HOW MANY DOINKS DOES IT TAKE...

Wow, are we really only a week away from Wrestlemania 27? The days are just flying by aren't they? It's been a pretty eventful month for wrestling fans (well, maybe not for TNA fans), but the long wait is almost over. Personally, I'm looking forward to the Hall of Fame ceremony, especially since the Road Warriors are rumored to be the next inductees. I don't know why Jake "the Snake" Roberts and Arn Anderson are not among the inductees (as of now anyway) this year, but it should still be a good show. Anyway, enough rambling, let's get to the post.

For those of you new to wrestling, no, Chris Jericho didn't have an early WWF stint as Doink the Clown. This was actually part of the March 26, 2001 episode of Monday Night RAW, a historic night in wrestling that saw the first, and only, simulcast between WWF RAW and WCW Monday Nitro (Vince McMahon had bought WCW a mere two days prior after Turner Broadcasting cancelled all WCW programming from their networks). The reason Jericho was dressed as Doink was so that the WWF could cross promote two of the matches for the upcoming Wrestlemania 17. The first, obviously, was a bout between Chris Jericho and William Regal for the Intercontinental Title, an awesome match that opened the show and had Jericho take the crown. The second match in question was the infamous Gimmick Battle Royal that was won by the Iron Sheik (for more info, check out the March 2010 posts).

As for Doink, a few people have played him over the years. The first was Matt Borne, who began portraying Doink in 1992, having just come off a run in WCW where he was known as Big Josh, a lumberjack who carried an ax with no blade and was escorted to the ring by dancing bears! (Only in wrestling can going from a lumberjack to a clown be considered a step up.) Sadly, Borne had some issues and was fired. Steve Lombardi (the Brooklyn Brawler) and Steve Keirn (Skinner) stepped in until Ray Apollo was brought in in early 1993 to play Doink. In 2002, Nick Dinsmore (Eugene) donned the grease paint for a match on Smackdown against Chris Benoit and most recently, Lombardi played Doink in an eight man tag match on RAW last summer. With Chris Jericho's lone appearance, that makes six men who have all been Doink over the years. Hopefully, this'll give everybody a better understanding of how much it takes to be Doink the Clown (And please, no e-mails about Doink's midget counterpart, Dink. Nobody cares about him!).

Well, that's all for now. I hope to be back next time with some new comics as well as some April Fools Day fun to get everybody ready for the coming month. Until next time, I'll catch y'all later!

MIKE AND MINDY, CHILDREN OF THE FUTURE!!!

Hey crazy heads! After years of scraping and saving I finally got a new computer! These last couple years have been pretty good to me work-wise, to the point that I'm actually starting to make a comfortable living. So now, I can finally update weekly, regardless of my work schedule, and without having to bother people to see if I can use their computers. To put it simply; I have moved into the modern age!

Anyway, you people don't read this blog just to read about my personal life, not that I actually post anything personal. You come for comics and wrestling, so let's start the show!

Gee, and I always heard that gas-powered appliances were more efficient.

It should be noted that I got a few e-mails after my Ultimate Warrior post a few weeks back, bringing to question one of pop culture's greatest urban legends: that the Ultimate Warrior is dead. I'm gonna go ahead and douse this flame and tell you that the Warrior is alive and always has been. There has only been one warrior, and as previously mentioned, his name is Jim Hellwig. The rumor probably started around 1992. He had just come back to the WWF and had lost some of his muscle mass and no longer feathered his hair. It was enough for fans to think that it was somebody else under the face paint, and the rumor quickly started. It picked up more steam in 1995 when WCW brought in a Warrior clone called the Renegade after they couldn't sign the real Warrior. Fans initially thought that it was the Ultimate Warrior, but quickly realized that the Renegade was actually worse in the ring, so fans once again thought that Hellwig had died. Thanks to this great tool known as the internet, what once was a silly little rumor has blown up into an urban legend complete with theories and conspiracies. So, for what I know won't be the last time, the Ultimate Warrior is alive. He's clinically insane, but alive none the less.

Well, that's all for this week. I'm excited for the future of this blog, not to mention the future period. Life is good people. Don't ever waste it. Until next time, I'll catch y'all later!

CLAPTONMANIA!!!

Hey folks! Mad's Maddest Reject is back after a busy couple of weeks. Sadly, no new comics this week due to some computer issues, but Mike and Mindy will be back next time with an all new adventure, as well as a very wild Mushroom to get everybody in the mood for Wrestlemania!

In the meantime, try to enjoy this classic footage of Eric Clapton performing She's Waiting at Live Aid (1985). I'm posting this because I worked his concert last Sunday and am still stoked that I got to be on it. Clapton is one of my all-time favorites and I was praying that I'd get the call for this show. Luckily, God came through, and I now have a story to tell the grandkids someday.

For the good many of you that weren't born yet, Live Aid was a concert put on in 1985 to help raise money for famine relief in Africa. Performances took place in both the U.S. and England and featured virtually every big act of the day, with U2 and Queen in particular stealing the show (Phil Collins also pulled off quite a feat, opening the show in England, then hopping on a Concord jet to perform in the U.S. as well). All in all, a true benchmark in music history.

Well, that's all for this week. I promise that the delays between posts will be ending soon, and that this blog will be truly going weekly in the very near future. Until next time, I'll catch y'all later!

THE ULTIMATE NUTCASE!!!

Hey folks! I'm back and ready to give you some bad wrestling that so many of you have been begging me for this month. With Wrestlemania rapidly approaching, WWE is going to be putting their best foot forward right now, making sure that people will buy the show. And although I already feel they dropped the ball by not bringing in Sting (not yet anyway), they certainly made up for it by bringing the Rock back and having him say what so many of us diehards have been claiming for years: JOHN CENA SUCKS! I don't think Cena's a bad guy, but I've never bought him as a main eventer. The Miz, Randy Orton and Daniel Bryan are far more entertaining in the ring. Either way, there should be some good shows coming up, so stay tuned. But enough about that. It's time for some crap!

No one name in wrestling stirs up more negative feelings than Jim Hellwig. If that name doesn't ring a bell, than you'd probably recognize his alter ego: the Ultimate Warrior. There's a million things that can be said about him, and none are very positive. It is possible, however, that he is simply misunderstood. That his erratic behavior and violent mood swings are simply overblown. Perhaps this appearance on the old Arsenio Hall Show back in 1990 will help clear the air.

Or maybe not. Let that be a lesson kids: cocaine and steroids are a dangerous mix!

I'd go into detail here, but we all got better things to do. The brief history is Hellwig started wrestling, teamed with a guy named Steve Borden (who later became Sting) as the Blade Runners, went to World Class Championship Wrestling (WCCW) and became the Dingo Warrior, then went to the WWF and became the Ultimate Warrior. He became a huge star, let success go to his head, and made a quick habit of pissing everybody off and burning bridges. His last major appearance was in WCW back in the fall of 1998, where he competed as "the Warrior" because he legally couldn't use the word "Ultimate". (At some point in the mid 1990's, he legally changed his name to the Ultimate Warrior, but the WWF/WWE holds the copyright, so he can only professionally use in a WWE ring.) And that's pretty much it. These days, he tours colleges giving lectures on the Seven Warrior Principles and tries to explain the meaning of the word "Destucity". Oh, and he also did a comic book series back in 1996 that explained his origins, which somehow included him kidnapping Santa Claus and putting the jolly old elf in bondage! (Do yourself a favor and resist the urge to track copies of that monstrosity down. Reading the Ultimate Warrior's comic book will cause you to loose faith in humanity!)

Well folks, that's it for today. I'll catch y'all next time with some new comics and maybe a little something extra. Until next time, later!

FINALLY, COMICS WEEK HAS RETURNED!!!

It's been way too long, but Mike and Mindy are finally back and celebrating the first anniversary of this blog! Isn't that exciting! It was one year ago this month that I started this blog as a way to showcase my work after MAD Magazine rejected me for a second time. And what do ya know? I've managed to go a full year without loosing interest in this thing!

Anyway, enough of the sentimental crap, here are the comics!

Poor Mindy, she hasn't really been catching any breaks lately.

Ah, if only high school had really been like that!

And now, in celebration of my blog's first anniversary, I'm going to answer the ten most frequently asked questions that I've gotten thus far in the past year:

Are you high or something?
No!

In their first installment, Mike blows up like a balloon. How could he float if it was just regular air?
It's a cartoon people, It doesn't have to make sense! (Besides, in the world of cartoon physics, any gas can make a balloon float)

What's with Mike's hair? Why's it so Spiky?
Hey, that's two questions! But I'll let it slide for now. His hair is spiky because he's part Sayan.

Why does Mindy wear bloomers?Because they're funny.

How come so few of your comics have backgrounds?It's mainly because I want the gags to be the focal point of the stories. That and I suck at drawing backgrounds.

Why's it called "Jon's Crazy Stuff"? It doesn't seem all that crazy.
Because "Jon's Stuff" was already taken.

Who are some of your influences?
Too many to list here, but the biggest would be Jim Henson, Don Martin, Jack Davis, Gary Larson, Chuck Jones, Tex Avery, Mel Brooks, and Antonio Prohias.

You're obviously a huge wrestling fan, so who's your favorite wrestler?That's easy, Jake "the Snake" Roberts.

What have you got against TNA Wrestling?Truth be told, I have nothing against the Nitro Reunion Tour (sorry, couldn't resist). I just don't like how they hold younger, more deserving talent back so they can push a bunch of dudes who were old when I was a teenager as the main eventers. I love Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan, but these dudes need to quit now while people still remember them fondly.

No, seriously, what are you smoking?For the last time I'M NOT HIGH!
Well folks, that's all for now. This month was very busy for me. I just finished an eleven-day run at the Convention Center where I was running video for a surgeon's convention. This thing was huge, attracting 35,00 attendees and taking up the entire building. This is the first day off I've had in over a week, so I have a ton of catching up to do. Needless to say, it'll probably be comics week by the time come back and post again. Until next time, I'll catch y'all later!

UGGGG!!! THERE"S NEVER ENOUGH TIME!!!

Hey folks! Sorry about the lack of updates lately. It's going to be a busy month, so my updates won't be very heavy this month. Still, I just wanted my loyal readers to know that I'm still alive, so here's a blast from the past for y'all, courtesy of our old pals at In Living Color!


If memory serves, this clip comes from around 1991, and was one of the funniest music video parodies that In Living Color ever did. Jamie Fox as a bruised and bandaged Lionel Richie is probably the real highlight of this video. (For those of you weren't alive yet, back in the day, Lionel Richie's wife caught him cheating on her, and instead of divorcing him, she simply beat his ass! Amazingly enough, they actually made up and stayed together afterward. Crazy, no?)

I've had a lot of questions lately about some of the recent events in the wrestling world. To save some time, I'll give some simple answers here:

1. No, I wasn't shocked that Booker T came back, since he had been negotiating with WWE for quite some time.

2. Yes, I was shocked by Kevin Nash's return to WWE, since up until two days before the Royal Rumble, he was in serious negotiations to return to TNA and restart the Main Event Mafia angle. Not only that, Nash had been pretty critical of WWE in recent months over their youth movement. What can I say? Money talks!

3. No, I don't know who is showing up on RAW February 21. Fans seem to be split right down the middle on this one, with one camp thinking it's Sting and the other thinking it's the Undertaker. Given the similarities between the two characters, it's hard to say who it'll be. My gut says it's the Undertaker, but I really hope it's Sting. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

4. No, I don't think it was underhanded how WWE swooped up Nash and Booker T. They were free agents, and TNA should have known better than to start promoting an angle without making sure they had the key members to said angle under contract. Given how many wrestlers Bischoff signed from the WWF and ECW who were only working on handshakes way back when, you'd think he would have known. It's a lesson to future wrestling promoters: verbal commitments don't hold up in court!

Well, that's all for now. I promise that next time I'll be back with new comics. Mike and Mindy are not particularly happy that they're being held back, and you believe you me, you do not want to make those tykes angry! Until next time, I'll catch y'all later!

WHYS SO SERIOUS?!

WOW! How do ya like that! I finally did four posts in a month! It took nearly a full year, but I think I'm finally getting the hang of this blogging stuff.

It would seem Christopher Nolan's latest flick, Inception, has inspired quite a few people out there. And why wouldn't it? It was a good movie and it's really easy to parody. The latest victim of the Inception mash-up bug is none other than the 1984 classic Ghostbusters.


What can I say? Anytime you can make Ghostbusters serious, ya know ya got talent! Personally, I feel the Dumb And Dumber/Inception mash-up was funnier (Let's face it, that one's even harder to make serious!).

Still, I'm waiting for somebody to really take some initiative here, so I'm putting out a challenge:

WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE DO A THREE STOOGES/INCEPTION MASH-UP!!!

Come on aspiring filmmakers. You know you want to! Now that the challenge is out, maybe somebody will really get creative!

Well, that's all for today. I hope to be back next time with some new comics for the viewing public, and perhaps maybe even a couple of Super Bowl Ads from the past! Until next time, I'll catch y'all later!