Learning from the best + Recent Happenings

It's been a long time since I've done a blog post. It seems like I've done half a dozen shoots while being in-and-out of various stages of being run down or having a weakened immune system.

Life is still busy and chaotic....and, to be honest, I suspect it'll be changing anytime soon. It's not as horrible as it sounds and I wanted to write this blog for the last 6 weeks or so ---- so I think it'll be a fun read.

TRANSMISSION & LAWN MOWER PROBLEMS

Let's start with the shitty stuff. During Royal Rumble weekend, I was up at Tropicana Field (where they were holding said event) when my transmission finally gave out. Of course, it's beyond the warranty and I didn't get any additional insurance to cover such a problem. 

I had to have my vehicle towed 30+ miles back to my house where it has been sitting for the last 2 weeks or so. 

Tomorrow I plan to send it up to the garage where it'll be for a couple days before it is pack in action. 

I'll be waiting for Blake Starr to come save the day by fixing my lawn mower, which needed a new carburetor. Blake has been a huge help and knows a ton of stuff.

We got together with Scrappy and a few buddies to catch Monster Jam in Tampa recently. It's becoming like an annual event for us. We're still kids at heart and are in awe of monster trucks flying through the sky!

MegaCon ORLANDO

One of the reasons that I've had to leave my vehicle parked was due to my wacky wrestling movie being picked for a Film Festival being held at a HUGE Comic Con. My film was going to be played on Sunday, but I noticed they had some wrestling going on during the event and I knew I wanted to get some extra eyes on movie...plus I always like sneaking around behind the curtains to try to spot what's going on with the celebs backstage. 

Let's start at the beginning...

I received a text from a wrestler (formerly of WCW & TNA Wrestling) congratulating me on having the movie selected for the Film Festival. Now this is surreal to begin with, somebody I watched on TV as a kid is messaging me saying congrats - it's wild! However, it didn't really hit me that this was as important and as monumental as it was. 

At the time, I was somewhere between Palm Springs & Los Angeles...hell, to be fair, I may have even been wandering out in the desert area of Slab City USA & Bombay Beach.

I definitely wasn't fully comprehending how big MegaCon Orlando is...it's huge. An estimated 200k people on Saturday of the event alone. Actors from Star Wars, 90s TV, hundreds of vendors, music and who knows what else? 

I spent Thursday to Sunday in the MegaCon area and only saw pieces of the 3rd floor and the 2nd floor. The more I moved around, the more I realized there was even more upstairs and downstairs...and even stuff off-premise. Each night I went back to the hotel exhausted. It was awesome and highly productive for the film.

We didn't win the Film Festival, but we gained a lot of supporters and saw a lot of interesting things.

RON SEXTON & KID LEOPARD

Now, why was I in Los Angles/Palm Springs? I was visiting my friend, Ron. One of the guys that really helped me come up in the wrestling world and in the video wrestling world. Ron has taught me a lot and I always thought of his company as a Hollywood of underground wrestling with its production values - lighting, cameras, computers, photographers, make-up artists, branding, etc. 

Ron's company always felt different from what I experienced at Kid Leopard's place. One is in a massive warehouse with endless costume racks and production equipment...while the other is in a house with milk crates of speedos and a small closet of wrestling boots. 

I liked wrestling for both places and both owners took time to show me a lot of things that I still use today. Kid Leopard assisted in honing my wrestling skills and understanding the importance of making sure the camera got to see what we were doing. He taught me new holds, new poses for photos, story telling and that anything can be a place to wrestle - whether a ring, or mat, or shed, or gazebo. Wherever!

Ron took the time to teach me the finer things outside the ring. How to properly film a wrestling match, costumes, web site stuff, paperwork, taxes, and more story telling in videos. Once while I was in Los Angeles, he hired a couple wrestlers to wrestle just so I could practice my camera work with him overseeing it.

I wonder what he did with that footage - probably still in his vault collecting dust. 

Which is part of why I was out in Palm Springs. Ron has a home there and invited me out for dinner and to hang out for a few days. He had just got some type of fancy pressure cooker (it has a different name than that, but I'm basic in the kitchen) and wanted to show off his chef skills. He teased me with a little tortilla pizza he made before the main meal, which took longer than usual to cook and I jokingly told him I'd be letting everyone who reads the blog know how much like his wrestling videos and cooking were alike....THEY ARE OVERCOOKED, GAVE ME THE RUNS & WERE TASTELESS! 

Obviously, that's a joke and Ron knows that. We had some good laughs. Went to the local air museum and a local spot for breakfast, but most of our time together was at his house chatting about the future of Can-Am...or as I'm dubbing it CAM-AM.

Ron actually just texted me back as we are working on breathing some life back into the Cadillac that used to rollover the competition. 😉 It's a slow moving train, but we're going to make it work.

LOS ANGELES & HOLLYWOOD 

As I get older, Los Angeles loses some of its' appeal to me. Maybe I'm just ready for somewhere quiet for a little while...with some space to piss outside.

We did a shoot up in Canoga Park & in the Hollywood Hills of an AirBNB that was unusually reasonably priced. Originally, I had planned to do the shoot for Ron's website and wanted something unique from what I've been seeing all over the wrestling world lately. I tried to film with all fresh faces and I was doing great until I came across somebody I didn't recognize from a previous shoot.

Luke London was less muscular last time I saw him, which was less than a year ago. He was also using a different name at the time. We had texted back and forth under a new number he had and set up a time for he and his buddy to come by to wrestle. As soon as he got out of the car, he recognized me and explained who he was. HOLY SHIT! What a difference a year can make. 

He's a hilarious guy and made the evening very fun and filled with laughs and smiles...and some shaking of our heads. He's a character. Make sure you check out BEVERLY THRILLS 90210, which is something I wanna keep going, especially when I need an excuse to get out to Los Angeles to meet up with Ron.

FLORIDA ACTION & WHAT'S NEXT

I just did a small shoot with a new guy that looks like Johnny Depp and have another shoot planned for Tuesday with a couple new faces. I really should slow down on filming as I have 200+ videos of matches right now....and I'm planning to tackle a big collection of private custom videos in the near term.

I'm also thinking of an annual Wrestler4Hire Magazine. Some exclusive interviews. Maybe behind the scenes articles on what it's like at a shoot. Maybe something about what it's like commissioning a custom video or a private wrestling match. Maybe a section called "From The Mind of A Madman"...haha. This is a recent idea that I thought could be interesting. 

What would you like to see in the annual magazine? Loads & Loads of pics I'm sure. 

We will be launching an OnlyFans account as soon as I finish setting things up...or at least that is my plan. We know how the best laid plans of mice and men can go. 

Oh yeah, I finished a couple books recently. Any Mitch Albom fans out there? That guy writes some great stuff. I think I've read like 5 or 6 of his stories, maybe even more.

WEBSITE PROBLEMS

I should've put this at the top, but my mind gets ahead of me, so sometimes important things end up in the wrong place. 

I recently figured out 2 website flaws...

1) Foreign language addresses are being rejected due to some characters not being readable to the system. I've reached out to many people and will continue to do so when I see this problem. It's a simple solution. 

Just change any unique characters in foreign language to an equivalent to the English symbol/letter such as.... à, è, ì, ò, ù  to a, e, i, o, u......and things like "ß" to the letter B or whatever is similar

2) American Express does NOT work with the site. I've chatted with a few people in the office of the processor for the site and it seems like it's a headache to get AmEx approved and most people have a Visa or MasterCard, so if you've had problems with website using an American Express this is why. 

Please help me out by using your Visa or MasterCard - I do appreciate you understanding

BONSOIR for now!