Free Have a Nice Day by Mick Foley

Barbara Eden if I ever get the chance.
    The Debater gets a little down when an anti-drug talk he’s giving leads to disrespect. “Dammit, Scott, nothing’s really changed, I still don’t get any respect,” Mick sneers angrily, before adding, “I’m sick and tired of being treated like a dog-get me something to eat.”
    “How about a Milk-Bone, Mick?” Scott replies, and then proceeds to make the poor Debater beg, roll over, play dead, and drink water out of a bowl on the ground, before finally giving him the crunchy canine treat.
    “There’s only one person who can help me,” the distraught Debater declares, and opens the yellow pages to the Grand Lizard of Wrestling.
    In the next scene, the Debater shows up at the Lizard’s door, which oddly is just to the side of the Foley living room, with pictures of Mick and John Foley hanging in the background. The Debater throws himself at the mercy of the Lizard, who after lambasting him both verbally and physically, admits that he sees that “eye of the tiger” in Mick and agrees to take him under his wing. First the Lizard (who is actually Dan Zucker without the Groucho glasses) tears off the Debaters “preppy piss rag” and says, “Here, wear this, it’s your first pajama top.”
    The action picks up as Mick’s swinging friends are sitting on a couch reading wrestling magazines, wondering where their buddy has gone, and mentioning they haven’t “seen that rat Zuck around either.” All of a sudden, the Dude appears. He has entered the building alongside his manager, the Grand Lizard of Wrestling. The Dude is looking good with his long hair wig, pajama top with matching headband, long underwear with shorts over them, and work boots. He also is now wearing a goatee. (In a display of cinematic genius, the Dude scenes were filmed first, and then a clean-shaven Foley and Debater did the rest.) The Lizard looks resplendent in a New Year’s Eve party hat and bedspread wrapped around him.
    Together, the deadly duo insult the swinging wrestling magazine readers, prompting a “Who are you?” from Tim Goldstein. After a bunch of incoherent drunken slurs, I was able to spit out “Dude Love.”
    “You’re Dude Love?” Tim suddenly gasps. “The master of the spinning sidewinder suplex, the man who’s been terrorizing the Midwest for the past four months?” (Remember, back then professional wrestling still had many regional territories, instead of two national powers.)
    The Dude then launches a verbal diatribe, which ends with “We’re here for one reason, and one reason only: fame, honor, glory, and fortune; to destruct, to destroy, and to take the World Wrestling Federation belt-the ten pounds of gold-from around the fat waist of Ishmala the Puerto Rican Giant.”
    With that, the movie segues into a music video that is actually a good piece of storytelling, chronicling the Dude’s rise to glory in the World Wrestling Federation. Combining interviews, locker room pull-aparts, and wrestling matches that took place in the snow in my front yard next to our big pine tree, the segment ends with a “busted open” Dude taking the gold from Ishmala. I think The Loved One’s greatest achievement is that we were able to get the real-life, five-foot- eight, two-hundred-and-eighty-pound Ishmala Lozada to wrestle in his underwear in seventeen-degree weather. I also should point out that unlike today’s backyard wrestlers, who foolishly maim each other, no one was hurt during our wrestling sequences. Plenty of fake punches, though, and the Dude’s ever-present “palm to the forehead thrust.”
    Unfortunately, success seems to have gone to the Dude’s head as he shows up at a party in the Foley living room, where the swinging party animals are still sitting on the couch flipping through their wrestling periodicals. The Dude is now smoking stogies and throwing down brews, as he sports the same tinfoil belt around his waist that the original Dude wore in Frank Foley. The