La Zona Muerta

Here’s the sort of thing I would write from time to time over at The BOARD~! by way of you knowing what the heck you’re getting into. This is from 2022, when Danhausen was first hired (and Gotch willing, he’ll gone by the beginning of 2025):

“Why don’t you eat the pasta salad?” my mother snapped, her voice deep and ragged with cigarette abuse and unknowable motherly venom.

“I tried it; I don’t like it.” I replied, my voice cracking with teenage surety. Who the hell served pasta salad during Thanksgiving, anyway? The reality was that I hadn’t actually tried the foul mixture of pasta and cheese and vinegar and olives and more vinegar, but I was cognizant, even at that age, of not wanting to cause a scene. It was gross, I wasn’t going to try it and end up gagging in front of friends and family.

Obviously, I had not provided the right answer. There was clearly something else wrong, but the pasta salad had now become her own personal Waterloo. This MEANT something. She had to be right; I HAD to eat the damned pasta salad. “I didn’t see you try it!” she fumed.

There was only one option left; the nuclear option. I did the only thing I could do. I took a dramatically large bite of the vinegary concoction. “There, I’m sorry, but I don’t like it. I don’t want any.”

This, of course, enraged her, but fortunately my aunt intervened, telling my mother to chill out and that it didn’t matter if I didn’t want any pasta salad. Now, my aunt had been responsible for bringing the pasta salad in the first place, but I cut her some slack since she threw me the life line. “Thank you,” I silently mouthed to her as I took the opportunity to slink away from the kitchen table.

What does this mildly traumatic episode from the Life of Convoy have to do with the cost of tea in China?

Danhausen, for me, is pasta salad. I’ve seen a bunch of his matches and been tired of the gimmick for YEARS. I don’t care for him and, quite frankly, his dumb fans who are WAY too into his shtick. After his appearance and subsequent signing to AEW last night, I had to explain to someone on the WOL Twitch Discord that it was not, in fact okay to want to “kill” the Observer front page reporter for saying signing Danhausen was a red flag moment.

I’ve tried the vinegary taste of Danhausen. Many, many times. Many more times than probably his most ardent fans. It’s super not for me.

If you distill his gimmick down, he’s basically Orange Cassidy if Orange Cassidy was a TV horror host instead of a sloth like slacker. It’s just that the OC gimmick doesn’t grate on me the way the Danhausen one does. Also, OC’s gimmick doesn’t quite generate the devotion Danhausen’s does. It’s not the end of the world or anything, but now I have to suffer just that many more people who think they’re clever adding “-hausen” to the ends of words or saying “Tony Elite gave Danhausen a blimp full of human monies” or endless variations on same.

Sigh.

2024 bonus: a quick sketch for some friends: