Hello Edgeheads. Your shoulder-and-nose-peeling leader is back with another installment of the Edgeucation. I now think I've passed Stevie Richards in cheesily using my ring name in almost every word or move. I do have to admit he may have trumped me with his version of the DDT, the Stevie-T.
Before I get started, I'd like to comment on one of the Matt Facts from SmackDown! last week: "Matt likes to eat slowly and savor his food." Now, I travel with Matt quite a bit, and that statement is true. He's a slow-eating savage. He's, as I like to call him, a hand-eatin? bastard. He does not use utensils, ever. He eats steak with his hands. Get some White Zinfandel in him, the hair comes out, and Caveman Hardy is born, complete with steak juice all over him. The last time I saw Caveman Hardy was in South Africa, although Caveman Edge was kickin? it that night too!
OK, last week I mentioned that I might bring up some stories about the road and Rob Zombie. It seems like many of my e-mails concern one of the two, so here goes.
One great road story involves two vans, myself, Rhyno, Christian, Joe E. Legend, Zakk Wyld (the wrestler), Chi Chi Cruz, a few others, a frozen lake in Manitoba at 4 a.m. in minus-50-degrees (Celsius) weather. You might have heard this one before, but it's worth repeating.
It was the winter of 1996, I believe. We had just finished a show at Gods Lake Narrow up in the frozen tundra of northern Manitoba. Put it this way, we were a 24-hour drive north of any real civilization (Winnipeg). To put that in to terms you might understand, that's like driving from Toronto to Ft. Lauderdale (which I've also done for spring break in high school, but we won't get into that).
This was the last show of the tour, and we all voted to make the drive that night, as opposed to waiting until the next day. Our promoter, Tony Condello (a one of a kind in this business, and that's saying something), wanted to stay the night. In hindsight, he was right, but we were sick of making Kraft dinner in the school home economics room and sleeping on blue gym mats. We had visions of dumpy beds and bowls of $2.99 all-you-can-eat pasta dancing in our heads!
So I offered to take the first shift of driving, and we'd alternate non-stop until we got to Winnipeg. To get off Gods Lake Narrow, we had to drive across a lake. This lake took an hour to drive across at 60 kilometers an hour. There was no land as far as the eye could see, and it was midnight with a full moon. It was pretty damn creepy. We had to follow orange pylons to stay on the supposedly "safe" parts of the lake, all the while it made cracking noises. The locals said it was just the current under the ice. Oh well, that made me feel better! Well it took an hour, but we made it across, due, of course, to my superior driving skills. Around 3:50 a.m., I was drowsy, even with Pantera blaring from the stereo to keep me up. It was about this time that I looked up and saw we were approaching our last lake. Only one problem: there was a football-field-sized hole in it! Let's just say I snapped to pretty quick, yelling every expletive you can think of and waking everyone else up in the process. I pumped the brakes and got it to a stop before we hit the hole, but my van full of wrestlers was already piling out. The ring van behind us, carrying all of our clothes, the ring and four wrestlers was able to stop, thankfully, before hitting us. Now, no one besides a troupe of wrestlers is stupid enough to be on these "roads,? quite possibly for the whole winter, so we could have been in some major (as in death) trouble!
Tony, in his infinite wisdom, decided it would be safe to drive across. He found a stick, stuck it in the icy water and it was only about a foot deep. Only my ass! That was enough for me, so I tossed the keys to Tony and said, ?Go crazy, boss.?
So Rhyno, El Fuego, Christian and myself all piled back in, while Tony acted like he had the situation under control. Then, wham! He gunned it, and we were off, at about 2 mph. The water was freezing and hitting the bottom of the van, we were redlining and about to stall, all of us screaming in Tony's ear, while Pantera was still screaming from the speakers, but I'll hand it to the little bastard, he finally got us across the 100 yards or so. I think Rhyno actually got out and kissed the snow-covered ground.
The ring van, being driven by another wrestler, Brian Jewel, had other plans. There was actually a small, clear path to the shore beside the hole, and he decided that was the way to go. By this point, we had all walked along this path back to the ring van in case they needed any help. Tony tried to tell Brian it was the wrong way to go, but he went anyway. He got about two feet and dropped to the wheel wells, while still driving forward, deeper and deeper. Water was shooting everywhere, and it was damn cold. I'm talking hypothermia cold. So Zakk, Joe and Cheech all piled out of the ring van trying to dodge the water when something even crazier happened.
I was standing next to Christian, when suddenly he just dropped, like someone had cut his legs off. I thought he slipped and took a bump on the ice. Nope, instead he fell through the ice up to his thighs! Now I can look back and laugh my ass off at this, but at the time it was pretty scary (but still in the back of my mind I was laughing!). This sent Rhyno over the edge (bad pun intended)! He saw Christian go through and hightailed it. He looked like the roadrunner, his thick stumpy legs were spinning so fast. Only problem was, in his panic, he took off back towards Gods Lake Narrow! By the time he realized his mistake, Christian was pulling himself out of the water (with me helping and laughing; hey, it wasn't me!). As we got Christian to his feet, Rhyno stampeded by us and knocked Christian on his ass again. In hindsight, it was awesome. Rhyno was about 325 at the time, and I've never seen a man that thick move so fast!
So Christian walked back to the van while his pants and boots had already frozen to his legs. The rest of us got footholds on what ice was left and tried to push the ring van back the 10 feet forward it had dug itself into, while still dodging geysers of water. Finally, between Joe, Fuego, Cheech, Zakk and I, we got it back to the point where it dropped. Now we had to try and push it up about two feet onto solid ice again. By now it was 4:30 a.m. or so, and we just couldn't do it. This is where the tagline "Get the Rhyno" came from. He was the strongest dude on the tour, so I went to go get him.
When I got to the original van, Christian had his bare feet on the heating vents, teeth chattering away, while his boots and socks were frozen straight up. Rhyno was in the middle row of seats, swaying back and forth like Dustin Hoffman in ?Rain Man,? praying. He honestly thought we were going to die. He was the only American on the trip, so he wasn't quite used to this. Finally, I got him to let go of his death grip on the seat and walked with him arm in arm, like he was a little old lady crossing the street. We got him down there and the Man Beast kicked in and helped us push that bad boy out.
By now the sun was starting to peek over the forest. The ring van took Tony's route and made it through. We were back on our way by about 5:30am, de-thawing all the way to Winnipeg!
I'd like to say that was my last winter death tour, but it wasn't. All in all, I probably did close to 20 of these trips, either in the winter, where we drove across lakes, or in the summer, where we took four-seater pontoon planes and landed on the lakes we usually drove across. But it was all worth it, and I made some great friends along the way. Tony, Don "Cyrus" Callus, Bad News Brown, Gerry Morrow, Johnny Smith, Cheech, Dr. Luther, and my first meeting with two fellas by the name of Chris Jericho and Lance Storm. Most of those guys were smart and only did our TV tapings, though. We were the gluttons for punishment. If you liked this story, there's a million more. Maybe one day I'll publish this stuff.
On to the Devil Man, Rob Zombie. It all started when Christian and I did our infamous split in T.O. (Toronto). When I cam back on TV, I wanted to reinvent my character, starting with some new music. Here's where we have to rewind for a second. You see, I've always been a big Rob and White Zombie fan. The first time I heard them was as I was getting my tattoo done at age 18. From then on, they were a constant part of my CD wallet that I brought everywhere. Fast forward back to the split. I approached Kevin Dunn (executive producer of RAW, HEAT, Tough Enough and everything else) about new music when I came back. I knew Rob had a new disc coming out in November, so I asked Kevin if it would be possible. Since it was only September, I didn't think it would be, but Kevin's eyes lit up, my eyes lit up and a call was made to Rob's people
A week later, I had an advance copy of three songs and my choice of which to use. Well, ?Never Gonna Stop? just jumped out because that's the way I look at my character. Keep beatin? me down, I'll keep getting? back up. So it was decided, they were cool with it, and I was asked to introduce the song, played for the first time live, on stage for the Merry Mayhem tour with Ozzy Osbourne in Albuquerque, N.M. It was going to be tiring, but I was in. From New Mexico I had to fly to England to wrestle Christian in a cage, come back Sunday morning, host HEAT at The World on Sunday night and drop the Intercontinental Title to Test the next night on RAW. Whew! But it was well worth it.
I got to the concert with Alanah, and Rob was backstage walking his dog (Dracula), and we started shootin' the s***. I came to find out that he thought I was being forced to use his music. I told him the tattoo story, and that I asked to use his stuff. We hung out in his dressing room and drank Red Bulls with his band (also great guys) while our wives talked about dogs. I went on stage that night, introduced the song and stayed out there for the whole thing. I assumed my microphone was off after the intro, so I sang along. The crowd was so loud, I couldn't hear anything. Well, I've gotten a tape since, and my mic was on, and I suck. But at least I fulfilled another cool dream, singing onstage with Rob Zombie. Now when I hit Los Angeles, we try to head out for dinner, and he's usually at the Staples Center for our shows. He's a class act, totally down to earth and a great guy. It's nice when someone you are a fan of lives up to your expectations. So don't be surprised if you see Rob Zombie and Edge walk into a diner near you! Trust me, you'll notice!
Going up to Canada in June for some promotional work and visit my ma. I'll be presenting some kind of award with Trish Stratus at the Much Music Awards (the Canadian version of MTV). Should be fun, check it out if ya can, and see how pathetic my stack-of-dimes neck looks. It will be my first television appearance since the surgery.
Received an interesting e-mail this week from Vixen Gratton over in Portsmouth, England. He told me he has Jeff Hardy, Matt Hardy (giving Christian the Twist of Fate) and me all tattooed on his back, and he's damn proud of it. He doesn't care, he said, he just respects us. Well, respect to you my friend, and thanks for holding Edge Appreciation Night at the local metal pub, the Air Balloon (although that doesn't sound very metal). His son Jack has Type 1 diabetes, so all the best to Jack from the ol' Edge Army!
To end things this week, I wanted to add a little paragraph sent to me by Cara Nardone, soon to be Cara Jordan. I thought it was kinda cool.
Work like you don't need the money
Love like you've never been hurt
Sing like nobody's listening
Dance like nobody's watching
Live like it's Heaven on Earth
Not to get too deep on my Edge Addicts, but I thought that sounded like a pretty good way to look at things.
Good luck on your upcoming marriage, Cara.
Until next week, you have been Edgeucated!