Chris Jericho earns audience ire by giving them a stern talking to (photo courtesy of World Wrestling Entertainment).

On Thursday May 13, pro wrestling bad guy Chris Jericho played a packed nightclub in Glasgow, Scotland with his power metal band Fozzy in support of their new album "Chasing the Grail." The following day he fronted a show in Nottingham, England and then did two shows in London the day after that. On Sunday he rested (or likely traveled), but was in Toronto on Monday getting clotheslined out of the ring during the weekly broadcast of the WWE's flagship program "Monday Night RAW". Only five days later he was at it again, playing a rocker dive in Chesterfield, Michigan followed by a pay-per-view tag team match in Detroit the next afternoon. Just like any other rocker, Jericho can't quit his day job to pursue his dreams of rock n' roll glory, but in Jericho's case, that day job involves body slams, spandex and pyro.

As if Jericho doesn't have enough on his plate, he's found himself in the middle of a literary blogosphere controversy, albeit indirectly. In a recent Huffington Post blog titled "Why Men Don't Read: How Publishing is Alienating Half the Population," book editor-turned-thriller-writer Jason Pinter details the difficulties in getting his mostly female former higher ups at Grand Central Publishing to take a chance on Jericho's memoirs despite the wrestler's obvious media profile. In the end, the fate of Jericho's book hinged on the opinion of the fifteen-year-old nephew of one of the company's senior editors. Luckily for all involved, the kid was a Jericho fan. The resulting book, "A Lion's Tale: Around the World in Spandex", cracked the New York Times bestseller list and has spawned a sequel titled "Undisputed: How to Become the World Champion in 1,372 Easy Steps", which is scheduled to hit the shelves in February 2011. Not surprisingly, Jericho has composed much of the new volume while on airplanes.

As Pinter's assertions of an estrogen-dominated publishing industry sparked off a firestorm of controversy in web outlets both large and small (with Salon's own Lara Miller weighing in), I had to get Jericho's take on this whole thing. After a Memorial Day promotional appearance at an FYE in Austin, Texas, Jericho granted me the following interview. Of course we discussed Pinter and the upcoming book, but we also found the time to talk about heavy metal, the psychology of getting wrestling fans to hate you, and Jericho's hand in coining Tony Stark's favorite put-down from "Iron Man 2". In fact there was so much to go over, we didn't even mention Jericho's appearance in the summer comedy movie "MacGruber" or his upcoming gig as the host of the ABC reality show "Downfall", which wasn't announced at the time of our conversation. Jericho did have time for both Monty Python and Woody Allen references, however.

BOB CALHOUN: You're the first person that I ever heard call someone an ass clown. How did you feel when you heard that in "Iron Man 2"?

CHRIS JERICHO: I was laughing because I thought I should get a royalty for that or something. I came up with that on the spot. We were in Bakersfield, California, just doing dueling insults with Kurt Angle. He was like, "you're this," and I'm that. And I'm like, "You're just an ass… clown." People kind of laughed at it so I said it on TV a week later, and then the next week after that there were signs in the crowd that said "ass clown." That's how you can always see if people like something. If you say something on TV and the next week there's signs in the crowd with that phrase on it. Right off the bat, I knew that I had stumbled onto something.

BC: That's the kind of audience feedback that you have in pro wrestling that you don't get as a rock band or in any other kind theater or performance.

CJ: Because it's a weekly serial almost like the 1940s, you see the instant gratification of what happened the week before. Playing a show with Fozzy, I'll get the gratification that night, but it's not like you're going back to Glasgow the next week to see if people enjoyed a certain song or whatever. It's the same thing when you're acting. You don't get any gratification for that for six months or eight months afterwards until you go to the theaters or see your work on TV. But with wrestling, because it's live theater, because it's televised around the world, because you show up every week to do it, you get the feedback right away.

BC: With your most recent heel incarnation where you're lecturing the audience on how they need to grow up, were you surprised at the kind of reaction that you got in this post-modern era? The kind of ire and hatred that you got for doing that?

CJ: It's not the line that you say, it's how you deliver it, and nobody likes being talked down to. Nobody likes it either if you're telling them something that's the truth. If you were walking across the street and you were about to get hit by a bus and I saved you, but every single day I went, "Hey, remember when I saved you from getting hit by a bus. You should've looked both ways." At first, you'd be like, "Well, yeah, you're right." After awhile you'd say, "Shut up. I understand. Enough already. I wish you'd let me get fucking hit by the bus." And that's kind of how it works with what I'm doing in the WWE with calling people hypocrites. It all stems from something that really happened, and people don't like being told the same thing over and over and over again. It becomes quite sickening. That's the reason the character has drawn such ire for such a long time, it’s that I'm a know-it-all who's basically telling the truth with what's going on in society, but people don't like being told that.

BC: If Robert Downey Jr. calls anybody a gelatinous tapeworm in "Iron Man 3" are you going to challenge him to cage match?

CJ: I'll jump through the screen like Woody Allen's "Purple Rose of Cairo" and attack him right then and there.

BC: You could get a good movie out of that.

CJ: You could.

BC: Tell me about Fozzy's "Chasing the Grail" album. What is the grail, how fast is it moving and why are you chasing it?

CJ: The grail could be anything. I wrote a song called "Grail" and our guitar player Rich (Ward) came up with the idea of "Chasing the Grail" for the record title. You're not exactly chasing an old cup that Jesus drank wine out of. The grail is something that could be a job, a girl that you're looking to catch – whatever it may be. So it stands for anything that's a goal in your life or a dream that you set out to capture. For me, it's an African Side Flying Swallow and it moves about 36 miles per hour on land and I'm going to catch that son of a bitch one of these days.

BC: Now the lyrics on the record are a mix of The Bible, Stephen King and Viking disembowelment.

CJ: Well yeah, it's a heavy metal record so those are the three food groups that you go to: Stephen King, Bible and Viking disembowelment. Any metal band worth their weight in rock will hit those subjects over and over again.

BC: You're a Christian and you're way into metal. Do you ever feel that you get if from both sides? That you have Christians who don't understand how you can be into heavy metal, and you have pagan or atheist metalheads who don't understand your faith?

CJ: Back in the 1980s, you used get that when metal was first coming into prominence. You know the picketing. You'd go to an Iron Maiden concert and there'd be signs. I think now the whole world has calmed down a bit. If you really want to get technical about it, God created everything anyway so God created Iron Maiden believe it or not. Heavy metal's a release, a great way to work out your aggressions. It was when I was 15 and it is now that I'm 39.

BC: Tell me about Jason Pinter. Were you aware of the hoops that he had to jump through to get "A Lion's Tale" published?

CJ: No, I wasn't aware of it at all and it was actually really interesting to hear that story. Especially now that the people at Grand Central (Publishing) signed Bret Hart's book, they signed Mick Foley's book, so these other books are signed because of "A Lion's Tale". And hat's off to Jason for seeing that. Am I a wrestler? Yes, but it's so much more than that. I didn't write "A Lion's Tale" for wrestling fans. I wrote it for people who might not know anything about wrestlers, (as) more of a follow your dreams type of book than "then I gave him a body slam." I think that it paid off in spades. I wasn't aware of the lengths that Jason had to go through to get the book signed so when I read about it, I was kind of laughing because he hadn't told me that story. Soon after he signed the book, he left the company to go and write on his own. So he started as my editor for about two weeks, but then I never saw him again until hearing this story on his blog.

BC: How would you compare the publishing industry to pro wrestling?

CJ: I don't know. There's not a lot of similarities I don't think except that they're both entertainment involved businesses. I think writing any kind of a book whether you're a wrestler, a musician, or an actor; it's such an art form. It's such an arduous process. It takes such a long time. I've never been the guy that would pawn off my story to somebody else to write. I've written every world of both of my books including the one that I'm just going to ship right now. I work with a collaborator to give me some thoughts and advice as I write it myself. I think that that's one of the reasons why "A Lion's Tale" was so successful because I was very hands on with it – the same way I've been with my wrestling career from the moment I started.

BC: Now you're writing the new book on planes, at least from reading your Twitter feed.

CJ: Yeah, that's the way for me to do it: planes, trains and automobiles, man. You do so much traveling that it really makes the time go by faster, especially when you're writing and you get really into it. Hours go by as if in minutes. It's funny too because I'm a big fan of watching movies and DVDs and I haven't watched anything in the last couple of months because all I've been doing is writing every single chance that I get. So now that I'm almost done, I have these huge piles of DVDs in my house that I have to start watching because I haven't had any time to do it. All my spare time, even when I'm not on a plane is devoted to writing this book, rewriting it and editing it. There's a lot of work to it. I'm up for it, but I couldn't churn out a book a year like Stephen King. I don't know how in the hell he does it, but I'm sure he probably wonders how I could wrestle 210 times a year.

BC: I take it the new book is about your experiences in WWE?

CJ: That and Fozzy. It's as much of a rock and roll book as it is a wrestling book. It's kind of half and half. Actually, my experiences in LA acting as well – it's kind of an all encapsulating show business memoir.

BC: Your previous book, "A Lions Tale," is about promotions that you had worked in in the past and a lot of them aren't even in existence any more. Is there a different feeling going into writing a book about that includes your current employer and co-workers?

CJ: Not really. I don't have any reasons to be angry about anything. I've had a big career and have done everything anyone can ever do. Obviously there are some stories where there are disagreements or conflict and that's what makes the stories interesting. At the end of the day, everyone I write about I have the utmost respect for. You have watch what you say in certain points but I watched what I said in the first book too because I wasn't coming up to settle any scores or be bitter. There's a couple of villains in the first book and there's a couple of villains in the second book. There's some great stories about some of my clashes with Vince (McMahon), but that's bound to happen when you've worked with somebody for almost ten years.

BC: In your experience with your first book, do men read?

CJ: Absolutely. Absolutely. This book was read by every demographic and every segment of society that I could imagine: men, women, hermaphrodites, everybody. Now that I've been doing in-store signings for Fozzy and "Chasing the Grail", I sign at least 20 or 30 books at every signing from people that have just bought it. It's still selling, which to me is amazing.

When he's not being hit by steel chairs or fighting Sasquatches, Bob Calhoun is a San Francisco author and journalist and regular contributor to Film Salon. His bestselling punk-wrestling memoir, Beer, Blood and Cornmeal: Seven Years of Incredibly Strange Wrestling, is available through Amazon.com in hard copy and for the Kindle.