The Hardcore Diaries (6 page)

With pen in hand, I headed for the spare room above my detached garage about thirty yards away from my house, where I had done the bulk of the
Tietam
writing while sitting in an orange padded chair that super fan Andy Wong of Kowloon’s Chinese Restaurant in Saugus, Massachusetts, procured for me from the Worcester Centrum. Why the Centrum? Because that’s the building I won my first WWE title in, from The Rock on December 28, 1998. Did the seat hold any emotional value for me? None whatsoever. But it was still a nice gesture, and it sure beat paying a small fortune for one of those ergonomically designed chairs.

Before heading to the spare room, I had given my wife explicit instructions not to bother me under any circumstances. “I don’t know how long I’ll be in there, “I said. “It might be ten hours, it might be eighteen. But I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

No more than two hours later, I heard my daughter Noelle’s voice outside. “Dad, Dad.” I feared it was an emergency, the only explanation for an interruption at such a critical time in my writing career.

With my staunchest literary supporter, my wife, Colette.

Courtesy of the Foley family.

So away to the window, I flew like a flash, tore open the shutter and threw up the…Wait a minute, I think I just spoke through the window screen.

“What is it, honey?”

“Mom says you have to help unload the groceries.”

“Tell Mom I’m working.”

A few minutes later, I heard her come again. “Dad, Dad.”

“Yes, Noelle.”

“Mom says she needs your help with the groceries.”

“Did you tell her I was working, honey?”

“She says she doesn’t care.”

With that, I stormed down the stairs and charged the house, ready to fight for my artistic rights.

“Colette, I told you I had to work all day.”

“Yeah, I know,” she said. “You can go back to work after you unload the car.”

“But this is my job. I’m a writer.”

“Yeah, sure, Mick.”

“I’m not joking,” I pleaded, sounding like Donald Sutherland’s feeble professor in
Animal House,
the one who finally confesses that his novel in progress is a “piece of shit.”

Colette just looked at me, and despite one last protest of “I’ve written four best sellers,” I headed for the car, realizing that convincing my wife, let alone the literary world, that I was really a writer was going to be more of a challenge than I thought.

“Darling.”

“Yes, Vicky.”

“You cannot rewrite a book in five days.”

I was terrified. I should have just said, “Yes, ma’am,” but I had put about seventy hours of work into those five days, and I thought my rewriting was pretty good. So I asked what I felt was obvious. “Why not?”

“Because I’ve been doing this for thirty years, and I know it’s not possible.”

“But have you read it?”

Victoria let out a frustrated sigh. “Listen, Mick, I have a fifteen-hundred-page manuscript and a thousand-page manuscript to edit. When I am through with those, I will read your changes. I don’t know how long it will take.”

Man, I loved writing that novel, but I missed the breakneck creative pace of WWE, where I’d get an idea while barreling down the freeway at 3:00
A.M
., and it would come to life in front of millions the very next evening. I think Tom Petty was right. The waiting really
is
the hardest part.

It was about two weeks later when I got the fateful call.

“Darling, how are you?”

My heart was pounding. “Well, that depends on you, Vicky.”

“Well, there are a few problems.”

“Are they big problems?” I asked.

“One of them is,” she said.

“Okay, let me have it.”

So, she let me have it. But it really wasn’t that bad. She was proposing a big change, but one that basically involved deleting some religious passages. No real rewriting. Vicky felt that my past as a wrestler was going to make me an easy target for critics, and she didn’t want unnecessary religious controversy to overshadow the characters and the story. The other change was fairly minor.

“Is that it?” I asked, almost unable to believe my luck. “So, we’re ready to print it?”

“I must admit,” Vicky said slowly, “I am impressed not only with the work you did but the speed in which you did it.”

I was shocked. “Is that a compliment?”

“It’s as close as you’re going to get from me,” she responded. Despite the fact that she was a stern taskmaster, I have often been told how highly she thinks of me, and despite the fact that I’m still terrified of her intellect, I like her very much as well.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll keep this a secret between you and I.”

“That’s you and
me.
”

“Damn.”

But first, here’s another exclusive. The next part—where I name the wrestler—actually took place many months before the previous part, where I rewrite the book in five days. If this was a Knopf book, Victoria Wilson would unleash her powers of intimidation on me, forcing me to go back to the spare room over the garage to toil for hours, making late-night changes in the discomfort of that stupid orange Worcester chair. I’m hoping Margaret Clark, my editor at Pocket Books, will be willing to be a little more charitable. So what do you say we just leave it as it is?

All right, back to October 2001, during the writing-in-notebooks stage. Concerned about my legal safety, I asked a famous wrestler to take a walk with me. Accompanied by Edge and Christian, my favorite two eyewitnesses, the famous wrestler and I sat in a fairly secluded part of a forgotten arena, where I proceeded to read him a few paragraphs of
Tietam Brown.
It is not meant to be an exact reenactment of my conversation with this wrestler, but at times it’s pretty damn close. As you read, think of me as poor, shocked Andy, and the wrestler in question as Andy’s father, Tietam.

“Dad, I’m having girl problems.”

He resumed his dinner-table
Thinker
pose and stroked his chin. He squinted a little and then closed one eye, a study in concentration. Surely he was weighing all the options, drawing inevitable conclusions, and would momentarily come bubbling forth with a sparkling nugget of knowledge that could transform my life in an instant. Then again, this was the same guy who’d used the term “bald-headed champion” only a few hours earlier. What had I been thinking?

His initial analysis of the situation surprised me.

“Well Andy, taking into account that all women are by nature different, and taking into account that you have yet to introduce me to your friend Terri, I would have to first warn you that forming a specific game plan for your specific situation could prove somewhat difficult.”

He sounded smart. My dad sounded smart! I could almost feel those clouds dispersing.

“With that in mind, there are some generalities, some strategies if you will, that do appear to be effective with most woman I’ve encountered.”

The anticipation was killing me. Sure my dad had his share of somewhat off idiosyncrasies, and yeah, maybe he didn’t do things that other dads did, but women did like the guy, and there had to be a reason. And I was pretty sure it wasn’t the fuzzy dice. He opened his mouth. “Well, Andy, whenever possible, get them to lick your ass.”

The clouds in my mind that had seemed to disperse accumulated en masse and rained all over my parade. I waited for a big laugh, and then a pat on the back to let me know that I’d been had. We would share a good chuckle over the whole thing, and then he’d tutor me on the lessons of love.

Except he wasn’t laughing. Or smiling. Not even a little. As a matter of fact, I’d never seen him quite this intense, not even when talking about the Suglings’ scarecrow.

“That way, Andy, no matter what happens after that, you’ve always got something over them.”

With that last line, I closed the book, took a deep breath, smiled, and said, “What do you think?”

Raven, aka Scotty the Body, aka Scotty Flamingo, aka Johnny Polo, looked every bit like a proud father. He was beaming. For a moment, I thought he might actually shed a tear. His first response consisted of two simple words.

“That’s fabulous,” he said before getting up and walking off in a strut more subtle, but every bit as proud, as the John Travolta paint-carrying Brooklyn bop of
Saturday Night Fever
.

May 5, 2006

Dear Hardcore Diary,

My son Mickey is a rock-and-roller. He’s been that way since about the age of two. But he’s also very particular about what he considers to be rock and roll. He’s not much of a harmony guy, and definitely not a mellow rocker or light rocker. Just a basic three-chord guitar guy, who happens to make world-class rock-and-roll faces, although truth be told, he brandishes his air guitar a little high—almost like Tiny Tim on a ukulele solo.

It’s not as if I’m some king of heavy metal dad either, the type of guy who forces the hard stuff on his kids at the expense of the classics. My musical tastes are kind of eclectic, running the spectrum from Christmas tunes to Emmylou Harris to Springsteen to Drive-By Truckers. Of course, as I mentioned in an earlier book, my definition of eclectic is many people’s definition of rotten, and as a result, word spread among my fellow wrestler that the hardcore legend has the worst musical taste in the business.

Fortunately, little Mickey, now five, disagrees. He likes his dad’s music just fine, but he can be just a little on the compulsive side when he finds a tune he truly loves. So over the course of the last few years, Foley family vacations have tended to become dominated by one particular song played continuously for days on end. Hershey, Pennsylvania, 2004 was the “We Will Rock You” vacation. Santa’s Village 2005 was Tom T. Hall’s “Sneaky Snake” and “Everybody Loves to Hear a Bird Sing.” But for everyday usage, for sheer frequency over an extended time, nothing could come close to AC/DC’s “Stiff Upper Lip.” Until, of course, the little guy happened to hear “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” and his dad made the decision to put the
Stay Hungry
CD into the car stereo, a place it would remain without pause for several months.

I’ll get to Twisted Sister in a few moments, but for now, let’s get back to “Stiff Upper Lip.” Sure, it was a good song, maybe even great. Rugged Angus Young guitar riff, typical over-the-top Brian Johnson braggadocio on the mike. But come on, hundreds of plays over the course of the years? “Play it again, Dad.” Over and over? It just lacked that certain something that turns a great song into a classic. It wasn’t the top-down, feel-good adrenaline rush of “You Shook Me All Night Long” or the spine-tingling slow build of “Hells Bells.” Although I guess I should count my blessings—at least my little guy wasn’t happily crooning along to “Big Balls” or “Given the Dog a Bone.”

Hey, I just ran to my stereo to find that the
Back in Black
album was actually still on the turntable, a part of a failed experiment in my
WrestleMania
conditioning program, where I came to realize that no music, no matter how cool or how loud, was going to disguise the fact that the Foley knees just can’t tolerate Hindu squats anymore.

But, hell, it will make for great writing music. So last night it was Tschaikovsky, tonight Angus Young. How’s that for versatility?

Come to think of it, Angus was the main reason I wanted to TiVo AC/ DC’s performance on the 2000
Saturday Night Live
hosted by The Rock. Sure, it was the show that helped launch The Rock into the stratosphere, but for me, it seemed like my only chance to capture “Stiff Upper Lip” live, thereby showing little Mick and new “Lip” fan Hughie what true Angus rock-and-roll faces look like. Sure, the image of a fifty-year-old man dressed in a schoolboy outfit might be a little frightening, but not necessarily any more so than the sight of Don Zimmer in a spandex baseball outfit. Or his dad (Hughie’s dad, not Zimmer’s) in tights and brown leather mask, for that matter.

I entered AC/DC into my TiVo wish list about a month ago, a move that was bearing no musical fruit until one fateful day, when the 2000
Saturday Night Live
popped up under “Upcoming Programs.” I hit record and waited for May 3, the scheduled air date, to arrive.

I watched the show this morning with my children, and found it did more than live up to my fond remembrance of it. The Rock was spectacular, and very much deserving of the attention Hollywood lavished on him as a result of it. Cheri Oteri was every bit as beautiful as I remembered her, and seeing her made me think back to how nice I was to her nephew, so that Cheri would think I was cool.

As for AC/DC—they rocked. Little Mick seemed transfixed by the classic Angus mannerisms, and Hughie happily belted out the same few words over and over. “Stiff lip, stiff lip, oh stiff lip, oh stiff lip.” Granted, the lyrics in their entirety are not likely to be confused with Bob Dylan’s best from the sixties, but come on, a song with only three words in it would be a little ridiculous, right? Wait a second, my “Dude Love” theme music had only three words in it: “Dude Love, Dude Love, Dude Love baby, Dude Love.”

Mickey and Hughie, my little rock-and-rollers.

Courtesy of the Foley family.

Unfortunately, watching “Stiff Upper Lip” also brought back some bad memories, long-repressed images of horror that had seemingly been brushed from my conscious thoughts. But as I watched my little guys rocking out in the Foley Christmas room, those distant visions come flooding back, putting me face-to-face with two truths I could no longer deny.

It all started as a great bonding experience. Although The Rock was clearly the star of the show, Vince had done a little maneuvering that allowed me, Triple H, and Big Show to appear as well, a move that we hoped would create interest in our upcoming four-way main event at the 2000
WrestleMania
. The Rock, of course, was the other entrant. At first, we all kind of felt like dogs trying to pick scraps off Rock’s plate. There just seemed to be no reason for us to be there.

Fortunately, one of WWE’s writers, Tommy Blotcha, who came from a background as one of Conan O’Brien’s writers, was able to make some changes that gave us all a little more to do on the show. It all came off well, did monster ratings, helped The Rock immensely, and for a short time made Big Show look like a potential breakout comedy performer. I still think Show should give Hollywood a real shot one of these days.

Yeah, it all worked out well in the end, but during that interim period, the three of us scrap-pickers all stuck together, passing the time by exaggerating our in-ring abilities, waiting for the AC/DC sound check that we hoped would be the highlight of the day.

The boys didn’t disappoint, tearing through not only their two scheduled songs on the show but three others as well for the benefit of the couple dozen cast and crew members who enjoyed the hell out of their own little mini-concert. They even dedicated “Highway to Hell” to us sports entertainers, probably because they’d earned a small fortune lending the tune to WWE for its
SummerSlam
Austin vs. Undertaker showdown.

We were all rocking out when Triple H made the first shocking discovery. I know I’ve expressed my desire to write a PG-13 book, and it seems like I’ve danced on the border of R-rated territory a couple of times. Something tells me I’m about to bust right over that border now. But, damn, there’s really no other way to put it. I’ve really got no other alternative but to quote Triple H directly on this one. And Triple H’s direct quote was pretty much, “Holy shit, look at the cock on Brian Johnson!”

Of course we all looked. We simply had to. It wasn’t like he had it out and was waving it around. It was more subtle than that. But only slightly so. Because, I swear (and you can ask Hunter and Show about this), the damn thing ran about a third of the way down his thigh. It looked like an armadillo was resting in there. Like he was harvesting zucchinis or something. No wonder half the songs in his repertoire are thinly veiled tributes to his penis. I’d write songs about mine too, if it took up that type of room in my trousers.

As I write this, I can almost see the legal red flags being raised. “You can’t print this,” I’ll be told. “It’s slanderous.” They tried the same stuff when I wrote
Have a Nice Day
and the zucchini farmer in question was Too Cold Scorpio. I’ll tell these lawyers the same thing I told the other ones—men don’t consider accusations of possessing a giant penis to be slanderous. They consider it a compliment. (Not that I’ve ever gotten one.) Besides, if Johnson decides to play rough, I’ll forewarn him—I’ve got witnesses. And they saw the same damn thing I did.

We all did our best to enjoy the rest of the song, but found our effort to be in vain when Big Show unearthed an equally shocking image. “Oh, my God,” he said, in a voice befitting a seven-foot, 450-pound monster. “Look at Vince!”

For the second time during the course of the same song, we turned our eyes to a hideous sight. And no, Vince wasn’t hiding animals in his shorts, or growing vegetables in his trousers. He was quite simply putting on one of the worst displays of dance moves ever witnessed by man or in this case, Mankind. This is where my limitations as a writer are obvious, because words alone simply cannot do justice to how bad Vince was. You have to use your imagination here. Think of Kenny Mayne on
Dancing with the Stars,
and multiply it by ten. No, it was worse than that. Think of Elaine Benes with the “thumbs-up” dance on
Seinfeld.
Then add a pompadour and shades of Elmore “crazy legs” Hirsch. You’re now in the general neighborhood.

In the unlikely event that Brian Johnson does indeed find my contention that he had a massive member to be slanderous, I think I may indeed have a solution, albeit a slightly erroneous one. I’ll simply do a little literary sleight of hand—pulling a slight switcheroo. In the new telling of the story, Johnson will have the bad dance moves, and Vince will have the produce department in his pants. Something tells me Vince wouldn’t mind that change at all.