WITH THE FIRST PICK IN THE 2010 DIVAS DRAFT, RAW SELECTS….
We all thought my friend Matt was the crazy one. Each April at Gettysburg College we would be out celebrating SpringFest – a college-wide party filled with live music, dancing, games, great food, and adult beverages. The party started early and lasted all day. It is one of the best memories from school each year. (Funniest SpringFest memory – my girlfriend (now wife) wanted to step into the inflatable boxing ring with me. I kept saying “no” but after I had had enough of her nagging, I climbed into the ring, put on the giant boxing gloves, and proceeded to punch her right through the ropes and out onto the grass. We laugh about it now, but I remember sleeping alone that night. Truthfully though I had little remorse, “hey babe, don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time”. I officially retired with a 2-1 record after some guy challenged me later that same day and turned me into Mankind.)
As fun at SpringFest was every year, my friend Matt always chose to skip it to “prepare” for the NFL draft. He was dead serious. The NFL draft was his favorite day of the year and it usually fell on the day of the party. I can’t tell you how much fun we made of him for this. Aside from being a Bengals fan (which is bad enough), he would compose multiple mock drafts and stress about which trades or picks each team should make, and then watch the draft for 10 straight hours. It was a little bizarre – he didn’t even take his actually classes that seriously. We graduated in 1995. Fast forward to today. He has now been working as a scout in the NFL for 14 years and wears a Super Bowl ring (1999-2000 St. Louis Rams). I’m not even sure how it happened…but he met the right person who introduced him to another person and so on. Next thing you know he is working for the Rams, scouting college football games, and hanging out with the players at summer BBQs. Pretty good for a kid who never really played football. Guess he wasn’t so crazy after all!
I was thinking about Matt the other day as I was piecing together my 2010 Divas Draft. Seemed pretty ironic to me that now I was the one looking at stats, making predictions, and stressing about match-ups and trades. Plus I felt like Stephen King with writer’s block. I kept putting thoughts down on paper, shaking my head, and then dramatically throwing the paper into the trash. This killed several hours at work, which is OK to admit because I’m 145% sure my boss doesn’t read this column (he barely reads the reports I turn). I felt a sense of purpose to get this right. After all, the WWE claims “For the eighth time in WWE history, the WWE Draft promises to realign the stars within the cosmos of the WWE Universe.” The cosmos of the WWE Universe?!? What the hell does that mean? Sounds important though huh?!
When Maria Kanellis announced all those months ago that she would be releasing her own music, I’m not going to lie, I didn’t take her seriously. Usually when people cross over between media platforms, the result is contrived and lacks substance. Just because an actor is great at acting, it doesn’t mean they’re going to make a great musical artist and vice versa. The likes of Paris Hilton, for example, has tried crossing over from well, whatever it is that Paris Hilton does, to music and yielded little success. It seems like these celebrities think it would be ‘cool’ and ‘fun’ to put a record out, not to mention it would add a few more zeroes to their bank balance. However, in just one chat with Maria, I could feel her passion and investment in her music. Everyone has that passion project they’d love to do but probably never accomplish because it seems so surreal, so you have to admire Kanellis’ bravado in making one of her many passion projects come to life.