Alex Marvez's weekly look at professional wrestling

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What a long, strange trip it's been for Bob Calhoun.Trying to promote his punk-rock band, Calhoun became involved with a San Francisco pro-wrestling troop that also booked live musical acts. But this wasn't just any grappling promotion.Incredibly Strange Wrestling was just that. Characters and storylines were so tasteless that some unforgettably offensive World Wrestling Entertainment angles -- like Mae Young giving birth to a hand and Paul "Triple H" Levesque's necrophilia with Katie Vick -- seem tame by comparison.Inspired by the group's "lucha libre" theme (even though many of the masked grapplers weren't even Mexican), fans brought tortillas to throw into the ring. The actual wrestling often didn't rise much above backyard level.And Calhoun -- a/k/a Count Dante -- was hooked.For seven years, Calhoun tried to help ISW break through to the mainstream a la edgy cable programming like "Celebrity Deathmatch," "South Park" and "Jackass." Calhoun chronicles that unsuccessful quest -- as well as the twisted characters he met along the way -- in his new book "Beer, Blood and Cornmeal" ($19.95, ECW Press)."Unlike seeing a play or other performance arts, wrestling is a form of theater designed to produce mass hysteria," Calhoun, 38, said in a recent telephone interview. "Even though we've got a guy out there in a chicken suit or something totally ridiculous and unbelievable, the audience would react as if what we were doing was real. Deep down, they knew it wasn't but they would be whipped into a frenzy anyway. That became very infectious."So infectious that Calhoun became more than just an ISW manager and announcer. He also began scripting over-the-top ideas spoofing race, religion and sexual preferences for a "talent roster" that included a cigarette-smoking referee and costumed performers like El Pollo Loco and Macho Sasquatcho. ISW even staged a gay wedding before WWE did in 2002 with its Billy-and-Chuck tag team.The only line Calhoun refused to cross was allowing a Nazi-themed grappler (Oi Boy) to perform in Germany during a European ISW tour. Incidentally, WWE star John Layfield lost his announcing gig as a CNBC financial analyst after doing a goosestep and Hitler salute to draw crowd heat during a 2004 show in Munich."That is a scary thing to unleash there," said Calhoun, who was admittedly frightened by the positive crowd response Oi Boy received at an earlier ISW show in Austria. "I also didn't care to see the Oi Boy land in jail even though he was not a friend of mine at the time. We did not need to lose a man on the roster and deal with the German court system. But ultimately, it was my conscience that said no."With its punk-rock roots and growing cult popularity, ISW landed a spot on the 2001 Vans Warped Tour that featured music and extreme sports. The tour was highlighted by a show at the Toronto SkyDome -- the site of "Wrestlemania VI" 11 years earlier -- that had former World Championship Wrestling and Mexican star Vampiro (real name Ian Hodgkinson) in the main event.ISW was never able to parlay that exposure into a television contract. ISW also suffered from the same problem that doomed other promotions like WCW: The inability to create younger stars that could replace older characters. As established ISW performers entered their 30s, many became more focused on their families and real-life professions than dreams of wrestling stardom.Under personal and financial duress, Calhoun left ISW in 2003 to pursue a full-time career as a free-lance writer. ISW still sporadically runs shows, but Calhoun says the group is a shell of what it once was.Calhoun uses ISW as an allegory for the Northern California vibe in the 1990s and early 2000s before and after the area's dot-com boom-bust period."We were eccentric people who pushed the entertainment envelope," he said. "Sometimes we pushed it the wrong way. We were the weirdest show in San Francisco. That's like saying we were the weirdest show anywhere short of Bangkok."For more information on ISW, visit www.count-dante.com.(Alex Marvez writes a syndicated pro-wrestling column for Scripps-Howard News Service. Contact him at alex1marv(at)aol.com.)