New Frontiers
Jul 7, 2016 18:44:22 GMT -5
Post by Johnny Karma on Jul 7, 2016 18:44:22 GMT -5
June 26th 2016, Lakeland FL
It’s the morning after the night before, in this case the night before being ASSV, and Johnny Karma is lying awake in his hotel room bed where he stares at a spot on the ceiling and, frankly, looks like a three-toed sloth could count the hours of sleep he’s had on one hand – for obvious reasons
As he continues to stare at that incredibly interesting spot on the ceiling, Karma’s thought process is interrupted by the sound of his phone vibrating on the bedside table with that hideous sound of plastic reverberating against pine, and more than anything else he sees the vibrations are making the phone edge ever closer to the table’s edge and a long drop to the floor which will only lead to an infuriating search under the bed to try and retrieve the thing, so Karma decides it would be in his best interests to answer
…hello?
Hey there J-K. How are you feeling?
Pretty rotten.
How comes?
Well for a start the air-con in this room has two settings: cools the room but makes as much noise as a 747 taking off, or if you want some quiet so you can actually sleep you have to switch it off – which, given we’re in Florida, means that the room is humid enough to grow orchids it’s not going to make for a comfortable night’s sleep.
Well that sucks.
Then there’s the part where I had to kiss the Pride Championship goodbye, which manages to be even less fun than it sounds considering how many hoops I had to hop, skip and jump through in order to regain it, let alone all the beatdowns I took for having the gall to win the belt – but none of that compares with seeing one of those mamzers walk out of the ring as the new FWA Champion.
Karma uses his free hand to wipe the thin film of perspiration off of his brow, before he decides it is in his best interests to maybe switch on the air-con so his room can potentially be considered as inhabitable at some point in the next hour
It’s like Fate walked into a casino and bet it all on black, only for the roulette wheel to detach from the table and smash him full-on in the face, knocking out a couple of teeth, and those teeth falling onto the wheel is what causes the ball to land on red. Every single thing that could’ve gone wrong is what went wrong, and I’ve had hours to go over it in my head to try and work out a way to put a comforting spin on it and…I can’t.
There’s a moment of silence on the other end of the line, so the only thing Karma can hear is the industrial whirring of the air-con as it coughs cool air into his room – and as Karma shields his eyes due to the sound of the air-con giving him a mild headache, Cherry speaks once more
You know that tomorrow is another day, right? Today, even?
Rather than answer, Karma looks at his phone in the most quizzical manner – and it’s almost as if Cherry can see the look on his face…
Last night wasn’t the end of something, but the first step in a longer process.
Miss Baum, I really don’t follow what you’re saying…
Well for one thing, the Frontier Lion’s Cup is right around the corner, so while you’re right to feel down right now in a few weeks you’ll be in contention to remind Johnny Cannon that it wasn’t that long ago when you proved you were the better man and knocked his ass out – and that was when there was pride at stake, if you’ll excuse the expression, so no titles to gun for and a half dozen less reasons for you to want revenge…or should I say redemption?
As soon as Karma hears the last word, a light seems to flicker on in his eyes
You’re a handful of matches away from making things better, so don’t forget that.
Steeled by a sudden reminder of what’s next on the FWA calendar, Karma slides out from under the bedsheets – mercifully wearing a pair of boxers – with the sort of energy usually reserved for people who inject a double espresso into their eyeball
I’ll tell you what, Miss Baum, I’ll call you back in about twenty minutes. I’ve got a few things to think about while I’m in the shower…
Now…
KARMIC TV
The Karmic Lion roars tonight
Just before Youtube can send a squadron of their Fair Use attack drones (mercifully without a built-in hologram-based messaging system…) to hunt down the latest offenders of their Copyright Diktat, we cut the Karmic TV studio – which, even though it’s a hot day and the duo of Karma and Cherry are sitting under hot studio lights is still a more pleasant experience than trying to sleep in a Florida hotel room with the air-con switched off
Hi guys and welcome to another edition of Karmic TV, your one-stop shop for non-stop Robocop…
As soon as Cherry finishes saying the last part, she goes deathly silent for a second while Karma looks at her as if she might have just suffered a mild stroke
…or a sentence that actually makes sense. But, hey, it’s better than ending four straight lines with the word “yourself”- so if EpicLLOYD or Nice Peter are watching, call me!
Cherry gives the international sign of “Call me!” towards the camera, at which point Karma decides to move things in a slightly more forward direction
As you can see, there’s no title belt accompanying me on this sofa today – and there won’t be one accompanying me for a while, not because I sent the belt away for a few repairs due to things getting caught on the screws that keep the nameplate on, and trust me when I tell you that pretty much anything gets caught on there to the point the belt will be about 4% lint at any given time, but because my title defence at ASSV didn’t quite work out as I had hoped.
For the briefest of moments Karma pauses, almost as if he is about to let out a sigh…but instead he swallows before he continues
Back when I pitched the match I said I wanted to have one thing: a match that everybody who was watching simply knew would be an instant classic, and from the moment the bell first rang that is exactly what happened. A pair of wrestlers who wanted to show that, no matter what people will have you believe, there is an art to what we do – and when the artistry is taking place, people can’t help but sit, and watch, and wonder as it unfolds before them. For somebody who takes pride in their work, knowing that I lived up to those lofty ambitions is one large tick…
Karma mimes ticking a piece of paper
…on the ol’ list of life goals.
The thing is, I can’t help but think it could’ve been that little bit sweeter. Think of it this way: you spend hours mixing together the finest ingredients so you can bake a cake so exquisite that your oven becomes sentient and attempts to eat the thing before it’s finished baking, let alone before you’ve finished with all the icing and so forth, but once you’ve finished preparing it the first thing you have to do is hand it over to a bunch of people who will eat the thing without ever offering you a slice. Sometimes it’s good to have a slice of that cake, rather than see somebody else enjoy your labours as you watch on and struggle to resist all the urges you have about bugging them to ask how it was – or, even worse, daring to try and steal a piece from their plate. Sometimes it’s not enough to be the best cook when you’re left hungry.
So in case you missed the metaphor I was going for, possibly due to me stretching it beyond what the laws of physics will allow, I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t want to have my cake and eat it – because even though I was in a great match, at the end of the day I lost a great match, so while a large part of me knows to extend my congratulations to Fuji for coming out of the match with the Pride Championship, there’s a teeny-tiny part of me that’s totally beyz at not having people congratulating me for winning the match of the night. I can feel that teeny-tiny part crawling up my spine, trying to get a little closer so he can whisper a few suggestions into my ear – so it’s up to me to say “baren ir and the horse you rode in on” before he starts planting seeds in my ear.
With that part said, Karma actually does pause for a moment, tapping his finger against the back of his hand as he tries to formulate the right words in his mind
Of course, the other main headline to come out of ASSV is how we have a NEEEEEEEEEEEEW FWA Champion…and it’s almost worth skipping over this part, frankly. There comes a point where you start to get sick and tired of things being so awful all the time – unless you’re a Phillies fan, at which point you deserve everything that’s coming to you.
By this point there’s no need to recap my experiences with the New Kings, but seeing them once again manage to get tan advantage they neither earned nor deserve is the sort of thing that feels like a kick to the gut too far. I’m sure a few people around here are smirking at the sight of Tony Carmine getting scraped off the arena floor and wheeled out of there, but that’s not who I am because I’m not stooping that low – but on the other hand, if he thinks a couple of dozen word apology on Twitter means we’re cool, he is sorely mistaken. But I guess that’s the point, they think it’s a game and they can brush it all under the carpet with a mealy-mouthed apology – but I’m no goldfish, and I remember.
Rather than continue, Karma takes a second to look directly at the camera to underline the last point
There’s something else I remember from that night, too: I remember the sight of Danny Diamond joining in with the title celebrations at the end of the night, as that image is burned into my mind’s eye as much as the image of Carmine, Cannon and Diamond taking it in turns to hit me as hard as they could as often as they wanted, and things like that tend to stick in my mind rather than things I’d like to…
As he’s speaking Karma’s attention wanders towards Cherry, and that happens to coincide with him trailing off in his conversation before he picks it up once again
…and here’s something else that’s stuck in my mind, in fact it’s been going around in there for the past year: the 2015 edition of the Frontier Lion’s Cup, and how I wasn’t a part of it.
For the past year I have sought to turn that disappointment around, to use it as a catalyst to climb higher than before – a height I’m sure plenty of people would’ve scoffed at the thought of me climbing to, given how many people seemed happy to write me off a year ago. I’ve been at a low point or two, I have had those moments where it feels like it isn’t worth it – not only missing out on the Frontier Lion’s Cup, but also not even getting a match in my hometown, and you know what I did? Rather than fold, I turned it around. So right now it might feel like the walls are getting a little too close for comfort, but here’s the thing: I’m going to start pushing them back.
The first thing on the agenda is starting to push back against the New Kings, and that starts with Danny Diamond wishing he’d thrown in with a different gang of dilingkvants – and I’m sure that, right at this very moment, Johnny Cannon’s asking Diamond to do anything and everything in his power to stop me in my tracks because if Cannon has any sense…
Wondering why he suddenly stopped talking, Cherry chips in
What is it J-K?
Nothing, I just realised that asking if Johnny Cannon has any sense is a question that needn’t be asked, for obvious reasons.
Now if Diamond has any sense, he’ll realise that he’s got some bad mojo headed his way because I am mad as heck and I’m not going to take it anymore: I have had enough of the New Kings, I have had enough of people getting to the top on a fluke and acting as if they had earned it, I have had enough of all the beatdowns, all the disappointments and all of the everything that gets thrown at me because people think I’m a soft touch, an easy target, the stepping stone to somewhere else. Well I’m not having that, I’m not having any of it, and the first step of me pushing back is voting to make sure Diamond exists the Frontier Lions Cup and he leaves it with a result that nobody can argue against because it’s not going to be a close-run thing – and when my hand gets raised, I am sure I will have Johnny Cannon’s undivided attention, as he’ll know that he’s just lost one friend while his other bestest bud couldn’t help him, so if he thinks the only person in the world who can help him is Quinn Goodrich, the monkey to his organ grinder…well he can rest easy knowing I’ll be a little too busy winning the Frontier Lions Cup to relieve the FWA Championship of that anchor that’s hanging off of it.
Cherry looks at her watch and suddenly her eyes grow by about 50%, almost as if they’re running low on time, so she quickly cuts in to wrap things up
I think that J-K has set out his stall pretty firmly there, as the Frontier Lions Cup 2016 begins and he has an eye on the prize – because of course he does, because what would the Frontier Lions Cup be without the Karmic Lion to prowl upon it?
…but take your time to consider your answer, as there’s plenty of time before the next edition of Vertigo for your to answer – but we’re pretty sure you already know the answer, but we just don’t want to hurt Danny Diamond’s feelings by having all of you watching say he’s going to lose.
But with that being said, thank you so much for watching, and don’t forget to give us a “Like” if you liked this and a subscribe if you loved this, but from me Cherry Baum…
…and me, Johnny Karma…
…thanks for watching, and we hope to see you all again soon. Bye!
It’s the morning after the night before, in this case the night before being ASSV, and Johnny Karma is lying awake in his hotel room bed where he stares at a spot on the ceiling and, frankly, looks like a three-toed sloth could count the hours of sleep he’s had on one hand – for obvious reasons
As he continues to stare at that incredibly interesting spot on the ceiling, Karma’s thought process is interrupted by the sound of his phone vibrating on the bedside table with that hideous sound of plastic reverberating against pine, and more than anything else he sees the vibrations are making the phone edge ever closer to the table’s edge and a long drop to the floor which will only lead to an infuriating search under the bed to try and retrieve the thing, so Karma decides it would be in his best interests to answer
…hello?
Hey there J-K. How are you feeling?
Pretty rotten.
How comes?
Well for a start the air-con in this room has two settings: cools the room but makes as much noise as a 747 taking off, or if you want some quiet so you can actually sleep you have to switch it off – which, given we’re in Florida, means that the room is humid enough to grow orchids it’s not going to make for a comfortable night’s sleep.
Well that sucks.
Then there’s the part where I had to kiss the Pride Championship goodbye, which manages to be even less fun than it sounds considering how many hoops I had to hop, skip and jump through in order to regain it, let alone all the beatdowns I took for having the gall to win the belt – but none of that compares with seeing one of those mamzers walk out of the ring as the new FWA Champion.
Karma uses his free hand to wipe the thin film of perspiration off of his brow, before he decides it is in his best interests to maybe switch on the air-con so his room can potentially be considered as inhabitable at some point in the next hour
It’s like Fate walked into a casino and bet it all on black, only for the roulette wheel to detach from the table and smash him full-on in the face, knocking out a couple of teeth, and those teeth falling onto the wheel is what causes the ball to land on red. Every single thing that could’ve gone wrong is what went wrong, and I’ve had hours to go over it in my head to try and work out a way to put a comforting spin on it and…I can’t.
There’s a moment of silence on the other end of the line, so the only thing Karma can hear is the industrial whirring of the air-con as it coughs cool air into his room – and as Karma shields his eyes due to the sound of the air-con giving him a mild headache, Cherry speaks once more
You know that tomorrow is another day, right? Today, even?
Rather than answer, Karma looks at his phone in the most quizzical manner – and it’s almost as if Cherry can see the look on his face…
Last night wasn’t the end of something, but the first step in a longer process.
Miss Baum, I really don’t follow what you’re saying…
Well for one thing, the Frontier Lion’s Cup is right around the corner, so while you’re right to feel down right now in a few weeks you’ll be in contention to remind Johnny Cannon that it wasn’t that long ago when you proved you were the better man and knocked his ass out – and that was when there was pride at stake, if you’ll excuse the expression, so no titles to gun for and a half dozen less reasons for you to want revenge…or should I say redemption?
As soon as Karma hears the last word, a light seems to flicker on in his eyes
You’re a handful of matches away from making things better, so don’t forget that.
Steeled by a sudden reminder of what’s next on the FWA calendar, Karma slides out from under the bedsheets – mercifully wearing a pair of boxers – with the sort of energy usually reserved for people who inject a double espresso into their eyeball
I’ll tell you what, Miss Baum, I’ll call you back in about twenty minutes. I’ve got a few things to think about while I’m in the shower…
Now…
KARMIC TV
The Karmic Lion roars tonight
Just before Youtube can send a squadron of their Fair Use attack drones (mercifully without a built-in hologram-based messaging system…) to hunt down the latest offenders of their Copyright Diktat, we cut the Karmic TV studio – which, even though it’s a hot day and the duo of Karma and Cherry are sitting under hot studio lights is still a more pleasant experience than trying to sleep in a Florida hotel room with the air-con switched off
Hi guys and welcome to another edition of Karmic TV, your one-stop shop for non-stop Robocop…
As soon as Cherry finishes saying the last part, she goes deathly silent for a second while Karma looks at her as if she might have just suffered a mild stroke
…or a sentence that actually makes sense. But, hey, it’s better than ending four straight lines with the word “yourself”- so if EpicLLOYD or Nice Peter are watching, call me!
Cherry gives the international sign of “Call me!” towards the camera, at which point Karma decides to move things in a slightly more forward direction
As you can see, there’s no title belt accompanying me on this sofa today – and there won’t be one accompanying me for a while, not because I sent the belt away for a few repairs due to things getting caught on the screws that keep the nameplate on, and trust me when I tell you that pretty much anything gets caught on there to the point the belt will be about 4% lint at any given time, but because my title defence at ASSV didn’t quite work out as I had hoped.
For the briefest of moments Karma pauses, almost as if he is about to let out a sigh…but instead he swallows before he continues
Back when I pitched the match I said I wanted to have one thing: a match that everybody who was watching simply knew would be an instant classic, and from the moment the bell first rang that is exactly what happened. A pair of wrestlers who wanted to show that, no matter what people will have you believe, there is an art to what we do – and when the artistry is taking place, people can’t help but sit, and watch, and wonder as it unfolds before them. For somebody who takes pride in their work, knowing that I lived up to those lofty ambitions is one large tick…
Karma mimes ticking a piece of paper
…on the ol’ list of life goals.
The thing is, I can’t help but think it could’ve been that little bit sweeter. Think of it this way: you spend hours mixing together the finest ingredients so you can bake a cake so exquisite that your oven becomes sentient and attempts to eat the thing before it’s finished baking, let alone before you’ve finished with all the icing and so forth, but once you’ve finished preparing it the first thing you have to do is hand it over to a bunch of people who will eat the thing without ever offering you a slice. Sometimes it’s good to have a slice of that cake, rather than see somebody else enjoy your labours as you watch on and struggle to resist all the urges you have about bugging them to ask how it was – or, even worse, daring to try and steal a piece from their plate. Sometimes it’s not enough to be the best cook when you’re left hungry.
So in case you missed the metaphor I was going for, possibly due to me stretching it beyond what the laws of physics will allow, I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t want to have my cake and eat it – because even though I was in a great match, at the end of the day I lost a great match, so while a large part of me knows to extend my congratulations to Fuji for coming out of the match with the Pride Championship, there’s a teeny-tiny part of me that’s totally beyz at not having people congratulating me for winning the match of the night. I can feel that teeny-tiny part crawling up my spine, trying to get a little closer so he can whisper a few suggestions into my ear – so it’s up to me to say “baren ir and the horse you rode in on” before he starts planting seeds in my ear.
With that part said, Karma actually does pause for a moment, tapping his finger against the back of his hand as he tries to formulate the right words in his mind
Of course, the other main headline to come out of ASSV is how we have a NEEEEEEEEEEEEW FWA Champion…and it’s almost worth skipping over this part, frankly. There comes a point where you start to get sick and tired of things being so awful all the time – unless you’re a Phillies fan, at which point you deserve everything that’s coming to you.
By this point there’s no need to recap my experiences with the New Kings, but seeing them once again manage to get tan advantage they neither earned nor deserve is the sort of thing that feels like a kick to the gut too far. I’m sure a few people around here are smirking at the sight of Tony Carmine getting scraped off the arena floor and wheeled out of there, but that’s not who I am because I’m not stooping that low – but on the other hand, if he thinks a couple of dozen word apology on Twitter means we’re cool, he is sorely mistaken. But I guess that’s the point, they think it’s a game and they can brush it all under the carpet with a mealy-mouthed apology – but I’m no goldfish, and I remember.
Rather than continue, Karma takes a second to look directly at the camera to underline the last point
There’s something else I remember from that night, too: I remember the sight of Danny Diamond joining in with the title celebrations at the end of the night, as that image is burned into my mind’s eye as much as the image of Carmine, Cannon and Diamond taking it in turns to hit me as hard as they could as often as they wanted, and things like that tend to stick in my mind rather than things I’d like to…
As he’s speaking Karma’s attention wanders towards Cherry, and that happens to coincide with him trailing off in his conversation before he picks it up once again
…and here’s something else that’s stuck in my mind, in fact it’s been going around in there for the past year: the 2015 edition of the Frontier Lion’s Cup, and how I wasn’t a part of it.
For the past year I have sought to turn that disappointment around, to use it as a catalyst to climb higher than before – a height I’m sure plenty of people would’ve scoffed at the thought of me climbing to, given how many people seemed happy to write me off a year ago. I’ve been at a low point or two, I have had those moments where it feels like it isn’t worth it – not only missing out on the Frontier Lion’s Cup, but also not even getting a match in my hometown, and you know what I did? Rather than fold, I turned it around. So right now it might feel like the walls are getting a little too close for comfort, but here’s the thing: I’m going to start pushing them back.
The first thing on the agenda is starting to push back against the New Kings, and that starts with Danny Diamond wishing he’d thrown in with a different gang of dilingkvants – and I’m sure that, right at this very moment, Johnny Cannon’s asking Diamond to do anything and everything in his power to stop me in my tracks because if Cannon has any sense…
Wondering why he suddenly stopped talking, Cherry chips in
What is it J-K?
Nothing, I just realised that asking if Johnny Cannon has any sense is a question that needn’t be asked, for obvious reasons.
Now if Diamond has any sense, he’ll realise that he’s got some bad mojo headed his way because I am mad as heck and I’m not going to take it anymore: I have had enough of the New Kings, I have had enough of people getting to the top on a fluke and acting as if they had earned it, I have had enough of all the beatdowns, all the disappointments and all of the everything that gets thrown at me because people think I’m a soft touch, an easy target, the stepping stone to somewhere else. Well I’m not having that, I’m not having any of it, and the first step of me pushing back is voting to make sure Diamond exists the Frontier Lions Cup and he leaves it with a result that nobody can argue against because it’s not going to be a close-run thing – and when my hand gets raised, I am sure I will have Johnny Cannon’s undivided attention, as he’ll know that he’s just lost one friend while his other bestest bud couldn’t help him, so if he thinks the only person in the world who can help him is Quinn Goodrich, the monkey to his organ grinder…well he can rest easy knowing I’ll be a little too busy winning the Frontier Lions Cup to relieve the FWA Championship of that anchor that’s hanging off of it.
Cherry looks at her watch and suddenly her eyes grow by about 50%, almost as if they’re running low on time, so she quickly cuts in to wrap things up
I think that J-K has set out his stall pretty firmly there, as the Frontier Lions Cup 2016 begins and he has an eye on the prize – because of course he does, because what would the Frontier Lions Cup be without the Karmic Lion to prowl upon it?
…but take your time to consider your answer, as there’s plenty of time before the next edition of Vertigo for your to answer – but we’re pretty sure you already know the answer, but we just don’t want to hurt Danny Diamond’s feelings by having all of you watching say he’s going to lose.
But with that being said, thank you so much for watching, and don’t forget to give us a “Like” if you liked this and a subscribe if you loved this, but from me Cherry Baum…
…and me, Johnny Karma…
…thanks for watching, and we hope to see you all again soon. Bye!
