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I have been good personal friends with Brooks Wheelan (and his brothers...his 36 year old brother is the one I am closest to) since I was in 4th grade through wrestling camps and later on, my college town through his brother wrestling there and his family living there. Brooks is a standup comedian who was on SNL for a season. I can tell you tons of stuff about his comedy origins.
The Impractical Jokers had a pretty large following in Southeast Iowa at the start of their 1st season. One of the first places they toured to (as a comedy troupe called The Tenderloins) was Burlington, IA due to there being so many requests...they weren't used to the stardom yet and stated that they weren't publicly recognized at all and said repeatedly that they found it so random that out of all places where they developed a large following, SEI was the geographical location. My wife, cousins and I partied with them all night. Q was the coolest...hands down. He and I talked the entire night. Sal was very nice and socially awkward. Joe just seemed to float around and go along with the flow and "nose" everyone. Murr was a ****ing douchebag. He hit on my wife right in front of me. It was obvious to everyone there that her and I were together and right in front of me, he straight up pulled her aside and said shit to her (loudly) along the lines of, "dude, I had no idea there were hot women in Iowa. You are ****ing hot. Come to the bus with me and have some drinks. Etc." I spoke up and was like, "dude, can't you see that her and I are ****ing married?" He acted like he didn't notice by spitting his drink out and acting all like, "holy shit, omg, omg." Then my wife did something that pissed me off...she said, "oh rico, you know they are just joking. Stop acting like a little bitch!" This made Murr laugh hysterically, Joe seemed indifferent, Sal was mortified and told me sorry like a thousand times and begged me to continue being their fan and Q got pissed and said to my wife that she should not disrespect me like that and told Murr to cool it because he was being a douchebag to their fans. My cousin happened to snap a picture of Murr and my wife right when I told him to cool it. He also snapped a photo of Q and her in which he didn't even want to be in the pic with her because he thought what she said to me was uncool. I will attach those. And for the remainder of the night, Murr kept asking Joe (loud enough for me to hear), "dude, should I keep on hitting on that meat-head's wife? It'll be funny as hell, right?" Joe kind of smirked and said, "Murr, just don't get us killed." Q and Sal both noticed that I was hearing every bit of this and Sal continued to apologize and Q told me to ignore Murr for he is a total douchebag sometimes and that he was pissing him off...and assured me he wouldn't let him hit on her any more. Q and I were buds that night.
I met Tom Green. He was in a twitter whore phase and retweeted a tweet that I wrote about Glen Humplik munching dingleberries that he thought was funny. He @'d Glenn and directed him to my account where he assured me that he does not eat dingleberries. Then he asked me to catch his show in my area for he was touring there. So I did... when I introduced myself, he was very stand-offish and acted like he didn't know what I was talking about when I brought up the twitter exchange. I asked my wife to marry me that night.
I met Rick Flair at AAU Nationals when I was a Sophomore. His son was in my grade and weight...in my bracket. I spotted him in the nosebleeds hiding out by himself. I approached him with a dollar and asked him for his autograph and pointed out my name in his son's bracket and told him that if I won my next match and his son won his, we'd meet in the semis (I lost). He told me he would sign my dollar on the condition that I didn't tell anyone else that he was there, for he wasn't in the mood to be bombarded by kids...he just wanted to watch his son. I agreed to it. After signing, he wished me luck and told me the dollar would be worth a million now and smiled at me. I believe that son of his died a few years ago.
Attached: 2 pics taken the moment I told Murr to cool it with my wife...even one of him spitting his drink out... followed by Q's reaction to the whole ordeal. He wasn't happy.
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