Cotton Rohrscheib's Personal Blog & Podcast...
Today I launched a project for my friend Shane Henry. Shane has a law firm here in Conway and specializes in Social Security / Disability, Adoption, Business Law, Estate Planning, and several other services. Shane’s website was built upon WordPress and uses the Genesis Framework.
Click on the screenshot above to visit Shane’s website…
Yeah, I’ll be the first to admit I still hold an unhealthy grudge toward Houston Nutt for a host of obvious reasons and I delight in watching his football world fall apart. This week I read a post by Aaron Torres where he went into great detail as to why this year will likely be Houston Nutt’s final chapter in SEC football. I have kidded around on Twitter that it has been rumored that instead of an airplane waiting on him to whisk him away when Ole Miss has had enough, there will likely be a late model mini-van w/ some kids Mom sitting in the driving seat to take him to his next job, coaching varsity football somewhere near Memphis…
In case you missed it, here’s a portion of Pete Boone’s (Ole Miss AD) letter to boosters this past week:
The fullness of the Ole Miss football experience that you deserve and have generously invested in, has not lived up to expectations recently. Coach Nutt and I met today and discussed the current state of Ole Miss football. Both of us are extremely disappointed in our performance this year. We agreed that to be successful, this disappointment must be met head on with solutions for improvement. We discussed several areas that needed improvement and I support Coach Nutt in his effort to correct those areas.
As I have said, Saturday’s performance and our running two-season SEC record are unacceptable. Our commitment to compete at a championship level is as strong as ever and we will succeed! We need your continued support of the team as Saturday is another SEC weekend and we need you here!
Last weeks loss to Vanderbilt cracked me up, Vandy was running their 3rd and 4th string in and out of the game (one time I could have sworn they even had the flute player on the field). This week Ole Miss will also lose to Georgia and it will likely be just as funny…
Hide your kids,
Hide your wife,
Hide your husbands,
because they are sucking everybody’s toes up in here!
I would be remiss if I let every media publication in the country, from Gawker to the Daily Show, weigh-in on this whacky story originating from right here in my hometown, Conway, Arkansas. What’s the story you ask? Well, let’s just say we have a 50yr old pot-bellied male that’s reportedly running around town and sucking on women’s toes. Yep, this guy is seriously running around sucking on women’s toes and everyone that I have talked to around town about this has a bad case of the giggles.
Now, before I go any further, I should state for the record that I am opposed to toe sucking, and I do think it’s probably one of the craziest fetishes I have ever heard about, but to each their own. I heard on the news the other night where it’s not even a felony, it’s just a misdemeanor. So I guess if this guy is caught in the act, with a mouthful of big toe, he could just get a ticket and told to go on his merry way. Also, before any of you get upset with me for making light of this heinous crime where there are obvious victims, let me say that I have sympathy for each of the women who were victimized by this guy. Furthermore, I hope the Conway Police Department makes an arrest on the guy if for no other reason than I want to be able to wear open toe shoes again.
The fact that a Google Image Search turned up this photo rather quickly, along with several that shocked even me, tells me that this whole toe sucking thing probably goes on a lot more than we realize...
The whole chain of events started this week when 3 women reported to the Conway Police Department that they had been approached by this man, who is reportedly either Asian or Hispanic (how does a guy suck on your toes and you not figure out his nationality?) who tells them they have pretty feet and then asks if he can suck their toes. In fact, I have heard from a couple of different sources that he convinced the elderly lady to go along w/ his plan and he loved on her piglets for close to half an hour before he stopped and asked her if he could kiss her, in which she then told him no and that he was weird (apparently being kissed is where she drew the line?). Several media outlets from Central Arkansas immediately reported the story, here’s our hometown newspaper’s initial report of the story…
Well, you would think that having his deviant actions exposed to the world and on every evening newscast in the state that it would deter him, or at lease pressure him into slowing down or moving on to another town right? Nope, he went right back to the same shopping center that he visited previously in search of more toes. This time the police have a pretty good description of the guy as well as the make and model of his pickup truck. The shocking thing about this story though is that this isn’t the first time Conway has had a toe sucking problem, here’s a story from the archives where a man from Conway was arrested in Fayetteville, back then they nicknamed him the “Toe Suck Fairy”, everyone in town is wondering if it’s not the exact same guy. I guess time will tell on this. I will try to keep you guys that are out of state updated on this case via my Twitter and Facebook streams, as well as here on my blog.
Random Thought: Can you imagine walking up onto something like that? A wacky dude mugging down on some elderly woman’s hammer toes?
Now, keep in mind that this is not even the craziest story to come out of Central Arkansas this month, not by a longshot. Something a little more tragic happened this month, something I have refrained from blogging about, but it’s also so bizarre that it’s hard to walk away from. In Maumelle recently a dead guy wearing a dog collar was found in the bathtub with a local television weatherman. According to the homeowner, the two had reportedly been doing coke the night before. All I can say is that must have been some pretty crazy cocaine…
If anything else whacky happens this month I will be sure to point them out, but I just can’t imagine anything topping these two tales. I do have a question though, has anyone seen Dwight David Honeycutt lately??
I recently was asked to assist with the management of social media for one of the fastest growing churches in the United States. I am still in the discovery process of what all social media strategies and presences they have in place right now but it hasn’t taken me long to figure out that they have worked pretty hard to get to where they are at presently. For instance, they have multiple campuses across the state and are opening new ones quite frequently. For each existing campus I have discovered that there are individual Facebook pages / places for each campus in place presenting us with some challenges in terms of management and consistency. Fortunately, there is only Twitter account so that end of the spectrum is less complicated. Over time we plan to tweak the existing social media strategy to make it more effective, but everything we will do will be gradual.
I sat down this evening to discuss social media with a friend from another Church, located out of state, and he was asking me for some suggestions in terms of managing their social media more effectively. We talked for the better part of three hours and I shared a lot of things that he hadn’t considered. I will share a few of the basics we discussed below in hopes that they will help you manage your social media ministry more effectively…
Utilize Both Facebook & Twitter
You have to realize that there are particular people that you are trying to connect to that are going to be on Facebook exclusively and won’t have any interest in Twitter whatsoever, and vise versa. You will find that your older demographic will primarily be Facebook and your younger demographic will lean more toward Twitter. It’s for this reason that it’s very important to utilize both networks in your strategy.
Learn the Rules for Engagement Before Jumping In…
Saavy Twitter users are turned off by organizations or brands that are all about promoting their agenda (products, upcoming events, etc.) and do very little actual interaction with their followers. It’s important to keep an eye on your Twitter stream to make sure you are interacting with your followers just as much as you are promoting your agenda. If you are all about broadcasting content and don’t take into consideration that your followers are following you for a reason and want to interact with you, you might actually find yourself spinning your wheels and not having near the impact you could have potentially…
Pretty much the same rule applies to Facebook as it does Twitter, you should use Facebook to engage your audience. Instead of posting a link to an upcoming event to your wall, try elaborating on the link in your status message, or asking your users a question related to the event. This seems to work a lot better than just posting content like you would on a bulletin board. Another recommendation I make to just about everyone I know that manages their company or organizations page on Facebook is to pay attention to their stream. Not only should you concern yourself with what others are saying or posting on your wall, but you should also be sure not to broadcast the same message over and over again. Let’s say you have an event coming up in two weeks, you definitely want to post the event to your wall several times leading up to the event, but never post these updates back to back. By doing this you could find your fan base unfollowing you because you are a broken record, posting the same message, over and over again. I highly recommend breaking your posts up and posting some fun, engaging status updates or videos in between your posts promoting your event.
With Twitter and Facebook both, it’s very important to respond quickly to your followers / fans when they ask questions. I have found that the Twitter generation especially expects a rapid response when they ask a question, when you fail to respond quickly to questions or comments on Facebook and Twitter both, you run the risk of the user losing interest and moving on.
Think Out of the Box…
When engaging people using social media you have to keep in mind that you need to make an impression very early if you are going to influence them to use your product, brand, or organization. You also have to keep in mind that during the course of a normal day they are engaged hundreds, if not thousands, of times by other brands competing for their time. It helps to think outside the box. I am presently running a trivia campaign for our church that asks users to answer three simple questions related to a popular movie that our weekend service is going to be based upon. As an added perk, we are throwing in some tangible prizes like blu-ray movie players, netflix subscriptions, and movie tickets as an incentive to participate.
For the same series I referenced above, we also have a landing page inside of Facebook that allows visitors to see previews of our upcoming services, to share a link to the page on their walls or inbox to their friends, and finally they can click on a link and receive a free cup of coffee prior to the service if they should decide to attend. I have found that plans like this really do work and have an impact.
Don’t Be Afraid to Get Off Topic…
Today I posted a question on Facebook asking our fans what college football team they thought would win the Southeastern Conference Championship. I posted this question on the page for Wimpy’s Burgers & Fries. Granted, the post had nothing to do with Burgers & Fries, but at the end of the day, who wants to hear us talk about Burgers & Fries all the time? College Football just started last weekend and in the south, our target market, College Football is a big deal. I think our users, or fans, appreciate the fact that we share similar interests with them and are not all about selling them hamburgers on gameday!
Geosocial Has Arrived…
I am a huge fan of Geosocial networking, like Gowalla and Foursquare. These companies are maturing rapidly and will continue to do so over time. Both of the services I mentioned offer some great tools for ministries and non-profits to engage their audience and know who is visiting their campuses and what they are saying. There are way too many dynamic aspects to geosocial for me to go into this post but I highly recommend checking out these services.
Also, I wouldn’t waste a lot of time on Facebook Places as they have announced they are discontinuing Facebook Places for the time being.
I have been talking with some people lately that are considered “Public Figures” on Facebook because they have reached that magic number over 5000 friends and were forced to either stop taking friend requests or to convert their profiles over to “Public Figures”. Let me start out by saying that for most people that fall into this category (celebrities) the problem I am fixing to outline is not a big deal, but for the handful that are affected by it, this can be a serious frustration.
When a user converts their account to a Public Figure on Facebook they basically are becoming a “Page” where their friends are actually converted to “fans” or “likes”. If you manage a page on Facebook for your business or organization you are probably already aware that there are some limitations as to what a page can do. For the most part, a page can only operate inside Facebook by posting links, status updates, photos, and videos to their own wall. Granted, the page, or public profile, can interact with their fans on their own wall by responding to comments, etc., but that pretty much sums up what they are allowed to do. Again, for most celebrities or brands out there, this is probably okay, but let’s say you are a “Public Profile” but still would like to interact with your “friends” or “fans” by posting messages on their walls, etc., you no longer have this ability like you would if you were still a normal user, or “Profile”.
As brands become more and more involved in social media marketing, I can’t help but believe that Facebook will eventually implement something to allow for them to eventually post messages or respond to status updates from their fans at some point in the future. For celebrities or “Public Profiles” that use social media as a tool to interact with their friends, or fan base, on a daily basis, these limitations present some serious frustrations. I am presently working with two individuals that have public profiles that are extremely unhappy with these limitations and would love for Facebook to do something about this pretty quickly so they can get back to engaging their fan base like they use to with their standard profiles.
Any Potential Workarounds?
I have thought about some possible workarounds for this situation and haven’t been able to come up with anything of value other than setting up an entirely different profile and friending a limited amount of people that you want to engage and then unfriend them when you decide to engage others. Keeping an eye on the magic number of friends and making sure that it remains below 5000. This obviously is a lot of work and probably more of a headache than it’s worth.
Another potential solution, and I haven’t completely ruled this out as an option yet, is setting up a Facebook Profile for the user, and then establishing a group, “friends of John Doe” for example. John Doe, our celebrity or public figure, would be one of the administrators for the group and he / she could interact with as many people as he wanted without some of the limitations of a page, but at the end of the day he / she is still back to square one when it comes to posting messages on group members walls, they have to be friends in most cases to be able to interact.
A while back I was asked by a good friend who is in leadership at a church in Little Rock to come speak to his youth group about social media. I am real excited about this opportunity because this is one of those rare occasions where what I do professionally intersects somewhat with my personal faith.
Another reason I am pretty excited is because I get to co-chair this talk w/ my good friend Keith Crawford, also known as @tsudo on Twitter, and another fellow believer… Keith and I have been going back to our own personal networks this evening and crowd-sourcing this question, “What advice do you have for teenagers concerning social media?”, and some of the responses we have received so far have been incredible.
On my Facebook wall alone I have received almost 20 comments in 2 hours and Keith has also had several good responses to his Facebook walls posts here and here and as well as his Twitter stream.
It’s not a big secret that I am a Gowalla fan-boy, have been for a long time now. I see the value of geosocial as an industry insider and a business owner, companies like Gowalla and Foursquare have been leading this charge along with Facebook, who recently announced they were dropping their emphasis on Places, or at least take it in another direction.
I have known for a while now that Gowalla was going to make this huge announcement but in my mind I don’t think I realized their vision would be this awesome. While Gowalla is going to remain one of the top check-in services out there, they are also going to expand the app to include two other awesome areas that are pretty much no-brainers in this day of social networking, storytelling and travel. Today, Josh Williams unveiled the new Gowalla 4.0 app at TechCrunch Disrupt. Here are some comments from the TechCrunch website as to what you can expect to see in version 4.0:
Technically version 4.0, the new version bears little resemblance to the previous versions of the app. Gowalla is no longer predominantly a check-in service. That’s still one aspect of it, but the idea is now to focus on two key areas: travel and storytelling.
When you load up Gowalla, the first thing you see is still a main activity feed. Here you’ll find the activity from your friends. Because Gowalla isn’t completely pivoting away from their core location functionality, much of the data and social connections remain intact. But instead of a stream of check-ins, you’ll notice people hanging out together. They’re checking-in, but they’re also taking pictures and talking to one another in clusters that are known as “Stories”.
The main middle tab is now “Guides”. Here you’ll find curated travel guides for various places around the world. For example, if you load up the app in San Francisco, you’ll see the San Francisco guide, as well as the East Bay guide and the Stanford guide. You can quickly scroll through other guides not near you as well. And Gowalla has the ability to make special guides on the fly. For example, they made a TC Disrupt guide for event-goers.
Clicking on these guides loads up a bit of information about the city as well as all of the must-see spots. Again, because Gowalla has years worth of location data, they’re able to easily populate robust guides. Some of the locations are curated, some are based on check-in data and people favoriting places. The Gowalla “Highlights” feature also plays a role here.
The final tab is your personal profile area. Here you’ll find all of your pictures and all of your Stories.
There are several stories online regarding the Gowalla announcement, here’s a link to another good one. One other thing that I think is important to note, the state of Arkansas is a launch partner w/ Gowalla for this app. Awesome!!!
I haven’t been this excited about an app release like this in a long time. I bet we do a podcast really soon on this…
Brands have used “influencers” for as long as I can remember to promote their products, just think back a few years to when Michael Jordan was at the top of his game and quite possibly the most popular athlete in the world, Nike signed him to a contract to endorse their brand and to release one of the most popular lines of tennis shoes ever created, the Nike Air Jordans, which if I am not mistaken, is still in production years after Michael has retired. Another prime example of where influence can easily be seen is in the fashion industry, remember the 80′s movie ‘Top Gun’ where Tom Cruise wore a leather naval aviators jacket w/ patches on it? Chances are if you grew up in the 8o’s you probably owned at least one ‘Top Gun’ inspired leather jacket, possibly even a pair of Ray-Ban aviators too. Have you ever thought about why we were so drawn to the Nike Air Jordan shoes or the leather bomber jackets? It’s simple, we looked upon Michael Jordan and Tom Cruise as being the coolest of the cool, the height of popularity, and we wanted to be just as cool as they were…
In this day and age I think Athletes and even movie stars have less of an influence than they once did. Musicians, especially from the hip-hop genre probably still have an influence over their fan base moreso than other music genres, but for the most part I think this has been on decline slowly since the fifties in the entertainment industry. Think about it. In today’s society we have so much reality television and real life interaction via social media with everyday people that I think we are finding people that influence us from within our own communities.
In his book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell discusses the way new ideas are transmitted by social influence. New products or fashions are introduced by innovators, who tend to be creative and nonconforming. Then early adopters join in, followed by the early majority. By this time, a substantial number of people are using the idea or product, and normative and informational influence encourages others to conform as well. The early majority is followed by a second group that Gladwell calls the late majority, and then finally by the laggards, who tend to be highly conventional and resistant to change.
I couldn’t agree more with this assessment and I think most brands are finding this to be true as well. Think about this, remember the popular kids in high school that all sat together at the cool table in the cafeteria? What kind of influence would it had had on you if you saw each of them wearing a Whitesnake t-shirt? I think once you form this mental picture in your head you will agree that the rest of the school would eventually want a Whitesnake t-shirt too, and granted peer pressure comes into play here but I won’t go into this too far. I think you would also agree that in addition to wanting a Whitesnake t-shirt, the remaining student body would also look upon Whitesnake’s music favorably, probably most without ever hearing one of their songs. Again, this is influence…
Today, with just about every person you come into contact with having at least a Facebook account, and quite possibly a Twitter account too, it’s safe to say we are all connected on a daily basis, just like school kids in a cafeteria. Yes, I know this is a hokey analogy but play along. We interact with each other socially on a daily basis whether it be through Facebook or Twitter. There are obvioiusly people out there that have more friends or followers than others, and there is nothing wrong with this at all. In fact some people who are very outgoing in real life might have limited social engagement because their strong suit is real life interaction. This is something we have to keep in the back of our minds when marketing to the masses, especially through social media. With this being the case, these people who might have a larger following could be considered to be “influencers” or “thought leaders” inside their own circle or community. Also inside that community you will also have followers, or feeders, who’s actions can sometimes be led by the actions of those they look up to, ie. influencers.
It’s for this reason that companies like Klout have a really important role in the future of marketing for brands that engage socially. I feel as if these companies are on the bottom floor for what will be an even bigger push over the next decade by brands to win influencers by marketing to them directly, almost obnoxiously to try their products. Is this bad, well sort of, in the eyes of a consumer who sees a brand going after their friend aggressively to try their products simply because they have more friends on twitter or facebook I can see how this might not go over too well. But what if a brand is able to win over an influencer, and in turn this prized consumer in turn promotes that brand to their friends or followers religiously, what do you think the results would be?
I have people call me all the time because they know that I have worked in the IT industry for the biggest part of my professional life. Most of the questions I get pertain to what kind of computer they should by, or what do they need to do to fix their computer? They look to me as a person of authority when it comes to IT / Computers, etc. As an influencer, I have a moral obligation to shoot straight with everyone and let them know my honest feelings toward a product or service. What if I have been contacted or somehow compensated by a manufacturer who provides a similar product or service to one that I would normally recommend, even though it’s inferior I would be obligated to recommend them. You see where this is going?
As a community that is starting to learn more and more about identifying influencers, we have to be extremely careful not to allow this data to be misused in marketing by big brands or it could have a serious impact. The company with the most money (ie. influencers, endorsements) would eventually be the only show in town, and this could be dangerous.
I’m just curious, how do you feel about Influence Marketing?
Just like many of you, I won’t ever forget where I was on 9/11. I was in Fairfield Bay, Arkansas watching CNN in my office as the second plane flew into the World Trade Center. I can remember the very moment the second plane crashed into the building right there on my television screen coming to the realization that this whole thing wasn’t a pilot error or gross miscalculation by an airline and that our nation was really under attack. I can also remember the panic once we all realized that there was another plane that had crashed into the Pentagon and another was unaccounted for, possibly headed toward the white house.
I can also remember feeling an assortment of emotions that morning as others crowded around the television with me in amazement. I can remember my initial anger as I watched smoke billowing out of the two towers as people scrambled around the streets of New York covered in ash that someone would do something like this. I can also remember feeling like I had been punched in the gut once I calculated how many people were on board those airplanes and how many were in the World Trade Center unable to get out. I can also remember the confusion that soon followed as to why in the world someone would go to all of the trouble and planning to orchestrate such an attack on us. Being someone that follows the news pretty closely, I knew immediately it was an Al Qaeda attack.
I can also remember the look on President Bush’s face the moment a member of staff approached him as he was sitting in a classroom full of children reading a book and whispered in his ear what had happened. I can also remember hearing the story of Todd Beamer and the people on Flight 93 that decided they weren’t going down without a fight. I can also remember hearing countless, painful tales from people that received phone calls from their loved ones telling them goodbye before their plane went down or their building collapsed. I can also remember the heroic men and women of the New York City Fire Department and Police Department marching into battle at ground zero as bravely as they possibly could knowing that there was a high probability that they would not make it out alive.
I can also remember seeing American Flags hanging up all over town as a sign of support. I can also remember when politicians from both sides of the aisle came together to show unity during this time. Something we haven’t seen since. I can also remember President Bush standing on a burned out fire truck at Ground Zero holding a megaphone announcing to the world that we would get the people that brought down the buildings and orchestrated this attack. I can also remember watching as David Letterman took to the airwaves the following week after the attacks and starting his monologue in a way that I had never seen him act before. I remember Rudy Giuliani leading New Yorkers in a way that few of us would have been able to.
I can also remember watching as we invaded Iraq a short time later wondering why in the world we were going into Iraq when Al Qaeda was supposedly operating in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but I was afraid to question this military action too loudly because everyone else seemed to be on board with the plan, and I was still pretty angry and wanted desperately to see us flex our muscle militarily. I still have questions as to why we proceeded in the manner we did militarily post 9/11 but I will leave that debate to the people that get paid to talk about it. I can remember the huge sense of pride I felt watching on CNN as the United States put on one of the most impressive military operations of all time. I can remember feeling like we weren’t defeated for the first time in a long time as our brave men and women went into battle.
Whenever I see footage of the planes hitting the World Trade Center today in remembrance of the 10th anniversary of this horrific day, all of these emotions come back just like it was yesterday, but yet it was 10 years ago. It’s funny because I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday but I can remember all of these things I have mentioned so vividly…
Fast forward to present day, Bin Laden, the evil mastermind behind this deadly plot is dead and buried at sea, compliments of our nations military. Our politicians are back to arguing with one another over every tiny piece of legislation. There are still radical extremists across the world that would like to do us harm, but our intelligence community seems to be working together a lot better than before, but as a nation we have grown a part again, divided by politics, race, religion, and a host of other reasons. I know that this might be misunderstood but I am going to say it anyway, out of all the bad that happened on this day 10 years ago, a lot of great things were born that we have watched gradually erode. Will we ever be as unified as we were immediately following 9/11?
Ron Hall Autographed a Poster for the Wall in My Office!
Growing up in the mid-south during the 70′s and 80′s, every kid I knew was glued to Memphis Wrestling every Saturday morning at 11am on WMC-TV5. I can vividly remember sitting in the floor with my dad watching Jerry Lawler do battle with bad guys like The Dream Machine, Austin Idol, Handsome Jimmy Valiant or any other bad guy Jimmy Hart had brought in to dethrone the King. I can even remember my mom loading up a minivan full of my 5th grade buddies early one Saturday morning in December, a long long time ago, to go see studio wrestling in person for my 10th birthday. I also remember getting a typed letter in the mail from Lance Russell a few weeks later wishing me a happy birthday and thanking us for coming to the show, I think I took it to school to show off to my friends the next day because he really signed it…
In the pre-internet early 80′s growing up in the country on the farm w/out cable television we had one of the earliest satellite dishes known to man so I had the opportunity to watch wrestling from all over the country but few things captured my attention and drew me in like Championship Wrestling out of Memphis. I am sure that there were a lot of things going on in the world at the time that I didn’t know about but I can’t imagine anything being more important to me as a kid, even the adults talked about wrestling like it was a real deal, sort of a soap opera like ‘Dallas’ or ‘Falcon Crest’, only difference it was men dressed in leotards and tights beating the crap out of one another. Of course we all knew it was a work, kayfabe or fake, but it was presented in such a manner that it didn’t really matter, much different than “sports entertainment” is presented today. Much different.
Well, this evening I talked my friend Charlie, who was also addicted to Championship Wrestling during the 80′s, to tag along with me to a screening in Little Rock of a documentary called; ‘Memphis Heat: The True Story of Memphis Wrestling‘. This is a documentary I had been waiting on for what seemed like an eternity. I was concerned that I had watched the trailer for this film on YouTube so many times that the film would be a disappointment by the time I got to see it on DVD, boy was I wrong. This documentary was off the hook entertaining and was worth the wait. I even got to hang out w/ Ron Hall, one of the producers of the film and the writer of ‘Sputnik, Masked Men, & Midgets: The Early Days of Memphis Wrestling‘.
The documentary was shown at Market Street Cinema in Little Rock, a theater I had never been and didn’t even know how to find, but the venue could not have been better. There was probably 40 or 50 people in the crowd, mostly all men (imagine that), and every time a wrestler would pop up on the screen that we hadn’t seen or heard about in 20 years we would erupt violently in laughter. Prime example, Tojo Yammamoto! I hadn’t seen or thought about that little guy in ages but when I saw him on that screen karate chopping people I was immediately reminded of a time in my hometown when wrestling came through to do a card at our national guard armory and I was so enamored by this guy that I was scared to go ask him for an autograph for fear that he would throw salt in my eyes or hit me with his kendo stick or wooden flip-flops.
This documentary had so many “high spots” as they put it in the wrestling industry that I could literally sit here all evening trying to list them all. It was so awesome to see guys like Jerry Lawler, Bill Dundee, Referee Jerry Calhoun, Jackie Fargo, Handsome Jimmy Valiant, and the late Sputnik Monroe talk about their days in the hotbed that was Memphis Wrestling. One highlight that I will share involves Buddy Wayne, a former wrestler back in the 70′s who went on to become a booker for Memphis Wrestling talking about wrestlers actually wrestling a bear, the entire theater was hysterical. I can remember Buddy Wayne chasing a group of us unruly kids out of the wrestling ring one weekend they were in town doing two shows at our national guard armory. About the second time he had to run us off we thought he was going to have a heart attack.
I could literally go on forever talking about how awesome this documentary was forever but I will wrap this up by promising you this, if you grew up in the mid-south and remember Championship Wrestling, and were drawn in like most of us were at the time, you absolutely have to get to a showing of this film when it comes to your town or own the DVD which will be available in time for Christmas. You will not be disappointed. I promise.
The only critique I have for the film was that they didn’t have Dirty Dutch Mantell in the film. I feel like he could have added a lot to the storyline of the movie. His blog is one of the best blogs out there and his books are probably some of the best written, genuine accounts of old school professional wrestling in existence. Dutch did a lot of the booking in the Memphis Territory alongside Jerry Lawler, Jerry Jarrett, and Bill Dundee.
In case you haven’t already seen the trailer to this film, here you go…
If you would like to order the book, ‘Sputnik, Masked Men, & Midgets: The Early Days of Memphis Wrestling’ by Ron Hall, you can click here to order it through Amazon.com. If you would like to order the DVD, you can do that online at http://memphis-heat.com.
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