Beer, Blood and Cornmeal: Seven Years of Incredibly Strange Wrestling

by Bob Calhoun

Incredibly Strange Wrestling was the bastard offspring of post-punk garage rock and masked Mexican lucha libre. Fielding a cast of crazed characters with names like El Homo Loco, Macho Sasquatcho and El Pollo Diablo, the show lived up to its name. Christians fought lions, Ku Klux Klowns squared off against Hasidic Jews and Bigfoots and bears mauled hapless hippies in some of the most surreal grappling bouts ever staged. And if that wasn’t enough, cult bands such as NOFX, The Dickies and The Donnas provided the raucous rock and roll in between the highflying mayhem. ISW emerged from the back alleys and seedy clubs of San Francisco’s South of Market scene to headline the historic Fillmore and barnstorm North America on the Van’s Warped Tour. At the height of its popularity, Green Day’s Billy Joe Armstrong and Metallica’s James Hetfield could be seen tossing tortillas (which the promoters supplied) at ringside with the rest of the hell heads, boozehounds and tattooed party girls that made up ISW’s rabid following. Bob Calhoun broke into ISW as an untrained grappler and rose through the ranks to become one of the creative forces behind the subversive carnival. In his new memoir, Beer, Blood and Cornmeal, Calhoun delves into the ISW’s organized insanity with all of the dark humor that it deserves. It’s a story of urban misfits risking their necks for local celebrity in one of America’s most famous cities all told against the backdrop of the dot com boom and bust and an increasingly corporate entertainment industry. Beer, Blood and Cornmeal takes the highest tier of the music industry and sends it on a collision course with the lowest rung of the professional wrestling ladder. The threat of real violence is always lurking at the fringes of the fake fights as shows end in riots and wrestlers disturbingly become their squared circle alter egos.

Genres: Nonfiction

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Bob Calhoun is a San Francisco Bay Area author, journalist, and former wrestler and peepshow emcee. Since 2015, he has recounted his city’s most gruesome and lurid events in his regular SF Weekly column, "Yesterday’s Crimes." His punk wrestling memoir, Beer, Blood & Cornmeal (ECW Press), is a national bestseller.

Reviews

[carla · Rating 4 out of 5]

My high school English teacher insisted that form mirrored content, and that definitely holds true for Beer, Blood & Cornmeal. Much like the Incredibly Strange Wrestling covered in this book, there's lots of metaphors, exaggerated sentences, and over-the-top descriptions. Bob strikes me as this incredible narrator, because as involved as he was with the scene, he manages view it through a critical lens understanding what worked and what didn't within the world, and placing the events within the broader cultural times. Bob is obviously well-read, and has a good sense of huge themes, while providing nitty-gritty details and spot-on observations.

There were several spots where I laughed out loud -- and a few places where I winced in pain as different moves were described.

Living in San Francisco during the times that this book took place, it was a treat to hear how someone else lived during those times. Especially since it involved flying tortillas, bad taste & lots of hanging out.

Fast-paced and easy to read, it's definitely a good one to check out.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actually, I really couldn't wait for this book to come out and put myself on the waiting list for it on Amazon.com. Having been to see two or three ISW (Incredibly Strange Wrestling) performances, I knew that MC Count Dante (here, author Bob Calhoun) would deliver this book employing his brilliant elan-- and that's exactly what he did. It's an outstanding account of the ISW lifestyle, without either pushing in the last nail of ISW's coffin or taking away from its momentum. Count Dante, after all, was the show's outstanding promoter, and he continues his call out in the pages of this book. Great photos!

[Dkolacinski · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was so good, my 70 lb puppy ate it! (For Straight!) If you're into independent wrestling, which I am, you'll love this personal recollection of Incredibly Strange Wrestling by Count Dante. Part autobiography, part memoir, part social history, relive your hormonally challenged youth (I'm still there -- at 68). Do everything to excess. Throw those tortillas. Savor the unsavory stereotypes battling (sort of)one another. This was an incredibly strange read.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reads like more of a Bob Calhoun autobiography with an emphasis on his time with Incredibly Strange Wrestling, than a straight up retelling of what ISW was all about it. That being said, Calhoun is modest, self-effacing and has an entertaining writing style which makes the book an entertaining read. He also writes about a time period in punk rock that I was a part of so it stoked some personal memories and made it easier for me to relate. The only drawback for me was the end of the book went on bit too much with the final tours and unraveling of ISW.
If you want to read a breezy tale that includes a giant chicken wrestling a Sasquatch, this is a good bet.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book about Incredibly Strange Wrestling, a phenomenon whose luminous arc I am saddened to have missed. Post punk and full of costumed wrestlers taking professional wrestling to a whole new sideways universe. Culturally, America will be just fine without ISW. But stylistically!--can this country recover from the loss of a guy wrestling in a huge, blocky brown gorilla suit with the moniker "Macho Sasquatcho"??? I don't think so, I really don't.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're already nostalgic for the 90's, this is the book to read. Bob Calhoun is a smart, funny, irreverent writer that manages to squeeze every last drop of humor from even the most seemingly humorless situations. Go out and buy two today, one to keep and one to lend. It's that good.

[Jake · Rating 1 out of 5]

I felt bad every time I put this book down after a bit of reading. I finished it because I bought it. I read this to the last page to avoid guilt over wasting money. Now, don't get me wrong, this book isn't terrible. It's just mostly written for the handful of people who remember ISW from when it was still a thing and people who love bitchy gossip and drama. I don't belong to the first group and my severe intolerance of the second is the reason that Goodreads is the only social media I haven't quit forever. I can't take it. I'm not a person who can deal with overwhelming negativity and not be affected by it.

I had never heard of ISW until I bought this book, which I did because I love rasslin and this seemed interesting. The rasslin bits appealed to my fan boy sensibilities, but this was about 90% gossip and exposé that no one asked for. It's like going to a friend's house and hearing them bitch for hours at a time about their job and the other people that work there that you don't know and are in no way emotionally invested in but it just turns out that they're also the worst people. Yuck.

[Rosemary · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wrestling book, and so much more. Set against the colorful background of the San Francisco music scene of the post Nirvana 90's, and intertwined with the fortunes of the dotcom boom and bust, Bob Calhoun gives an insider's view of the birth of the cult phenomenon known as Incredibly Strange Wrestling. Taking the do-it-yourself punk rock ethic as serious as a heart attack, the founders of Incredibly Strange Wrestling mixed Mexican Lucha Libre stylings with American Professional wrestling and added a healthy dose of punk rock comic book insanity to create an ironic and hilarious brain child that matched Sasquatches against crazy chickens, fed Christians to the lions, and rocked the house every night.

Calhoun, aka Count Dante, is an outsider at first, and a show running MC and booker in the end. But all along this twisted tale, he's an intelligent and accessible everyman that guides the reader through a wonderfully alien world of rancid night clubs, flea-bitten tour buses, around the country and the world to the pinnacles of sold-out shows from the Fillmore Theater to the Toronto Skydome.

Wrestling fans will be thrilled by the blow by blow of matches they'll wonder how they ever missed. Musicians and music fans will recognize the story of a rocker just looking for a chance at stardom. And readers everywhere will identify with a young man striving to follow his dreams in the face of obstacles both incredibly strange and mundane.

This is a wrestling book and so much more. "Beer, Blood, and Cornmeal" is a story you have to read to believe.

[Ethan S · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Story of Incredibly Strange Wrestling, one of the odder independent wrestling groups from pro wrestling's late 90s boom period. Bob Calhoun was an announcer and sometimes wrestler that was there for almost the whole period. ISW certainly lived up to its name with characters like Uncle N.A.M.B.L.A, El Pollo Diablo, Mucho Sasquatcho, The Abortionist, etc...

He details the rise out of the punk/garage/music scene in San Francisco, through the heights (low as they may have been) through the slow death at the end. It's populated by a mishmash of weirdos, miscreants, indy workers, go-go dancers, alcoholics, and all kinds of others that made up ISW.

It's a fun read, probably more so for anyone that saw any of their shows, than if you haven't, but it's an interesting look into a bizarre group of characters starting a bizarre wrestling fed in probably the only time and place it could have worked.

[Rick Monkey · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit rough around the edges, sure, but damned if it doesn't make me wish I was part of the San Francisco punk/hipster scene of the 1990s so I could have been around to witness El Pollo Diablo vs The Poontangler.

And nothing (NOTHING!) should make me wish I was part of a hipster scene.

[Luis Marrero · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a decent read

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delightful, and often funny, memoir of his days in the San Francisco independent wrestling promotion Incredibly Strange Wrestling. It was often like trench warfare for him, but it is a great read.