The 31 Movies in 31 Days marathon continues as we are quickly approaching the end of Spook-tober. As of this writing, I am coming hot off the heels of a Critters marathon that started with the newest one (a new Critters movie in 2019?!) and then going through the others in order. Critters 4 was my 24th movie for this round of 31 Movies and I’m fairly ahead of the game at this point, which is good since I’m going on vacation soon and probably won’t want to spend it watching horror movies. This is 3Spoopy.
And now that the 31 Movies in 31 Days update is complete, I have no angle for this blog, no overarching story to discuss with no soapbox to stand on. Maybe if I just list some of the things at the forefront of my mind, we’ll land on a topic? Let’s give it a shot.
Since the last chapter, I wrestled on two very different shows; WCWC in Salem, OR and 321 Battle in Seattle, WA. I am grateful for WC because recently they’ve been giving me opportunities to wrestle people I normally wouldn’t get the chance to wrestle. Last month I met and wrestled Jay Cafe for the first time and this month I had the chance to tangle with Ryan Kidd — both of whom are not from this area and have never interacted with if WC hadn’t brought them in — so that’s nice.
321 Battle
Similarly, I am grateful to 321 Battle, because they give The Academy a platform to reach a new and different audience and show the local Seattle scene what we can do. At 321 Battle we also get to wrestle people we wouldn’t normally get the chance to, since they have a fairly unique roster as well. Plus, they have a show every two weeks, which means it’s a fairly regular place to work. This last 321 show was their big Halloween show — Horror Business (I know, thank god it’s not called Halloween Hell), and a lot of people took the opportunity to wear a costume and The Academy was no different. We settled on Doctor Frankenstein and his Monster, but wanted to play a little with the trope, as I do.
Chapter 12: 3Spoopy
I’m sure you can see where this is going, but I’ll spell it out just in case (plus, I’ve got a word count to hit); since one would normally expect the powerhouse of the team to be Frankenstein’s Monster, we swapped roles and I was the Monster (I know, so clever and original). We had a bunch of fun ideas for this funny little pairing but since Horror Business is one of 321 Battle’s bigger shows, the card was absolutely packed leaving us with very little time to do much of anything. So we took the Weekend at Bernie’s approach and just played up the fact that I was a dead guy, to moderate success. Make the best out of what you’re given to work with, amirite?
Now that my fairly busy October is coming to a close, I am down to only one booking for the rest of 2019 — WCWC on December 8th. Part of that is my own doing because I’m taking a few weekends for vacation; I don’t intend to wrestle on my birthday, plus there’s Thanksgiving and Christmas weekends, so I’m not sad about it. But it will definitely open up time to work on one of my recent hobbies; making gifs out of my own matches. My life has become so ingrained into my social media that “content” is gold to me.
Live Stream
This is another reason that 321 Battle is a great place to work — they stream every show live on Twitch and they stay up after the live stream which makes it very easy to watch my matches back and create gifs out of them. 321 also is great at employing various talented photographers which allows for tons of great shots for me to choose from. Between the pics, gifs, and poetry, I tend to have more than enough content to be active every day on my favorite social media platforms. That said, I used to be absolutely terrified of social media.
3Spoopy – I Never Understood how…
I never really understood how it worked and sometimes when I would post something that interested me, trolls would latch onto them and use that as a platform to tear me down. That on top of my anxiety would often leave me shaking, unable to leave my apartment, and question if I should just quit wrestling altogether and go into hiding. It was a bad, bad feeling. I definitely still get some anxiety about posting to social media, but I’ve taken more control over it and even started using it as a tool to help cope and be open about my mental health.
I started doing “Anxiety Selfies” on my Instagram story that were intended as a way to show that when I’m feeling anxious or having a hard time, I often don’t look any different than normal, and that’s often the case for people who struggle with their mental health.
3Spoopy | The Moral of The Story
I guess the moral of the story here is “don’t be a jerk online because you never know where someone else is coming from when they post on social media.” It was a weird, windy road to finally get to this chapter having some sort of meaning, but we got there. Thanks for sticking around! This was 3Spoopy.
The world is your burrito!
Upcoming Dates:
- December 8: WCWC – Salem, OR
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