“Just tell me this, all you rock ’n’ roll fans—how would you like to put your little babies down in Duran Duran’s lap?”

—Rowdy Roddy Piper (Glasgow, Scotland). “Let’s just say this—I’d sure love to be the Marshall Dillon of the rock ’n’ wrestling connection.”

—Hulk Hogan

(Venice Beach, California).

“Lemme tell you something—the only thing wrestling and rock ’n’ roll have in common is that, by and large, the fans of both are morons. ”

—Handsome Dick Manitoba

(Bronx, New York).

In its usual finite wisdom, MTV was billing it as “The War To Settle The Score”—“a wrestling match with social, political, and artistic implications far beyond any wrestling match in history” were the very words used by Alan Hunter’s cue cards on the night of February 18 as the cable music video channel digressed from standard programming to simulcast a World Wrestling Federation bout live from Madison Square Garden. At stake, not only the coveted WWF Heavyweight title, held for the last year by former bad boy but now neo-folk hero Hulk Hogan but also, due to the Hulkster’s avowed devotion to Cyndi Lauper in particular and rock ’n’ roll in general, the entire so-called “rock ’n’ wrestling connection.” His opponent? None other than the kilted one himself, Roddy Piper, whose unsavory conduct and all-around no-goodnik character had finally brought him to the ultimate confrontation with Hogan, thereby gaining the once in a lifetime chance to not only reign supreme as WWF champ but also, in one fell swoop, to render the rock ’n’ roll he despises so under his plaid thumb forever.

Now the path leading up to this pitched battle began last year when Captain Lou Albano, who starred as Lauper’s dada in the “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” video, claimed to be Ms. Cyndi’s manager—and that, without his Svengali-like guidance of her career, she’d be just another wigged-out street urchin. This led, you all remember, to the much ballyhooed surrogate challenge match in which Lauper’s protege Wendi Richter (Dallas,. Texas) defeated fern met, champeen The Fabulous Moolah (parts both unknown and too gruesome to mention), after which it was learned that Albano had been diagnosed as suffering from a yeast infection located somewhere along his medulla oblongata, resulting in months of treatment and transformation by Albano into a good guy. Last December, during a special Madison Square Garden presentation to honor Lauper and now. friend Albano’s charity work presided over by Dick Clark (I), Piper, sick to his stomach of all this nicey-nice kissy-face stuff that he felt—quite rightly, if you ask us— was giving wrestling a bad name, went gaga in the ring. He dropkicked Lauper, body-slammed Cyndi’s real manager Dave Wolff, broke a plaque over Albano’s healing cranium, and, in the words of Hogan (and this was probably what put old Hulkeroo over the top) “scared Dick Clark half to death; he’ll never be the same.” (We should only hope so.)

Anyway, said prologue all went into the soup leading up to the Hogan/Piper title/grudge match. Said Alan Hunter to WWF announcer Mean Gene Okerlund just before mat time, “Is Hulk’s goodness as interesting as Roddy’s apparent evil?” Replied Okerlund sans batting an eye, “Not unless you think America itself is boring.” Well, between that line and Hunter’s subsequent musing that “there’s the potential here, if Hogan wins, for a new Woodstock, a united music scene, a return to the true spirit of the ’60s,” we naturally had no choice but to start rooting for Piper. I mean, I wouldn’t want my kid in Simon LeBon’s lap, either, y’know? And if the wrestling part of this rock n wrestling connection was made up exclusively of “good” guys, does that mean that only “good” rock was being defended? Like, where the hell does Ozzy fit into all this? Or Ratt? Or Ronnie Dio? You want me coming down on the side of Billy Squier (shown both at ringside and in the locker room)? For anything?

By the time we’d gotten all heated up, what with Piper coming into the ring holding an electric guitar and then smashing it into little bitty pieces on the ground (didn’t Pete Townsend used to do this sort of thing when he was a “bad” boy?) and everything, the match was already here and gone, with the usual double-teaming of the hero after the ref is knocked unconscious ploy (only the 5,000th time we’ve seen that one), the evitable here-to-save-the-day appearance by—yes, that’s right— Mr. T (I told you two months ago, he’s everywhere), and your basic disqualification decision so that this soap opera can play a couple of more months before it’s (as they call it in the more serious wrestling circles) payback time for Rowdy Roddy. The defense rests.

SNAP SHOTS

Lady Sings Fan Boos: Diana Ross, “Missing You”—It’s disgusting enough to watch her turn memories of Marvin Gaye into mere fodder for her own propaganda machinery, but then she draps up Florence Ballard, whom she never lifted a finger to help. And such a thick line between nerve and gall...Money Changes Nothing: Madonna, “Material Girl”—About two-thirds of the way through this one, I started thinking, well, maybe she’ll just let it lie for one video. That’s precisely when the tuxedo boys turned her upside down and her breasts started to pour out of her strapless gown. Silly me...Drink To Me Only With Your Lips and I’ll Keep Adjusting My Color Knob: Sade, “Hang On To Your Love”—Cool gaming casino plot, neat Dr. Caligari scenery, exotic looks, and she can sing, too? Heaven s just a hit away, indeed...Rust Never Dots Its “I” 's: Autograph, “Turn Up The Radio”—There’s really nothing to say about this video, but did you know that a line of this song actually says, “Things go better with rock”? What was that stuff about America being boring earlier in this column?...l Have Seen The Future And It’s Unconscious: Malcolm McLaren, “Madame Butterfly”—McLaren has actually said that he wanted this video, which goes along with his amazing rap/r’n’b/Puccini trail mix, to make people fall asleep before it’s over. Which it just about does; scores of teenage girls in pale leotards and tights moving somnabulantly through a steam bath, langorously leaning on each other as they read mail in their bunk-like quarters, fetchingly fondling each other while massaging away life’s bittersweet moments. It seems to take (stretch) forever, but, somehow you don’t (yawn) mind. Guess I’ll finish up now—maybe take a na...(zzzzz).

I AM THE CHEESE

THE DOORS: Dance On Fire (MCA Home Video)

Dave DiMartino

Amazed, I looked at the bathroom mirror. Good God, I thought. What’s happened?

Indeed, there had been a change. A drastic one.

For I was gone—or rather, my familiar face was gone—and staring at me was the spitting image of Jim Morrison.

“Fuck,” I remember saying.

None of my clothes fit. I was a shrimp. I went downstairs and looked in the bathroom mirror down there. “Fuck,” I said.

Due to an incredible cosmic accident, the circumstances of which I am to this day unsure, I had actually become Jim Morrison.

It was certainly unsettling.

Luckily, looks aren’t everything. I still had my mind. Yes, that’s right—the same cosmic accident that physically transformed me into a world famous rock star who’d tragically perished in Paris in 1971 had only partially completed the transition. Thus, though I looked precisely like the same Jim Morrison who stared out so sinisterly from the original inner sleeve of Strange Days—and, to be honest, often found myself thinking strange new thoughts, alien thoughts, thoughts that weren’t mine, that I could only presume were those of rock star Morrison—I was still me. Still me.

Of course, I checked the weenie.

Outside, a Pontiac Fiero drove by. Though I recognized it instantly, a voice from somewhere deep inside me moaned, “What the fuck kinda car was that?" It was a curious sensation. A part of me, a new part of me, was experiencing life in 1985 as if through a child’s eyes. As if 13 years had suddenly passed, unannounced.

“Fuck,” I contemplated.

And then came the brainstorm. What an incredible coincidence! The irony to end all ironies was this: on exactly the same morning I was preparing to view the new MCA Doors videocassette called Dance On Fire for later review purposes—not one day sooner and not one day later—I had, by the whim of the gods, become the spitting image of their lead singer.

Can you imagine how I, as a journalist, felt?

‘‘What the fuck are you doing, man?” the voice inside me moaned. And how could one blame it? For the hand of Jim Morrison was surely reaching for the first VHS Hi-Fi videocassette it had ever grasped, and pressing the EJECT button of my videocassette recorder. As the top popped up— as it must on this model—the voice moaned a quick “fuck!,” which I took to be one of surprise.

The voice subsided for a while—whether due to shock or a sudden realignment of the cosmos, one can only guess—and I plopped my new body down on the couch. My feet colild barely reach the floor.

Suddenly, there I was on the screen. “Nice TV, man,” the voice returned. As I considered 1971 and Sony Trinitrons, I watched my new body singing the old Doors songs. "Yeah," the voice said, enthused. I—that is, the me that still remained, deep in the recesses of the brain of this world famous, truly legendary rock vocalist—was rather enjoying myself.

“How can I be hearing this through the fucking stereo, man?” the voice queried, and for a second I didn’t fully grasp its confusion. Of course, I remembered, the ptocess of running a cable from my VCR’s "audio out” switch into a Ycord which would then be inserted into the Left and Right channels of the Auxiliary input of my stereo would seem unusual to anyone in such a situation. “Sounds fuckin’ great, though,” the voice added. It seemed distracted.

As well it might be. For I realized, as I watched, that perhaps life as Jim Morrison in 1985 would not be so bad at all. There was no denying I was now quite the, shall we say, physical specimen. And my voice? I loved it!

Fascinated, I watched me. Live television performances of “Light My Fire,” of “Touch Me,” of “People Are Strange.” Clips of policemen taking me off the stage. As I made a gesture signifying my bewilderment onscreen, the voice inside me said “HAH!,” loudly. It seemed amused. Promotional clips of “The Unknown Soldier” and “Break On Through.” In concert, doing “Roadhouse Blues” and “The End.”

“Unfuckingbelievable,” the voice said. “Fucking great!”

In point of fact, as I sat there inhabiting the very famous body oL Jim Morrison, I marveled at a universe that would allow such a fluke to transpire, To think that one body could house both my mind and that of another’s simultaneously— it was not only miraculous, it was very possibly the best thing that could ever happen to me, next to winning that week’s Michigan Lotto game, for I had entered.

“The television,” the voice said, “it bears the shape of eggshell, fragile and white—and the mind walks the great windy plains, electronic wires branching out, becoming lizard tongues, becoming the children of the night, waiting for the Indian Father to draw first blood, outlaw in the tropical night. There is an ache in my penis,” it said, “lam hungry. Do you have a ham sandwich?”

To be frank, I sat transfixed, ignoring physical desire, and watched this wonderful program time and time again. It was superb— there was no extraneous chatter, no interviews, no bunches of people saying “he was on the edge” or “man” 85 times in one brief hour. It was very possibly the finest rock video I could ever remember watching. That it had been willed I would watch this remarkable visual document through the very eyes of its charismatic subject was the stuff of which legends are surely made.

Eventually, I stood up. I was tired. My new body was weak. I walked to the kitchen. “Wow, you got one of those new ones that make their own ice cubes,” the voice said in wonder.

As I reached in the refrigerator, an overwhelming dizziness struck me. My last thought as I plunged groundward was that I hoped the falling mustard jar would not be messy. “Yeah,” the voice assented.

When I awoke, of course, I was in my own body again. Mustard was all over my feet. My head hurt.

I felt dispirited. I hobbled upstairs, leaving a pitiful yellow trail on the wooden steps behind me.

I pulled the Polaroid camera out of the closet and placed it in the bathroom, near the shower. Near the full-length mirror. Near the very well illuminated full-length mirror.

I hid all the towels.

Tomorrow was the day of the Madonna review.

I wanted to be ready.