Ep. 469: The Complete Hulk Hogan | 1982 Part 6 (Hulk Meets Linda)

0:18 It's the lapsed fan wrestling podcast special report. The lapsed fan presents the complete Hulk Hogan, a real American story brought to you by garage beer.

0:30 So much happens to Hulk Hogan in 1982. I think we've established that by now, boss.

0:34 Yeah, I think, I think 82, well, it's kind of funny. It just seems like every year so much fucking happens to him. Absolutely.

0:42 The things that happened in 82 though, man, do they set in motion things in the future from the Rocky opportunity to which led to the we magazine nude photo shoot we talked about last week.

0:51 I still can't get over that.

0:54 Shout out to Mark Weiss who joined us, the photographer. That's, that's, you know, honestly, that's a fucking, that's a fucking get honestly. So Bravo to you for that one. Cause that's, that's what he said. I've no one's ever asked me about this. I've been waiting. I was like, fuck.

1:13 I mean, If you wonder why the complete Hulk Hogan exists, if you wonder why we put everything aside and spare no stone, it'll all be clear in retrospect when it's in the volume and fucking AI and shit knows every little detail about Hulk Hogan because of the work we're doing.

1:30 I just don't get it. He's one of the people, you know, it wasn't like that was a missed thing. People knew about the Wii magazine. People knew about the new thing. They've been so curious about it for years. And, like, nobody fucking bothered to say, hey, you know, let's talk to the fucking photographer. Great stuff.

1:49 And to get the insight and the fact that Ruth kind of stepped up to do the interview because Hogan, after the photo.

1:54 Shoot, got cold feet about participating. Dude, I don't want to do an interview, dude. They said it was a shoot. Brother, you got naked photos of me, dude. What else do you want? You got me completely vulnerable naked, brother.

2:07 Yes.

2:07 100% naked, dude. His eyes soft. His desire is clear.

2:11 So nervous.

2:20 Does this dude mind if I touch her tit? No, but she does mind being called a dude.

2:29 And so, again, we're forced to confront the fact that Hulk Hogan for years was portrayed.

2:36 As a sex symbol.

2:38 Okay.

2:38 Okay.

2:40 The Thunderlips character is supposed to be the ultimate male. He's supposed to have women hanging off of him. And he made that manifest in the November 1982 edition of We Magazine. And so we've got all that context as to Hulk's appeal. This would be the same year that a certain somebody would pick up on that appeal at a bar in California called the Red Onion.

3:03 How many people can say they got fucked by a giant? How many people can say they got fucked by a giant?

3:09 Say it again. Say it again.

3:11 How many people can say they got fucked by a giant?

3:13 Is that what it comes down to?

3:16 Yes.

3:17 I ask you. Of course. Listen. It comes down to two things. Okay? It comes down to do things. It comes down to food. Okay? Number one. And then? There is only sex.

3:33 Wow.

3:33 Okay? Food and sex. That's what it's about.

3:35 Right.

3:36 Right, if you're trying to get to the core of what motivates people's actions. Listen, think about it. It is too one of the necessary actions to survive in this world. So why would Hulk Hogan be any exception? Of course. And obviously, the bigger the better.

3:50 Yes.

3:51 You know, he apparently has a nearly one foot long cock. Okay. So, of course, you want to get fucked by a giant. It's so wild that.

4:05 It was kind of a storybook marriage between these two. It starts in 82, of course, until the end. And they sit down with her all these years later for the Netflix documentary, which is where that little soundbite comes from. And that's kind of the lump sum of how she explains how she was attracted to him.

4:26 That's what she needed, that's what she wanted, and that's what she got. A giant fucking. And pre-divorce, would she explain it that way? Probably not. But post-divorce, is she being a little more truthful than she would be otherwise?

4:39 Yes.

4:39 Honesty is running rampant. Running wild more so than Hulkamania. Brother. We're the beneficiaries of that here on The Complete because... Yes, we are.

4:49 As a result of the divorce and all the fallout and Hogan knows best and all that, sex tape, there's intense media interest in kind of documenting the history of Hulk Hogan and Linda Claridge's relationship. I don't know why I used her real name and his fake name, but.

5:03 Actually... I know exactly why I did. Yeah, exactly. We don't know which one's the truth.

5:10 That is another huge thing to happen in 1982. Hulk meets Linda. And so we are officially done, boss, with the part of Hulk Hogan's life that did not involve Linda in some way, shape, or form.

5:23 That's actually bigger than I really realized, I think. Yeah, absolutely.

5:29 When you think about how much that's going to be a subtext for everything that's about to happen.

5:34 That is one of the definitions of this fucking clown's life.

5:39 You know, you have all the considerations around raising a family, starting a family. When we did the trial of his life and the George Zahorian transcript, it's like, how does this guy get exempted from testifying against Zahorian? It's some secret thing that has to do with his personal life and his family planning. It's like, man, it's behind so much.

6:00 I mean, to hear Hulk tell it post-divorce in his second book, the whole reason he went to WCW, you know, it's like, right. She just had, um, a lifestyle and an expectation. And you know, every divorced husband says shit like this, but in our case, there's plenty of evidence of it. Most of us on Hogan knows best, um, that you just had this like insatiable, uh, lifestyle demand that he just, well, she just had demands. He demands that he just couldn't help, but continue to monetize the name he had built. And there's no riding off in the sunset for this guy.

6:33 No, No, no, no, no, no.

6:35 And we know over the years from Total Nonstop Hogan, all the stuff we've talked about, that's the main tragedy of Hulk Hogan, is that the biggest star the business ever created ended up in complete shambles from a personal life perspective. Even he couldn't figure out how to be enough. He couldn't figure out how to see his career and for his family to have seen his career as enough.

6:59 Not to say the kids didn't want him to step away from wrestling.

7:02 I'm sure they did.

7:03 But he had to stay in the spotlight for everybody else's agendas. And he's not afraid to kind of play that sympathy card in the post-divorce media circuit, the book and everything else. Because somewhere in his heart, and he's talked about this, we talked about it, he kind of longs for the simplicity of his childhood when he's playing with Tonka trucks out back and stuffing rocks up his nose.

7:29 He's Charles Foster Kane. Charles Foster Kane. you know, all he wanted was his Rosebud sled in the end.

7:37 You just said that. And then my question for you is why are you doing this to me? Why are you elevating this discussion? Cause that's where we're at here.

7:47 Is that right? Yep. Wow. I mean, think about it sneaks up on you. It does. It does. I mean, I mean, you know, there, there are some, certainly some similarities to, to, to citizen Kane, you know, in regards to Hogan, especially with, with Linda. Absolutely. Well, Linda's about to enter the picture, and we're going to raise a glass of garage beer to the flames left behind, including those women in the photo shoot, I guess, in V Magazine, although Mark didn't confirm that there was any hanky-panky in that case. He did say something, though. He said, well, curious word. I think he might have I don't think he meant this word when he said it. Obscure, yeah. Obscure. Yeah, he wanted to obscure it as a verb. Right, exactly.

8:37 I think there's something there. He suddenly was, you know, hey, look, I get it, but I suddenly felt the backpedal hit. That's great. I felt the backpedal.

8:47 Well, I mean, as he told us, and I didn't even know this. I mean, I knew this once I researched him and tried to find him for an interview, but he was like the go-to photog for like, big time eighties, big hair rock bands with, with nude women in the photos. That was like a whole genre.

9:02 That's crazy.

9:03 Now that was like the, um, like the height of rock and roll lifestyles. If you could get apparently like these nude photo spreads in these magazines, which as we talked about were replete and just a huge business back in the eighties. Uh, and so Hulk Hogan ends up in this rock and roll world before rock and wrestling is even a thing. He's like adjacent to this, this, this circuit, this, um, I mean, in a way, he's always been, because think about the bands and stuff. I mean, he's always kind of been there. It's always been on the peripheral.

9:33 It's a good point.

9:33 Yeah, he kind of talked about his band days as making access to women quite easy as well. So we're going to raise a glass of garage beer on this episode of The Complete Hulk Hogan to all of the women we've heard about, known about, learned about in Hulk Hogan's life, including an engagement before this that I think he only talked about after the divorce and a lot of other things before we transition to a... full Linda context here.

9:56 I mean, think about, think about, there must be, I imagine, I imagine, I mean, no, listen, this happens, I think in, in, in many relationships and marriages and stuff, you don't really want to talk about this stuff. Although I think in a healthy relationship, you can talk about previous relationships and, and other things, because I mean, obviously the, It's like, do you really want to think about the fact that, I mean, obviously there's some insecurity there with Linda, I would imagine, in my opinion, I should say, in that she doesn't even want to hear about or have any kind of reference to the fact that he was engaged to someone else before. I mean, that's on her.

10:34 According to him, she had a fit when she saw the We Magazine photos years later. And it's like, it's got nothing to do with you. She's probably doing the math and not believing him that, he did that photo shoot before they met. Now it's hard to pin down a month and day.

10:49 Which is kind of funny. It's like, I mean, wouldn't you know where he was going? I mean, also early on a relationship too, you know, you can be not, not that I'm saying you should go out and do some fucking crazy ass shit, but you know, if you're early on a relationship and you're not necessarily sure where it's going to go, you don't always sit tight and cozy in exclusivity. No, totally.

11:11 In fact, to hear them characterize their 1982, it was kind of a little while before they would be considered exclusive, I would say. They get married in 83, so 82 is not even the marriage years. And there's this time period, as we'll talk about, where she's kind of figuring out, do I want to move to Minneapolis with this guy?

11:29 Because that's his home base still. Let's not forget that. As Hollywood as he is, because of Rocky III, And as many times as he stops over in L.A. on his way to Japan, Hulk is still based in the Twin Cities.

11:41 And for an L.A.

11:42 Girl, a true valley girl like Linda Claridge, that is a big adjustment, which she makes, to her credit. You know, she goes up there and they build a life together. But 82, I think, is probably a lot of smoke committers, you know, as far as... Because Hulk said in his book and in other interviews and stuff after the divorce that she was always very skeptical that he wasn't cheating on her.

12:03 She had a right to be, honestly. You think of the Kate Kennedy episode, which is.

12:07 Oh.

12:07 You know, we shouldn't call that an affair, more an alleged assault, according to her. Right.

12:12 That didn't really go anywhere in court, but she didn't quite frame it as a consensual encounter, but there was a settlement that doesn't allow the details there. But there was that in 95. There was just, you know, the fact that he would have free and loose access all the time if he wanted it, you know.

12:29 Yeah. It was hard.

12:30 I remember he thought that, um, she thought that he was with, um, that woman that Vince hired to do the WBF television show.

12:39 Oh, a cameo newer. Thank you.

12:41 Yep.

12:41 I don't fucking know that name or something. That's great. Jesus Christ. Fucking thrilled. You remembered it without me having to look it up. I'm pretty sure it.

12:50 Was cameo newer or it was someone else kind of like adjacent that got involved because of the WBF. Um, and, um, and yeah, all kinds of, uh, issues.

13:00 I mean, one of the things, you know, I should say, I know exactly how I know that because I like sat there and, I, I, I, I read the magazines that had ads for the WBF body star show like over and over and over again.

13:15 Yes. Right.

13:16 Over and over and over again. I read those magazines since I'm pretty sure it probably March and April of 1992. Right. Are probably the ones that I read over and over and over and over. And you know, one of those things that's kind of like overlooked or not even appreciated. We talked about it on TNH cause we went through a lot of, um, court documents and such, is that, you know, the Heather Clem thing, he always talked about that as like this one-off thing where he was like unlucky, he was caught up in the moment, he was on camera.

13:44 But later on when she's like deposed, they fucked many times, like including in Nashville. So it's not like he has one instance of infidelity that, you know, he was unlucky about it being on tape and it came to define the rest of his existence. For Linda, it was a culmination of a series of deep suspicions. Come to find out he was absolutely blitzing Brooke's best friend. I mean, let's think about that for a second. You know, I mean, just throes of passion.

14:13 Yes.

14:14 And to him, the marriage is already over with Linda at that point. You know, he's got his whole. His enormous appetite and his ravenous hunger. I think so. Yeah. I think so. Fair enough. I mean, has anyone asked Joan Severance? Yeah. Where's she at? Haven't heard from her. I want to know the stories. I want to know what's going on.

14:37 It seems so unnatural to, you know, fans of our vintage, early 90s, kind of saw Hulk always as kind of an old man.

14:45 Of course. To see him as this, like, playboy. Listen, we said it from the beginning. That whole idea of him being, yeah, like you said, with Joan Severance, it's wrong. It's wrong. It's like he is... Yes. He's not a sexual being. Like, he can have kids and be married, but he can't have sex.

15:07 Right.

15:08 Yeah, it's like, if you were reading a Superman comic book and suddenly there's a cell of him just blitzing somebody. Fucking Lois Lane is just getting hammered. Right, come on. Just pummeled.

15:18 Right.

15:19 You know? I'm sure there are magazines that have that, some comic books, but I haven't seen it. I don't know. And I wouldn't want to. That would disturb me to this day.

15:29 They said it's hard to pin down a month and day that they actually met at the Red Onion in L.A.

15:33 But we're going to do our best here on this episode. The Red Onion is fantastic. Where is it? We'll get to that.

15:38 Okay.

15:39 I haven't committed it to memory, but I know it's here in our materials for sure. And it's a hell of a ride, and it has so much to do with the Hulk Hogan story that it's a huge sort of signpost along the way that we need to pause on. A lot of that happens in 82. It's like you can't just blitz through the chronology.

15:56 It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

15:58 If we don't figure out everything that's worth knowing about this moment, we're going to miss the significance of what's to come. And meeting Linda is absolutely a vital link in the chain here as we continue marching along on the complete. Well, let's turn to an extended sample from the Hulk Hogan Netflix series where both Hulk and Linda talk about how they met.

16:24 And me and my buddy went to the Red Onion.

16:28 The very first time I saw it was in the Valley.

16:30 At the Red Onion.

16:31 In the Valley. It had just come out.

16:35 And Terry was playing the part of Thunderlips, right? And all of a sudden, there was a Thunderlips baby.

16:40 In the flesh. Coming into my bar.

16:43 And I'm looking.

16:43 I'm thinking, this can't even be happening.

16:45 I just saw the movie last night.

16:47 Thunderlips is here.

16:49 In the flesh, baby.

16:50 Oh, my God. The ultimate male.

16:54 There's this little posse of chicks all around him, right? All these girls all around him, like they're touching muscles and shit. He just kind of stood there and just sort of like, you know, flexed and stuff.

17:04 And I was like, all right, that's cool.

17:06 I like that.

17:08 It was very intriguing to be around somebody like that. Yeah, why?

17:11 All of a sudden, Linda came walking. It was like everything stopped because everybody in the bar watched her. You know, it was like every single person in the bar watched her walk.

17:22 Walk across the room. I was like, oh my God, that girl scores. And I said, holy smokes.

17:29 And the second that my foot hit the dance floor, I felt this arm come on me and it was as big as my thigh.

17:36 Do you want to dance? Hey, aren't you that guy in the Rocky movie?

17:40 She goes, oh yeah, you're Mr. T.

17:43 I went, No, I'm not listening to you.

17:45 No way she said that.

17:46 He's like, it's Hulk Hogan.

17:47 I was like, Hunk Hogan?

17:48 I thought his name was Hunk Hogan. I was like, no, we.

17:51 Call themselves Hunk Hogan. I thought, he's an actor.

17:54 Yeah, he is.

17:55 And then he told me he was a wrestler. And I said, what is that? And he's like, well, you have to experience to comprehend it.

18:02 The fake stuff. I was like, all right. But your grandfather watches on TV.

18:06 After that, he goes, let's go back to the apartment where I'm staying. So we go up, and it's this rickety-ass old apartment.

18:14 He brings me a beer. He's like, I'll be right back.

18:16 He goes in the bathroom, right?

18:18 I'm waiting the longest time. All of a sudden, he comes out. He's completely naked.

18:24 I'm like, all right, well, say what you want without saying what you want.

18:28 It was like when you go to the zoo and you see.

18:30 Like, a Mammy Willis or whatever they're called, a woolly mouse.

18:34 He was huge.

18:34 We drank a couple bottles of wine and just hit it off great.

18:38 And how many people can say they got fucked by a giant? How many people can say they got fucked by a giant? How many people can say they got fucked by a giant?

18:49 Well, you know, she was on the drill team at Chaminade College Prep School. Come on, ref, get in there.

18:56 It's true.

18:56 I'm not joking. She was on the drill team. She stayed on the drill team, didn't she? It's what a situation, man. What a situation. She comes off pretty good in the documentary. She's, she's kind of slap happy a little bit, but she's, she's not, she's not the fucking like the engine vengeful, tearful. Well, or the, or the, the one when she's that, that awful video of her looking like the, Oh dude, the decrepit lady in, in the shining. That's where this is headed.

19:27 It's just such a fucking, it's, it's amazing.

19:30 But you know, we're, we're, We're going to live the honeymoon phase with Terry and Linda, just as they did.

19:36 Sure.

19:36 Because it's going to add a lot of color to Hulk's adventures in professional wrestling.

19:41 Yeah, exactly. And she's going to actually see that color firsthand as we get back into the AWA stuff, the Japan stuff, and all that Hulk was doing back in the old world. business post-Rocky 3. But it belongs here not only because it was in 82, but in fact, as she kind of just said, the Rocky 3 movie was the reason she recognized him. Rocky 3 doesn't happen.

20:00 Hulk's in there. Sure. You know? Does she notice him because he's huge? Yes.

20:05 But does he have that panache of just having been in one of the most successful movies at the box office at the time?

20:11 Maybe not. That's true.

20:15 When he says she thought I was Mr. T, I think, and we'll get to it, she says, are you Clubber Lang? Kind of misremembering what the character was as opposed to thinking.

20:23 He was Mr. T. I'm sure she's right.

20:27 It was quite early as far as Mr. T's pop culture profile to expect everybody to know who Mr. T was, so maybe she got it mixed up, but I think what it was was she called out the character name She didn't know what wrestling was, and she's about to find out, okay? She's about to find out in every fucking way. But we're raising a glass this fall and forevermore.

20:52 Absolutely.

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21:11 As you should. As you should need it. It makes all the sense in the world. That's all I can say. Yes. Listen, we're in the crisp seasons. We're in the crisp days of fall. We are, man. We are. If you're lucky enough. I know people in Los Angeles are not necessarily crisping. Well, they're crisping in a different way. They're roasting. But come on.

21:34 It just makes sense. I mean, just these incredible, beautiful football days are just made so much better every Sunday. Listen, I look forward to it. I look forward to my beer every Sunday. That's about it. I have my one beer every Sunday unless, you know, well, it'll be a Saturday when we do a pay-per-view. Right, right.

21:55 We do lift a garage beer as part of our premium live calls for our patrons as well. But garage beer, they get it.

22:02 They're succeeding. We're succeeding. We're succeeding. No coincidence there. No coincidence whatsoever. Not at all.

22:09 Real recognizes real, and we're never going to shy away from encouraging everybody in the lapsed fan solar system, including the homie Christian, who was kind enough to send us an extra post of him enjoying a lapsed garage beer out in the wild to let us know that you've converted, as they say in the biz, by sending us photos of you enjoying garage beer at lapsedfan at gmail.com or on our social media channels on Instagram or And we're glad to share that, not only with the solar system writ large, but the good folks at Garage Beer as well, who have our back and provide critical resources to make sure that the complete Hulk Hogan goes down as nothing short of that. And so this fall, that is your

22:51 beer of choice, whether you realize it or not. Of course, patreon.com slash thelapsedfan continues to hum as the central engine that makes all of this worth it. And you are very much the beneficiary of that. as we continue to chronicle Hulk Hogan's entire life in a way that will never be replicated. And I ask you to tell people what they're missing this Halloween season, if they're not in the EP or above tier on Patreon and enjoying under the cinema.

23:19 Oh my goodness. Ladies and gentlemen, we, we, we're almost there. We're almost at the conclusion of, of this year's scary movie season. We are one shortstop away from concluding this the Rob Zombie chapter of the Halloween franchise. We doubled down. I needed to, you know, there was, you know, I did state the tradition last year was going to be every year we do a timeline, but I just had to get the fucking Rob Zombie ones out of the way. Yeah.

23:55 I needed to get them done. What did you think of that one, by the way? I didn't mind it. I mean, it was... It's okay. It's okay. Yeah, it's a little.

24:03 it's a little self indulgent, you know, it's a little like, okay, this guy's having a little bit too much fun at the expense of the viewing experience of the film.

24:12 Right.

24:12 You know, he's like scratching a lot of itches as opposed to really thinking about what's going to make the best movie.

24:17 Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think, I think that's, I think that's a lot to say about Rob Zombie. I mean, he's got his, he's got what he, he's got his flavor for sure. And I don't, you know, think his flavor is awful. I think there are some neat parts in that, in, in, in his Halloween. Um, I think overall it's, I mean, it's not one I revisit every year.

24:43 I never revisited actually. I've, I've seen it a couple of times and that's it. And, um, yeah, it's not one that I enjoy, but, uh, you know, we got to discuss, Hey, you found out something big about him though, right? That he's a, that he's a, he's a new Englander. I had no clue from Haverhill of all fucking places, Haverhill, Massachusetts. Um, just a lot of fun, a lot of fun digging into that, just kind of figuring out where they're going to go with the franchise after the debacle. That was, um, it's kind of funny. They seem to always have this great comeback. And then all of a sudden it fizzles out.

25:17 They have this great big comeback. H2O was the same thing. H2O was a big comeback. Everyone was happy. Resurrection sucks. Again, same thing. Halloween with Rob Zombie, big comeback, made a lot of money. We'll see what happens with what was affectionately or not affectionately called H2.

25:39 H2.

25:39 I mean, that is, uh, H2 is what they call Halloween too. I don't know how I feel about that, but I know exactly how you feel about it. And you, you should feel that way because it's absolutely atrocious. Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, it's, it's great to get the Halloween, um, I don't know how to put it, but the full Halloween experience in.

26:02 I think people were wondering if we'd actually go there in terms of the Rob Zombie movies for this point in time. Sure, yep. But I think it was absolutely perfect, the way it's playing out. It's one of those transitions that, because it happened so fast, the transition, even though there was a five-year gap, the transition from The original line of films, as we talked about, the Mustafa Akkad era of the films, and then branching out into the new era with Rob Zombie, they're very connected. So in a weird way, these ones, it fit in with the story that way too because I feel like if we had taken the break and come back next year with the Rob Zombie ones, we wouldn't have had the affection for how different the Mustafa Akkad era was from... the non-Mustafa era.

26:58 Yeah, right, because if you have the example of the other side of the coin fresh in your mind, you can much better appreciate what's different than if you take a year off and then, you know, view the new vision and kind of forget or get foggy or, you know, not entirely clear about the past version. So, definitely great stuff, wonderful, scary movie season unfolding under the cinema. Long may it continue, and if you're on the fence, man, we're heading into.

27:24 Holiday movie season, that's, Oh yeah. Just as much a fucking gold mine UTC style. I mean, this is where, this is where it really shines, man. It's going to be a hell of a Christmas. That's all I can say. Is that right? You already know what you're doing? It's going to be a hell of a, always know what I'm doing. You know why else it's going to be a hell of a Christmas? The unwrapping. Oh yeah. Packages already coming in, right? Yes, they are. Be part of the best holiday tradition in all of podcasting.

27:49 That's your co-chairman. Gather round one more time to open gifts from you. Members of the solar systems and react on the pod. as part of 24 days of Christmas or however many days we end up with. Again, a little extra nutmeg this year because we're also going to be opening Santa's sack and bringing back some of the feedback stuff that you've craved that's kind of been put on the back burner as the complete Hulk Hogan is taking center stage. And so it's going to be fun also to read some missives from the solar system. I mean, it's really just Santa sitting by candlelight, right? And Kind of reading what the young cherubs want this year.

28:23 Bring the spectacles down to the bottom of the nose. Thank you. And just read by the fire. It's going to.

28:28 Be the holiday comforts that you need and expect your co-chairman to deliver. And if you want to be part of the unwrapping in terms of giving us a gift to unwrap on the air, you can send that package. You're running out of time. Make it fast.

28:40 Usually by the time November 1 hits, it's a little too late. But don't delay.

28:46 P.O.

28:47 Box 710 Main Street South. Pardon me, it's TheLapsedFan, 710 Main Street South, P.O. Box 119, Southbury, Connecticut, 06488. Again, that address for the unwrapping packages, TheLapsedFan, 710 Main Street South, P.O. Box 119, Southbury, Connecticut, 06488. And we'll see you under the tree, motherfuckers.

29:08 Oh, yeah.

29:09 And I can't wait to see what you guys come up with. We're rocking and rolling, heading into... I don't know, are they going to.

29:16 Go to Saudi? I don't know. I thought we'd have clarity a week out from Crown Jewel or whatever it is, 15 days. No clue. No clue. Of course not. Why would they? I mean, just because the country's under siege doesn't mean they don't need cultural enrichment. And that's what I think people miss. What I think people don't understand is that, you know, in this time where the country is under siege. Now more than ever. Professional wrestling is what's going to bring them together.

29:44 I don't know why people pretend to not know that all of a sudden. Just memory all that whole thing. I, you know, also too, this is, to me, the fact that they haven't really, you know, either made a decision or made clear as to what their intentions are, is a major, major symptom of the disease that is the guaranteed money era.

30:12 Absolutely. 100%. Absolutely. Because they don't care. You know what? They're okay, actually, if nobody fucking watches on streaming. They don't fucking care. They don't need it. Yeah, they don't even have to broadcast it. Right, exactly. Probably won't. They probably won't even go live out of concern that something might happen that everybody would see on the stream. We'll get it like a day later. Yeah, and we'll like it too.

30:41 They have time to edit. Because they also have to go there for WrestleMania. You can't forget, if they piss off the royalty by canceling this, that WrestleMania payday, which is going to be by far the biggest one night payday the company has ever raked in.

31:00 You think, you think, you think that Vince is just lighting up Triple H's phone? Yes, because he really was the one that cut this deal. You know, Vince's handprints are not only all over that, but the UFC Saudi Arabia deal, Dana White said Vince McMahon put together as well as part of, you know, warming up to the kingdom and developing that relationship. So, like, it's all of TKO, you know, and, Vince is the one that I'm sure he would love the idea of going over there in a situation like this.

31:32 I think that's great. And Dana's done the same thing. I mean, running towards doing events during COVID and stuff like that. It's like he sees that as a chance to bolster his I don't give a fuck, you know, on Wii. So we'll see. But that's available for your Patreon dollar as well. We watch Modern WWE so you don't have to in the true spirit of lapsed. in exchange for your Patreon dollar in the VIP tier and above.

31:59 So heading into not only Crown Jewel, but also the Survivor Series, and then, of course, the road to WrestleMania begins. You're going to want to be locked in with your co-chairs, because even if you watch it yourselves, you will hunger for the lapsed perspective. You can't help it. You're addicted to it. And that's because it's world-class.

32:16 That's right.

32:17 And we point out the things that endure. We point out the things that end up mattering the most in the long run. And the Boston, the boss index remains undefeated.

32:26 Agreed. In terms of parachuting into the product cold and just being like, yep, that sucks. That's good.

32:31 That'll go somewhere that won't. And, uh, the last living lapsed fan in captivity, the boss holding court on modern WWE.

32:39 It's all God. It's all high, high value stuff, but we've got to figure out this Lynn DJ situation. I think we do.

32:46 I'm obliged to mention before we dive in too much that, uh, Mark Weiss, the photographer from the We Magazine situation last week, had made reference during the course of the interview to a guy named Jim South, who it turns out was quite famous slash infamous for recruiting models into the adult industry in that era. And, you know, just some guy who made an absolute empire out of this, but a short-lived one. And it would be a situation where, you know, it wouldn't be that hard to find testimonies of, I thought I was being recruited in to do traditional modeling.

33:19 And pretty soon I was being offered things and being put in positions where I felt like I had to say yes to nude shoots when I didn't necessarily, as the woman, sign up for that or expect that to be the case. And Jim South was therefore the subject of a lot of write-ups and a lot of questions around what processes he was using to get women in the fold.

33:44 Sure. It sounds like they knew how to make Hulk Hogan comfortable. That's for damn sure. I guess so.

33:49 He didn't come in reticent about the thing. But we're obliged to mention that there was an instance that a lot of people, I think, remember in the 80s, because it was big news, modeled by the name of Tracy Lourdes, was able to get into, I think it was Penthouse, even though she was not of age.

34:07 Oh, right.

34:08 Right?

34:09 By misrepresenting how old she was to the industry and having, I think, bona fide fake credentials to trick them. And South was the one who represented her. and kind of brought her in to the industry in the state of California.

34:26 Yeah.

34:27 State of California, federal government, I think both indicted him. Eventually the cases were dropped.

34:31 He wasn't, I don't think, convicted of anything ultimately because they kind of saw the IDs that she was proffering and the proof that she offered that she was of age and felt that he was kind of rightfully duped by what she provided.

34:45 So....

34:48 Fucking idiot. Well, what are you supposed to do, you know? Yeah, I guess. There's absolutely no way to verify.

34:54 Well, I won't say no way, but it would be very difficult to imagine, especially before digital files, you know, before digital identification documents, for them to be able to truly verify that she was the age she said she was. But the point is, it wasn't just him that was taken for a ride. I mean, the whole industry. You know, the fact that she made it into, I think, a centerfold, essentially, was a huge scandal at the time. And, yeah, so that mention. And shout out to Gabe, a rock solid member of the solar system.

35:29 Long, long, long time.

35:31 True G in the game for noticing that reference during the course of our interview about the We Magazine shoot. There's some adjacencies. And you've got to wonder, you know, if Hulk... part of his nervousness is that like, I don't know, I don't know anything about these girls, you know, I don't know where they're coming from.

35:49 I don't know if they're here or there, dude.

35:53 Right.

35:53 If they're in or they're Yang or they're up or they're down or they're hiding the ball, you know, you got to wonder, and am I involved in something where one of these girls is going to come out later is, um, not someone I would have chosen to share the frame with if I knew all there was to know, not to make any, uh, any intimations about the women who appeared in the photo shoot with Hulk, but you can't help but think about that as part of the equation after you learn what happened. So that's kind of the wild and woolly world of the 80s that Hulk Hogan is entering.

36:27 And we've talked about this.

36:28 I mean, Hulk Hogan, he was not just the most famous wrestler of the 80s. He was right there with any pop culture icon you can think of in the 80s.

36:36 Yes.

36:37 Yes, he was. Remember there was like this book about the television stars of the 80s and there was like illustrations of everybody, Mr. T, Stallone, Schwarzenegger, everybody. And he was right there.

36:47 He was there like without any, without any like, oh, this is the wrestler or any like anything that made it like obvious who he was, like people wouldn't be sure.

36:55 Everybody, everybody in the 80s knew this.

36:58 Guy as quintessentially 80s, as like a, as someone that could only exist in this form in the 80s, a true product of, what the culture was looking for in the 80s and what was sticking with viewers and purchasers and consumers. Across music, across sports, across entertainment, Hulk Hogan fit in perfectly. And I think the things we've been talking about thus far in 1982, from Rocky to the photo shoot to everything else, really is helping to explain why.

37:25 Because he just was the perfect presentation for the moment.

37:28 Yeah, he was.

37:30 So let's talk about the flames that we've heard about up to this point. Because after Linda, there certainly are more. But it's kind of a drought, period. In high school, he was all about Sue Clark, brother.

37:43 That's right.

37:43 He was crazy about her, as he talked about in his book. He tried to kiss her one time. Had no idea you were.

37:50 Supposed to open your mouth and use your tongue. Oh, my God. So he was quite embarrassed by that. This is high school. So he was a slow learner in that department. Again, see, here it is. Now I'm imagining him open mouth kissing. Looking like he did back then. Right. And I was like, it's just, Oh God, it just, he's, he's just not meant, I'm sorry to say it's, it's kind of brutal to say, but he's just not meant to have relations. Sorry, man. We hate to break it to you. Cause we, we are the arbiters of this in case you didn't know. We are. And I think we need to go back and erase these relations.

38:28 I mean, do you imagine just how much it smelled like tan, tan, tan lotion in like the eighties and nineties? It just, the smell of like, That like banana boat. Like we said too, there's the smell of Linda on that fucking, on that stash. Anywhere you went, you could smell her vagina.

38:51 That's what he said. He said that. We didn't make that up. He said that on Bubba's show. He said it. We read it last week. The juices were preserved. Pussy. Pussy. Like it's soaked in. Thank you. I mean, look. The hair grew like grass grows with water. hogan's mustache hair grew with pussy juices you can.

39:08 Blame us but we didn't invent the game okay so how about this unnamed high school girl in fact not a mile away from sue's house was this other girl i can't remember her name but we used to sit on her couch after her parents would go to bed and we would just kiss and make out for hours and hours oh god no sex no nothing just kissing when i stood up to go couldn't figure out why I'd have a wet spot in my underwear.

39:29 I didn't have a clue.

39:29 Didn't know anything about masturbation, none of that shit. There wasn't any sex ed in those days, and no one ever talked to me about it. For some reason, my friends figured it out. My buddy Ed Leslie was having sex all the time.

39:39 Of course.

39:41 But not Dory Bollea. I lost my virginity so late, I'm not even going to reveal it in this book. It's just too embarrassing, he says. That, of course, is his second book.

39:49 He's not talking about that shit. I don't think he even realized there was money to be made off his sex life until the Gawker thing. It's like, all right, brother, if people are going to make money off me fucking, it's going to be me, not everybody else. And then, of course, there's Donna.

40:04 He engaged Donna. He knew her from back in Tampa. We don't talk much about her, but she appeared. Well, we do, but you know what I mean?

40:11 They didn't.

40:12 Right.

40:13 She appeared briefly in a Japanese wrestling magazine because she accompanied Hulk to Japan one time. And she showed up there and we kind of conveyed that. We posted that on social. That's the only picture I think that exists of her with him. You know, the only picture that wrestling fans would have seen. And as we talked about, that was such an important part of Japan for Hulk is they took such an interest in the personal lives and documenting. the personal lives of the wrestlers and the readers of the Japanese wrestling magazines and publications really wanted that and crave that.

40:45 Sure.

40:45 So all the windows we have in a Hulk's personal life before the WWF 1984 national expansion run are all from Japan and particularly Fumi Saito, who we've had on the complete, who moved to Minneapolis for university and covered the AWA circuit when Hulk was ascending there and interviewed him at length several times, went to his house, that whole photo spread of like the, The townhouse him and Linda shared in Bloomington.

41:09 That's all from Fumi. And that's really them as young lovers just having met when Hulk was on the ascent, truly, in the AWA. But as for Donna, we've read this passage before, but it belongs here as well for reiteration purposes. Although my wrestling career was starting to take off, my personal life was kind of floundering. First of all, I was never a girl magnet type of guy. If I had one of those gorgeous movie star faces, it would have been different, but let's be honest. My body looked good, but I was balding, and about the best thing I would say about my face is I'm brutally handsome, dude.

41:41 Good uniform, bad helmet. Brutally is right. Good uniform, bad helmet. Oh, God. This guy, man.

41:47 The amount he thinks about his hair. It never even crossed my mind as a kid. I mean, I know he doesn't care about what kids think. It's what women think, but it wasn't a big deal. Everybody was bald back then. It's like you didn't have a choice.

41:58 There wasn't all these gimmicks to pretend you had a full head of hair when you were in your 40s and 50s. Right, exactly. It would have been a laughing stock if you walked around with wrinkled skin and a full head of hair. Give me a break. It would have been weird.

42:12 That's going away in our lifetime. I hope you know that. Male baldness is going to be absolutely cured and solved. It pretty much is. I mean, if you have enough money. And so I hope you're ready for people to have flowing hair into their 70s and 80s.

42:28 Sure, why not?

42:31 Just long locks of white hair. I'm glad you're okay with it. That's good. Yeah, listen, I think it's deserved.

42:39 I was still portraying a bad guy in the wrestling world, so even a wrestling fan woman had this misperception that I was some kind of crazy mean dude. That didn't exactly get the girls flocking to me, no. I didn't get jealous of the other guys who seemed to. I really thought for a moment you were going to say, that doesn't get the girls wet. I really thought you were going to say that.

42:57 I don't know why. It would have been true. Because of my mind, but yes.

43:00 I didn't get jealous of the other guys who seemed to land a different girl every night, though. That wasn't my style. After all, I had what I thought was a steady girl back home. I met Donna toward the end of my band days down in Tampa, and she was by far the hottest girl I'd ever been with. We made quite the pair. We both had matching long blonde hair. We started dating and had this thing going on on and off for years. She never wanted to come on the road with me.

43:18 You see what he said there? What's that? This thing.

43:21 Yes.

43:22 There's always a thing. Yes, this thing. It's always.

43:25 This thing. Everything's always a phenomenon to him. It's always a thing with a beginning, middle, and end. It's a thing you can put over there and say, that's that thing. The things never interrelate. Everything's a little run. The first thing we played from his mouth on The Complete Hulk Hogan was him saying, life is a series of runs.

43:44 And we're learning.

43:45 That's exactly how he oriented his life. From the territories he jumped to, to how he managed his business affairs, to his personal relationships, it's all just a series of that thing, this thing. that we can manage and put our arms around and, you know, kind of like focus on and obsess over and game plan out this thing.

44:02 Another thing was like when his son went through the accident, it's like this thing, he locks himself up in his house for like two weeks, just calling lawyers, calling everybody you can think of. It's, this is that thing of the moment. So that's really how we thought about his life. I think it's just like, what's the thing right now?

44:19 You can have one or two at once, but they all have their own ecosystem, you know? He never sees it as just his life. He sees it as a series of challenges or little opportunities to make money. She never wanted to come on the road with me. That just wasn't her style. So I would see her between road trips while I was in Alabama and Memphis and all the way through my start with the WWF. I don't know why he says WWF, but there it is.

44:42 I wasn't real sure, to be honest, whether she was dating other guys in between or not. I didn't really think about it. Anyway, by 79, it seemed like the most serious relationship I was probably ever going to find for myself. So I up and asked a daughter to marry me, and she said yes. It's so fucking weird that there's a woman out there who Hulk Hogan proposed to and said yes. I gave her a nice engagement ring, the whole deal, but something just wasn't right. I could feel it, but I never wanted to admit it, you know?

45:05 In some ways, I was still so naive. I don't think I knew how to have a real relationship or real anything. Well, that's true.

45:13 You know what I mean?

45:13 That's kind of what you're saying, Terry, whether you realize it or not. Once things started to take off for me in New York, Donna seemed to get more and more distant. Even if she didn't want to hit the road with me, I thought she'd want to come see me in Madison Square Garden at least, something.

45:24 Nope.

45:25 Well, again, she was clearly in Japan, unless that was some photo taken in America. She just was not into the whole wrestling lifestyle. She wanted to stay in Tampa, kind of like you. Yeah, I was going to say, so she's perfect for you. The difference is she wanted to stay there and talk about Mike Graham. You wanted to fly back and talk about Mike Graham. I understood that.

45:43 If it wasn't for McMahon's big push, I'd plan on staying in Tampa myself. I came back on Christmas that year and Donna basically started a fight with me. Women have a way of doing that, don't they? She told me not to even bother coming back for New Year's. Of course, the first thing I did was make sure I showed up for New Year's. I walked to an apartment and found her sitting on the sofa there with her arm around the sky from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

46:00 A football player?

46:01 This, of course, later would lead to Terry claiming that he was scouted and actually selected in a Tampa Bay Buccaneers open tryout, which is a complete fabrication.

46:09 That's just unbelievable. What fucking horseshit? When they were an expansion team. What fucking horseshit? Of all the guys you could have picked, right? I walked over, took the engagement ring off her finger, slipped it on her other hand. You're free, I said. See you later. And I walked out the door. See you later, dude. Donna, dude. Donna, dude, brother.

46:29 See this thing? What? I'm putting it on the other hand, dude. We're just turning the nose up. This thing, dude. We're just turning the nose up on this thing, brother. You know what, dude? You know what? Donna, dude. It's time to stop playing hide the ball, brother. All right, dude. I'm going to take this thing to the next level, dude.

46:44 Sounds like you're playing hide the ring right now. Dial this thing back in, brother, and turn the nose up on it, brother.

46:49 I mean, Lauryn Hill sang about that thing. Hulk Hogan sings about this thing. This thing, this thing, this. The whole thing was so weird.

47:01 I can't imagine. The whole thing. Say it again. The whole thing. I can't imagine actually being married to Donna. Yet I was so naive about love and marriage and sex and relationships. I'd put a ring on that girl's finger, even though we were totally incompatible. What was I thinking? I'm just glad it ended when it did. Hulk has a weird relationship with the rings, doesn't he? Yes, he does.

47:18 Makes all his money and also costs him all his heartache. Right. On a side note, just to show what a small town Tampa really is, years later, Donna worked for the Avis Rent-A-Car at the Tampa airport, so I would see her every single time I flew in or out of town. Eventually, she married the owner of that local Avis spot. They had a kid, and that kid went to the same school as my kids, so I saw Donna almost every day.

47:36 It was spooky.

47:38 In some ways, letting go of Donna allowed me to concentrate fully on my wrestling career in New York. I didn't feel that pull to get back to Florida quite so often, even though I still considered it my home. Linda and I dated for about a year, okay, before I finally asked her to marry me. Having learned a few lessons from my failed engagement to Donna, I knew for sure this was the real deal. So, you know, part of the significance of the Linda relationship was he had come off a failed engagement and saw more in this one than he saw in that one. So we'll try to detect what that difference is. As the anger progressed over the years, there would be a few times when I wished I had done with Linda what I

48:11 did with Donna. Just taken the ring off her finger and told her she was free. But I always stopped myself.

48:16 Wow.

48:17 Let's not forget the unnamed Japanese woman he was clearly dating while in Japan. A point in time where anytime he was on an interview, he would always say, I was single back then. Right, of course. You know, you talk about a Japanese girlfriend in your book. Stan Hansen remembers you having one.

48:32 Brother, no, dude. As he says....

48:36 In the second book, it's an awesome thing to feel wanted, but the thing that made my time in Japan really memorable was I met and dated this gorgeous Japanese girl. She spoke perfect English, which definitely helped in the finding my way around department in her business. It gave her hookups for everything. Finding my way around what, her body?

48:49 Is that what you're saying?

48:51 I think finding his way around that thing. Oh, shit. Do you know what his favorite character was in the Fantastic Four? The Thing. He was also a big fan of, also his favorite character in The Addams Family. Cousin Thing. And her business gave her hookups for everything. When the big rock relax came through from Rod's. I love when he says the rocky movie. The rocky movie. The rocky movie.

49:24 He doesn't say Rocky III ever. It was the rocky movie. The rocky movie. When the big rock relax. I'm sure he wants people to almost think that it's the first Rocky. He was part of the whole franchise.

49:34 Right.

49:34 He was part of the whole thing. Not like 10 minutes of one of them.

49:37 Oh.

49:38 When the big rock and roll acts came through, from Rod Stewart to the Rolling Stones, she always had backstage passes. And when it came to partying in a country where getting caught with a few ounces of marijuana could mean a lifetime in jail, she had access to every drug under the sun. I even dabbled in a few other substances besides the steroids, and I'll tell you a little more about that later. The long and short of it is, I was real happy hanging out with her in Japan. Yeah, because that's a big secret. We want to wait until later, right?

49:57 I can't wait. What did you ingest? I know. Jesus Christ. I just love the idea that we'll talk about, you know, I used to do steroids, bro. I don't know if you knew that or not, but I did some steroids. Kind of well-known. Yeah.

50:09 The long and short of it is I was real happy hanging out with her in Japan. With no exaggeration, I was like Brad Pitt in that country. Everywhere I went was a mob scene. I towered over almost everyone. The people there worshipped me. Most of all, they were nice to me. That's what I really loved. There was just a respect and sincerity among the people there that I'd never experienced back home. So I said, okay, just like that. In early 82, I left Japan, that girl, and that crazy fame, and I went back to wrestle in this tiny Minnesota territory.

50:35 That, this... Brother.

50:37 There's the confirmation in early 82 that he left that Japanese girlfriend that he had.

50:42 Okay.

50:44 And then post Linda, there was, of course, Christiane Plant, Christiane Plant, who was Brooke's best friend. One of those handlers the record company brought in, this is, of course, when Brooke is trying her music career, was a woman named Christiane Plant. Christiane was so great with Brooke. She did everything she could to look after her, and I love seeing someone take care of my daughter that way.

51:03 She was just so positive and caring. She was 34, but she and Brooke became really close, almost like best friends in a way. None of this is an excuse for what happened next. I just want you to understand the state of my relationship and how fragile my emotions were, dude. One day in the middle of all that, Christian Plant called.

51:16 Brooke had broken down again and she wanted to ask me what I thought she would do to help her, but as soon as she heard the sound of my voice, she said, oh my.

51:22 God, what's wrong?

51:23 She turned that caring attention she had given Brooke on me. So I told her, I'm just real worried about Linda, I replied. Christian knew what Linda had been pulling. So he has a whole story we'll get to eventually about how she You know, was drinking to excess and just forcing fights and just doing disappearing, leaving the house, ditching the family for weeks on end and all that. We'll get there eventually. She heard about it all from Brooke and witnessed plenty of Linda's behavior firsthand, dude. She knew how much trouble Brooke had been having and she sympathized with my situation. I don't know why she's doing this to you and Brooke. Over the phone that day, Christian gave me a shoulder to lean on, at least verbally.

51:58 Can't tell you how much I needed that. Maybe a month or so later, Brooke made an appearance up in New York City. and I went along to introduce her from the stage. Christiane was along for that trip, and the three of us, she, Brooke, and I, went out to dinner afterward. Back at the hotel that night, Christiane and I stopped by Brooke's room to check on her at the time. At the same time, rather. I eventually left the two of them there and went downstairs to my room, dude. A half hour or so later, because I'm always over the top and have to check one more time, I called Brooke's room again just to make sure she was okay. Yo, yo, Brooke Teeny.

52:25 What's it is, brother? You getting this slizzy? You getting good slizzy?

52:30 What?

52:33 You know what helps me, dude? I sit in bed and I eat just Snickers bars, dude. Yeah, dude. I'll try that. Christian answered the phone. She said, are you there, dude? Christian answered the phone. He's leaving. He leaves a message. He's leaving a message.

52:48 Okay.

52:49 Just constantly going, going, going. And then after he talks for a while, you're there, dude. Yeah.

52:57 You want to check Terry? Cause she's not even talking for 10 minutes. Leaving a fucking message like my mom would do.

53:04 Yeah, brother.

53:06 Christian answered the phone. She said Brooke was going to bed and she was just leaving. Then she asked me what I was doing. Probably going to drink a glass of wine, just hang out. I said, oh, there's always wine in these stories.

53:16 No, seriously. Yeah, right. Listen, you know why? Cause he doesn't want to take responsibility. Is that what it is? Yeah. He wants you to know. Yeah. He's like, it's like if he hadn't been drinking wine, that's not what this wouldn't have happened. And that's my biggest sin dude was drinking. It wasn't fucking. Right.

53:32 Yeah. Right. Yeah.

53:34 And words came from my mouth that I didn't expect. Why don't you come down and join me? Felt like two seconds later, we were in a room together. We're both drinking a glass of wine, just talking, but I felt she wanted to do more than that. You know, I was real attracted to her. So for so many, for so many reasons and my wife and I hadn't been intimate in so long that I can't even tell you how long it had been. All of a sudden.

53:52 All these excuses. All these excuses. All of a sudden. I'm just explaining, dude. I'm not excusing anything, dude.

53:57 What?

53:57 I'm just explaining.

53:58 What?

53:59 All of a sudden, Christiane reached her arm over to put her hand on my back, and I ducked. And all of a sudden, she's on my cock, dude. Of course you ducked, Gary. All of a sudden, she's blowing me, brother. I was like, what happened? She tried to schoolboy me, dude. In the hotel, brother. And I gave her a roundhouse ride and beat, dude. He wound up in the windmill. Christiane, dude, you don't fucking come behind, brother.

54:18 Right.

54:23 He windmills his arms six times. God, I'm so fucking fast after that. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's call Dallas back in, dude. You know, Chris is Jian, dude. What's going on, brother? It was a weird instinct.

54:39 I ducked the way a dog that's been hit too many times would cower when someone raises a hand. Are you okay, Grishan asked. Apparently it surprised her, too. Yeah, yeah, you just caught me off guard there, I said.

54:48 Yeah, it's fine.

54:49 Next thing I know, the two of us started kissing. Not to sound perverted or anything, but it was fantastic, dude. Here I am in my 50s now.

54:56 50s.

54:56 He said his 50s.

54:58 Wow.

54:58 And this is a really attractive 34-year-old woman with dark hair and a curvaceous body. And just to have some affection, genuine caring, mixed in with that kind of physical attraction, it felt good. It was such an emotional and physical release. We didn't have sex that night, but it opened the door, dude.

55:10 Over the course of the next two months, we did have sex. How many times? Maybe five different times. That was it. Linda had no idea.

55:17 For a while, it was that sort of naughty appeal, like a kid sneaking some chocolate that he's not supposed to have, unless you're Jesse Ventura. Just seeing Christian during the course of a normal business date with Brooke became this real exciting thing. It was an entirely new experience for me.

55:30 Okay, Terry.

55:31 Like I said, I had never done anything like this in 22 years of marriage. In a way, the Christian excitement kept me going for a couple of months. It helped me just to get through the days. But Linda wasn't the only one I'd been keeping a secret. It was right around this time that my fear with Christian plan ended. I was still married, even though Linda was...

55:45 I'm jumping around a bit if it Kind of seems disjointed.

55:48 Yeah, no worries.

55:48 Even though Linda was in the process of moving 3,000 miles across the country just to get away from me at that point, I still had a wife.

55:53 I had a family.

55:53 I had every intention of making my marriage work. When I prayed to find happiness again, in my mind, I was praying for Linda and me to get back to the way we once were. So divorce was not an option for me. But of course, eventually, the divorce becomes public.

56:08 Yep.

56:08 And I'll have, the affair becomes public as well as the divorce. And I'll have you, boss, pick up. The words of the Hulkster as we chart his relationship history. We're doing a heat map on his crotch. Roller. That's right. Okay. Here we go. You know, one day out of the blue, I got a panic phone call from Christiane Plant. Why does he have to keep saying her full name?

56:37 Well, this came much later in the book, so I think if you didn't say the full name, you might wonder.

56:41 Who it was.

56:41 Yeah, she and I hadn't really spoken at all since the summer of 2007. So you can imagine, wow, that's kind of funny. Summer of 2007, that's when Halloween, Rob Zombie's Halloween came out. See, it just keeps rolling. That's wild. Exactly. So you can imagine how surprised I was to hear from her. The news she had was not good. I got a message from Brooke, she told me. Apparently a friend of Brooke's who worked in the record company with Christiane just casually decided over lunch to inform her that Christiane had been having an affair with her father. Brooke was incensed. I don't know. That's such a, that's a weird, I think it's a weird word. Well, especially when you consider, uh, you know, his, how much his future girlfriends resembled, uh,

57:27 his daughter. Right.

57:29 Right.

57:31 Incensed. A little too close. Yeah.

57:33 Yeah.

57:33 So she called.

57:34 Yeah.

57:34 Right.

57:35 So she called Christiane looking for answers. I told her, you know, Christiane just told her the truth. I'd already come far enough in my new way of thinking to know that lying would only make it worse. line would postpone the inevitable, the heartbreak, the pain that was about to be unleashed. Christiane was real nervous about it, of course, and she didn't think she could keep it together and make sense of it all in a phone call. Rather than call Brooke back, Christiane decided to send Brooke a letter, a letter in which she admitted the affair and apologized for letting it happen. At this point, Brooke was just about 100% in Linda's camp as far as this divorce was concerned. I couldn't understand why. And I wouldn't understand

58:21 until much later. What happened next made the whole situation a lot worse. First, Brooke confronted me. She wanted to know if it was true. She wanted to know why I had done it. I told her the truth. There's two sides to every story, Brooke. There's two sides to every Hulkamania. All right, dude? It was what I said.

58:44 I tried to explain to her that her mother and I were so broken and I was so lonely and hurt that when this thing with Christiane presented itself, I had to dial it back in, brother. I had to take it to the next level. He tells Brooke, I had to dial it in and take it to the next level. That's how much contrition he's showing about fucking her friend. I almost couldn't help myself. I wasn't making excuses. Actually, you're...

59:12 You just made an excuse. Did you know that it's up to the person making the excuse to decide if it's an excuse or not? It's so fucking... That's the thing about it. I mean, it's the same fucking... It's all fucking annoying. When you say you're not. Making excuses. You're making an excuse by saying you're not making excuses. Everything's an excuse. You don't even need to use the word because everything's an excuse. All I have to say is, you know what, Brooke? I fucked her and I'm sorry. That's it. That's it. Look, it's not...

59:47 Fuck it, Brooke.

1:00:31 With Jack Encarnacio and J.P.

1:00:33 Sorrow. Like, let's save the whole part where she says, what exactly did you do to get... I fucked her. I fucked her, dude. I fucked her in the pussy. And I'm sorry, brother. You know, I need pussy. Oh, God. DMI. Brother, Hulkamania needs pussy, dude. What do you want? What do you want from me? Remember us? We're kind of French.

1:00:53 I want you to not fuck my friends. And you ever wonder what kind of friend she really is, dude, if she's willing to have sex with me, brother? And, brother, what about her, dude? Is she really a friend if she's willing to fuck your dad? Where's her accountability? Exactly, brother. Why am I always to blame? Right. I'm just a lonely old man, brother, looking for puss. Says that to his daughter. And then later in the day, he fucking oils her ass up. He doesn't say looking for love.

1:01:28 He doesn't say looking for affection or kindness. Or a partner. He doesn't say looking for a partner. Or companionship.

1:01:35 He doesn't say looking for companionship. He doesn't say looking for a cure for loneliness. He also doesn't say he was looking for sex. He also doesn't say he was looking for love.

1:01:44 Intercourse. He also doesn't say he was looking for pussy. He says he was looking for puss. Puss. Bro, I was looking for that pizzossi, you know what I'm saying? What did you just say, Dad? I was looking for that pizzossi. That pizzossi, dude, you.

1:02:07 Know what I'm saying?

1:02:17 After all they put into the earth, you know, their children, their life, their huge houses, the millions of dollars and everything. That's, that's basically what she says. That's what she chalks it up to.

1:02:27 Oh my God.

1:02:28 So fucking American. God bless her. God bless her. But yeah, that accent is sometimes too much. It's too much. So fucking obnoxious. She's, like, just her existence is obnoxious. Come on, ref, get in there. Listen, it's the truth.

1:02:45 Be nice.

1:02:45 What do you want from me? Be nice. That is being nice. I could say a lot worse. I wasn't making excuses. I was just trying to explain where I was coming from. You know, how I found myself in that situation. How I found myself in that situation. Well, look, I mean, it's a thing, right? It's this thing.

1:02:58 Yeah, right.

1:02:59 You know, Brooke wouldn't hear it. You know, there aren't two sides, Dad. There's right and wrong. And my daughter, who had barely... That sounds like two sides. Well, bro, that's two sides, dude. Right side, wrong side. Like, I think you're wrong. Well, I was on the right side, and, you know, she was on the wrong side. Oh, God.

1:03:17 It is not easy to talk to this guy on a personal level, is it? I was looking for puss. Dad, that hoof. What is it? Where did this alien guy come from? We've spent years trying to figure this out, and we're no closer to figuring out why he does the things he does. Like, what? Where did you get that from? Like, what are you doing? Are you a walrus? Like, what are you doing? Oh, my God. It's hard to hide.

1:04:04 He starts hooking. He starts hoofing. Fucking points a finger at her. Hoof's line is in any way. Guess hoof. That's his favorite board game. My daughter, who had barely been speaking to me anyway for months, suddenly stopped communicating with me at all. Two days after Brooke received that letter, a reporter from the National Enquirer knocked on Christiane's door.

1:04:33 Her personal letter to Brooke had somehow found its way into the tabloid's hands. They cornered Christiane and left her no choice but to respond. So on February 28th, my affair became national news. I don't think there's a blog or entertainment show in America that didn't run with the story of Hulk Hogan cheating on his wife. I was humiliated.

1:04:54 I was angry. I didn't know what to do. There was no one to sue. There was no one to sue. The story was true. It's a good lyric, but I'm going to write one down, dude. Absolutely. I couldn't even figure out who to be angry with except for myself for letting it happen in the first place. Well, there you go. You can be angry with yourself because you fucked up.

1:05:15 Yeah.

1:05:16 By fucking your daughter's friend. Fucking moron. Just a moron. Straight stuff, man.

1:05:24 I'm not sure if Linda was frustrated by my lack of response or what, but months later, She hired a publicist and sent out a statement to the media claiming that the Christian affair was the reason she filed for divorce. But I couldn't believe she had known about it before she saw that letter. From everything I've ever seen, if Linda had known about Christian, she would have gone ballistic.

1:05:40 She wouldn't have kept it quiet for all those months.

1:05:43 Would she have been incensed as well?

1:05:45 Perhaps.

1:05:46 Probably. And then, of course, there's Jennifer McDaniel, his second wife, who I believe he started dating in February 2008 and was his wife throughout the course of the TNH series that we did and all the back surgeries and all that.

1:05:59 Of course. And we'll get to those future relationships. But in spirit of being holistic, I need to mention her. Of course, Skye Daly, his wife upon his passing last August. His third wife as well. There's also Sherry Mashburn, his childhood crush. As he says in the second book, for the most part, I was way too nervous to make a move on a girl. A girl like Sherry Mashburn.

1:06:20 Man, oh man. I was in love with her all the way back to sixth grade. I'd ride my bike all the way to her house just to see her. She had long, dark hair like Cher and these long legs like a pony. She was just gorgeous. As we got into high school, she started to hang out with all the cool kids, you know. She wasn't a cheerleader because she didn't have to be. She was more like an Angelina Jolie type. She would play harmonica before school in the mornings. Does Angelina Jolie play harmonica? I don't think so, but okay. Couldn't take my eyes off her.

1:06:45 She was so gorgeous.

1:06:46 But the idea of ever asking Cherie out was just way beyond anything I could have handled back then. So to approach Cherie, I had a fucking bottle of Cherie.

1:06:55 Okay. I know.

1:06:56 Somewhere in the middle of this crazy run, I had a chance to drive down to Florida. I rolled into town in that green Continental.

1:07:01 Get out of here.

1:07:01 I know.

1:07:02 Get out of here. Terry Bollea finding the pole back to Florida before he's making millions of dollars. Thinking I'd finally made something of myself. There wasn't a wrestler in town that could hold a candle to what I'd accomplished. Mike Graham.

1:07:15 In fact, I was feeling so pumped, I decided to go find Sherry Mashburn. So this obviously is later.

1:07:20 I decided to go find Mike Graham.

1:07:21 Yeah.

1:07:23 Yeah, I decided to find Sherry Mashburn and stop at Mike Graham's first. The beautiful Angelina Jolie type girl I've been in love with since the sixth grade. This is, of course, after he'd hit it big in like Alabama, Memphis, and I think New York too. I think he'd done a little bit in New York when he made.

1:07:38 This trip back. We've covered this before if you're having deja vu, but again, we need to be holistic here in Hulk's relationships before getting into the Linda thing. It makes everything else kind of cast in a different light. I found out that Sherry was working at a really high-end modern furniture store called Scan Design. So I drove over there, walked in real casual and said, hi. Well, so much for my confidence. Seeing her face-to-face, I broke out in this massive sweat. I mean, I was drenched.

1:08:01 It was pouring down my back, down my neck, off my nose.

1:08:04 It's nothing to do with the steroid use, of course. My shirt was drenched. Even my underwear was drenched. We went outside, stood by my car, and Sherry kept asking me, are you okay? Finally, I found through this crazy reaction I was having and asked if she wanted to go out on a date. Oh, I'm really dating somebody, she said.

1:08:18 Great.

1:08:18 Then the conversation started to turn a little bit. Is this your car, she asked. That's a real nice car. Hmm. Maybe she's more interested than she's letting on. She seemed pretty clueless about what I went up to, so I told her I was a wrestler now. And she said, oh, like Mike Graham?

1:08:33 Oh.

1:08:34 Mike Graham. Are you as famous as Mike Graham, she asked. She did not. Yeah, we already covered this. She said it. We did? Yes, she absolutely said it.

1:08:43 Mike Graham was Eddie Graham's kid, the guy who talked to me in the van and set me up with Matsuda. As a fan, I couldn't understand how a guy so small could even get into the business against all these monster wrestlers. Mike Graham was a local hero. All of a sudden, I stopped sweating. Sherry started asking all these questions, like, have you ever wrestled Steve Kern?

1:08:59 All these... bullshit. I don't buy that for one second. I don't buy that any fucking self-respecting woman said to him, have you wrestled Steve Kern? They were household names in Tampa, dude. I don't fucking care. Not to this woman. They were high school jocks who became pro wrestling stars in the same city. I don't know. Robinson High School, dude.

1:09:19 All these years had passed, and Tampa and these high school guys were still her whole world. I was working for Vince McMahon, selling out Madison Square Garden, wrestling the biggest wrestlers in the world, but until that moment, I was still nervous about what Sherry Mashburn thought of me. The fact is, I was still nervous about what everyone in Tampa thought of me. It was crazy, but by this point in my career, I was a main event wrestler at the biggest venues in the world. When Dusty Rhodes came up to wrestle in New York, they put him in the opening match.

1:09:42 No, they didn't.

1:09:42 Before half of the crowd had even filtered into the arena, and here I was, the main event that had everyone up on their seats at Madison Square Garden going wild at the end of the night. That's so not true. Dusty was always like main or co-main when he came. I never went out with Sherry Mashburn. Honestly, even at that age, I still barely would have known what to do with her if I had her in my arms.

1:10:01 I found some peace in that moment, though, a peace that had been a long time coming to. There's also a reference to an unnamed woman, a Japanese woman at a modeling agency, kind of intimates that it's a different woman than the Japanese woman we just talked about that he calls it the girlfriend in no uncertain terms, but there seemed to be some really romantic relationship there potentially. Um, and of course he talks about Kate Kennedy as well, uh, throwing off all the, uh, the timelines at Christmas 94.

1:10:33 Of course it wasn't, um, Christmas 94 when he got this letter because right. Pasta mania opened in September 95 or thereabouts. Um, and it was to promote the opening of the place in the mall of America and That led to the situation between the two in the hotel room.

1:10:54 And she sued him. So the exact dates are in the lawsuit. But in his book, he kind of gets the years wrong. But this was a situation where she was working for Hulk Hogan's Pasta Mania kind of in a public relations capacity at the Mall of America.

1:11:10 And they ended up in the same hotel room. And she alleged that he forced her to perform certain sexual acts. And the lawsuit was eventually settled. But this is one of the early Trouble in Paradise moments for the Hulk-Linda marriage. So I think in 95, Kate Kennedy's attorney basically sends something to the house. Probably Christmas 95 is what he's trying to say, not Christmas 94 when he gets this letter.

1:11:37 I can understand remembering it being Christmas when this comes out. That's fucking important context. When I first received that letter from Kate Kennedy's attorney, I was so scared about how Linda would react that I didn't tell her. I went for a whole year without telling her. Two Christmases passed.

1:11:50 After I went through the second Christmas without smiling, Linda saw how down in the dumps I was and she started pressing me for answers. A man can only keep something from his wife for so long. So I finally broke down and told her exactly what happened. I didn't hold anything back. I let her hear it all.

1:12:04 I want to tell you, dude, so what happened first with her is she put her mouth on my cock, dude. And then she kind of like just sucked in and out very slowly, brother, until I was hard as a rock.

1:12:21 Yep.

1:12:22 At first, Linda was really... I'll tell you, bro. You know what, dude? Here's the thing, dude. He's talking to Linda, by the way. I was actually more than 10 inches this time, dude. I was like 11, 12 inches, brother. And she's just kind of going back and forth and back and forth. I was almost ready to nut in her mouth, dude, right there. I thought you wanted all the details. At first, Linda was really, really angry with Kate Kennedy. This was a woman Linda had befriended and personally approved to work for Pasta Mania. She couldn't believe she was about to put her family through this ordeal.

1:12:49 Eventually though the inevitable happened and Linda got really angry with me. She threw the word divorce around loud and often for months on end. And even though Linda didn't follow through that her threat, not a week went by for the whole rest of our marriage that she didn't bring up the Kate Kennedy fiasco at least once. How long in the marriage? How long? What do you say?

1:13:06 Not a week went by. There wasn't a time that she didn't mention it. Is that what he said? For the rest of their marriage. Wow. That's what he says.

1:13:13 Yep. Yep.

1:13:14 That she didn't bring it up at least once. Um, Not a week went by where she didn't bring it up at least once for the rest of their marriage.

1:13:20 I wonder why. Maybe because she had reason to believe you cheated on her. I don't know. Right. He kind of denies it, but because of the nature of the settlement, he can't really be that specific in the book. I don't blame Linda for being angry, he writes. There was no excuse for my getting into a situation like that, no matter what happened in that hotel room. But the problem in Linda's eyes was much bigger than just that incident.

1:13:43 When this happened, Linda finally had the proof she'd been after for years. Proof, at least in her eyes, that all of her long-standing suspicions about me cheating must be true. And he later said in an interview with Wade Keller, did Hulk, a lot of stuff that happened with this Kate Kennedy trial in Minnesota when this girl was accusing me of sexual assault. Jesse Ventura spun on his radio show.

1:14:06 You got this, Jesse? Okay, by this point, had a radio show in Minneapolis that was a political radio show. But you better believe he used that bully pulpit to fuck with his old nemesis, Hulk Hogan. who by this point he had found out had ratted out his unionization. Oh, here's a guy who, here's a guy who said he was going to run for president and yet he's having affairs.

1:14:25 Right.

1:14:26 I mean, do we need someone like that in the white house? I don't think so. Another bill Clinton, basically with the same moral turpitude. It's a great question. But yeah, so I mean, we have to examine everybody's moral compass. So that, uh, it was really unfortunate for Hulk that that happened in Minnesota.

1:14:45 Yeah.

1:14:46 At a time when his old pal had a fucking drive-time radio show listened to by the whole city. There was just a lot of stuff Hulk said to Wade Keller that I really wanted to tell my side of the story, but it was like, oh my God, they'll sue us if we say that. There was just stuff that I thought might have been interesting to the wrestling fans that they were scared to touch. So basically he acknowledges that Kennedy came to his hotel room. She was with her fiance, I think, at the time. And then the assault accusations came after that. He calls it a trial on that remark, but there was no trial, I don't think. Now, I know that there was a trial.

1:15:16 There was a settlement before trial. But that's kind of the full grid, okay? If we're doing one of those timelines that detectives on TV make with pushpins and notepads and sticky notes, we've got the full assortment, the full array. But we talked about the red onion, the Riz head onion. And we need to get acquainted with this place because...

1:15:43 It wasn't just some hole-in-the-wall bar. This was an absolutely happening dance club in the 80s for people to be seen at this point in time. We're on the release of Rocky III in 1982. So a couple of press clippings that I've shared with you, boss, and I'd love for you to share with the solar system. That kind of gets across how hot and heavy this place got at a certain point. And like anything, the best way to figure out what the operation really was all about is to wait until the authorities bust it.

1:16:19 Of course.

1:16:20 Just like the places, the anchor club and stuff that Hulk worked in Cocoa Beach in 78, that memory Hulk part of his life. You got to wait for the worm to turn and then you get more of a fulsome picture of why the place was a magnet to the drinking, the carousing, and the drug use of 80s success. So this is from the 1992... September 28th, 1992, issue of the Los Angeles Times, as the Red Onion had been called a real trouble spot by authorities, according to this headline. Two-pager there.

1:16:53 But through this, we're going to learn not only what the place's reputation and legacy was, but how it went south, dude. The lights are already down and the decibel level up at the Woodland Hills Red Onion by the time Antoinette Flores and her two girlfriends arrive. It is early evening and the three have come, as they often do, to dance, to meet people, and to party. Quote, it's a place to come and mingle to enjoy yourselves, says Flores, 21, before slurping from a huge container filled with a potent cocktail called Sex on the Beach. Everybody gets along here really good. Unfortunately, police and city and state officials believe some people are enjoying themselves a little too much at the popular drinking and dancing night spot, and not everyone

1:17:38 is getting along. Authorities are trying to shut down the red on Unit 6424 Canoga Avenue, or at least tone things down a couple of notches by imposing restrictions. They say the establishment has been a magnet for trouble for years, and they blame the business's management. Quote, I suspect they try to get as many customers as they can in there and then provide them with as much alcohol. I'm sorry, this is a police car. I suspect they try to get as many customers as they can to get in there and then provide them as much alcohol as they can consume, said Sergeant Dan Hoffman, head of the vice unit.

1:18:12 When asked to describe how bars work. I know, that's exactly right. Like, okay, how is this different from any other fucking place in L.A.? at Los Angeles Police Department's West Valley Division. Oh, my God. The WVD.

1:18:29 Shit.

1:18:29 What do you know about it? I know nothing about it. I just like that there's a West Valley Division. The WVD. There's a vice unit in the West Valley Division. Law and Order WVD. How about that? The crux of this is that they are not controlling the intake of alcohol there and that it is where it all falls apart.

1:18:48 It is a time bomb ready to go off. That's right. Somebody didn't play ball with the permitting authorities. Not at all. Somebody's getting it for not playing along. That's right. Authorities say the problems include repeatedly serving alcohol to minors and drunk patrons, some of whom are later arrested nearby.

1:19:07 There's plenty of rare earths. And I mean, of course there's miners there. Like there's all kinds of quarries around there. There's, you know, all kinds of like rock deposits and rare earth deposits.

1:19:20 There's, I don't understand. Like why they get in trouble for serving miners. I don't know.

1:19:28 I know.

1:19:29 I know. It's like putting a bar, you know, in West Virginia on also for serving coal. Repeatedly serving alcohol to drunk patrons. I mean, that's, Kind of the business model, I believe, at the fucking bar. They make it sound like they were drunk before they got there.

1:19:44 Right.

1:19:45 Well, but still, I mean, listen, until they start getting rowdy, I mean, or problematic, I mean, what's the problem? Because they're a Don Wilson fuck den on the second floor. That's what I want to know. That's exactly right. Where satisfaction was guaranteed. Where the dragon did the slaying. Yes, that's right. Car collisions in the adjacent parking lots and on nearby streets. Fights inside and outside the bar, some involving deadly weapons, burglaries, and vandalism. Wait, so burglaries happening at other places or the building itself? Because how do we know that the burglaries have anything to do with the clientele from the Red Onion?

1:20:26 I think they're trying to throw everything against them. I'm telling you, someone's not playing ball and they're trying to shut it down in the press.

1:20:32 Yeah.

1:20:32 The Woodland Hills Red Onion isn't the only one in the 14 outlet chain with problems. Authorities say management of the Mexican restaurants and bars encourages an atmosphere that spells trouble everywhere. Recently, four short-tempered young men argued in the parking lot of the West Covina Red Onion. Gunshots were fired and one man was killed and another badly injured.

1:21:00 Hulk always comes around to these places.

1:21:01 This is kind of like The way he was describing where Alan would go and where he'd play in the band and stuff.

1:21:08 I think, I think when reality, when push comes to shove, I think, I think Hogan's kind of a, kind of a trash trailer. You know, he's trashy. He loves going to like honky tonk style bars. Like, yeah, I think he's a trashy guy.

1:21:21 Biker bars kind of to like right on the edge. And this kind of seems like, you know, LA's version of that kind of place.

1:21:27 Oh, sure.

1:21:27 Sure.

1:21:27 Um, From July 1991 to this June, officers were summoned to that Red Onion 223 times. Wow, that's a lot. That's like... That's not that many.

1:21:42 No.

1:21:43 I'm just kidding.

1:21:44 Of course that's a lot.

1:21:45 Jesus Christ. I was like, that's like almost once a day. You know what I mean? It's like once every two days. Yeah, they're probably close. Are you fucking kidding me? These fucking clowns. The goddamn Red Onion. Jesus Christ. Johnny! They're probably close two or three times a week, so it's like literally... Exactly.

1:22:02 It's like Mondays and Tuesdays are not open, and those are the days they don't come. Red Onion Outlets have— oh, there's an outlet as well? That's great. Red Onion Outlets have been cited so frequently that the company has earned the unique status of having its own file in the regional office of the State Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

1:22:20 Tremendous.

1:22:20 Ah, the DABC. Fantastic. Said Jerry Jolly. Jerry Jolly. What a name for a guy that tries to stop everyone from drinking. Well, notice he's not called Jolly Jerry, okay? Jerry Jolly, Deputy Division Chief for Southern California. The file contains 68 different accusations, 47 of which have been sustained.

1:22:46 I don't think there's a red onion in Southern California that hasn't received a complaint from law enforcement. Jolly said they have a history of violating ABC laws. I guess Bill Bratton brought the whole department with him, didn't he? Fucking L.A. cops. All of them are from Dorchester. There's not, listen, there's not a cop in the history of this show that isn't from fucking Massachusetts. That's just the letter of the law. They all followed Ray Donovan. Ignacio, don't call me Alberto Del Rio, president of the International Union. You know, most people think DCMA notices are digital millennial copyright, but it's don't call me Alberto notices is what it is.

1:23:34 President of International Onion Incorporated. I thought that was Paul White. Shit. International Onion. International Onion Incorporated. The Carson-based corporation that runs the chain rebuts those statistics. He blames state officials for the troubled image. He blames state officials for serving too much alcohol to his patrons. In the past, we have been picked on by the ABC because of the magnitude of the business. Del Rio said, we are the number one chain in Southern California. When a state agency with a limited budget wants to make an example of what restaurants can and cannot do, they pick on the red onion.

1:24:32 I just can't stop hearing Hulk say the red onion. I know.

1:24:36 And me and my buddy went to the red onion.

1:24:38 Went to the red and yellow onion, dude. That would be with mustard then. That's right. Del Rio conceded the chain has had problems. Discrimination claims have prompted Red Onion to pay more than $ 600, 000 to minority customers who say they were turned away or asked to leave restaurants because of the color of their skin. But it is a responsible business, Del Rio said, employing nearly 2,000 people and participating in community organizations. At the Woodland Hills location, Red Onion employees and managers also are convinced they are being picked on. I think it's ridiculous that we have to put up with so much harassment, said head bartender Jim Camuso, who has worked at the restaurant since 1977. We don't

1:25:28 have dollar drink nights. We don't have 18 and under nights. We don't have... We don't have shooter girls. Brother, what?

1:25:38 Right.

1:25:38 Better not. Hold on, dude. Walking around pouring shots like a lot of other places do. It's gotten so that they don't even allow our customers to have fun anymore. You said pouring shots, not porn shots, right? Pouring shots, yes. After We Magazine, I'm all... That's true. Authorities say the Woodland Hills bar improves at times, but then gets a new manager who reverts back to encouraging a packed house full of drinkers. Camuso and others disagree. Hoffman, the vice officer and Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joy Pickus say they have met repeatedly with Red Onion managers to encourage them to clean up the problems without having to go to court.

1:26:27 We keep meeting with them, and they always promise that the problems will go away, said Joy Newell, a Pickus spokeswoman. But we keep hearing about them. Hoffman insists police don't want to put the restaurant out of business. We prefer them to close on their own. We don't want to bring them out of business. What we want to have happen is them to shut their own doors.

1:26:56 All right?

1:26:57 We just want them to run the place professionally. What upsets me is that they keep saying we're unfair, and that is not the case at all. And they say they are not aware of our problems, which is an out-and-out lie. That would be the first police department in the history of police departments to admit that they're being unfair.

1:27:13 It's not going to happen. On August 27th, in what Hoffman called a last straw effort, the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office announced filed a nuisance abatement suit in Superior Court against the Woodland Hills Night Spot and its corporate owners. The suit seeks the suspension or revocation of the establishment's license.

1:27:39 The city plans to seek an injunction in the next few weeks that would set strict conditions on the continued operation of the restaurant pending trial of the abatement lawsuit. Deputy City Attorney Henry Burr said Friday. Burr said four driving victims for driving under the influence arrests of patrons leaving the restaurant were made in the last two weeks of July. He also said police in the past two years have made at least eight arrests inside the restaurant for the sale of alcoholic beverages to minors or to people who are already drunk. So they're arresting people for...

1:28:14 Getting served. For drinks being served, basically. For serving drinks. Tackling them in the parking lot. Burr and other authorities. Smoke break out back, bartender. It's fucking defensive. Were you selling drinks to people? Were you? Sir, excuse me. Were you selling drinks to these people out here? Or anybody inside?

1:28:40 Were you selling alcohol? That's kind of the business, yeah. Well, you sure are under arrest for selling alcohol to anybody. Are you a pouring establishment? I see a pouring license, please. A common victual license. I would like to see your technique. Can you pour for me right now, please? It's one thing to have alcohol on premises. It's another thing to pour.

1:29:00 It's another thing to sell it. Is this a pouring establishment? It's one thing to have alcohol on premises. It's another thing to sell it and serve it. Is this a pouring establishment or a boring establishment? Burr and other authorities said officers of the West Valley Division have reported that bar patrons have been involved in at least 16 incidents of battery and assault with a deadly weapon in the past two years. as well as 16 arrests for public urination, 11 vandalism complaints, and 28 theft reports. It's quite a romantic place for Hulk and Linda to meet. Jesus Christ.

1:29:38 Two Fridays ago, police tried to help security guards at the bar prevent a drunk man from harassing a female patron. A scuffle ensued that spilled out into the parking lot, Hoffman said. The thing turned into a flat-out Donnybrook, he said. Now, we end up arresting one guy for interfering with an arrest, another for unlawful rescue for trying to get his friend out of police custody, and another for battery. The bar is required by the Los Angeles Police Commission to have security guards stationed outside, and Hoffman said one guard reported seeing the three alleged troublemakers getting drunk in the parking lot before going in. You know, what good is a uniform security if they observed guys drinking for one hour

1:30:19 in the parking lot and didn't do anything? Hoffman asked.

1:30:22 Huh?

1:30:22 Huh? How is that okay? City zoning officials also are clamping down by seeking to change the business's use permit so that the Red Onion would be prohibited from operating a nightclub on the premises. Zoning Inspector John Parika said. And state ABC officials disclosed, which makes me always think of the Alphabet Network. Yeah, I know. To say nothing about state CBS officials. Yeah, right. Officials disclosed last week that once again, they will seek sanctions against the establishment for violating its liquor license. This time, the agency has compiled a list of 55 alleged violations, 22 inside the premises and the rest outside, including serving drunks, some of whom have committed assaults with deadly weapons, said Jim Smith,

1:31:11 the ABC district administrator in Van Nuys. This just goes on and on. They're going to bury this place. Fuck. If they are allowing these assaults and batteries to take place, they're violating their license. A license is a privilege, not a right. Twelve times in the past, the ABC has filed formal accusations for offenses that included employing a minor.

1:31:36 selling to minors and drunks, giving away alcohol, and allowing gambling. As a result, the bar was shut down once in 1986 for 10 days for selling to minors, Smith said. In March 1990, the ABC suspended the bar's license for 10 days for serving a drunk customer, but red onion management appealed. And that action is still pending in six other cases. The company was allowed to pay fines, totaling $ 8, 500 while continuing to operate the lucrative operation. Although the company would, could not say how much it takes from its Woodland Hills operation. The chain grosses as much as $ 60 million annually in 1991. The, the police commission stepped in and imposed 24 operating conditions on the restaurant, including a requirement

1:32:27 that it sell no more than one drink to a customer at a time and a limit on the size of the crowd. But those conditions are routinely ignored, according to authorities who said they are tired of the continuing violations. You know, we don't plan on letting them pay a fine on this one, said Smith. He said the ABC will soon seek to have the bar's license revoked but would allow the bar to continue operating under a threat of permanent revocation. Smith said he expects Red Onion officials to drag the process out for several years by appealing any penalties to an administrative law judge. In the past, he said, Red Onion has always taken us to the wall on these. That's what it's about. It's about them

1:33:08 not rolling over and taking their punishment.

1:33:10 Right, exactly.

1:33:10 Exactly. As a result, city and state officials say they will continue to try to work with Red Onion management to address the alleged problems. Meanwhile, some Red Onion customers like the bar's owners say... Some Red Onion customers like the bar's owners? Doesn't make any sense. Doesn't make any sense at all. Oh, much like the bar, right. They're saying, just like the bar's owners, these people are saying.

1:33:34 I see.

1:33:35 But yeah, it's the syntax. Meanwhile, some Red Onion customers like the bar's owners say the bar is... being persecuted for problems that pale by comparison to those in other San Fernando Valley night spots. Others say that they now leave early before things get too rowdy. As Flores and her friends continued to work on their sex on the beach drink one night last week, things began heating up.

1:33:58 Strobe lights flashed around them at the bar and the music was pumping. Clusters of college students and young executives shift. Young executives. How do they know? Bunch of fucking... Bunch of fucking like, you know, these fucking idiots who like, you know. Yep, yuppies. Executive VP of like pencil control, you know, shit like that. Executive VP of blowjobs. Right, exactly.

1:34:23 The executive VP of bullshit. Shared laughs and they all work at fucking like Universal, you know. Wearing fucking jeans and blazers and shit. You can picture him. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

1:34:36 Oh, you know.

1:34:37 I remember when I had an interview at Universal for an internship. I was like, oh yeah, we dress business casual here. Okay, so does everybody. What's the fucking difference? Everybody fucking wears business casual. Idiot. Young executives shared laughs and rounds of drinks at nearby tables and some headed for the dance floor. They can't close this place down, lamented Flores' friend Betty Sanchez, 23. Where else are we going to go? One regular, Carrie Kajontvet, said, the roundiest it's ever been is when you get pushed off the dance floor by the other dancers. Another, Marja Luthwaite, they fucking got all the- Bobcat Luthwaite?

1:35:30 Yeah, right.

1:35:30 21 said the bar is always packed, but that the bartenders are good about cutting off people who have had one too many. And Mike Steen, 46, and his seven friends said they come once a month after work and have never seen any problems. It's just regular old folks, he said. But others like Carmen Pinard, 25, say they are coming less and less to the Red Onion because of problems. You know, the violence has increased in here.

1:35:56 said Bernard, sitting with friends from work. The last couple of times we've come here, there's been a fight and a racial slur or two. It used to be a great place to go dancing at night. We don't do that anymore, knowing what happens. We don't feel safe.

1:36:09 Wow.

1:36:12 Awesome.

1:36:13 So, yeah.

1:36:13 That is wild. A nice romantic spot, wouldn't you say?

1:36:15 Of course.

1:36:16 Of course.

1:36:17 That's what happens. That's where you go, you know, you meet up there. That's where you find true love. They say, whoa, Chad.

1:36:25 Roller.

1:36:28 Aren't you going to show a preach? Fuck. Shout out to Chad on that one. But good stuff, man. That's where they met. And you're going to hear it over and over and over again.

1:36:40 And me and my buddy went to the Red Onion.

1:36:41 Because they think, like, both of them think that's, like, evocative to people.

1:36:47 They're like, oh, the Red Onion. It's kind of annoying, you know? It's like, no one gives a fuck what the Red Onion was. Why do you have to say the name of the place every time you tell the story?

1:36:55 Right.

1:36:57 But like, you know what? I could tell you something again. I lived there for almost 10 years. I live in LA. I lived in the Valley for a year, like a year and a half. Never fucking heard about the fucking red onion. It doesn't mean shit to me.

1:37:13 And me and my buddy went to the red onion.

1:37:16 Oh God. So weird. How like certain things annoy. I don't know why that it's true. Like, you know, It's like, if I, if I said, if I, if I said the place, like whenever people ask, like where me and my wife met, I never say the place. I just say what we were doing. We were, we, you know, it's like we were in a show together. They don't need to fucking, if I say the name of the theater, it's not exactly studio 54 either. It's not exactly right.

1:37:49 Not at all. Maybe it is locally, but just too much, man. Too much.

1:37:54 It's spoken like a true, like a, a true Florida boy in LA, you know, and it's like what Kevin Nash does when he, you know, he'll drop local references to a city to make, to make it, make himself feel like world, like a world traveler, like worldly, you know, he gets a charge out of that.

1:38:11 I can identify with that. I do that too. But, um, it's, it's, it's, it's pretty.

1:38:15 Funny to see how, um, 100% of the time when telling the story of how they met, they mentioned the red on it. In fact, the Netflix documentary crew found a picture of, in the archives of what the Red Onion used to look like on the outside. Not one of the nights where people were... being accosted by LAPD, but nonetheless, there it is. So we've got to know more about Linda Claridge, and we've got to know more about her family, because that becomes part of it as Hulk deals with the interior decoration demands of Linda.

1:38:49 Ah, yes.

1:38:49 It's very much Apple falling far from the tree situation, or not far from the tree, I should say, as Linda's mother, Gail Claridge, was an interior designer.

1:38:58 Oh, look at that. And kind of like an interior designer to the stars. She would be... Really? Yeah. Written up in the L.A.

1:39:05 Press quite a bit for her, like, you know, tasteful recommendations on how to decorate big honking homes for the holidays or any occasion. She definitely specialized in the kind of French villa interiors. I mean, I'm kind of talking out of school here. I don't know if I have the exact right terms for all this stuff. I could care less, but yeah, it's basically the Bel Air mansion that you see at Hogan knows best that kind.

1:39:32 Of, right.

1:39:33 You know, those like deep Brown wood fucking beams everywhere. And right. It's like the.

1:39:41 Trucking in materials from Europe. Like you can, build something that's going to feel like Europe and fucking tropical Florida, which is completely ridiculous in and of itself. But it's very clear kind of where that comes from. And Hulk expresses frustration in his second book, Post Divorce, about how much involvement Gale kind of had in everything in their lives, in particular, forcing massive expenditures on designs, redesigns, construction, building the big house, all of that stuff. He kind of looks askance at how much of a role the in-laws played in, uh, stressing his wallet. And those are the kinds of things that, you know, you would expect a divorce guy to, you know, to, uh, nitpick about after

1:40:23 the fact.

1:40:24 Sure.

1:40:24 But, um, even, he even faults them as we'll get to for not, uh, picking up any of the tab at the wedding or anything like that when he's carrying around just massive wads of cash from trips back and forth to Japan and say nothing of the AWA at the time they got married. But I thought this was kind of a star mom kind of moment. This is kind of like a, a Ruth Bollea moment for Linda's mother as well. It appeared in the May 28th, 1992 edition of the Los Angeles Times. Apparently they would do a regular feature back then, Odds and Ends Around the Valley.

1:40:54 And this is one where, for some reason, telling the story of how this new superstar, Hulk Hogan, not this new superstar, but by this point a superstar, Hulk Hogan, had met Linda and how it's actually a very L.A. story and has to do with this Gail Claridge that had been written up for her interior design work over the years in the papers. And so, I don't know, I just think it's interesting that Gail steps into the limelight here to tell the story of how her daughter landed this huge fish. So if you could, boss, it is special to the times, and it's entitled Buying into Hulk.

1:41:29 Ooh. A young couple and her parents were having dinner at Bob Burns' restaurant in Woodland Hills. They had barely gotten seated when the nervous young man politely asked Mr. and Mrs. Joe Claridge if it was all right for them if he married their daughter, Linda. When the guy doing the asking is a giant wrestler named Hulk Hogan, there is only one answer you can give, says his now mother-in-law, Gail Claridge of Chatsworth, with a laugh. Before that, Linda, who has been a manicurist, used to complain she would never meet any eligible men living in the valley. Her mother says Gail Claridge is the owner of Claridge House Interiors, a design shop in Northridge. Then one night, Linda went to the Red Onion and saw this tall blonde man

1:42:16 across the crowded room. Just like in the song, the five foot seven. What song is that?

1:42:23 What?

1:42:24 The song he's talking about. He said, just like the song. I don't know what fucking song he's talking about. I want to murder my head, too. The 5'7 Valley girl began talking to the 6'5 hunk from Florida who had been brought into the Westland Woodland Hills restaurant by a Val pal and didn't know one another. Didn't know another soul in the place. The Hulk introduced himself to Linda as Terry Bollea, but she knew who he was because she had just seen him in a movie. She was disappointed when he told her that he was leaving town the next day on an extended business trip. Brother. I got a little fake fight for a little while, dude.

1:42:58 Yeah.

1:42:59 Before he left, however, he looked up the number of her manicuring shop on the Yellow Pages and phoned her. He said he was going, but would be calling her from time to time if that was okay. It was. It was a year, several visits, and about $ 12, 000 in phone calls later when the foursome got together for dinner in Woodland Hills. Now it's almost nine years and two grandchildren later and Gil... I thought it was almost two grandchildren later. And Gail Claridge says the man she calls the gentle giant has been the perfect husband to her daughter. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

1:43:36 Imagine saying that in print and then it ends up playing out the way it does.

1:43:41 Yep.

1:43:41 Quite the judge of character is Gail. Yes, indeed. The only thing she regrets is that the Belayas live most of the time in Florida and don't spend enough time at their Northridge home. They do show up in the fall, though, and for the past two years have thrown a neighborhood Halloween party for the kids. Linda dresses up as Marilyn Monroe, and Terry comes as the Hulk. I'm sure he does.

1:44:03 Comes rather naturally. The first year, about 30 neighborhood kids came around with their parents who went crazy taking pictures. For the second party this past Halloween, about 250 kids and their parents showed up. Brother. Hulk and Linda. Domestic bliss.

1:44:20 As recorded in the pages out west of many L.A. publications, in particular the Times. So, More than happy to tell the story and celebrate in the love that started. That's 10 years after they met right there, that article published.

1:44:35 Yeah, that's crazy.

1:44:36 Having Halloween parties and such, which of course lines up with our timeline serendipitously. But yeah, so what was Linda Claridge's profile in the city such that they would give her the ink to explain how her daughter got to know the Hulk? Kind of starts back in, well, as far as I could tell, 1981 in the Los Angeles Times.

1:44:55 And by the way, Gail's still out there, still a As far as I can tell, running an interior design business still available for hire.

1:45:01 Wow. Never heard anything from her over all of this craziness.

1:45:05 Yeah.

1:45:06 As far as I can recall. She's, you know, no spring chicken. But good for her for keeping on keeping on keeping on. Absolutely. There's an article in the LA Times in December of 81 around the holidays entitled Collectors Celebrate with Style. It's never too late to start a collection, says designer Gil Claridge. The most difficult step is the first one, trying to figure out what to collect. Claridge is the consummate collector, and her spacious country kitchen becomes a magical setting at Christmas. Antique dolls and toys, copper pots and antique pewter add an aura of festive charm to the kitchen's authentic English details. Seven years ago, Claridge took a tour of the English countryside and fell in

1:45:45 love with what she saw. A year later, she opened Claridge House, a design studio and retail shop in Chatsworth that specializes in traditional English and American accessories. Once you're hit upon an idea of what to collect, Scout antique shops, junk stores, garage sales, and swap meets. Get your name on catalog mailing lists. Don't wait for Christmas. Make this a year-round hobby, says Claridge. Here are a few of her suggestions for prospective Christmas collectors. Old toys. Look for blocks, drums, sleds.

1:46:12 Well-loved teddy bears. At Christmas, dress the bears in scarves, hats, and ribbons. Watch for antique and homemade dolls and raggedy hands. Wooden toys, dolls, and animals are relatively easy to find. Many are hand-carved, which will add to their value. Old Santa's.

1:46:25 Collect paper mache and porcelain figures, dolls, and stuffed Santas. Today, most coveted are the old variety dressed in white. Cookie cutters. Use the cutters as Christmas ornaments. Attach them with plaid bows, baby's breath, and cinnamon sticks. Ribbon, lace, and calico fabric. Use them to wrap Christmas packages and for attaching ornaments to the tree. Upon the unwrapping here, boss.

1:46:46 Hint, hint, hint. Decorative items. Don't overlook old and new pewter accessories. Copper pots, kerosene lamps, pine cones, baskets, colored candles. candlesticks, and vigil lights. Now, why do I read that?

1:46:59 Well, not only because it appears to be the first significant reference to Linda's mom in the Times, but that she follows up a few weeks later, a month later, to thank the Times for the coverage, but also complain a little bit about the coverage. And I think that's very revealing. I've known these types over the years, you know. Oh, thank you so much. You know, but the problem is, oh, here we go. That kind of person. I really appreciate what you guys did. That being said, your fucking article sucked.

1:47:34 February 7th, 82.

1:47:36 LA Times.

1:47:36 Thanks so much for beautifully capturing the feeling I try to create in our country English kitchen at Christmas and collectors celebrate with style on December 13th. I just wish the photographs could have more clearly showed the brilliant color of the poinsettias from the Paul Eck Poinsettia Ranch in Encinitas.

1:47:54 It's a fucking photo in a newspaper. It's black and white. It's 82. Our color is black and white. I don't know if it was black and white at the time. How many newspapers back then in the 80s were colored? That's a good point. I don't remember a single one. Maybe USA Today. That's a good point.

1:48:14 From the Paul Eck Poinsettia Ranch in Encinitas. Not only do I use the traditional three-bloom plot plants throughout the house, I hang poinsettia baskets from the beams in the kitchen and then feature a large display of red and white poinsettias on the buffet. And you fuckers missed it.

1:48:28 Why not red and yellow, dude? Why not red and yellow, dude? And you motherfuckers missed it. That's right. I spent all fucking day. You son of a bitch. Yes, let's go. Now, boss, if you can navigate through some of the clippings that I shared with you, there is one, Gail Claridge, Los Angeles Herald Examiner, 1986. Okay.

1:48:50 And if you could read that one of the solar system, this is a much more focused feature on the empire that she was starting to build around interior design in L.A.

1:48:59 At the time.

1:49:00 Again, this is the matriarch of Linda Bollea's, the future Linda Bollea's family.

1:49:07 This is wild. Um, okay. Which, uh, which paper again? It says 1986 in the file name.

1:49:15 Okay.

1:49:15 And the headline is cream puff houses turn into real estate gold.

1:49:20 Well, there we go.

1:49:21 Let's see. There we go.

1:49:23 Good.

1:49:24 Got that one. Here we go. Let's, let's learn about cream puff. Take a look at her too. She's featured right there in a picture. Wow. Hulk's mother-in-law. She, she looks like a, I mean, she looks like a 1950s movie star.

1:49:39 Honestly.

1:49:40 Very, very California. Very SoCal. Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. Cream puffs. Real estate agents love them because they look like hot cakes. They sell like hot cakes. And the only fat in these kind of cream puffs, houses that have been fixed up in landscapes so that they look perfect, is the profit you gain when you sell them.

1:49:59 Yes.

1:50:00 Gil Claridge, whose frothy red hair and fluffy dresses remind you of a delicious pastry. Excuse me? What? Who remind you of a delicious pastry, has made a small fortune in cream puffs. This is just too much. I can't fucking do this.

1:50:19 Oh, my God.

1:50:20 Starting with a tract home in Canoga Park, she's amassed enough net worth to build an enormous house on two and a half sprawling lakeside acres in Chatsworth. Now she's renovating a $ 1 million-plus Bel Air mansion at a time when her homemaker peers are thinking about taking up golf. Think of Claridge the next time you're sitting around wondering how to increase your net worth. If you own your own home, you've already got a head start. Married at 16 and about to celebrate her 28th anniversary, Claridge was a young policeman's wife with three small children when she began decorating her first home, a small tract house in Canoga Park. Quote, I fix it up like a dollhouse, she says. And little by little, I started doing work

1:51:01 for my neighbors. One day, I was paid $ 25 for reshuffling someone's house, changing the pictures, rearranging the furniture, and I was absolutely exhausted. But that's when I decided that maybe I could make some money doing this. It was the early 60s, and Claridge was in her early 20s. Her husband was working for the sheriff's department. She signed up for interior design courses at the West Valley Occupation Center.

1:51:25 When her oldest daughter entered Chaminade... I don't know, you know, the Chaminade College Preparatory School, Claridge began to teach interior design classes to senior girls. I studied constantly, she said. I loved period design, Cape Cod, country English, beautiful manor houses. And then in the early 70s, I got the opportunity to go to England. Claridge's grandmother wanted to visit Rome where she had been born, and Claridge took a second week in England to see English country homes. When I got back, I told my husband, Joe, that I wanted to build our own house. He said, okay, we'll have to sell this house and look for a lot. I started looking, and I looked, and I looked, and I looked, but nothing I found was good enough. When I had $ 30, 000. Yeah,

1:52:08 she sounds good. This is going to work out well. She sounds like she's easy going all around. She sounds like she's fishing for sources of funds. Yep, exactly. At all times. When I had $ 30, 000, the ones I liked were $ 50, 000. When I had $ 50, 000, the ones I wanted were $ 70, 000. In the meantime, Claridge was looking for old houses to restore. The only problem was that there are virtually no old houses in the valley. Finally, Joe said, Gail, let's buy a new house. Now, a new house was the last thing, was the last thing I wanted. White walls, stucco, no landscaping, but I agreed to buy a house and a tract that wasn't built yet because I couldn't find anything else that I wanted. We sold our house in

1:52:54 Canoga Park to the first couple that looked at it. It was fixed up beautifully. It sold in less than a week, and we moved into a rental while we waited for the new house, she said. And waited, and waited. After a year when the houses still weren't built, the Claridges sold their position in the tract and bought another house in Chatsworth. We were lucky. We hit during the real estate boom of the 70s and we tripled our money, Claridge says. That gave her the money to start looking once again for a lot, which I could afford, 70,000 or 90,000, she says. But it was two acres, not just a lot. And my selling point to Joe was an old barn where he could work on his cars and motorcycles. Yeah, I could play with your toys over there. Yeah, right.

1:53:40 I build a museum. You can't even walk, step foot in. Yeah, you can't actually even come into the house anymore. You have to stay in the barn. Taking a big financial risk, the cleric just bought the property and started work. I really put my whole self into that house. I studied everything I could to get my hands on. I labored over the stucco to make sure it looked like old English stucco. We even tumbled the bricks in a mixer ourselves because ordinary used brick wasn't right for the house. Yeah, I'm good. How so?

1:54:12 Joe.

1:54:13 Joe is a fucking, is a saint. Yeah. He's the one. I'd be like, nope.

1:54:20 Nope.

1:54:20 Claridge's husband had always enjoyed working on projects, and the rest of the family joined in. He enjoyed it, all right. Yeah, right. Yeah. We all worked. My husband and son laid the floor, and my younger daughter and I grouted the bricks. Then in the middle of the building, in the middle of the building, I was in an auto accident and broke my arm. My jaw had six teeth knocked out, but I had to keep going. I had too much at stake, she says. Joe kept working at the sheriff's department, and Clarence started an interior design business to help fund their building.

1:54:53 Some of her first clients were Vince Van Patten, Pete Ellis, and Terry York of car fame, and Dick Van Patten. Her business was instantly successful. People would see what I was doing with my own house, and they were impressed, she says. As is usually the case, Claridge's house quickly cost lots of money. They were impressed with the job I did, she says. Yeah, right. They were impressed. Let's talk to Dick Van Patten and see what he says.

1:55:22 We did the things that couldn't be changed later. Things like fireplaces, driveways, chimneys, and what we could add later. Landscaping, stained glass, the pool we put off. And I did a lot of trading. But before we were finished, the house won the San Fernando Valley Board of Realtors Award of Aesthetic Blending of Landscape and Architecture. And then another for Homes in the Fusion. So tasteful. Over 5,000 square feet.

1:55:45 So tasteful. Yes. Finally, the house was complete. The family moved in. Oldest daughter Linda was about to marry celebrity wrestler Hulk Hogan. And half the house burned down when some painting rags caught fire. Oh, man. Joe was injured but recovered.

1:56:04 Oh, fuck.

1:56:06 Poor Joe. He's in a flaming job site. This fucking guy.

1:56:10 I'm working on the house, honey.

1:56:14 He's a fucking police officer, okay? He goes to work every day with his life on the line. And his life is on the line when he comes home, too. Apparently. His whole life is on the line all the time. Every day of the week, 24 hours a day.

1:56:26 So good.

1:56:28 Um.

1:56:29 Boy, do I believe in smoke alarms. Claridge said, and it's like, without them, he would have died. Insurance money paid for the rebuilding, which took a year. Oh, my God. These poor fucking people. In the meantime, Claridge's business had taken off. She now employs six in her Valley Interior Design office when she saw clients resell their homes for handsome profits, largely based on the work that she had done.

1:56:54 She decided that what she needed was to put up the cash herself. You can only sell so many sofas, she says. Which brings us to Sturdy Wood, the Bel Air mansion that Claridge bought last year. Plans to rename Claridge House. Oh, my God. And hopes to complete in the next three months. She's used many of the features that she developed for her own house, an enormous kitchen, lots of brick wood. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brick, lots of brick wood? What's brick wood? It's one or the other, isn't it? I know, right? Because, again, lots of brick wood, lots of wood. Is this like Hart House, Claridge House? Exactly.

1:57:34 You know, Terry was telling me about a family up in Calgary, and they have this thing, Hart House. I was like, well, Claridge House sounds way better than Hart House. Why doesn't that exist? Joe, why doesn't that exist? Joe, how come we don't have Claridge House? We have a carriage house, if that's what you mean. We have a house.

1:57:56 We have a house. What else? Joe, Joe, stop it now. Okay? Stop it now.

1:58:04 All right?

1:58:04 If you're not going to agree with me, you just back the fuck away. Okay, honey. Yes, dear, whatever you say. A large master bath, complete with jacuzzi and outdoor landscaping, carefully planted so that the colors of the flowers, mostly pinks, lavenders, and whites, will match the interior decoration. Son Joe Jr., now 22, works on the construction, and Joe Sr. has retired to devote full time. Yeah, okay. Has retired to devote full time to managing the family projects. Joe, Joe, honey, you have to retire. I need your help here all the time. You have to retire. There's no point. Listen, the family is making so much money off of this, off of my business. You don't need to work in the sheriff's department anymore. Just stay at home and work

1:58:56 for me for free. Love you. Awesome. Clarence herself is working on refurbishing the Sheraton Universal Hotel. In her spare time, she's studying for a contractor's license. In her spare time, she is not having sex with her husband. Come on, Raph. That's unfair.

1:59:20 In her spare time, she's studying to become a licensed electrical contractor. My father was.

1:59:31 A licensed electrical contractor.

1:59:33 It must arise. What was your dad?

1:59:46 My father was a licensed electrical contractor.

1:59:49 And me and my buddy went to the red onion.

1:59:52 How many people can.

1:59:53 Say they got fucked by a giant? The very first time I saw him, it was in the valley.

1:59:58 Hi, darling.

1:59:59 How many people can say they got fucked by a giant?

2:00:04 Foaming at the crotch. And me and my buddy went through it on his honor.

2:00:15 You don't fucking know the first thing about it.

2:00:21 Said Joe Claridge. The fuck? My father was a licensed electrical contractor. That's the fucking greatest thing.

2:00:34 My father was a licensed electrical contractor.

2:00:39 As opposed to unlicensed. Just say he was an electrician.

2:01:26 With Jack Encarnacio and J.P.

2:01:28 Sorrow.

2:01:30 Okay, Boston, just say he was a fucking electrician.

2:01:31 My father was a licensed electrical contractor.

2:01:35 You don't know nothing about it. If you're not under the cinema and you didn't see Halloween Resurrection, you don't know anything about it. You dumb son of a bitch.

2:01:44 And me and my buddy went to the Red Onion.

2:01:48 One, two, three.

2:01:49 How many people can say they got fucked by a giant?

2:01:56 Linda can.

2:01:57 Linda can, that's for sure. It's the complete Hulk Hogan, by the way. When did they play the Buster Rhymes bite?

2:02:12 Yeah, right. So have we heard everything we have to hear? There's one little paragraph here. When Claridge takes risks, she takes them big. To buy sturdy wood, she mortgaged the family home. This is definitely a problematic pattern. Joe, I'm going to, Joe, listen, I have to buy this place, so I'm going to mortgage the home. Need money, Joe.

2:02:34 I have to have this French blah, blah, blah.

2:02:37 What?

2:02:38 No, but. Joe. Gil, we don't, Gil, that doesn't make any sense. Joe, I wasn't an ask. I wasn't having a conversation with you. I wasn't having a negotiation. This is what we're doing, and I was just informing you. Out of respect because you're my husband. Dennis Franz looking motherfucker. Oh, you damn fucking right. Waddling around. Thought he was just going to eat like Cambodian donuts till he retired. No, his wife makes him retire so she can. Dennis Franz looks like John Quincy Adams these days. Yeah.

2:03:27 Oh, shit.

2:03:28 The asking price hasn't been determined, but you can be sure it won't be anywhere in the neighborhood of what it costs to buy that first little Canoga Park cream puff. Cream puff. So she's an entrepreneur. Oh, my God. She's an entrepreneur. She is. Listen, she's, you know, exactly. She's breaking walls. She's breaking ceilings, glass ceilings, okay? And he talks quite a bit about Kiel in his book, the second book in particular, of course. Recalls how Much her warmth upon greeting him for pretty much the first time was in such stark contrast to his upbringing. Many years later, just before I got married, the first time I met Linda's mom, she gave me this huge hug and it shocked me. I just wasn't used to being hugged like

2:04:08 that by anyone in my family at all.

2:04:10 Wow.

2:04:11 He does acknowledge that they shelled out a ton of money for their wedding, Hulk and Linda's wedding, including a generous amount for booze. But of course, he invited all the New Japan roster and Andre there, so they Definitely exceeded that.

2:04:24 Oh, forget it.

2:04:25 Yep.

2:04:26 And according to Hulken's second book, he had to come out of pocket 12 grand to cover the over the top. And he comes to this conclusion. In retrospect, Linda and her whole family probably thought they caught themselves a sucker fish. My first clue was right there in front of me that night. Apparently the wedding guests ran up a huge bar tab, like 12 or $ 14, 000. So Linda's mom came up to me and asked me to pay the bill.

2:04:47 And I did. The parents of the bride usually pay for that kind of thing, right? I didn't care. I had the money on me and I was having such a good time. I just handed it over. That's something I would wind up doing a lot over the course of my marriage. Wow. So, uh, okay.

2:05:01 Yeah. Yep.

2:05:04 Uh, when it started happening frequently, the outbursts from Linda, I went to Linda's mother, asked her if she'd ever witnessed any of these anger issues in Linda before. And she acted like it was an everyday occurrence. You're the one who married her. She said, Oh, she was practically laughing at me. Thanks a lot, lady. It was just one of those little secrets I learned about Linda and the Clarge family in the months and years after we married.

2:05:23 Little bits of information kept trickling out, all of which were distressing to me, but none of which seemed too big to overcome when I took them one at a time. He remembers that Gail had owned a rental property near her home in Los Angeles, and she offered it to Linda and Hulk, and he portrays Gail as kind of siding with Linda in a disagreement about where the family should live. She makes reference right there in a fucking article published for the whole region to read about how she's not necessarily happy how little time they spend in California.

2:05:49 We had this beautiful home on Bellevue Island, but Linda insisted we need to at least give it a try. Her mother was always dabbling in real estate and actually had a house not far from her own that she offered to rent to us. Cash flow, you know? Oh, it's always, right. That's what it's all about.

2:06:02 I wanted Linda to be happy, so I said yes, and we wound up bouncing the whole family back and forth between those houses in Florida and LA. The kids weren't in school yet, which made it easy to do. Apart from the hassle of constantly traveling, the fact was my wrestling business, and even Thunder in Paradise, was based on the East Coast.

2:06:15 Linda knew that.

2:06:16 Living in California only meant more traveling and longer plane rides. Then I had already endured all those years trying to get back to be with her and the kids.

2:06:22 She didn't care. And her mother was there backing her up all the time. I don't understand why you don't sell that place in Florida and just move here. Whenever we were in that rented house in LA, the moment I would come downstairs, I'd be hit with Linda's mother or grandmother or someone telling me about all these things I should be doing. Oh my God. Sounds like fucking hell.

2:06:38 That's right.

2:06:39 Oh my God.

2:06:39 Can you imagine? Seriously. He's Hulk Hogan. Here's this guy.

2:06:42 Right.

2:06:43 Exactly. Here's this guy who fucking is like, You know, one of the biggest stars. Again, not even just in terms of wrestling, but in the world.

2:06:57 Yep.

2:06:58 In the world, okay? And it's not enough. He's got to listen to all the things that he's not doing.

2:07:06 Right.

2:07:06 All I want to do is get to the gym, have some sort of a normal routine. But Linda's family was always in the house.

2:07:13 He says his planned Florida home expanded significantly after Linda consulted her mother. I would wind up pulling millions and millions into the Claridge family's pockets before I was through with this marriage. Millions. Okay? Millions. Just before construction was set to start, I paced the footers and did the math in my head, and I couldn't figure out what had gone awry. The way I figured it, this house was laid out in the dirt. There wasn't 7,000 or 8,000 square feet. It was more like 20,000.

2:07:37 He had set the context earlier. That he'd only expected to build a seven, only a seven, 8,000 square foot house.

2:07:47 Yep.

2:07:48 And it ended up being so much more than that. I asked Linda what was up and she said, oh, I talked to my mom and my mom said, well, if we're building a house and making all the rooms, why not make each room four or five feet longer? It won't make a difference anyway.

2:08:00 Oh, God, she's exhausting. He continues, of course, Linda Claridge, Gail Claridge, rather, Interiors, the home furnishings and furniture store that's owned by none other than Linda's mother, furnished all of these homes. Guess who's always been her best customer?

2:08:16 Yep.

2:08:16 Moi. That's right. The next morning, Linda got on a plane to California. I called her parents.

2:08:21 This is after they break up, and Linda seeks treatment for alcoholism, according to Hulk. The next morning, Linda got on a plane to California. I called her parents, told them how bad things had become, and even Linda's mother, Gail, told me she thought Linda needed help. She'd received so many phone calls from Linda just complaining and moaning about everything in her life. It was clear to me that she'd crossed the line with her drinking. So Gail and Joe picked Linda up at the airport that day and drove her straight to the Betty Ford Clinic. A few days into her stay, Linda started calling me, begging me to let her come home. I didn't know how to handle it, so I actually called Gail for advice.

2:08:47 No, don't let her out. Don't let her out, Gil, beg me. It's too soon.

2:08:55 Yeah.

2:08:56 So.

2:08:58 Just easy peasy.

2:09:00 That's part of the tapestry here, we have to acknowledge. He's heading headlong into a situation that he would end up taking to his own book to write about the, I guess you could say the anguish of.

2:09:13 Here's an article from December 1987, if you can find that one, boss. It's from the Modesto Bee in Modesto, California. It was a syndicated article that had originally been published in the Los Angeles Times. It kind of gives us a little bit of a glimpse into how Gale jumps into the forefront of the family in terms of public-facing media coverage out on the West Coast. Hulk's got it on lock in Tampa, but There was a whole other parallel narrative going on while he's married to Linda. Oh, for sure. Listen, it's not, this is never going to be just plain and simple.

2:09:51 I would love to see a Gail and Ruth in the same room, like two Matt, two magnets, you know, they repel from each other when they get too close. Cause they are, they are two peas in a pod in that way, both way out front.

2:10:04 I wonder, I mean, does he ever talk in the second book about what, you know, do they ever share holidays like together? No, no, No, he doesn't say they did. Not to say they didn't, but he doesn't reference it. I would love it if they did. Must have been a fucking nightmare. Joe and Pete. The amount of conversations afterwards.

2:10:23 Joe and Pete commiserating and just out back. So, Joe, how goes the interiors business? I'm going to tell you, Pete. Pete, I don't even know. You don't even know. What do you mean? I just do it. I just do what Gail tells me to do. You know, she told me to retire. I retired. You know, she tells me to go get some lumber. I get lumber. You know, I've discovered, you know, being married with her for so long, it's best to just not say anything at all. Someone out there is so mad that we're getting it exactly right.

2:11:04 So mad. They're waiting for a chance to say, you guys are so full of shit. It's like, oh, well.

2:11:13 No.

2:11:13 That did kind of happen. No, that's it. Joe just fucking rolls over. But when Hulk is building a huge-ass house out in Florida, you better believe the headline back in L.A. is mother-in-law designing a big home for Hulk. Please. Of course. That's exactly what it is. Hulk Hogan will soon get a new home that will be built by his mother-in-law. Mother-in-law? All those gals who thought the famous wrestler was single after hearing Dolly Parton sing to him on her TV show will be upset to hear that.

2:11:45 Dolly crooned about dreaming of marriage with a 33-year-old heavyweight champ. Yep, as Dolly might say, the Hulkster, which his friends call him, is married. He has been for four years. And his mom-in-law is Gail Claridge, a dynamo designer builder with three grown kids, including beautiful 28-year-old Linda, who is expecting the first baby Hulkster in April. Grandma-to-be Claridge won't have the Hogan's house finished by then. The Hogan's house. But she has begun to plan it and expects to start building it in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles during 1988. Escrow closed last Monday on the four-acre, $ 1. 5 million site, which was comedian Red Fox's estate. The house there now is a teardown, Claridge said, built in the 40s.

2:12:36 In its place, Claridge will build a 12,000-square-foot house, one that will be big enough, she says, to, quote, fit six feet, eight inches, and 310 pounds through the door. She will design everything, even the furnishings, she says, with the wrestler's huge frame in mind. Claridge knows her subjects.

2:12:53 She designed the interiors of the Hogan's two other homes in Connecticut and Florida. This will be their first home on the West Coast. She didn't do it for free.

2:13:04 No, no way.

2:13:05 Or a cut rate. Now, Terry, listen, Terry, I got to tell you, this is going to be very expensive, and I can't do this. Oh, my God. She acts like he is telling her to spend that much.

2:13:20 All right.

2:13:20 Well, I didn't ask for a house. I talked to Linda, and we think this is best, but the problem is. Terry, Linda and I were just talking, but this is going to be a lot of money. Oh, you're making me sick to my stomach right now, boss. She's already put a down payment on.

2:13:34 What?

2:13:35 Always talking like she's triaging a situation that she created, you know? Yeah, right. She's here to save the day, too. Linda gave me a check this morning, and I cashed it five minutes later. What? Math doesn't math, dude. Well, dude, I'm, I'm laughing at my head, dude. It's Terry, Terry. It's okay.

2:13:57 It is okay. We have this under control. Just trust me. Trust me. Believe me. You know what? You want to do it with me because this house is going to be, it's going to be all the better for it. And you're going to be all the better for it. You're going to be a better dad because of this. Has been birthed on the complete. Now I can't say, you know, listen, I have tried to, to, I've given, I gave Linda an estimate of $ 2 million, $ 3 million, $ 4 million, $ 10 million.

2:14:24 It could be that. We just don't know. What do you figure on the main foyer? Well, I'm thinking anywhere from $ 2 to $ 640 million. It depends if we can get the Italian roof tiles from fucking— Listen, I'm having— the Italian roof tiles are being blessed by the Pope.

2:14:42 No.

2:14:48 I don't need that, dude. Terry, it's going to be great. It's going to be the best house ever. By the way, speaking of the Pope, Linda's book is sprinkled with random Italian recipes in the middle of these tawdry stories about her life and times. All of a sudden, the narrative just breaks so she can give you a tortellini recipe.

2:15:10 It is hilarious. Well, what's wrong with that? Nothing. Of course not. It's fantastic. Fucking tortellini recipe. So yeah, what's the headline again on that you just read? Sorry, I closed it already. One second. Where the hell did I put it? Mother-in-law designing a big home for the Hulk.

2:15:44 San Francisco Chronicle, 1980. 1992, around November, to be exact. Headline, Hulk Hogan and wife plan a French country estate in Florida. Hulk Hogan, who stars in the upcoming movie Mr. Nanny and his wife Linda, are completing their plans to build a country French estate on the waterfront in Bel Air, Florida, near Tampa. Two Bel Airs going here. Hogan, once known as the greatest draw in the history of professional wrestling and star of a merchandising empire that reportedly grossed $ 1. 7 billion in 1991, took an indefinite hiatus from wrestling last March after reports which he denied. that he was a heavy steroid user. 39-year-old Terry Bollea, who became a professional wrestler, Hulk Hogan, in the late 1970s after moving from Tampa

2:16:22 to Venice Beach in Southern California.

2:16:25 Oh, my God. I fucking can't handle it. I cannot handle that shit. That is just vile. So amazing. It's absolutely vile how fucking idiotic they are. Started cutting back on his wrestling schedule shortly before he started No Holds Barred 1989. Their new home will be authentic country French with a slate roof and a lot of stone from France. Said, I'll give you one guess. Mother-in-law Gail Claridge. She's quoted.

2:16:51 Gail Claridge, Hogan's mother-in-law, a Los Angeles developer designer who plans to work on the interiors, will bring in the stone from demolished castles and estates. There will be an enormous working.

2:17:03 Why?

2:17:03 Why? Why?

2:17:05 Ugh.

2:17:10 There will be an enormous working kitchen. It's so funny, working kitchen. Meanwhile, Hulk in his book says Linda would literally scream at him for cooking.

2:17:18 Breakfast for the kids. Why are you making breakfast? They can just pour cereal. Oh, I don't know, because your mother made me spend $ 6 million on this kitchen.

2:17:26 Maybe that's why. And the kitchen's a work, dude. In progress. In progress. I'm getting work in progress, brother. Man, how far he's fallen if he's work in progress. That is a small company. Are you okay? I'm getting work in progress.

2:17:49 Are you sure?

2:17:50 I showed up to the building and whatever. There were like two people and they said, this is a sold out house. Devon, England, dude. And they were just like, dude, what? There will be an enormous working kitchen with a walk-in fireplace. What is a walk-in fireplace? You stand in a fireplace? What the fuck is that? Isn't that a bad idea? Well, brother, you know, you've got to get more heat, dude. I guess so. Meanwhile, it's 180 degrees outside. God.

2:18:19 Right.

2:18:20 Jesus.

2:18:21 Built-ins featuring antiques and a gym. You know what I picture? I picture.

2:18:29 The house that, what's his name, Colin Firth moves into in Love Actually to write his thing. Except it's like 4,000 times the size. Featuring antiques and a gym. Doorways will be at least eight feet tall and three and a half feet wide. Everything will be large scale for obvious reasons, she says. Hogan is six foot six inches tall, brother, and weighs 290 pounds. We're talking about a different story.

2:18:53 The home, which will be about 12,000 square feet, is being designed to nestle among 200-year-old oak trees, Claridge said.

2:19:02 Oh, my God.

2:19:05 Why?

2:19:06 She's the only one quoted in this story.

2:19:09 Hogan's wife bought the 2.3-acre site for about $ 2 million in February, so that would have been February 1992, and despite preservationists' protest, raised a 17-room mansion built there in 1931 in March. She had planned to renovate and live in the house, but has said that it needed too many repairs. Hogan wife planning a French country estate, and she is very much quoted, and she is very much in charge of.

2:19:36 Supply chain, boss. Oh, she absolutely is. Absolutely is. And finally, if you can open up this 2000 article from the Ventura County Star in Ventura, California, this ran November 2000. Hey, absolutely. I love reading from Ventura. It's entitled American Country Dream. How's she living on the other side of the nuptials between her daughter and the Hulkster? Oh, my God. Let me zoom in here so I can actually fucking read this thing. Serenity, peace, and quiet stars at night. That's how Gil Clare describes the dream home she and husband Joe purchased in 1997. I thought she purchased her fucking house in the 80s. Well, that was in the 80s when we read that. Now she's got a new one.

2:20:26 How many dream houses has she got? I thought it was a dream house then. Well, the thing is you wake up from dreams, then you have another one. I guess so. I guess it doesn't take long for the dream house to become the nightmare house.

2:20:36 Right.

2:20:38 With a rolling 45 acres as their domain, Gail and Joe Claridge named it Country Meadow Ranch in honor of the panoramic views that surround them. What a fantastic, clever name that is. Country Meadow Ranch. Sounds like a fucking salad dressing. It's delicious. I was just going to say that. Nestled in somes? I don't know what that is. I thought you wouldn't know. I don't know that one. Amid orchards, farmland, and horse property, the ranch is testimony to the relatively unspoiled environment that remains the heart of Ventura County. Former residents of the San Fernando Valley, the Claridge's, chose to live in Ventura County after the 1994 Northridge earthquake decimated their home there. Quote, we had a million dollars in

2:21:21 damage and no earthquake insurance, Gail said. It did turn out to be a nightmare house. I guess so. We wanted to move far away from the earthquake fault. They moved to Thousand Oaks until they acquired the Somis Ranch. It is now a haven where they can spend time with friends and family, including daughter Linda, who's married to professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, daughter Christy, a former Miss International, son Joey, a general contractor, and five grandchildren. Joey had no choice but to become a general contractor. No, not at all. Look, Joe, I can't do this by myself.

2:21:52 I can't handle your mother. I need you to do this, please, for the love of Christ. I'm going to keel over. I'm going to keel over. I can't do it. Look, I got to retire from retirement, okay? I cannot do this anymore. If you love your dad. If you love your dad, listen, just follow it, please, please, for the love of Christ. Once a working horse ranch and lemon tree orchard, the Claridge's new abode is the antithesis of the cramped housing developments of the day. In choosing a rambling alternative, the couple acquired enough land to build to their heart's content. They also became owners of two existing caretaker's cottages constructed in 1945. The cottages were in need of some serious TLC, particularly since Gail and Joe intended

2:22:31 to use one as their temporary home. Luckily, Gail is a professional interior designer whose experience in creating custom decor allowed them to turn their small homes into unique stunners. As owner of Gail Claridge Designs of Westlake Village, her eclectic slate of clients include CEOs, TV producers, Sophia Loren, and several members of the acting Van Patten family. Joe, a retired police officer, is content to leave the decorating to his wife. He's a good guy, Gail said of her husband of more than 40 years. Unfortunately, he's allowed me to do whatever I want to do. Can you repeat that quote, please? He's a good guy. I'm fortunate he's allowed me to do whatever I want to do.

2:23:20 And me and my buddy went to the Red Onion.

2:23:26 A licensed contractor in addition to being a self-described idea person, Gail is known for her ability to make dramatic changes. In the case of the two cottages, she needed paint, wallpaper, flooring, and the special vintage touches that make them romantic masterpieces. The first cottage, dubbed Summertime, was the one she and Joe opted to use as their living quarters. Of the two abodes, Summertime was in better move-in condition. Neither of them were maintained very well over the years, Gail said.

2:23:59 She enlisted their son Joey's help in addition, in adding a traditional porch, something she felt the cottage needed. You know, I'm looking at this house, Joey, and I'm telling you, sweetie, I think this one needs a porch. Oh, Mom, I got clients up my ass. I can't just, I don't have time. Joey, I'm your mother. How? You're going to deny the person that gave birth to you? Jesus Christ.

2:24:29 No, it's okay.

2:24:30 Prioritize your clients. I understand. All right. Okay, Mom. Look, you've made your priorities clear. Mom, listen, okay? We'll make it work, and I'll tell you what. I'll put together some numbers, and I'll give you a budget next week. Honey, I'm not going to pay for it. You know they're going to charge your mother hundreds of thousands of dollars? No, of course not. I would never dream of charging. I was simply just letting you know. I was talking about myself.

2:25:03 I was talking out loud that I need to put together a budget for myself to spend and not get reimbursed for. It's totally fine. I'm happy to do it. This is why I do what I do. He still has his service weapon. I would be careful. The porch gives the home the feel of 1920s rural Americana. The addition of lots of patio furniture makes it a welcome place to sit and ponder life in the great outdoors.

2:25:48 In summertime. To venture inside summertime is to step back into an era when grandmas made fresh squeezed lemonade and baked ginger snaps from scratch. The quaint furniture... Okay. I mean, now I don't really want to go. Right, exactly. The quaint furniture, loads of lacy accents and flowing priscilla curtains give it an aura of old-fashioned charm. The focal point of the living room is a huge open cabinet that displays an array of bright floral chintz dishes. Chinaware was made from the 1800s to 1950, Gale says. When the Northridge earthquake hit, she lost not only her house, but her enormous collection of vintage chintz. Ever the idea person, she traveled to England and commissioned Wedgwood. Is she going

2:26:40 to talk about traveling to England for 30 years? I go to England at least. I spend at least three quarters of the year in England. I don't take Joe with me. It's my private time. I need alone time for the majority of the year. The famous China maker to reproduce chintz under her label, the House of Claridge.

2:27:06 I can't. We're going to have to. I mean, it's one of the things, it's like, okay, if she had a better last name, but it's like not a name that actually makes me think of something interesting. Like, it just sounds stupid. Well, I don't know. It's all very. It's so self-indulgent. Yeah, it doesn't portend. This is like oil and water, I think, with Hulk, you know? You need someone that's much more of a yang to his yin than this. It sounds like this is not going to work out. It's easy to say that in retrospect, but...

2:27:39 and everyone's kind of elbowing each other to get in front. It's not going to work when Hulk has to be in front. Oh, it's ridiculous.

2:27:46 Yep.

2:27:47 And everyone kind of pretends that they're out in front on their own merits. Now, she had a little bit of business going, a little bit of publicity going before the marriage. We established that, but I'll be damned if we haven't read a single article that doesn't mention.

2:28:02 No, no, no. She didn't matter until this. She was an anomaly for two seconds, and then the Hulk thing made her interesting. And this next quote, I don't understand at all. Suckerfish. This is a new collection of antique shints. How can it be new antique? Look, you just don't understand their world. You don't have a fine taste. I'm pretty sure antique is like you got to be at least like 50 years old before it's an antique. So if it's new, it didn't really work for me. Other touches in summertime include a wonderful old painted green hutch crazed, cracked with age and set in the small enclosed porch off the kitchen. Vertically striped wallpaper to give the illusion of more space. What would this family know about illusion? Yeah, right.

2:28:55 and loads of painted wood paneling with fine crown molding. I think of it as American country, Gail said. In Welbeck. Just a few steps from summertime is Welbeck, the cottage that initially needed much more work. Much more work. When we moved in, this one was so bad. The carpet was orange shag that had been here for 20 years. Oh, God, perish the thought. When we looked at the carpet, there was an inch of dirt.

2:29:24 Oh, God.

2:29:26 After stripping orange paint from the light-colored pine walls, Welbeck began to take on the appearance of a log cabin, with its soothing pale yellow wind walls adorned by Gale's collection of miniature cottages, tiny porcelain flower bouquets, and floral custom-created Welbeck china. The Claridge's second home is as inviting as the first. Welbeck is slightly more masculine in the summertime, with lots of woody accents in one of its bedrooms in colors of black and white adorned by vintage cross-stitch samplers, and antique silhouette pictures.

2:30:02 Gail?

2:30:04 Gail considers her a. It's fine. Gail considers herself a collector of everything. Okay, how about a collector of shit? Is that part of that? Collector of platitudes, as far as I can tell.

2:30:19 Yeah, right.

2:30:20 And decorates with interesting groupings, such as a small collection of Mother of Pearl opera glasses. Collectors sometimes start a collection of something and don't know when to quit. You'll never have all of it, so sometimes you need to stop and start collecting something else. Beadboard was added to walls because of ruined drywall, and a plaster skim coat was sprayed on the ceiling. The bathroom in Welbeck was small, so Gail expanded an outside shed into an unusual, elongated room.

2:30:52 Another example of vintage-style flair is her penchant for taking a dining room hutch and converting it into a bathroom sink, making it resemble an antique wash basin. An old biscuit barrel is displayed in the living room, and a large butter churn is used as an end table. When I went through my things, I looked at what I had to put the room together, Gail said. It also helps to have access to 3,000 square foot design facilities. It also helps to have access to $ 30 million whenever you want it.

2:31:21 Yeah, right.

2:31:22 It's kind of nice when you own a store. You know, you can try something and if it doesn't work, you can bring it back. Joe. No shit.

2:31:33 Joe.

2:31:34 What?

2:31:35 What? Can you go away? He was away. He was away. He was away like winter coats in August. And you made him come out just to tell him to go fuck off. As Linda once famously said in bed with Hulk, fuck you, Terry. Tremendous. Fuck you, Terry. I mean, can you just picture the phone calls between her and Linda when she smells an opportunity? You know, like, oh my God.

2:32:18 I just don't think. You know what, Mom? You're right.

2:32:22 And Linda just goes and does it without telling Terry because he'll get mad. And he gets mad about the most ridiculous things, like spending $ 6.

2:32:30 Million a month. All I want to do is spend his money my way. And he gets angry with me. Why does he think I married him? I mean, it's our money. Okay, well, all.

2:32:52 Right.

2:32:53 Just imagine. I just don't understand why he's so... about these things, Mom. He doesn't understand that I'm making our life better by spending his money. Our money. Correct yourself there, honey. Why can't he just be more like Dad? You know, I married a good one. Your dad is a rare breed. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

2:33:23 As he sits there staring at a television that's not even turned on for three hours. That's right. Trying to have another beer. Fucking hell. I don't know, man. Just quiet. Silent the whole time. He just kind of adds. Joe! Yes, yes, I'm here. I'm here. Joe, why are you here? It's a proud man. He served in law enforcement. He's a man's man, you know? Dignified? It's coming when I'm getting called.

2:33:56 Whatever you need, honey. Laying down linoleum for the rest of his life. Oh, fucking A. Absolutely. Imported oak from fucking Spain or whatever. Joe, what are you doing right now? Exactly. It doesn't look like you're doing much. I thought I'd just relax for a second. I was just sitting. How about you ask me what I need? Because I'm sitting here This is great, man. This is such good stuff.

2:34:25 I want to quote that. How about you? How about you? I'll go get father-in-law. Get taken to the woodshed. Why don't you ask me what I need? I'm sorry, Gil. I apologize. I'm so sorry, honey. I'm so sorry. Joe, apologize, you bitch. Apologize. Honey, I'm so sorry. You're absolutely right. What do you need? Honey, what do you need? Oh, my God. Nothing, Joe. Now I don't need anything. All right.

2:35:04 I did it all myself. It would just be nice if you asked or offered. Why don't you, you know, if you ask every once in a while. If you did something without being told to do it, you know. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I mean, you could, you know, honey, just ask me anything you want. Just ask me. Joe. Here it comes.

2:35:19 I don't want to have to ask.

2:35:21 Yes.

2:35:24 And I shouldn't have to ask. Shouldn't have to. Those deadly, deadly combination of words, man. Shouldn't have to. As soon as you hear, shouldn't have to. Discussion over. Discussion over. You know what? Joe, go to summertime. Just go the fuck to summertime, please. I need some alone time. I need to think. I need to think here. Joe fucked up again. I don't know how I'm going to get this done.

2:35:48 I didn't appreciate all she's doing. Spending other people's money rearranging fucking chairs.

2:35:55 Like, I'm holding this together. I'm turning this barrel into a sink, Joe. Listen, I'm putting together a butter churn. Okay? I'm putting together a goddamn butter churn and you're what, watching a game? I'm turning this rocking horse into a Sibian, Joe. And you're doing nothing. Just, just, just go away for like a day. Okay? I need a break.

2:36:21 Ugh.

2:36:22 Absolutely. Absolutely, he says. Falls asleep in his truck outside the marina. Joe. Oh, God. You knew. You knew the complete Hulk Hogan was going to take us to new places and new horizons. And the Claridge family, Claridge House. Claridge House. Is now part of Canon, okay? Because it's all part of the Hulk story.

2:36:51 Yep.

2:36:52 So all the money he's going to make wowing us as wrestling fans for the matches and promos we're about to watch, this is pretty much where it all gets funneled to. It doesn't matter. It goes to Mama Claridge. Oh, my God. The amount I love it can't possibly be put into words. Well, we've heard from everybody except Linda herself, with the exception of that small bite at the beginning.