Cru Jones Society

Today is August 28. It’s the 45 year anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington. Today Barack Obama will become the first black person ever nominated for president by a major political party. Today is also the birthday of Jack Black, Shania Twain, LeAnn Rimes, Daniel Stern, Jason Priestley, and Olympic swimmer Janet Evans. It also happens to be my birthday.

I’m 27 today, and I have the distinction of sharing the day of a hero’s most important speech. The “I Have a Dream” speech is one of the finest pieces of oratory ever constructed in this country, and I find it amazing that it shares the same calendar date as my birthday.

I also find it amazing that I share the same birthday as the brilliant actor that played off-kilter Cubs pitching coach Phil Brickma in Rookie of the Year.

Okay, that’s not amazing, but since it’s my birthday, I got to thinking about who I share the day with. That led me to consider everyone I had ever idolized growing up, the people I used to emulate, and the people I aspired to mirror in my growth. Unfortunately for me, aside from my parents, this list does not contain many “great people” like Martin Luther King. Fortunately for you, there’s plenty of obscure cultural icons to laugh at as I die a little bit inside pondering my superficiality. Let’s journey through a scrapbook of E Dagger’s heroes, shall we?

Age: 4
Hero: He-Man

Desirable Attributes: Strong man, cool sword, rides around on a bobcat with a saddle, beats up a skeleton on a regular basis, unrestricted by clothing.
Flaws: Life under constant threat from assorted monsters and villains, Orko a whiny asshole, has good friend named “Fisto,” possible homosexual.
Additional thoughts: When you’re 4 years-old, what’s not to love about He-Man? He’s a buff dude who rights the wrongs of Eternia, he doesn’t have to wear a shirt, like, ever, and he gets to carry around a sword. I used to have a He-Man sword that I’d stuff down the back of my shirt and walk around with. I had to make sure I was ready at all times to turn from mild-mannered Prince Adam into unstoppable villain dispatcher He-Man at the drop of a hat. That meant I’d break out the sword no matter the occasion if I felt it necessary: parents’ dinner parties, the local swimming holes, church, etc.He-Man was my first hero, and despite cringing a bit now when I see all the somewhat overt gay coding going on, I think back on him and smile. I have to. It’s either that or humiliation thinking about all the video my parents have of me re-enacting scenes of Prince Adam turning into He-Man. So why not smile, eh?

Age: 7
Hero: Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat

Desirable Attributes: Expert in karate, jumps from the top rope better than anyone else (Possible exception: Randy Savage), has cool nickname, WWF Intercontinental Champion.
Flaws: Prone to throat injuries, enemy of terrifying Jake “The Snake” Roberts and his snake, a bit undersized for a wrestler, Asian.
Additional thoughts: Full disclosure: I spent an equal amount of time posing like Hulk Hogan in my He-Man underwear as a young lad as I did leaping down the stairs like Ricky Steamboat. But I had way more fun standing at the top of the stairs wearing my “Ricky Steamboat pants,” which truthfully were nothing more than a pair of gray chinos, waiting for my dad to stick out his arms and tell me to jump than I ever did posing like the Orange Goblin (TM: Scott Keith, who’s coming up later). “Superfly” Jimmy Snuka was just a bit before my time, so my memories of top rope excitement consist mostly of The Dragon. My first wrestling match memory was seeing him improbably (in my eyes, anyway) take down the massive Hercules Hernandez at WrestleMania 2. From that point on, I confused my teachers by signing my papers “Ricky” and telling them I’m from Hawaii. Considering I was a toe-headed little Swede, I’m pretty sure they thought I had a massive identity crisis, but whatever. I wanted to be like Ricky Steamboat, and whenever I put on those special pants and leaped down the stairs to my dad, I was.

Age: 9
Hero: Mark Grace

Desirable Attributes: Plays for Chicago Cubs, has high batting average, has blond hair, is friends with Ryne Sandberg, plays good defense, signed a picture of me.
Flaws: Plays for Chicago Cubs, doesn’t hit for much power, can’t will team over hated San Francisco Giants despite hitting over .600 in 1989 playoff series, only Rookie of the Year runner-up in 1988.
Additional thoughts: For a while growing up, baseball replaced pro wrestling as my #1 passion. The Cubs were suddenly good in 1989, and I couldn’t get enough of them. They were on nearly everyday on WGN, and I watched illustrious stars like Vance Law and Mike Bielecki take the Cubs to the NLCS. I couldn’t get enough. My favorite player was their young 1^st baseman, Mark Grace. He looked like me, played my same position, and pounded the living crap out of Frank DiPino that summer in a bench-clearing brawl. When my dad saw him in an airport and asked him to sign MY picture, Mark Grace said, “Hey, he looks like me as a kid! You got it!” That clinched it. He was going to be my favorite baseball player forever. Once I got older and he came out with the term “slump buster” to describe an ugly woman you bang to snap a cold streak, well, that was just icing on the cake.

Age: 13
Hero: George Kuffs

Desirable Attributes: Has cool haircut, has own personal cameraman at which to make coy sideways glances, wins $1 billion in bet with Ted Bukovsky, dates fine ass Maya Carlton, wears badass letterman jacket.
Flaws: Threatened by local businessman Sam Jones and henchman wearing odd clothing, dead brother, responsibility of running a police district, fictional.
Addtional thoughts: Never underestimate the power of the shitty movie. Our website is named after the protagonist of a BMX movie no one has ever seen as you well know. I saw Christian Slater on the big screen in this movie, and my in-the-throes-of-puberty self ate him up with a spoon. He opens the movie dancing with an underwear-clad Milla Jovovich, for fuck’s sake. I didn’t think the movie could get any better from there, but then he spends the entire movie delivering witty asides to the audience in a way that a 13 year-old is positively fascinated by. Sometimes it’s not even a line of dialogue, it’s just a knowing, bemused glance at the camera to convey his befuddlement with the current absurdity of the given scene. If you watch me carefully, you’ll catch me doing this from time to time. The only difference is: there’s no camera when I do it. He dresses cool. He says cool things. He has cool hair. And he has a hot girlfriend. If you were a male between the ages of 11 and 16 when this movie came out, he embodied everything you aspired to be. Pretty simple, really. Although, as I mentioned last week, he’s stuck with the same haircut for the last 15 years. I don’t know what that means, but I’m sure it’s something.

Age: 16
Hero: Dicky Barrett

Desirable Attributes: Buff spikes chillin’ on top of his melon (spiky hair in Pauly Shore-speak), lead singer of popular and influential ska band, always wears sunglasses, owns many stylish suits, gravelly voice, appears in pop candy movie Clueless.
Flaws: Ska generally for nerds, ska not as popular as it seems, ska sinking fast, possible one hit wonder, appears to be one-time and future overweight guy.
Additional thoughts: The first time I heard ska, I was in this dude Mike Frost’s car on the way to swim practice. I remember thinking, “What IS this?” I was hooked. It was like I mainlined heroin when I heard it and couldn’t get enough. When I got to the Bosstones and feasted my eyes on Dicky Barrett, he was the absolute living embodiment of cool. Black suit, black shades, black spiked hair, weathered voice. I was still wearing my hair with a gay little part and wave in the front, dressing without a clue, and hadn’t yet grown into my feet. His image propelled me to dress better, try a new hairstyle, and have more confidence in myself. He blasted me through the remainder of puberty and I came out on the other side much better than when I went in. I almost dyed my hair black to look more like him, but decided to keep it blond so I could be his blond counterpart if we ever met. I’ve kept some variation of that spike ever since, and it’s all because of this Boston ska icon. All of these memories came flooding back while I sung my voice out at Red Rocks last weekend.

Age: 17
Hero: Triple H

Desirable Attributes: Leader of cool wrestling faction D-Generation X, wears sweet leather coat with cat’s eye sunglasses, extremely buff, well-conditioned hair, has own catchphrase, “crotch chop” is popular anti-authority cultural gesture, WWF Intercontinental Champion, has sweet entrance music.
Flaws: Appears to be The Rock’s bitch, hangs out with she-man Chyna, hangs out with X-Pac, likes to show his ass to live crowds, possible homosexual.
Additional thoughts: I’ve always decided against getting a tattoo because I think back to when I was 17. If I’d ever had the opportunity, you’d find me here 10 years later with a horrifically embarrassing DX: Suck It! tattoo. Triple H used to wear a leather jacket, his transcendent DX shirt, a pair of jeans, and cat’s eye sunglasses. Can you guess what my favorite outfit was during my junior year of high school? I received my first leather jacket for Christmas that year, and you can bet your ass that two days later I was wearing it with my DX shirt and a pair of jeans even though I was living in Houston and it was still 80 goddamn degrees at the end of December. I’d be embarrassed that there’s two professional wrestlers on this list, but what can I say? That’s who I was. At least I never idolized someone that wrote about wrestling. Oh wait…

Age: 20
Hero: Scott Keith

Desirable Attributes: Writes about (and gets paid for) professional wrestling, founder of important wrestling analysis websites Rantsylvania.com and TheSmarks.com, author of books on professional wrestling, keen wit, incisive writing, large nerd following.
Flaws: Not necessarily the heartthrob like some of the other entrants on this list, many jealous and annoying internet enemies, large nerd following.
Additional thoughts: If you can liken reading someone for the first time to listening to music, then I might as well have been in Mike Frost’s car the first time I read Scott Keith. He loved wrestling the way I loved it, but was much funnier about it. My friend Stephen introduced me to a website called Wrestlemaniacs.com where 4 guys wrote about professional wrestling in ways I didn’t know were possible. They were hip to backstage happenings and looked upon the proceedings with something of a jaundiced eye. I had no idea anything like this even existed, but once I found it, I knew I had to be a part of it. As a result of reading Keith’s entire archive throughout college, and his continually hilarious and razor sharp insights about Raw and the current wrestling pay-per-views, I began to recap Raw myself. I wrote for at least a dozen different websites and spent most of my time ripping off Keith’s style with much less success. I eventually learned not to do that and to write in my own voice, but man, Keith’s words were so intoxicating, it was a hard habit to break.

I still read him and look forward to anything he writes. Outside of wrestling, he’s the reason I got into Dexter, and he’s the reason I decided to give Scrubs a second chance. You can find his blog listed in our links section. If you’re a lazy bastard, check it out here.

Age: 22
Hero: Trent Walker/Jim Young/Mike McDermott

Desirable Attributes: Cool guys in mid-20s, desirable careers in acting/finance/poker, quick-witted and sharp-tongued, good-looking, chick magnets, have interesting group of friends.
Flaws: Trent: Can’t find steady acting work, deals with annoying friend getting over a break-up, fictional. Jim: Lack of interior decorating skills, workaholic, fictional. Mike: Annoying wet blanket girlfriend, self-destructive, weaselly best friend, delusions of poker grandeur, again, fictional.
Additional thoughts: I like to call these “the drunk years.” Whenever we weren’t getting messed up, we were talking about getting messed up. When the bars closed, we’d often come home, order calzones from D.P. Dough (the most amazing food delivery chain in all of existence) and watch one of these three movies. We’d get together to play video games before going out like Trent in Swingers and antagonize the delivery guy with his and Sue’s routine. “Michael is he cute?! Is he brown?! I want to see him!” All our delivery guys eventually caught on to this routine and kindly asked us to stop.When we were all trying to get laid, I used to remind my roommates to “Act as if…” like Ben Stiller tells his young trainees in the middle of Boiler Room. Act is if you’re going to bring home a smokin’ piece of ass tonight. Translation: Clean up your fucking room. I have no idea how those guys tolerated me sometimes.

And as far as Mike McD goes, well, let’s just say the dialogue from our nickel-dime-quarter poker games consisted entirely of Rounders set-ups and payoffs. “Don’t splash the pot.” “In my club, I vill splash the pot VENEVER… THE FUCK… I PLEEEEZE.” Mike had such a calculated, casual confidence, I envied it with every fiber of my being and I reviled my stupid neuroses. The guys are the “Three Drinking Muskateers” and although I no longer seek to pattern my life after them, they always make me reminisce about college.

Age: 25
Hero: Jason Cruz

Desirable Attributes: Leader sing of influential and popular punk band Strung Out, flinty punk rock voice, disarmingly dark good looks, writes insightful, dark, macabre, and often hilarious lyrics, did I mention unnervingly attractive?
Flaws: Travels with four other dudes in a van most of the year, possible heavy narcotics use, possible wearer of guy-liner, can’t break through to upper echelon of music acts, unsettled by freaky man crush of dorky Internet writer.
Additional thoughts: In the thick of graduate school where you’re surrounded by more annoying hipster squares than at a Seattle-area Whole Foods store, part of you seeks to blow it up. That’s why Lady E, Kyle and myself would get good and drunk for colloquiums, show up shitfaced for our race & ethnicity class, and shock the squares by writing papers about punk rock, sex changes, and Harry Potter (alright, so Kyle was a dork).Jason Cruz became my nihilistic demi-god. His appearance was so slick, but his message was so anarchic. He and his band played with such controlled fury, the measured carnage left after one of their shows was mesmerizing. In that sense, his appeal was meta-textual, but I also just thought the aesthetic was fucking cool. I loved his mythos, but I also just appreciated his badassery. Multiple levels were at work at once here, and I think that’s part of the reason this band is still relevant to my life. I love them for what they represent, but I also love them on a completely superficial level as well. That’s the best of both worlds right there, baby.

Age: 27
Hero: ???

Desirable Attributes: ???
Flaws: ???
Additional thoughts: ???

I never claimed to be a deep guy, and this list consisting mostly of professional wrestlers, punk rock singers, and fictional characters from cult classic movies certainly proves that. But my media studies degree tempts me to pontificate on the importance of media in shaping who we are and why it’s the most overlooked psychological discipline. I’ll spare you the lecture, but I will encourage you to think about why you say the things you do, who you aspired to be growing up, and how you got to be who you are. There will be more media influence than you’d probably like to admit.

As for who I want to be now: I haven’t the foggiest. It’s not like I plan these things in advance. But believe me, you’ll be the first to know when I do. In the meantime, I’ve got a plane to catch. I’m off to sunny San Diego where a weekend of Rockies baseball, betting on horse racing, and seared mammal flesh awaits. Hart will be here with a new Happy Friday tomorrow and Senor Limon makes a cameo on Monday. I’ll be back with tales of my sun-soaked shenanigans next Wednesday.

Until then…

edagger@crujonessociety.com