From legendary wrestling announcer Jim Ross comes a candid, colorful memoir about the inner workings of the WWE and the personal crises he weathered at the height of his career.
If you’ve caught a televised wrestling match anytime in the past THIRTY years, you’ve probably heard Jim Ross’s throaty Oklahoma twang. The beloved longtime announcer of WWE is already an icon to generations of wrestling fans, and he’s not slowing down, having just signed on as the announcer of the starry new wrestling venture All Elite Wrestling. In this follow-up to his bestselling memoir Slobberknocker, he dishes about not only his long career, which includes nurturing global stars like Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, and John Cena, but also about the challenges of aging and disability, his split from collaborator Vince McMahon, and the sudden death of his beloved wife, Jan. The result is a gruff, endearing, and remarkably human-scale portrait, set against the larger-than-life backdrop of professional wrestling.
Ross’s ascent in WWE mirrors the rise of professional wrestling itself from a DIY sideshow to a billion-dollar business. Under the Black Hat traces all the highs and lows of that wild ride, in which Jim served not only as on-air commentator, but talent manager, payroll master, and even occasional in-ring foil to threats like Paul “Triple H” Levesque and Undertaker. While his role brought him riches and exposure Jim never dreamed of growing up in a small town in Oklahoma, he chafed against the strictures of a fickle corporate culture and what he saw as a narrow vision of what makes great wrestlers—and great story lines. When suddenly stricken with Bell’s palsy, a form of facial paralysis that makes it impossible to smile, he stared down his greatest fear—being cast out of the announcing booth for good.
Picking up where Slobberknocker left off and ending on the cusp of a new career in a reimagined industry, Under the Black Hat is the triumphant tale of a country boy who made it to the top, took a few knocks, and stuck around—just where his fans like him.
This is the third adventure of the unlikely space heroes of the cult TV hit Red Dwarf – Lister, Rimmer, Kryten, Holly and the Cat – as they continue their epic journey through frontal-lobe-knotting realities. We join them just as Dave Lister has finally found his way back to planet Earth – which is good. What’s bad, however, is that time isn’t running in quite the right direction. And if he doesn’t get off the planet soon, he’s going to have to go through puberty again – backwards. If his crewmates can’t help him, Lister will carry on growing younger until he becomes a baby, then an embryo, meeting a very sticky end indeed.
In April 1999, Entertainment Weekly asked its readers what many Americans were surely wondering to themselves: how did wrestling get so big?
As a consequence of the heated ratings competition between World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), the spectacle had taken over Monday nights on prime-time cable television. But in a departure from the family-friendly programming produced by the last industry boom – the 1980s wave, which made household names of Hulk Hogan, ‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper and Andre the Giant – the new era of wrestling combined stunning athleticism with a raunchy sex appeal, engrossing story lines and novel production techniques that reflected a changing society and its shifting values.
Once again, wrestling was a ubiquitous phenomenon – only this time, it seemed as though the fad would never end. With both WCW and WWF expanding into other forms of entertainment – movies, video games, music and the like – the potential for growth appeared to be limitless.
But with uncertainty surrounding its corporate future, and increasingly uninspired programming eroding its audience, WCW stood on the verge of collapse. Three years into a five-year plan devised by its charismatic leader – a former Blue Ribbon Foods salesman named Eric Bischoff – the company whose unexpected ascension initiated the entire boom was operating on borrowed time.
For by the end of the five-year plan, WCW ceased to exist.
But NITRO is a story about much more than WCW and the Monday Night Wars. It is a story of an era, a time in which the media and cultural landscape precipitated – and later supported – pro wrestling’s mainstream popularity. It is a story of how a company made in the image of an intuitively brilliant risk-taker betrayed its original promise. It is a story of how a handful of men, each struggling with their own limitations, facilitated a public obsession that changed television forever.
And so, with the inside knowledge of a journalist, the perspective of a historian, and the passion of a fan, author Guy Evans provides a fresh look at an unfortunate inevitability – the downfall of World Championship Wrestling. Bolstered by exclusive interviews with over 120 former TBS and WCW employees, NITRO is the definitive picture of the last wrestling boom.
Featuring exclusive interviews and comments from:
Eric Bischoff, fmr. President of World Championship Wrestling; Harvey Schiller, fmr. President of Turner Sports; Jamie Kellner, fmr. CEO of Turner Broadcasting System; Bill Burke, fmr. President of TBS network; Joe Uva, fmr. President of Turner Entertainment Sales and Marketing; Scot Safon, fmr. SVP of Marketing for TNT network; Kevin Nash, WWE Hall of Famer and 5-time WCW world champion; Diamond Dallas Page, WWE Hall of Famer and 3-time WCW world champion; Vince Russo, fmr. WCW writer; Marcus ‘Buff’ Bagwell, fmr. WCW superstar and 5-time world tag team champion; Kevin Sullivan, fmr. WCW superstar and head booker; Hugh Morrus, fmr. WCW superstar; Neal Pruitt, fmr. WCW Feature Producer and voice of the nWo; David Crockett, fmr. WCW Vice President of Production; Dick Cheatham, fmr. Group Controller for TBS; Alan Sharp, fmr. WCW Director of Public Relations; Mike Weber, fmr. WCW Director of Marketing; Rob Garner, fmr. WCW Vice President of TV Programming and Sales Jerry Jarrett, legendary wrestling promoter and booker…
One of Ray Bradbury’s best-known and most popular novels, Something Wicked This Way Comes, now featuring a new introduction and material about its longstanding influence on culture and genre.
For those who still dream and remember, for those yet to experience the hypnotic power of its dark poetry, step inside. The show is about to begin. Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. The carnival rolls in sometime after midnight, ushering in Halloween a week early. A calliope’s shrill siren song beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. Two boys will discover the secret of its smoke, mazes, and mirrors; two friends who will soon know all too well the heavy cost of wishes…and the stuff of nightmares.
Few novels have endured in the heart and memory as has Ray Bradbury’s unparalleled literary masterpiece Something Wicked This Way Comes. Scary and suspenseful, it is a timeless classic in the American canon.
Imagine a product that increases alertness, boosts creativity, reduces stress, improves perception, stamina, motor skills, and accuracy, enhances your sex life, helps you make better decisions, keeps you looking younger, aids in weight loss, reduces the risk of heart attack, elevates your mood, and strengthens memory. Now imagine that this product is nontoxic, has no dangerous side effects, and, best of all, is absolutely free.
This miracle drug is, in fact, nothing more than the nap: the right nap at the right time. The work of Sara C. Mednick, Ph.D., a researcher at the Salk Institute and the leading authority on the study of the nap, Take a Nap! Change Your Life. is the scientifically-based breakthrough program that shows how we can fight the fatigue epidemic—which afflicts an estimated 50 million Americans—through a custom-designed nap. Take a Nap! Change Your Life. explains the five stages of the sleep cycle, particularly Stage Two, Slow Wave Sleep, and REM, and the benefits each one provides; how to assess your tiredness and set up a personal sleep profile; and how to neutralize the voice in your head that tells you napping is a sign of laziness. (Not that anyone would have called JFK, Churchill, Einstein, or Napoleon a slug-a-bed.) Using the unique Nap Wheel on the cover and interior graphs and charts, it shows us exactly when our optimum napping time is, and exactly how long we should try to sleep—even how it’s possible to design a nap to inspire creativity one day, and the next day design one to help us with our memory. There are tips on how to create the right nap environment, a 16-step technique for falling asleep, a six-week napping workbook, and more.
While other books give you tips on how to “write funny,” this book offers a paradigm shift in understanding the mechanics and art of comedy, and the proven, practical tools that help writers translate that understanding into successful, commercial scripts. The Hidden Tools of Comedy unlocks the unique secrets and techniques of writing comedy. Kaplan deconstructs sequences in popular films and TV that work and don’t work, and explains what tools were used (or should have been used).
The Pyrates is George MacDonald Fraser’s tongue-in-cheek homage to the swashbucklers of yore. In these rollicking pages you’ll find tall ships and desert islands; impossibly gallant adventurers and glamorous heroines; devilishly sinister cads and ghastly dungeons; improbably acrobatic duels and hair’s-breadth escapes; and more plot twists than you can shake a rapier at. A deliriously entertaining combination of high-seas action-adventure and comic hi-jinx.
Once upon a time – of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve…
Bob Cratchit and Ebenezer Scrooge are busy preparing for their holiday celebration. Five years have passed since Scrooge’s miraculous transformation, the strange circumstances of which no one could ever quite account for.
But when Scrooge fails to make his annual appearance at Fred’s dinner party, everyone is alarmed. Nephew Fred, Bob Cratchit, his son Tim, and Martha Cratchit’s fiance Daniel set out into the grip of a snowstorm to locate Mr. Scrooge. Their journey will take them right into one of the darkest slums of East London, as they discover what it truly means to Keep Christmas Well.
Peppered with original drawings by Samuel Morgainne Blight, Jason C. McDonald’s original sequel to A Christmas Carol recaptures the whimsical voice of Charles Dickens, with a message that is as fresh and relevant today as it was 175 years ago.
Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely traveling further than the pantry of his hobbit-hole in Bag End. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard, Gandalf, and a company of thirteen dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an unexpected journey ‘there and back again’. They have a plot to raid the treasure hoard of Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon.
Igloo and Angie are the co-founders of a new social network, Tapestry, based on the principles of privacy and data ownership. Two years later, with Tapestry poised to become the world’s largest social network, their rapid growth puts them under government scrutiny.
Tapestry’s privacy and security is so effective that it impedes the government’s ability to monitor routine communications. Fearing Tapestry will spread to encompass the whole of the Internet, threatening America’s surveillance abilities around the globe, the government swoops in to stop Angie and company — by any means possible.
Under the constant threat of exposure — of Angie’s criminal past, of Igloo’s secret life in the underground kink scene, and of their actions to subvert a FISA court order — they must hatch a plan to ensure the success of Tapestry no matter what pressures the government brings to bear.
Not knowing whom to trust, or if they can even trust each other, Igloo and Angie must risk everything in the ultimate battle for control of the Internet.
The official novelization of Jim Henson’s cult classic film along with a behind-the-scenes look at the film’s conception from the Jim Henson Archives.
Sarah has thirteen hours to save her brother from a land where everything seems possible and nothing is what it seems.
Experience the beloved fantasy classic Labyrinth adapted by A.C.H. Smith and personally overseen by Jim Henson. Featuring twenty previously unpublished illustrations by legendary illustrator and concept artist Brian Froud and an exclusive peek into Jim Henson’s creative process with fifty never-before-seen pages from his personal journal, detailing the initial conception of his ideas for Labyrinth.
In the vein of Mindy Kaling, Ali Wong, and Amy Poehler, a collection of hilarious personal essays, poems and even amusement park maps on the subjects of insecurity, fame, anxiety, and much more from the charming and wickedly funny creator of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.
Rachel Bloom has felt abnormal and out of place her whole life. In this exploration of what she thinks makes her “different,” she’s come to realize that a lot of people also feel this way; even people who she otherwise thought were “normal.”
In a collection of laugh-out-loud funny essays, all told in the unique voice (sometimes singing voice) that made her a star; Rachel writes about everything from her love of Disney, OCD and depression, weirdness, and female friendships to the story of how she didn’t poop in the toilet until she was four years old; Rachel’s pieces are hilarious, smart, and infinitely relatable (except for the pooping thing).
World famous wrestling diva Tammy Lynn “Sunny” Sytch has written a tell-all autobiography that follows her into the ring and on the road, through her romantic relationships, domestic abuse, her battle with cancer, incarceration, getting sober and the release of her adult film with Vivid Entertainment.
Lister gazed out of the porthole and catalogue the series of disasters that had led him to this point in space and time: the bad decisions, the poor career choices, the unreliable friendships that had led him here – on a prison ship bound for the most inhospitable penal colony in the outer cosmos… and all he’d ever wanted was to be a soft metal guitar icon. This is the beginning of the third and eagerly awaited red dwarf novel where Lister starts out by searching for his Doppelganger and ends up having the future of the human race on his shoulders.
A wondrous tale of a child…a prophecy…and the power of magic.
The Child She was born with the mark on her arm. The mark of the one who would cause the downfall of Queen Bavmorda, and end her evil reign. If she survived…
The Prophecy The legend told of the Queen that a child would be born who would destroy her. That prophecy was the Queen’s greatest fear…and now it was about to come true. Unless she could stop it…
The Power of Magic Willow Ufgood had always wanted to be a magician, to be wise and respected in the community. His dreams were about to come true…but in ways he could have never imagined.
There was a time when Marty McFly was never in time for classes and never in time for dinner. Then one day, he wasn’t in his time at all. Thanks to Doc Brown and his impossibly fast DeLorean, Marty returned to the past, changed his future (or present, depending on how you look at it), and then he . . . well . . .
Time is really running out for Marty McFly and Doctor Emmett Brown!
Mart McFly is stuck in the year 1955 — without a time machine!
Even worse, Doc Brown is stranded in the year 1885 on the dusty streets of his hometown’s distant past, where he’s in danger of being gunned down by desperados before he’s even born!
Somehow, Marty must get back to the Wild West so both he and Doc can get BACK TO THE FUTURE!
By day, Angie, a twenty-year veteran of the tech industry, is a data analyst at Tomo, the world’s largest social networking company; by night, she exploits her database access to profile domestic abusers and kill the worst of them. She can’t change her own traumatic past, but she can save other women.
When Tomo introduces a deceptive new product that preys on users’ fears to drive up its own revenue, Angie sees Tomo for what it really is–another evil abuser. Using her coding and hacking expertise, she decides to destroy Tomo by building a new social network that is completely distributed, compartmentalized, and unstoppable. If she succeeds, it will be the end of all centralized power in the Internet.
But how can an anti-social, one-armed programmer with too many dark secrets succeed when the world’s largest tech company is out to crush her and a no-name government black ops agency sets a psychopath to look into her growing digital footprint?”
