More Than One Sentence About the Competition

[Manhattan White]

~*~An APW camera crew finds Manhattan White staggering through the hotel’s bar from the bathroom toward a corner booth. He’s slurring to himself words that we can’t quite make out. His hair is askew and his shirt is in disarray as if he’d been in a physical altercation. He stops at the end of the table in a corner booth that is in darkness. His right foot shifts and the clinking of empty bottles and glasses banging together break the silence of the room.~*~

MW: Hey, it’s tiiiiiiiiiiiime toooooooo go. I haaaaaaaaave a shoooooot tooooooo film.

Irish Accent: Aye, laddie we need to talk a bit, first.

MW: Hoooooooooow are yoooooooooou not slurrrrrrrrrring your words?

Irish Accent: I’m Irish, lad. Not some puss-ass American with more sass than sense.

MW: What’s to talk about?

Irish Accent: Your shoots are boring as Hell. That’s why your cousin sent us to help you out.

MW: NO! I won’t conform! I won’t –

Irish Accent: Ahh, shut yer hole! This isn’t about being some pretty boy for NAACP, or RAAIF, or whatever the hell yer company’s called. This be about style. This be about credibility. This be about not boring the piss out of yer fans when they finally wise up and see the light, laddie.

~*~The scene cuts to a disclaimer. It pleads with its viewers to not copy what they see on television, and do not under any circumstance, send those videos in, they will not be viewed.

Manhattan White stands in front of the camera as a guitar strums a few chords. He looks haggard, as if he’d been hanging out all night in a hotel bar with professional alcoholics. He’s wearing cut-off jeans, no shirt, and aviator sunglasses.~*~

MW: Hi, I’m Tommy Knoxville, and this is Drawn-Out Shoot About Nothing.

~*~Manhattan White is sitting in a room with a couple homeless people obviously paid with ham sandwiches, a bottle of rye, and three one dollar lotto tickets (whatever that’s supposed to look like to make it obvious to you, but cut me some slack, I’m running out of time, here). Manhattan looks directly into the camera, pleading with it.~*~

MW: This is a little goddamn obvious, isn’t it? The correlation between Knoxville and that numbnuts that got paid to do dumb shit, and then him and his friends laugh like a couple juveniles when it’s all said and done. I mean, granted, he sits around with a bunch of his friends that no one gives a crap about, talking about stuff that no one cares about –

Irish Accent: What kind of stuff?

MW: I don’t know, I don’t actually pay attention to the nonsense he talks about. There’s a bunch of threats involving people that don’t even have any bearing to this company, just a bunch of personal crap.

Irish Accent: So, they be shoots about nothing…

MW: “Aye…”

Irish Accent: Watch it, lad.

~*~We cut to a scene outside a stone apartment building. There’s a noise like a cat running up and down the strings of a bass guitar before we find Manhattan White pacing inside the kitchen of an apartment. A homeless man flings the door to the apartment open and slides across the wood floor. His hair is brushed toward the ceiling, his pants are belted to just about his nipple-line.~*~

Homeless Guy: Manhattan, you’ll never believe what happened today!

MW: What happened today, Lamer?

Homeless Guy: I found the best soup you’ve ever had.

MW: The best soup?

Homeless Guy: The best soup!

MW: The best soup, EVER?!

Homeless Guy: The best soup, EVER!

MW: EVER?

Homeless Guy: EVER!

MW: Where’s George?

Homeless Guy: …..

MW: …..where’s George?

Homeless Guy: I’m sorry, now I’m confused.

~*~Manhattan sighs and looks into the camera, clearly breaking character.~*~

MW: Yea, I’m not real certain about this, either. What does this have to do with wrestling?

Irish Accent: Nothing.

MW: Nothing?

Irish Accent: Noth—

MW: Stop with the back and forth nonsense!

Irish Accent: We’re ripping on Knoxville’s tedious shoots that have nothing to do with anything that’s wrestling oriented until he starts whining about comebacks and then we sprinkle in two or three insults about him, and we’re golden. We insult the competition AND we’re mocking his style of shoots. Two birds, one shoot.

MW: And we’re going to entertain fans by riffing on a show that’s been in syndication for a decade?

Irish Accent: His shoots are about nothing. The show is about nothing.

MW: Right, I get the connection, this is just dumb. Maybe I should just go back to what I was doing before.

Irish Accent: Oh, right laddie. You know better than a manager that’s led two tag teams to championships, and taught yer cousin how to be a champion, AND to defeat his arch nemesis.

MW: His arch nemesis was a woman.

Irish Accent: Aye, but nothin’ is wilder than the spiteful actions of a crazy-ass wife. Keep that in mind when you go gettin’ involved with the ladies…….laddie.

MW: Whatever. I’m not doing this. This is stupid and boring to me. What’re we going to do?

Irish Accent: Don’t ye worry, lad. This shoot may be shit, but ye got what it takes in the ring. That pretend ruffian hasn’t got a candle to hold up to ye. And once yer other help gets out of TSA’s custody, we’ll be good to go for yer next set of shoots. It’ll be gold from here on out.

MW: Gold.

Irish Accent: Trust, lad. Yer in the care of the B-Team now. We’ll do Asylum, and then go bust fatty out of airport jail.

~*~The scene fades.~*~