You gotta lace that shid, Ace.

Layin' it in. Lacin' dat azz. Being on set with The Aces, Chingy, a new chick, and Gary Oldman this weekend while we continue shooting scenes for the upcoming film, "The American Veteran Sleep Experiment: Test 2" and you have to ask yourself what would you do if you were indeed stuck in a sleep experiment designed for veterans.

Well, maybe you aren't a veteran, per se, and you are just a patriotic mother fucker looking to step-up and you have a weak ankle, some deciduous teeth, you are a sleep-walker, you fill your jeans when things get exciting, whatever. There are a million reasons that you can slip-up and mention or get nailed for and not be allowed to enlist.

The recruiter will sometimes tell you not to speak up if you are serious about getting in. Whatever you volunteer could disqualify you. Nobody is telling you to lie, they're asking how bad do you want it? Remember weak-ass Steve Rogers? Remember when 'dem boys enlistin' to fight Nazis and save Jews and other enemies of The State in WW2. I see a lot of pricks using the term Nazi loosely and on each other the way some groups use their own racial terms as terms of endearment.

Like how the word chingy means "Cha-ching" to some, an insult to Asians, or a loving way to call someone Chinga Tu Madre but in a more Mijo/Mija sense of the word, which like Zoolander said, "Rufus, Brint, and Meekus were like brothers to me. And when I say brother, I don't mean, like, an actual brother, but I mean it like the way black people use it. Which is more meaningful I think"

The enemies of the state of Nazis, controlling Germany and Europe, were good men like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was a Lutheran, a Christ-influenced man, who refused to work Nazi propaganda into the message of the Church. He paid the price with his life in a camp. He stood to help the Jews and the handicapped folks being blamed for the ills of a war-torn Germany. Blaming Jews, killing Polish people, while accusing others of being Nazis is backwards and inverse thinking.

Some folks who are tunnel-runners like us on the underground can see that there is a difference between a govt. and it's people. There is a film commission and Hollywood, and big AMC promotional events, and Halloween Horror Nights, (all things which are fucking sweet, dgmw) but there are also people who like Phil Anselmo puts it on ReInventing The Steel, You've Got To Belong To It.... It's who you are....you are going to do it regardless of the promise Tyler Durder told us we were pissed off that the potential wasn't realized because we weren't interested in that to begin with. Like when a guy mistakenly thinks you are being good or into The Lord because you are hoping to go to Heaven or avoid Hell.

“I see in the fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars, advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of the history man, no purpose or place, we have no Great war, no Great depression, our great war is a spiritual war, our great depression is our lives, we've been all raised by television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won't and we're slowly learning that fact. and we're very very pissed off.”

― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

It's already written on your heart. A covenantal relationship is a deep, committed bond, often solemn and permanent, sealed by binding promises and mutual obligations, setting it apart from a temporary contract. Unlike a typical contract, it's personal, relational, and based on commitment, loyalty, and sacrifice. Marriage is a prime example, but the concept is central to the Bible, where God enters into these relationships with people through promises of unending love and faithfulness, as seen in the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants.

This isn't for everyone. Some need the religion. The Red Carpet Bullshit. Hollywood. They need the idols and statues and titles. For others we are on the outskirts of town, we travel on the word of mouth, giving no mind if this internet blog or video reaches anyone because we know how many copies we move, we know how many seats are filled, we know how much Hot Buttered Corn you guys ate at the Fistswings '76 Fest when we had the live bands blowing the doors of Christ Community Church.

John The Baptist was on the outskirts when the religious leaders rolled out into his neck of the woods, came to his creek, and asked of him. This is like the Skate Park of Tampa sending out a crew because they heard you were tearing it up on the outskirts of the creek. Ya boy was turning 900s and running a vert course like nobody knew. JTB hit those boys, The Pharisee with a “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8Produce fruit, then, in keeping with repentance. 9And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 10The axe lies ready at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

11I baptize you with waterb for repentance, but after me will come One more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.c 12His winnowing fork is in His hand to clear His threshing floor and to gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

Why is this here, this is nothing new, check out our films and pretend that we didn't mention these things before, like ICP said on the 6th Shangri-La, We're Not Sorry If We Tricked You, truth is we have always included these elements like John Carpenter and we don't plan to stop. Not only that but The Bible is a cultural reference point for Western Society and comes from the edges of The East. Some times you need to know about something to catch the jokes, sometimes Simpsons fills you in on the references, like when I learned about Twin Peaks and understood the references without seeing the film because Simpsons Did It, thanks, South Park. Chimaira was a band that The Aces drew a lot of inspiration from and they made songs based on several films as has he with his band Burial at Sea, namely songs about Halloween and Event Horizon.

I'm not plagiarizing btw, I'm referencing and I hope that it sticks and maybe you'll figure it out or figure out where I got it but in conversation and through dialogue I tend to credit my source or paint the works cited into the material. Much like rappers like Eminem, Canibus, Techn9ne, Killah Priest, Bone Thugs, Beastie Boys, ICP, Wayne right albums, Moses and the Torah seem to be more arranged like a rapper with 5 albums using cultural reference points to open up a running dialogue which is often what an album is. The Bible is filled with multiple writing styles, songs, reports, letters, and Apocalyptic literature.

Like honestly there should be no reason that you should stumble if you find out the Choctaw or an African tribe have some account of The Flooding from the last two Ice-Ages post Younger Dryas. Every group has some, semi-accurate account of 9-11, these ideas are beside the point of the story, but like that impact laced the Earth, this is an account of where the Ace learned to lace it.

So I mentioned the Ace early and his pension for all things heavy, except chicks. Ace hates fat chicks.

At some point in my professional wrestling quest I found myself, beezalls deezeep in the Polk County wrestling circuit. During this time I no longer had my brother behind the wheel driving us around to defend the Royal Wrestling Tag-Team Titles, he had taken a wicked bump and, as the Roderick Strong documentary showed, his parents divorced and the school his dad was running folded.

Some time around Oct 2000 Rex met Al "Wild Thang" Hardiman. I did a little research from the internet and pulled from what could have been him feeding information to a burner account, but either way, I'll join back up in a minute but I'll post what I found here....

Dec 22, 2008 at 11:29am

Who is he most of you ask?

Al Hardimon was trained by old man Malenko and was with Eddie Mansfield's promotion, IWF. ( A promotion I attended as a kid with my mom and saw RVD and The Smoking Gunns pre-fame)

He helped promote the Orange Dome in Winter Haven and in 1991 era he branched off and started the FWF, Florida Wrestling Federation. For most of the 90s and early 2000s he had the best promotion in the state of Florida. Al Hardimon trained some of Florida's best, like Chris Nelson. (Nelson is a mentoring voice in the career of Huckleberry Heeler aka Doyle Poole aka Maurice Meko and was a harasser of Rex the Shepherd)

This article mentions Classy Chris Nelson as well as Chris Michaels, who I once tagged up creating a pairing of, Michael Christopher and Chris Michaels, we took on Donny York, Masked Assassin, and Butch Long aka The Hell Rebels. The article mentions some of the history of these Chris' as well as someone who was in the same situation as Mick aka Sheriff Ringo. He was the manager, but like Fight Club, if this is your first day at wrestling training, you have to bump.

Let me share a little more about Al too....

https://www.plantcityobserver.com/party-man-tom-anderson/

Hardimon is a legit bad ass and even at an older age could probably whip most of the people's ass on this board. That is a shoot.

The Black Assassin use to work for WCW and was one of the best workers in the state at one time. He worked under his real name Steven Green.

Dec 25, 2008 at 4:46pm

Again I am NOT AL Hardimon! Now I grew up with al he and I went different ways in High school he was into the Martial Arts and I was into Body building he didnt get over 170 lbs till his Father died in 1986 after that he went into shoot fighting and also he was a PKA and A WKA Champion I belive in 3 different weight divisions (middle,Super Middle and Light Heavy divisions) Al went on to be trained by Larry siamond same as me and also he trained shoot with Mr Gotch and Masami Soranaka, Mr Gotchs late son in law ! He had a few martial arts fights but he [mostley] did the work shows ! He has had a few health problems that has forced him to Retire .....

Another source: IPWHOF Class of 2014 - "Wild Thang" Alan Hardiman

Al Hardimon was trained by Boris Malenko and was with Eddie Mansfield's promotion, IWF. He helped promote the Orange Dome in Winter Haven and in 1991 era he branched off and started the FWF, Florida Wrestling Federation. For most of the 90s and early 2000s he had the best promotion in the state of Florida. Al Hardimon trained some of Florida's best wrestlers as well.

Now, like that article with Chris Michaels said,

"LIVING THE DREAM

A wrestling fan since his youth, Anderson got the chance to break into the business when he met Al Hardiman in the early 1990s. Hardiman, who ran a promotion and a training center in Winter Haven, offered to train Anderson to be a manager. It still meant that he had to take a beating.

“They told me, ‘Well, you’re kind of small,’” Anderson says. “‘You’d probably be a manager, so you don’t get killed.’ They invited me out to train.”

This meant learning to take falls, bumps and slams, just like the wrestlers. Except, as a manager, most of these things would happen to him outside of the ring.

Outside of the ring, it’s just concrete. Even in his first night of training, Anderson got well-acquainted with the surface.

“They used me as a crash-test dummy,” Anderson says. “I got slammed around, beat on, body slammed, suplexed. I couldn’t move the next day.”

Also Ace isn't small and by today's standards he'd be a bruising dude at 5'8 200lbs, considering Roderick Strong, Adam Cole, and Fin Balor are all about 5'8 or less and thinner. He would have actually been in the category of a Benoit or Jericho size-wise.

Now this is zeroin' in closer on what this has to do with my cousin and lacing that azz for a stunt, as recalled from Chingy being shoved by an actress over the weekend during the course of filming a David Zucker meets David Ayer style film.

There is a wider full circle too. but at this point I met Al Hardiman and my cousin was in tow. He was not a wrestler, but we'd had done a lot of wrestling with our friends in our wrestling club. We'd pretty much mob around in a pack like skateboarders but since we were all poor, we didn't have skateboards. So we wrestled each other. We were all pretty decent and found ways to create clever characters and moves safe enough to do in real life...for fake.

Equal pain as skateboarders bailing.

I'd worked out with Al a couple times, told him I'd trained with Robbie, TNT, and Elvis.

He took a liking to me and I had made it out to his training facility, which now it, like the Temple is Israel was restored after meeting a long demise. Think the first temple when it was in ruining after the Babylonians conquered them and moved them to Babylon, modern Iraq, and they could no longer just recite the Bible scrolls from memory, but they had to write it down. A skill the Greeks lamented as well. They found writing down history to be stupid and the easiest way to loose it, for change to creep in, and made people lazy. So for a while it laid in ruin, but in 2020s it has comeback as a non-profit mma, wrestling, boxing, jiu jitsu, and pro wrestling center.

Another note about this place: Before 9/11 and cell phones, it was as close to the wild west in Florida as you can get. Which means heading East toward the center of the state, aka Bone Valley, which is where the Lone Riders rode in from. The Lone Riders are a tag team that spent the better part of 25 years black-balled and railroaded by local promoters and bookers along the ol' Chisom Trail. During the 1800s there were local events called Rendezvouz and Rasslin' where all the local outlaws would gather near Alderman's Ford, where the Dems and the Klan would meet in secret.

The training area was upstairs at a flea market/indoor circus in Auburndale, FL.

Al told me that he was Chuck Norris' training partner, that he was with IWF, and would run me around the ring Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. This takes a full circle arch too because in the 80s I took some martial arts classes in Seffner, FL and Chuck Norris was affiliated with this school and so, occasionally the action figure of Chuck Norris, who had recently did a demonstration at the Sundome at USF was now here teaching us the spinning back kick. Now I had already been bitten by the wrestling bug with Ultimate Warrior and Sting, and the structured class of the school, led me to dropping the martial arts school. So how fitting for my wrestling to be picked up and seasoned by a pro wrestling friend of Chuck Norris.

I worked Wed, Th, Fr, Sat, 3 x 10 shifts. I needed the gig, the rent to live at home and maintain the same room despite not sleeping there often or eating there was one check, and the other went to the new car, the full coverage insurance, and well....

Al sharpened me up, he put some polish on me, he was a martial arts guy, that is important and something a lot of professional wrestlers lack. Martial Arts gives you a different sense of your body and how to move through space. This is also important when filming, like Musashi says you must learn the way of both pen and sword. There are two sides to the sword.

Where Robbie and Elvis and TNT taught me about entertaining, bumping, selling, acting, Al showed me that you need to, what I would find in Judo, you need to do the move to this guy and he needs to receive the move.

In Jiu Jitsu this is called the Tori and the Uke.

The term "tori" comes from the verb toru (取る), meaning "to take", "to pick up", or "to choose".

Uke (受け) is in Japanese martial arts the person who "receives" a technique.

This is used in Judo exhibitions where someone demonstrates a technique against a cooperative opponent. Very much theatricals, very much you have to know what the fuck you are doing.

Mick is a quintessential performer. Like when Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson and Usher, David Lee Roth and Donnie Wahlberg, Daniel Day and Daniel Bryan, you need to be able to sing and dance and be a well rounded performer.

Like Dwight Yoakam in Panic Room.

My cousin started coming with me to pro wrestling training. He had the idea of just watching and seeing what happens and observing. Al had him get in the ring the same way the Chris Michaels article goes.

He ran the ropes. Learned to take bumps. Learned how to hit a man hard with a blow that hits him hard and allows him to take it and remain standing. Chops, forearms, back elbows, dropkicks, there are several moves that require contact but there is a way to use the anatomical padding of your body to make contact with others in ways that don't jab and bruise like bony-chicks.

There is a story about the time a few months later when Mick wore boxers with his basketball shorts and realized he couldn't dribble his balls quite the same when taking stomach bumps.

Needless to say, we got to experience performing in front of live crowds, in the downstairs arena area when FWF and CWF (outlaw form) were running shows in Polk County. Shit was sweet until 9-11-01 and WCW and ECW both folded and wrestling cooled off but we belonged to this, and we also started to explore the music scene more, hitting up Guitar Centers and Thoroughbred Music to find local bands looking for members.

Mick was steadying improving his vocals and we'd ride around for hours listening to cds of Slipknot, Pantera, Fear Factory, Hatebreed, Limp Bizkit, Soulfly, and Chimaira, practicing screams and trying to understand how music was being arranged and songs were written.

Like wrestling, in music, we'd find ourselves at odds with most groups we found ourselves jamming with. People would often look at us and immediately want The Hardy Boyz or some form of Linkin Park. We weren't interested in trading on our looks or youth, we wanted to be in the fire. Like that scene in War of The Worlds, when Robbie, the son, leaves Ray to witness the last stand of Humans versus The Aliens.

Like in Jarhead, when in....

"Jarhead" is a war movie that rises above the war and tells a soldier's story. It tells it with the urgency and pointlessness that all men's stories have, because if something has happened to us, then it is important to us no matter how indifferent the world may be. "Four days, four hours, one minute. That was my war," the Marine sniper Tony Swofford tells us. "I never shot my rifle."

The movie is uncanny in its effect. It contains no heroism, little action, no easy laughs. It is about men who are exhausted, bored, lonely, trained to the point of obsession and given no opportunity to use their training.

... the most dramatic scene in the movie comes when Swofford has an enemy officer in the crosshairs of his gunsight and is forbidden to fire because his shot may give advance warning of an air strike.

Like Tyler said, "We'd all been raised to believe..."

Ultimate Warrior told us to, "Always Believe"

He also took two dudes out in the middle of the desert and left them because they asked for a job reference from him. He gave them a wake up call. The wake up call that if Conan steps into the real world, or the ring, he will win. Like Superman v.s Mike Tyson. Conan the Barbarian would pin the Hulkster.

"No talent becomes a legend on their own. Every man’s heart one day beats its final beat. His lungs breathe their final breath. And if what that man did in his life makes the blood pulse through the body of others and makes them bleed deeper and something larger than life, then his essence, his spirit, will be immortalized by the storytellers, by the loyalty, by the memory of those who honor him and make the running the man did live forever.

"You, you, you, you, you, you are the legend makers of Ultimate Warrior. In the back I see many potential legends. Some of them with warrior spirits. And you will do the same for them. You will decide if they lived with the passion and intensity. So much so that you will tell your stories and you will make them legends, as well. I am Ultimate Warrior. You are the Ultimate Warrior fans and the spirit of Ultimate Warrior will run forever."

The proverb "better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war" emphasizes the importance of preparedness and having the skills to handle adversity, even when in a peaceful environment. It suggests it's better to be skilled and ready for conflict in times of peace than to be peaceful and unprepared when unexpected danger or conflict arises, as a gardener in a war zone would be vulnerable and unlikely to survive. The saying is often attributed to the legendary samurai Miyamoto Musashi, author of The Book of Five Rings. 

This is where we get back to lacing it, and why:

You need to lay it in.

You don't want to hurt anyone.

So you need to lay it in nice and flat.

You need to hit him to make him feel it not knock him unconscious or give him whiplash.

He lays in a forearm shot like laying aggressive vocals on an album. He doesn't blow his voice out for one performance. He needs his voice to work consistently for a range of things. He needs to know how to get the most out of it without injurying himself and also with respect for the performance to minimize injuries and get the maximum and conservative turnaround out of his resource.

He can lay in the shot and effectively rely the message without needing auto-tuning or to make his physical performance look weak or mailed in.

The same often applies for cases of self-defense advice; instead of pragmatic advice like keep your hands up, your elbows protecting your ribs, create space, ect, you get cheesy advice like go for the groin, as if you have room to kick field goals, or as if this is a fail-safe, when attacked from behind.

Situational awareness is paramount. When Ace walked in that day, he had no clue, that someone was going to give him the old, if this is your first night, you have to fight, rules.

But it was from that avenue that he has continued to hone and craft and receive the credit that comes with being the man in the arena, getting his ass kicked, because he isn't the one being remembered as the millionaire, movie-star, or rock goddess, he is remembered as the Man in the Arena that, the first American Judo Brown Belt, and 26th President of the United States mentioned in a long message,

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

The uneducated only points out that you were the bridesmaid, not the bride. But John The Baptist said in the song John The Baptist by Stephen The Levite,

Dudes must've missed when he spit what his job was

Seeing that when Jesus baptizes, all come

Upset thinking He's a threat to what John does

Not so, John got low, giving props up

I need to shrink so that He can be honored

He holds the mic, I'm the hypeman, I'm not much

He get's the Bride, I'm the sidegroom, it's not dumb

I'm gon' rejoice at His voice, I'll be all done

Also one other things is JTB, in that lyrics there, is making a point about putting over His cousin, who he recognizes is greater than he. ³⁰ He must increase, but I must decrease.

Good things happen when you put over the cousin God gives you.

So when you wonder where we learned this stuff, or on what authority.

He is lacin' the way he learned from Al and Al learned from Boris Malenko, Karl Gotch, and Masami Saranaka.

So when you see that shot in Rock Bottom Creek (2012) when Sheriff Ringo rips a wicked forearm across the upperback of Vic Crabtree or when you see Chingy take a forearm blast in The American Veteran Sleep Experiment: Test 2, just know when you take a hit from The Ace, it's always Laced.

Word Life!!!!