Incredibly Strange Wrestling - Bob Calhoun

2008-10-30T03:32:37Z

Complete video at: fora.tv

Author Bob Calhoun discusses the history of Incredibly Strange Wrestling, a semi-pro wrestling / performance art group he helped establish in San Francisco in the late 1990's.

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Bob Calhoun recalls Beer, Blood, and Cornmeal: Seven Years of Strange Wrestling, a dark comic memoir that tells the true story of urban misfits slamming themselves for cult celebrity.

Beginning in the mid-'90s, Bob Calhoun describes how he moved to a shoebox apartment in San Francisco, and, taking the stage name "Count Dante" from a comic book Kung-Fu master, formed a punk band and fell in with a bizarre wrestling outfit called Incredibly Strange Wrestling (ISW).

With ISW, Calhoun would not only wrestle sasquatches and giant chickens, tour the US and Europe, he would eventually become the creative force behind the mayhem.

Cult bands such as NOFX, The Dickies, and the Donnas provided raucous rock and roll while crowd favorites squared off against each other in the ring.

From run-ins with the Church of Scientology, the real Black Dragon Fighting Society, skinheads, skaters, and even Limp Bizkit's front man Fred Durst, Calhoun's memoir takes popular culture and sends it on a collision course with professional wrestling, and he shows how big-time politics, an increasingly corporate entertainment industry and the threat of violence lurked in the fringes of a truly punk phenomenon - Cody's Books

Bob Calhoun is an author who has written stories for Salon.com, the San Francisco Chronicle, and numerous other magazines. He has published several books and resides in Daly City, California.

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