Zen in the Art of Being a Jerk

One of my favorite things to do is to ask loaded questions.  Especially when it's obvious of what I'm trying to accomplish.  Questions like, "How much would you rather let me borrow today?  20 dollars or 30 dollars?"  I can't think off of the top of my head of a good instance of this happening in professional wrestling, but I'm sure some heel guy used this tactic before. This is kind of similar to the strategy of putting words in someone's mouth, which I HAVE seen someone do in professional wrestling before.  One time, at some Clash of the Champions I think it was, Bobby "The Brain" Heenan told Tony Schiavone out of nowhere that "Mean" Gene Okerlund hated Schiavone.  He clarified this by emphasizing, "Okerlund TOLD me he hates you."  Then Schiavone said he didn't believe a word Heenan ever says.   Usually it's best to pull someone into the conversation that wasn't even involved when you put words in their mouths.  ...

Cowardice is always a good trait for a heel character to possess.  When someone calls me out and makes me look bad by exposing my lying, I claim I'll let it slide this one time.  But even when it happens repeatedly, I just keep making that same claim - that I'll let it slide "just this once."  Even though I already let it slide several times by this point.  Clear example of somebody being too afraid to take action even though he repeatedly claimed he would. This kind of trait reminds me of Big Pappa Pump Scott Steiner at the Spring Stampede 1998 pay per view.  Despite being loaded with all kinds of muscles, it was clear that he was afraid to fight his own brother on the opposing team and he ran away during a tag match, leaving his partner Buff Bagwell in the ring to fight two men.  Good stuff with Big Pappa Pump looking that pathetic.  Certainly had me laughing. Another good way for a heel to look pathetic like that is feigning victimhood in an attempt...

I found a great way of being a heel in daily life is to pull some dumb stunt like declaring someone close to you a team leader in an attempt to gain their favor, but then while declaring yourself to be on their team you proceed to go about doing nothing but things that they don't like.  I did that so much that people began to see right through me.   They realized (quicker than I thought) that the attempts to over-emphasize their positive traits were only done as an expectation of undeserved gratitude in return.  Even people I liked and respected could tell when my words were genuine and when they were nothing more than empty attempts to pull the wool over their eyes.  And they called me out on it too - saying I was full of it, and laughing at me.  Then I laughed at how easy they could read my mind. I remember one time I had three people in front of me that I kept saying all kinds of good things about.  Yet every single one of them wasn't buying it....

A good heel tactic is to keep whatever horrible motive you have as obvious as possible.  One time I spent my money on something worthless that my coworker disapproved of and told me NOT to spend money on.  After I ignored her advice and spent it (being sure to tell her just how much I spent on it), a few minutes later I asked if I could "borrow" that EXACT amount for "groceries."  I did not get the loan. Another time I drew up a petition for all of the office to sign to remove all of the stuffed monkey decorations from a different coworker's desk (she liked monkeys instead of flamingos), but I was too darn lazy to actually get everyone's signatures so I just signed their names myself.  And I was so lazy I didn't even try to make the signatures look authentic.  I wrote them in PRINT, and didn't even vary the printing style.  And I was so arrogant I thought no one would notice.  When everyone saw that silly petition they all had a good laugh.  I got...

One good way of being like a heel wrestler in daily life is simply being lazy.  In the office I like to be close to some object like a folder, but ask someone much further away than me to get the object for me.  It's inexcusable, which is why I do it. Also it's fun to attempt to put responsibilities on people when the responsibility shouldn't lie on them at all.  Like even though I lie to my coworker on a daily basis about stupid stuff, I tell her (falsely) that there's a perfectly good explanation of why I lie about a lot of stuff, and it's her responsibility to listen closely to my explanation behind all of my lies even though it's going to take about four to six hours to explain the reasoning behind it.   She came up with one of the best responses ever to attempts to justify elaborate lies like this.  Typically she holds her hand high in the air without saying anything.  The first time she did this I asked why she was holding her hand up, and she sa...

Another good heel thing to do is to make ridiculous requests for things.  And to make sure you never reciprocate.  A lot of times I ask for apologies even when someone hasn't done anything wrong.  When they say "Apology for what?" I say that it doesn't have to be for anything.  Then I offer some lame explanation like it's just good to apologize regardless.  That never goes over well. Also I like to ask the person I bother MOST to vouch for me when it's most important.  I told my coworker that I bother a lot, "When it's Judgment Day, and I'm standing before the Lord, I know I can count on you to vouch for me and tell the man upstairs what a good man I've been."  The result is an akward, "Uhhh... you better find someone else dude!"  Then we all get a good laugh. As far as non-reciprocation goes, I mentioned before I usually like to sit in a coworker's chair for no reason.  But then I tell them when I have to go out to make sur...

One of the things that made Ric Flair such a great heel in wrestling is he would still cheat against really easy opponents he didn't even need to cheat against.  He cheated not because it helped him, but simply because he liked cheating.  It was fun for him to see what he could get away with.  I always liked when he pinned some jobber and still put his feet on the ropes for leverage even though you knew the jobber wasn't going to kick out anyway. But what's even better heel behavior is when you like lying, cheating, and stealing so much that you'd STILL do it even when it actually hurts you.  I am so petty that I like to lie to my coworker about when I've been sitting in the chair at their desk sometimes.  If I HAVE been sitting in it, I lie and say I haven't.  But lying is so fun that even if I HAVEN'T been sitting in that chair, I will sometimes lie and say that I have.  And the best part is I've lied about it SO much over the years that even when I ...

Wrestling also has types of heels called "monster heels" that just run over the competition and make it look impossible for the good guy to defeat them.  These kinds of villains are popular in comic books in particular.  As powerful as Superman is, it's always interesting when even HE can look like an underdog next to a bad guy.  But there was one villain in particular that Superman had who seemed different from the others in that he was apparently more annoying than dangerous.  I believe he went by the name Mister Mxyzptlk, but I know little more than that because I didn't read comics very much.  However, I DID watch quite a few episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and one villain on that show fit this description in particular - a villain named Q. Q was certainly powerful enough to be dangerous and at times actually was.  But since he could so EASILY destroy Picard with his overwhelming omnipotent power, it wasn't any fun to make that his goal...

Part of trying to possess the personality of a heel wrestler in daily life involves not only mimicking the actions of the heel wrestler, but accepting similar results as well.  This comeuppance in the ring usually leads to the heel being thoroughly beaten from one corner to the other and flying all over the place in a desperate attempt to escape.  An embarrassing situation to say the least.  Especially in front of a lot of people.  But daily life for most of us usually involves quite a bit less violence.  So what kind of comeuppance do us regular joe heels end up getting? In my case it has been being caught in my own lies so badly that a regular person simply could not tolerate the embarrassment resulting from the discovery.  One of my favorite times this happened is when I told my coworker how upset I was that I was being called the name "Jack" over and over despite that not being anything even close to my actual name.  It started by her saying "Liste...

Before I watched wrestling, I was a fan of comedy.  I've pretty much been a fan of comedy my entire life.  Even in elementary school my parents allowed me to watch Monty Python's Flying Circus, which surprises me because a lot of its content is really not intended for small children. Still, it took me MANY many years to realize that a comedic routine is greatly enhanced with the presence of a "foil" or a "straight man" character - the regular person placed beside the crazy one just to emphasize how much the crazy person deviates from what's normal and accepted.  Gorilla Monsoon was a PERFECT foil for Bobby "The Brain" Heenan back in the days of WWF Prime Time wrestling, and to pursue the goofy and pointless art of being a jerk in daily life, finding an adequate foil of my own was a necessary requirement.   Fortunately I found out one of my coworkers could be a perfect foil.  Mostly because she refuses to give nonsense any kind of a foothold wha...

American professional wrestling has split wrestlers into two primary groups since time immemorial, or at least since the days of Gorgeous George.  First there are the heels that go around and act like jerks all the time, and then there are the babyfaces who confront the jerks with the intent of ultimately teaching them a lesson in the ring after a sufficient build to a match.   In the late 80's this formula expanded from the ring to the commentary booth with commentators like Jesse "The Body" Ventura and Bobby "The Brain" Heenan encouraging the jerk wrestlers in the ring to be even bigger jerks than they already were, much to the dismay of play by play commentators like Gorilla Monsoon who just wanted to call the action in the ring.  Eventually it got to the point where the heel commentators seemed even more like jerks than the heel wrestlers who were actually wrestling in the ring.  I can't tell you how much I enjoyed heel commentators and wrestlers over th...