Bash Compactor: Ready To Rumble

Sunday night I was invited
to cover Mike Edison’s annual
Wrestlemaniacs Party, and was one of the only guests allowed entrance without
first filling out an application. Not since I was an eight-year-old Ultimate
Warrior fan lusting after Miss Elizabeth (Randy Savage’s then girlfriend) had I watched a wrestling match, but
Edison’s parties tend to include artists, writers, pornographers, chefs and rock stars, so I
decided to rekindle my love.

Edison—a former High
Times and Screw editor and current New York Press classical music critic—welcomed guests into his
Murray Hill apartment sporting a short-sleeved Rockabilly button-down, pork pie
hat and a cane. Edison explained that he’d hurt his foot.

“I’ll bet that’s your
Wrestlemania weapon, you’re going to bash somebody over the head with that
before the night’s over,” said the author and television producer Keith
Elliot Greenberg, an early arrival.

The first match of
Wrestlemania XXVII was between a wrestler named Alberto Del Rio, who made his entrance in a Rolls Royce, and a
longhaired porn actor-type called Edge. The match ended with Edge smashing his opponent’s car with a crow bar
and the group agreed it was good.

“One way to judge a good
match is whether you’re able to suspend your disbelief,” Edison told me.

Former Dictators member and
current Avenue B bar owner “Handsome” Dick Manitoba was the last guest to arrive. He quickly took a
seat on the floor, not far from a spread that included Budweiser, chips and
salsa and grilled octopus, leaving the last remaining chair for his young son.
He immediately began to break balls with Edison.

As one of the wrestlers was
getting pounded in the face, Manitoba commented, “This is a big right-hand
festival!”

“Sounds like your love
life,” countered Edison.

I asked the group how they
thought wrestling had changed through the years.

“Wrestling was more violent
during the morally ambiguous Clinton years. It’s cleaned up now,” said Edison.
“Wrestling changes along with the rest of the world and those changes reflect
the world at large. For instance, during the Cold War the bad guys were all
Russian.”

Thinking about my own
childhood wrestling icons, I asked, “Whatever happened to The Ultimate
Warrior?”

“He’s a Minuteman now,”
said Greenberg.

“And what about Miss
Elizabeth?”

“She’s dead.”

Many of the guests brought
their children, who stayed pretty well behaved. Just before the main event,
Edison grabbed one of the kids, pretending to jab his face, then brandished his
cane for an attack. Greenberg came out of nowhere, delivering a crushing blow
to Edison’s midsection.

The night’s main event, on
television at least, began and The Undertaker made his entrance. I was reminded that The
Undertaker had never lost a Wrestlemania as the tall, black-clad juggernaut
walked toward the ring accompanied by elaborate pyrotechnics and the music of
Johnny Cash. The group, which at this point included rocker Jon Spencer and Punk magazine founder John Holstrom, watched in awe.

“Wrestling is fake, right?”
asked young Alex, a kid who had come along with Spencer and his son. He was met
with silence.

“Yeah,” said noted
illustrator Cliff Mott, “but
it’s like a dance. A very involved dance.” [Jon Reiss]