#FanX Fall 19: "EXCUSE ME!!" - An interview with WWE's Vickie Guerrero

I had the chance to chat with WWE's villainous manager Vickie Guerrero during FanX Fall 19 in Salt Lake City last weekend. On-screen, she was irritating, annoying and universally despised. Vickie broke into World Wrestling Entertainment in 2005, being incorporated into storylines with her husband, the late WWE Hall of Famer Eddie Guerrero, and has since spent more than a decade as the recipient of relentless boos from the WWE Universe. Her shrill cries of "EXCUSE ME!!" send audiences across the country into a frenzy and maintain her reputation as one of the most reviled personas in the history of professional wrestling.

Her appearance at the convention last weekend was a surprise to many; she announced that she was in town in a social media post on September 5, the first day of FanX, and it became my immediate goal to track her down for an interview. Unlike her TV character, Vickie couldn't have been more pleasant in person. She was kind, friendly and remembered me on each day of the convention as I passed by her booth.

Here's my interview with Vickie, recorded on the second day of FanX Fall 2019:

Signs of the Times: All right, Vickie. How are you doing?

Vickie: “I’m great. How are you?”

SotT: Doing great. Thanks for coming out.

V: “It’s my pleasure. I love Salt Lake City. The people and the fans are just so wonderful to me. No one has thrown any food, so that’s good.”

SotT: Awesome. Not yet. That’s good. All right, awesome. I just wanted to ask you a few questions about your career. First of all, what got you into wrestling? Was it [late husband] Eddie? Or did you have an interest in that before?

V: “No, you know what? Before I met Eddie, I hated wrestling. I was in a family [with] five younger brothers. I couldn’t stand it. I was a cheerleader and a dancer, but when I dated Eddie, I kind of was like, ‘Fine, whatever.’ It slowly started growing on me and I had a big respect for it. Once I got married to Eddie, I just loved it. I started falling in love with the sport.”

SotT: Ok. Tell me about the “Excuse me!” catch phrase. [Both laugh] Where did that come from and how did it catch on so quickly?

V: “’Excuse me!’ came from me forgetting my promo lines one night. They gave me a promo that changed maybe like three or four times before we went live, and I just messed it up and the crowd was just being so awful with me that I just kind of yelled ‘Excuse me!’ at them. They kind of roared back, and I was kind of like, ‘Wait a minute…’ [Laughs] I didn’t think it was going to catch on until the writers said, ‘Let’s try this again,’ and the more times we did it, the crowd started recognizing that that was going to be my catch phrase. Eighteen years later, I’m still doing it, so it’s been great.”

SotT: Yeah. So, you were in the Women’s Royal Rumble, weren’t you?

V: “Yes – the first one.”

SotT: That’s right. I remember because, “Excuse me!” hit, and I said, “No! No way!” [Both laugh]

V: “I was so excited! That’s such a great honor to be in the first one. It was a lot of fun. I got to see my old friends and then meet the new women on the roster. Number 16 will be my lucky number forever.”

SotT: Awesome. Can you tell me a little bit about the “Women’s Evolution” in wrestling and where you see that going in the future?

V: “I think it’s been a great change for the women’s division. I mean, you take maybe eight to ten years before that, and the women were just eye candy for the show. The women back then were really talented, and they wanted to have these good matches that had quality time [on television], so to see how it’s changing and they’re getting the opportunity to main-event Wrestlemania, main-event “RAW” and “SmackDown!”… I’m really proud of where it’s [come] today.”

SotT: Great. Do you have any people that you really enjoyed working with – any favorite rivals or anyone that you were a manager of, or anything like that?

V: “Yeah, I think my favorite storylines were with Undertaker and Edge, Dolph Ziggler, the McMahons, ‘LayCool,’ Betty White, the Muppets… It goes on and on! [Laughs]”

SotT: What has been your favorite part of being in Salt Lake City this weekend?

V: “You know, I’m not on the Celebrity Row, but I came through a vendor and I love it because I can take my time and talk to the fans. They can share their stories, I can share mine, and it’s just a good quality time to enjoy their company. This is a blessing for me to be here.”

SotT: Well, thank you so much for coming. We’re so glad that you’re here.

V: “Thank you! I appreciate it!”

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Vickie Guerrero can be followed on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and at vickieguerrero.net. For future #FanX content and more blogs about wrestling, you know what to do. Keep it here with Signs of the Times.

LOST: The Top 5 Mysteries

In 2008, JJ Abrams presented a TED Talk called "The Mystery Box." You can watch the 18-minute presentation below:


In his presentation, Abrams relates a story about buying a sealed box of magic tricks for $15. He was told that the contents of the box were worth $50. However, he has never opened the box. He leaves it, sealed, in his office. Why? Abrams explains, "I find myself drawn to infinite impossibility." Mystery, he says, is the catalyst for imagination, and sometimes mystery is more important than knowledge.
Here are a couple of articles that may shed some additional light on the concept of "mystery box" storytelling:

• Sterling & Stone - What is a Mystery Box?
• Film School Rejects - The Evolution of the Mystery Box
• The Verge - Legion Gets the Mystery Box Formula Right Where Westwood Failed

So what were a few of the "mystery boxes" in "LOST"?

• What, exactly, was the Island?
• What made Walt special?
• Why were there polar bears on the Island?
• Why couldn't women on the Island have children?
• What on earth was the Smoke Monster?

It was this particular type of storytelling that made "LOST" a smash hit TV show when it debuted 15 years ago in 2004. The show succeeded, in part, because the writers provided so many questions up front without immediate payoff, keeping the audience guessing for seasons at a time - all in an era without the spoiler-rampant culture of social media and binge-watching to ruin surprises in advance.
Of course, the series' divisive and controversially ambiguous ending left some fans furious at the apparent lack of answers to some of the Island's biggest mysteries. Admittedly, not all of the twists worked as well as they could have, but some of those surprises were absolutely brilliant. Here are our five favorites (with a few others receiving honorable mention):

5. The Man from Tallahassee

Anthony Cooper was a real piece of work. From stealing one of his son's kidneys then pushing him out a window, Cooper's constant manipulation of poor John Locke was tough to watch. In "The Man from Tallahassee," Ben Linus brings Cooper to the Island to be confronted by Locke. Later, in "The Brig," animosity between Locke and Cooper reached a boiling point. Locke calls in James "Sawyer" Ford to kill Cooper when "LOST" dropped a bomb that even the Dharma Initiative would be proud of.
It is then revealed that Cooper is also the original "Tom Sawyer" - the man who conned James Ford's parents and whose moniker was adopted by the Island's resident redneck. After years of searching, Sawyer had finally found the man who ruined his life.

4. Jeremy Bentham

For the entirety of Season 4, we wondered who on earth Jeremy Bentham was and why his death was so unsettling for the Oceanic Six. In a dramatic turn of events, we find out that the body in that coffin is none other than John Locke, who we didn't even know ever made it off the Island!
Equally as shocking was finding out who put him in the coffin to begin with. Although Jack Shephard and the gang were led to believe that Bentham had committed suicide, it turns out that Locke was prevented from killing himself by a perfectly timed visit from Ben Linus. However, mere moments after talking Locke off of the ledge, Ben strangles him to death in the emotional conclusion of the Season 5 episode "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham."
ScreenRant.com lists seeing Locke in the coffin and watching Ben kill Bentham as two of their Top 25 moments of "LOST."

3. The Numbers Rarely does a TV show ingrain something as clearly in the minds of its viewers as "LOST" did with the numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42. Were the Numbers special? Were they bad luck? Did entering them into the computer at the Hatch really save the world? Did they even do anything at all? Such were the mysteries of those lottery-winning digits. In Season 6, we discovered that the Numbers were linked to "Candidates" who were being brought to the Island by Jacob as a way to select a new Protector.
The Numbers also served as Easter eggs, from blatant usage such as "Oceanic 815" to other less obvious appearances. To the keenly trained eye, the Numbers were everywhere. All these years later, we can't help but repeat them every time we fly into LAX.

2. Not Penny's boat

In perhaps the most tragic of twists, Charlie Pace put a Sharpie to good use and spent the waning moments of his life to inform Desmond Hume that the freighter the survivors had just made contact with was not who they thought it was. Nope. It was "NOT PENNY'S BOAT," after all. His dying message became one of the most widely recognized images of the entire series.
IGN.com ranks "Through the Looking Glass" as the second best episode of the series, next to "The Constant."

1. "We have to go back!"

So you mean those flashbacks in Season 4 were actually flash-forwards?! In. Sane. At the shocking conclusion of "There's No Place Like Home," it is revealed that Jack has constantly been booking flights, hoping that he crashes back onto the Island. In a drunken bender, he begs Kate Austen to meet him at the airport where he pleads those classic lines -- say them with us -- "We have to go back, Kate! We have to go back!"

Without a doubt, this is the most classic and best twist in all of "LOST." Over the course of four seasons, viewers had grown to know the age-old formula: on-Island drama, off-Island flashback. But in the Season 4 finale, they flipped the script (quite literally) by treating everything like a flashback and revealing the first of many mind-bending time jumps to come.

Honorable Mention:

• It is revealed that Locke was paralyzed before he got to the Island ("Walkabout")
• Ben kills Jacob moments after meeting him ("The Incident")
• Michael shoots Ana Lucia ("Two for the Road")
• Daniel Faraday is revealed to be the son of Charles Widmore and Eloise Hawking ("The Variable")
• Sayid shoots Young Ben Linus ("He's Our You")

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What are your favorite mysteries from "LOST"? Do you agree with us? Did we leave anything off the list? Let us know in the comments section below or on Twitter at @SotTUnderground.

As always,

Namaste... and good luck.