Killer And Psycho

Friday December 5th, 2008 - St. Charles, IL/Lake Villa, IL

How many people in life can say they’ve done more than one thing they truly love to do with any amount of success? Not many. Finding one thing is rare enough for most people but I’ve been truly blessed to be able to find several. I’ve made a living at comedy for my entire adult life and I’ve also been in and out of radio and worked all over the country.

It was FUN. Nobody else in my family seemed to get that concept. They were always on some mission to not only make their own lives miserable but to spread it around to me as well. My grandfather worked a job he hated as did my father and uncle too. What for?

I never bought in to that theory and I still don’t. I may be struggling but I’m having a lot of fun doing it. I love comedy more now than I ever did and even if radio is a powder keg I still love being on the air. It’s the firings that get old. Being on the air is always a blast.

One of my very favorite things I’ve ever done was be a pro wrestling ring announcer for many years. I eventually ended up buying the ring and truck to haul it and I ran shows for about a year. That was a very tumultuous year but looking back on it I still enjoyed being around ‘the boys’ as wrestlers call themselves. I still consider many of those guys friends.

I’ve always said my biggest wealth resource are my wonderful friends and contacts I’ve made over the years. I have comedy friends, radio friends and wrestling friends too. I love them all but I would have to say by far the most interesting group would be the wrestlers.

I happened to hear from two of them today that I hadn’t heard from in quite a while and I was thrilled to hear from both of them. Coincidentally they used to be tag team partners and wrestled as ‘The Texas Hangmen’. They wore chaps and black masks and when they came into the ring they brought bull ropes tied into nooses. They were very intimidating.

They were a great team and very good at what they did and they went by the treacherous ring names ‘Killer’ and ‘Psycho’. They were total bad guys in the ring but two of the very nicest people I’ve ever met outside of it. I would trust either of them with my first born.

Back when we met we all had dreams of glory. We were in our twenties and were in the businesses we wanted to be in. Wrestling and comedy were both booming then and it was a time of hope and optimism. All of us had our chances but for whatever reason none of us have really hit that elusive next level. We’ve made our living at it but we aren’t stars.

Now we’re in our forties and we all have a different perspective. We are realistic and if all we ever do is what we’ve done we’ve still all done quite well for ourselves. Who else can say they have an 8x10 with ‘To Dobie from your friends Killer and Psycho’ on it and mean it when they say it‘s one of their most prized possessions? I think I’m the only one.

We’ve all come such a long way from where we started and we’re all seasoned and very experienced now. We beat the odds and made it past where 99.999% of anyone ever does.