A Lion's Tale: Around the World in Spandex (5 page)

We also made a point of spending time together at his office, which just so happened to be upstairs from a convenience store that rented WWF videotapes. So we rented the latest tape, ate some Kentucky Fried Chicken (well what
did
you think KFC stood for?), and watched wrestling. My relationship with my dad at that time was based on body slams, biscuits, and Bibles and we became closer as a result of the three.

Now that I’d decided the course of my life, I knew I would have to get a whole lot bigger. I joined a gym, stuffed myself with protein (along with a sock), read every muscle magazine I could find, and ordered the Arnold Schwarzenegger EZ Curl Bar to “Get 21 inch arms just like Arnold.”

One day while watching Stampede, my heart jumped out of my mouth when I saw an ad for the Hart Brothers Pro Wrestling Camp. This was my chance to be trained by Owen and the entire Hart family, including Stu Hart himself! I wrote to the address on the screen and a couple of weeks later when I opened the reply, I found out two things:

1. I had to be eighteen to go to wrestling camp, and

2. I should be about 225 pounds.

The letter had been written by a guy named Ed Langley, who was the representative for the Hart Brothers Camp. His advice on weight gain was to eat beef, fish, liver, and to drink only milk... a direct violation of Koko B. Ware’s rule. He also advised me to lift weights for two and a half hours a day and run three miles a day. So I ate raw eggs and liver (trying not to barf) and lots of fish and beef. Every shift at work, I’d weigh myself on the deli scale to check my progress. I started at 175 and my grand plan was to be 235 pounds by the time I left for wrestling school.

I’d decided on 235 as my target weight about a year earlier when I met Ricky the Dragon at an annual car show called the World of Wheels. The show featured fancy funny cars, soap opera stars, Playboy Playmates, and more importantly, a WWF wrestler! Of course I couldn’t give a shit about seeing Michael Knight from
All My Children
or meeting Miss March, Mary Jane Rottencrotch, I just wanted to meet my hero himself, Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat! I met Wallass at the show and tried to decide what I was going to say to him, as we figured we’d have time to ask the Dragon one question. We got our tried-and-true picture system ready and when I reached the front of the line, my big question for Ricky was “How tall are you?” (Hours to think of an inquiry or a witty anecdote and “How tall are you?” was the best I could do. The trend continued.)

Ricky replied that he was 5 foot 11 and when I asked him how much he weighed, just as he answered 235 pounds, Wallass snapped the picture. When I got the picture back we were both actually in the shot, even though Steamboat’s eyes were half closed and I looked like a complete tool with bad hair and my mouth wide open like a Muppet. Wallass’s photographic ineptitude had struck again.

Steamboat was the same height as me but a whole lot bigger. From that moment on, working out became my second biggest hobby. My biggest hobby was my band.

I started playing bass guitar when I was fourteen years old when my cousin lent me his Paul McCartney Hofner bass. I kinda knew my way around a guitar, after taking lessons when I was nine from a guy called Brad Roberts. Coincidentally, Brad would become internationally famous as the leader of the Crash Test Dummies, best known for the song “Mmm Mmm Mmm.” I knew they had really made it big when Weird Al Yankovic parodied the track.

When I entered junior high, I made the rock ’n’ roll decision to give up the guitar and take up the trombone instead. You could hold a gun to my head and ask me why I felt the need to be a member of the brass section but I still can’t come up with an answer. I’d like to tell you that there was a hot French horn player or that I was into Count Basie, but there wasn’t and I wasn’t. Trombone? Even being an oboe player was cooler.

My trombone phase not withstanding, I was getting more into heavy metal, especially when I noticed that all the girls I liked were wearing shirts of bands like Ozzy Osbourne, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest. I decided if I ever wanted to actually talk to a girl, I’d better figure out who these guys were, pronto. So I bought
Blizzard of Ozz
by Ozzy and it instantly corrupted me. The Beatles were great, but Ozzy had become the new sheriff in town.

I completely immersed myself into the metal scene and became the Clive Davis of my neighborhood by discovering Metallica, Anthrax, Raven, Saxon, Trouble, Nasty Savage, Megadeth. I’d go to the record store and look through the bins to check out album covers and the band pictures, buying the ones that I thought looked cool.

I was such a metaller that I created major controversy with my metal friends after an appearance I made on the local video program
CitiVision.
“Chris, do you like Bryan Adams?” the host inquired.

“Yeah, he’s okay,” I said, not caring that I really thought he sucked. I just wanted to be on TV.

But the second I said it, I knew I’d made a horrible mistake. To the Iron Maiden crowd in my school, admitting that Bryan Adams was “okay” was akin to treason...the ultimate sin! Any true metalhead should spit on the grave of Bryan Adams and flash his family their nutsacks. As a result of my miscue, I was subjected to the worst buggings I’d endured since I was seen crying after Spock died during Star
Trek II—The Wrath of Khan.
“You cried when Spock died! You like Bryan Adams!” Becoming a Mathlete seemed to be my fate, until I quickly did something to regain my street cred. I formed a band.

My friend since birth, Kevin Ahoff was a really good guitar player and we started jamming together. While most teenagers dabbling in guitar first learn songs like “Smoke on the Water” or “Iron Man,” the first song I ever learned on bass was a complex little ditty called “Revelation (Life or Death)” by Trouble. Then we recorded the obvious follow up to a Trouble song...the theme from
Peter Gunn
. I don’t get the connection either. But it was the first time I’d experienced the magic of playing a piece of music with another musician...and I was hooked.

When I started high school, the first band I was in was called Primitive Means (great name), which was like a punk version of Chicago; ten guys in the band with three or four guitarists and anybody who came over could join in. We’d write riffs and make up lyrics on the spot. Since nobody else wanted to sing, I decided to pull double duty. Warren the drummer’s nickname was Rocky and after a few weeks of messing around, only he, Kevin, and I were left, so we formed another, heavier band named Scimitar. We jammed for months every day after school in Rocky’s garage. When the popular hot chicks who lived down the street were walking home, we impressed and regaled them with our version of “You Really Got Me,” Van Halen style. We’d crank it up just as they walked by and play “Da Na Na Nah Na” 100 times in a row. They still wouldn’t give us the time of day in school, but for those 2 minutes and 45 seconds of rock stardom they were our groupies.

Scimitar rocked Westwood Collegiate for our entire high school run, mostly doing Iron Maiden and Metallica covers—pretty intense stuff for a bass player in a three-piece. When a citywide Battle of the Bands was announced we entered and were accepted. We played a cover of “Peace Sells...But Who’s Buying” by Megadeth and a glam/prog rock original called “City Nights.” For my stage outfit I made a pair of jeans with mirrors glued on the sides, cut the feet off a pair of socks for wrist bands, and drew a big, black ? on a T-shirt, which was my subtle way of questioning foreign policy against Aborigines...or something. When the battle began, our set got off to a rough start when Kevin stepped on his cord and pulled it out of his guitar. We had to restart “Peace Sells” from the beginning and I felt like we were fucked. But we pulled it together, the crowd responded, and we rocked to the second round!

In round two, we totally threw down, inspired by the kids in the crowd who were singing along to “City Nights.” I’d like to say that we won the battle and surpassed the Guess Who as the biggest Winnipeg band of all time, but I can’t. We ended up losing to a band called the Fourth Floor who did a kick-ass version of “Back in the USSR” by the Beatles. Beaten by my own favorite band! Even though we lost, it was still an amazing night. We were backstage in our own dressing room/closet playing in front of kids from all over the Peg who knew our song. Stepping onto the stage under the glow of the stage lights in front of what felt like 5,000 (50) screaming fans was the ultimate rush. I began to think that I could do that for a living.

The battle was filmed for a local TV show and we got one tape of it that we were supposed to share. We decided we’d take turns with it and when the tape got to my house, I watched it once and it ruled. The next morning, I went downstairs to watch it again, only to be mortified when I saw that my mom had accidentally taped over it with an episode of
The Love Boat
! Scimitar’s finest hour had been erased forever, replaced with Isaac serving mai-tais to Charo and Jonathan Winters.

The need to perform continued and I landed the role of lead villain Bill Sykes in our high school musical
Oliver!
I threw myself into the role by spray-painting my hair black, introducing an Indiana Jones–style bullwhip into Sykes’s repertoire, and practicing my English accent constantly. The play culminated with my big death scene as I plummeted off the back of the stage (landing on a BTWF regulation-sized PORTaPIT), causing the entire crowd to erupt in glee. I felt like Eugene Levy in
Waiting for Guffman
, when he looks at the camera and says, “I have to perform, I must entertain.”

My résumé continued to grow as my group of buds and I became the masters of the Air Band. Air Band was a lip-synching competition where a group would get up on stage and pantomime a song—and we were the best in the city. Instead of doing one song straight through by one band, we took two songs from two different bands and put them together. “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go” by Wham! was combined with the heaviest metal song we could find, “Damage Inc.” by Metallica. We called ourselves the Wham Bangers and the crowd yawned as they saw another group of guys dressed in black leather and studs, miming the opening of the Metallica song. But their yawns turned to looks of confusion, as right when it was about to explode, you heard “Jitterbug,” and Wham! kicked in. Then balloons and confetti fell on the stage as a pair of hot preppy girls came out and started dancing. Then—boom—it’s back into the super-fast guitar solo from Metallica. It was so original and entertaining that we won the city championship.

Not to be outdone, the next year we took the original country version of “Take This Job and Shove It” by Johnny Paycheck and combined it with the punk version by the Dead Kennedys. Then we had the Johnny Paycheck part sung by a little person named Gary Dyson. At our high school, we had more midgets than black people (two midgets, one African-Canadian) and we took advantage of that. We won again, took our prize money, and blew the entire wad on hookers and blow. Actually we got nothing as the cash was donated to the Student Council. When we won again the next year with a Village People dance extravaganza called the Village Inn Guys, we made sure to have the check written out to Chris Irvine Esquire. Then we blew it on hookers and blow.

CHAPTER 4

MATH FOR HINDUS

I
was only seventeen when I graduated from high school, which meant I had to wait another year before I could go to wrestling school. When Wallass told me he was going to apply to Red River Community College to take a course called Creative Communications, I was intrigued. More importantly, CreeComm would give me something to do until I was old enough to go to wrestling school.