Roddy's got a story to tell

Listen up - The one-man show chronicles "Rowdy" Piper's adventures -- or misadventures -- in professional wrestling

Hearing "Rowdy" Roddy Piper retell the tales of his 52 turbulent years will make you feel good about your own life, he says.

"You're gonna walk out of that theater on a cloud," the professional wrestler said in a recent telephone interview after rehearsals for his one-man show that's booked across the country. The call wasn't long distance -- he and his wife, Kitty Jo, four children and a granddaughter live near Hillsboro, where Piper has lived for nearly two decades.

"It takes 18 people, but I'm calling it a one-man show," he rasped into the telephone. "I'm not a stand-up comedian or anything, so this is just me telling stories. I've been around the world seven times, been stabbed three times, been down in an airplane and once dated the Bearded Lady. I've had Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy as a tag-team partner. I've been in 30 car crashes, none of 'em my fault, I swear on a stack of midgets. . . . OK, they were probably all my fault."

He's fought a record 7,000 matches as a pro, was the youngest -- age 15 -- pro wrestler and has appeared in more than 30 movies, including John Carpenter's smart and satiric "They Live." That 1988 film is the best science fiction movie ever to use sunglasses as a crucial plot device. (You could only see the aliens who had infested the Earth by wearing special glasses that cut through their human disguises.)

Of course, some of those movies were more of the caliber of "Hell Comes to Frogtown," which is about a post-apocalyptic world in which few men survived and Piper is pressed into service, so to speak. It is notable, among other things, for its use of an exploding codpiece as a plot device. Still, 30 films makes Piper an actor in anybody's book.

He's an author, too: He wrote "In the Pit With Piper: Roddy gets Rowdy" with Robert Picarello. The title refers to his stint as a television host when he had a segment called "Piper's Pit" on World Wrestling Federation TV, a show that got pretty rowdy judging from this Wikipedia entry:

"In an infamous interview with 'Superfly' Jimmy Snuka, Piper started insulting Snuka's heritage by bringing out pineapples, bananas and dropping coconuts onto the table. . . . Piper then attacked Snuka by hitting him over the head with a coconut, then shoved a banana in his face. He whipped Snuka with his belt then left before Snuka could fight back. This incident led to a long feud between the two."

Thin-skinned, those pro wrestlers.

Piper's got a hundred more stories. He said the idea for a one-man show was born one night when a friend who owns a Portland comedy club urged him to get onstage and say hello to the crowd.

"I told him I wasn't a stand-up comic, but he'd read my book and told me to just tell some stories. So I told them about the time I wrestled a bear when I was 19. I was the light heavyweight champion of the world, but the bear apparently didn't know that or didn't care. It took 'em about 12 minutes to get the bear off of me."

Piper says the shows are interactive: Fans are welcome to ask questions or request favorite stories. And he's got some new technology to unleash. For years, he was famous for wrestling in a kilt and entered the ring to the skirl of bagpipes. So when he found a set of electric bagpipes, he just had to have them.

They've got some benefits over the traditional wind-powered bagpipes, he said. "Now I can talk and play at the same time. They're never gonna be able to shut me up."

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Former pro wrestler disqualified for Cherokee seat
By JILL YOUNG MILLER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 05/06/06

Former pro wrestler Rick Steiner was tossed out of the ring this week as a Republican candidate for the Cherokee County School Board.

But he plans to return to the match under his legal name, Robert Rechsteiner.

After county Supervisor of Elections Janet Munda couldn't find Steiner's name among registered voters during a routine search of qualified candidates, she called him and told him he wasn't qualified, after all, to seek office.

It was Rick Steiner who was appointed last year to fill out a school board term. And it was Rick Steiner who was the only person to qualify for that seat last week, making him, it seemed, the de facto winner.

But only people who qualify under their legal names may seek public office.

On Friday, Rechsteiner, 45, sent a letter to Munda apologizing for any trouble he may have caused. He said he "will likely seek the position through an independent qualification or a write-in campaign in the general election," in November.

He had gone by the name Rick Steiner for 20 years, he said in the letter. He holds his real estate license in that name, he said, and is only known as Rick Steiner "to everyone I know."

"I used it as a springboard to help people recognize who I was," he said Friday.

Rick Steiner was half of the Steiner Brothers tag-team wrestling team in various pro wrestling leagues in the late 1980s and early '90s.

Steiner was appointed to the school board in November, to a seat vacated by Fred Larsen.

It's too late for Rechsteiner's name to get on the ballot for the July primary, Munda said. But he could qualify and be on the ballot for the general election in November, she said.

— Staff writer Chris Reinolds contributed to this article.