisher, even though he never actually used that as a finish. Rick Martel, who was on Royal Rumble and RitC was Bret Hart with different colored pixels on his pants and on Royal Rumble all matches between Hart and Martel ended in the game freezing up.
Lex Luger had a running forearm finisher that was ridiculously complicated, as you had to hit it off the ropes yourself instead of the usual winning a lockup. If you timed it right, though, you could hit someone that wasn't worn down enough to take the finisher normally or the ref.
It also had great theme music that played on the character select screen. I taped 30 minutes of the Undertaker's theme music off of RAW, because at the time the WWF hadn't decided there was money to be made selling CDs of theme music. They had offered a tape of themes to WWF Magazine subscribers in the early 90s, which was nigh-impossible to find.
Anyway, Ron, you're coming close to beating the Ricky Morton thing to death. It's been funny so far, but tread lightly. Everyone knows no one in Oregon has ever heard of Ricky Morton.
I was simply using Ricky Morton and his unfortunate circumstances as a framework to make fun of academics and their profession. Hence the "bad sportscoat" wearing and the book titles, names, and institutions in the post. This reflects my growing disdain with my career choice at this late stage.
But hey, it beats Office Ghetto!
Don't get me wrong, whatever you gotta do to properly utilize your creative energy is all good, but the razzing of academia was obvious and it was a tad heavy handed. Maybe it's just my personal disdain for Ricky Morton coloring the articles; having a living legend live above you in someone else's duplex while driving a rusty ol' hoopty certainly changed my perspective on him. And the first article blaming Morton's downfall on Clinton was so awesome it's kind of hard to follow up.
Point taken. I'll rail on other people from now on.
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