Terry Taylor's Perspective 9/12/02

Hi, everyone! I hope you’ve had a great 2 weeks since we last visited. I have been on the most incredible emotional roller coaster because of this wonderful house we own. My wife and I get our 13-year-old son off to school every morning, walking him out to the bus. Monday we did the same thing as always, but the “Queen” noticed some black ants in a single file walking on a ledge on the garage and then disappearing. We watched to see where they’d gone and saw a tiny pin sized hole through which they vanished.

I knocked on the wood, which was part of the trim on our garage, and it disintegrated! The wood was almost hollow with the paint holding the whole thing together. Being the levelheaded adult man that I am, I grabbed a crowbar and frantically tore a section of the wall away.  My wife and I looked like the Three Stooges pulling each other back trying to get away from the swarm of ants that poured out.

The whole wall was honeycombed with the ants boring tunnels called “galleries”. If you’re wondering why I know that – I ran to the Internet to learn about these ants. I found out they don’t eat wood like termites (whew, thank goodness) they only tunnel through the wood to make a home for their colony. Same result as termites, just a different cause.

We have to get the front quarter of our home rebuilt. That’s bad, but it’s not the worst part. The worst part is every time I go to sleep; I feel a little tickle or something on me and explode out of the sack! I dream of ants! They’re everywhere and they’re after me. If you’re wondering why they’re after me, it might be because I empted 2 full cans of Raid Ant and Roach Spray on their house-eating asses! You know the deal – Ants check in, but they never check out of Taylor’s Ant Hotel!

 OK, now that I have that out of the way we can move on to the “real” guts of this action packed masterpiece of literary excellence! (I can’t believe I wrote that – it’s good!)

I sit here at 3:00 AM writing this column for you to get an inside look at the wrestling business or at life. As most of you know, I help Al and Ted with the story lines at Smarks.tv. Before anybody out there starts thinking I’m extremely creative – I don’t make the stories up. These are true accounts of situations that have happened to me or one of the other guys in wrestling. The old saying is true -  “The truth is stranger than fiction”.

With that in mind, I thought most of the adventures were behind me because I was now in the real world. Six months ago, Al, Greg (the dreaded lawyer), and I went out to Hollywood to do 3 days of wall-to-wall meetings to pitch Smarks to the cartoonists and big studios.

I thought this would be a cinch because at home my family and I have the satellite network for our TV, which affords us 900 channels to watch. Of course, anyone else out there that has believed the BS regarding the programming choices (or LACK thereof) knows there are 7 television shows passed between the 900 stations. I knew all these suits would dig Smarks and make us rich! God knows, they need the programming. Why not up the total number of TV shows to eight for the 900 stations?

Funny, isn’t it how things work out?

I probably should have been alerted to the fact that things were done a little differently in Hollyweird when we walked into the first meeting at 9:00 PM in a hotel lobby. The man we were to meet was already there in a deep plush chair that nearly swallowed him whole. We introduced ourselves and he offered us drinks.

The conversation starts out talking about wrestling. We addressed and answered all the obligatory wrestling questions ending up talking about Ric Flair. Bill, the producer with whom we were meeting asked me about what it was like wrestling a star like Ric. I am a fan of Ric’s and told the truth about what a thrill it was wrestling Ric in the Superdome in 1985. The small talk continued with the lawyers so I began to look around the room.

My jaw almost broke when my chin hit the floor! I looked behind the bar, blinked a few times, took off my glasses, cleaned them, and then put them back on hoping NOT to see what I thought I saw! I had to do a double take and yep, there really was a very young man laying in a large fish tank in his underwear! No, he wasn’t swimming – he was combing his hair, or he was on the cell phone, or  ….. what? I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was like looking at a car wreck – you don’t want to look – but you do. I had to get it together because even though there was a nearly naked boy in a fish tank –this was an important business meeting.

All the beautiful people walked by like nothing was wrong or strange, so I settled down to “blend.”

I was getting used to the fact that a scantily clad young boy was on display in a mainstream bar – that was until another young man got into the tank with him! A thousand thoughts went through my mind in a blur – should I get up to leave, should I act like I see this all the time, or go up to the fish tank and see if there’s room for three?!?!?!?!?

There is much more – to be continued…..TerryTaylor