I feel really weird.....

In my last blog I posted about the death of WWE superstar Chris Benoit. Obviously I didn't "know" him. I met him once and he was really quiet, humble and accommodating. Other than that I'm just "associated" with him through my friends and through my liking of WWE wrestling. Still, this affects me in a way that I have to put it out "on paper". It affects me in a way, that talking about the W.O.M.B.A.T. scores or the excitement of the upcoming Harry Potter movie seems trivial. (Yet I will further down.) Yet my life goes on and I AM excited about it - and at the same time I feel guilty that I do. Strange.

As more details about this horrible tragedy come to the surface, it seems that Chris Benoit indeed killed his wife, his 7 year old son and then himself. Everything is very bizzare as this seems to have been drawn out over the whole weekend. Apparently he wrote textmessages to some of his colleagues, informing them of his physical address and that he put the dogs up in the enclosed pool area. That alone sounds like a cry for help to me - and apparently also to the recipients, as they asked police to go to his house. It just was too late.

What is so confusing to me is how EVERYbody described him as a nice, humble guy, a great friend and yet his life ended as him being this monster. Can everybody have misjudged his character? I don't really think so. Again - I have only met him once, very briefly - but most of the time I get a pretty good inkling of a person in the first few minutes or seconds I meet them. Sure, I always say to myself "well, give them a chance - get to know them better". But usually I'm right. He seemed very level-headed to me. So - what went wrong? Obviously something must have gone very wrong for this nice, family-loving guy to have snapped and killed his wife, son and himself. If it was some kind of mental issue - shouldn't that have been obvious to those around him? Was it drugs, steroids? Did he have some kind of hallucination, paranoya or whatever those steroids cause?

For critics of the WWE it's obviously the steroids. Sure, whenever something goes wrong - blame it on the roids. But as far as I understand WWE has a drug policy and does random testing. In the not too distant past several superstars have been fined, suspended or let go for violations. Moreover the critics say WWE should not have aired a tribute for him on Monday night. I personally think that WWE did what was right at the time. The arena was sold out, yet they turned everybody away (wrap your head around that for a minute! - what a financial impact!) to air Chris Benoits' greatest matches. Furthermore, they scrapped a whole HUGE story line that involved chairman Vince McMahon (who had supposedly died in an explosion two weeks ago) so that he could address the WWE fans. For those of you who are not familiar with the program - this is HUGE. I mean, it has a monumental impact on the next shows. You have to think of it as a soap opera that is preplanned for weeks, even months in advance. Now everything has to be re-written. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't a fan of that storyline, and I don't agree with a lot of things Vince McMahon does, but he showed class! He stood in that ring, his eyes red and swollen from crying and his voice cracking. If you've ever seen him - that is really shocking. 

Anyway - I got sidetracked. On Monday it wasn't clear yet, what had happened, so I think WWE did the only thing they could do. Chris Benoit was well respected in the business, by his peers and by his fans. A lot of those fans are little boys - are you going to tell them that their hero just died and then act as if nothing happened. No, you have to do something to console them.

A lot of people asked if they should/would have done the same thing had they known what they know now. I think so, for the same reasons. Don't get me wrong - I obviously don't condone what he did. But the fact still remains that he had great achievements in his life. He had many friends that thought very highly of him. Should this all be eradicated because of this tragedy? I don't know. Here is where my confusion sets in. If he indeed did all this, he did a terrible, terrible thing. When I hear news of other people doing that I go off and call them low-lifes. So - am I hypocritical? Maybe. But this is different. I "know" this guy! He's touched my life-path, so it's really hard for me to condemn him. Maybe it's a sign for me to not make rash judgements about all those other cases. After all, everybody has a family, has friends that have to cope with what their loved-ones may have done. I don't know.

But now I think I know why I feel weird.....

If you want to read more go to my friend Shana's myspace. She has said it more eloquently than I did and she has a lot more facts than me. It is a very good read!

Still, my life goes on. There is no good segway to the lighter side of my today's entry - so I'll jump right in. Whether I feel guilty about it or not, I can't help but be excited about Harry Potter month. I may have some interesting news to report tomorrow night. What? you ask? Well ...you'll just have to wait.

I got an "Acceptable" at my W.O.M.B.A.T. That was way better than I expected. At least I didn't get a "Dreadful" or a "Troll". This test was very tough, but I had all the spells and defensive spells and measures right. I guess I'd do good in the DA!