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Fans Wait Politely For Commercials
As my Russian Mafia readers are certainly aware, figure skating season is under way. This means that for the next several months, men will find themselves staring at the ceiling or paying undue attention to the car, while their wives/girlfriends join Dick Button (tell me that's not a funny name) and the gang in picking apart the movements of tiny people in silly outfits. 
This year, however, I took a page out of the president's playbook, opting for a pre-emptive response to figure skating. I dragged my wife to a live professional wrestling event -- where we could watch the movements of big people in silly outfits. Despite my having been a long-time fan of pro wrestling, extending all the way back to the days of Kerry Von Erich, I have to admit that I had never been to an actual show. No doubt this stems from the fact that my father is sane.
But free of my father's sanity, and having worn down my wife's resistance, there was no stopping me from attending the traveling circus of violence that is "WWE Smackdown!" I had my tickets just five minutes after they went on sale. "Smackdown!" (that's the way they write it, by the way -- with the exclamation mark. It seems a bit silly to me, but who am I to argue with the marketing genius of Vince McMahon?) is a televised show. Part of the joy of attending is the possibility that you'll be on the TV. 
To ensure their 0.05 seconds of fame, wrestling fans have taken to bringing large signs to the show. One of most popular sign styles is a simple enough concept. You write your name, draw a down arrow, then hold the sign over your head for three hours. A variation of this theme is pictured below. "What's your sign gonna say?" a friend asked when I told him I was going to an event. Obviously, the sign was a big deal. As an alleged humor columnist, I felt extra pressure to come up with something brilliant for my sign. It had to be the sort of sign that would earn me the Pulitzer Prize. "Nidia Gave Me V.D." was my personal favorite (Nidia is a female wrestler). But it was vetoed by my wife, as were most of my sign ideas. I finally gave in and went with, "(619) Is Local." Just like video game characters, professional wrestlers have "finishing moves." Rey Mysterio's finishing move is "The 619." See, my sign was witty ... uhm ... 'cuz 619 is also the area code in San Diego, Rey's hometown. 
Obviously, "(619) Is Local" is lame, and didn't get shown on air. If you have ever been to the rodeo, or a monster truck show, you know they are put on with the attention deficit disorder sufferer in mind. Things happen so fluidly that it is often difficult to tell when one event has ended and another begun. (Figure skating, pro wrestling, rodeo, monster trucks -- this column is really hittin' the mainstream audience, isn't it?) I had expected that wrestling would be much the same, but with the added danger of a the maniacal, screaming-for-blood sort of crowd you see in a futuristic gladiator movie. Not so. Since "Smackdown!" is televised, nothing happens between the matches -- that's where the commercials go. And the crowd has become so media savvy, that they sit patiently and quietly during the lulls in action. 
That's not to say that we were all sitting around discussing the father themes in James Joyce's Ulysses. The wrestlers were still able to get us on our feet and screaming like lunatics. The match between Eddie "Latino Heat" Guerrero (a heel, or bad guy) and Edge (a babyface, or good guy) pretty much wrecked my ability to speak for two days after, because I had been screaming so hard. How can you not love a match that involves tossing people from 8-foot ladders? To that end, I feel I should stick up for wrestling a little bit. Yes, it's all fake. But that doesn't mean that much of it doesn't hurt. There's no magical way to get thrown on your back from 8 feet in the air and not make it feel like you didn't just get thrown on your back from 8 feet in the air. For reasons that I cannot explain, wrestlers beat the living tar out of themselves solely for the purpose of amusing people. And I'm sure it's a sign that I am a sociopath, but that makes the whole thing pretty endearing to me. The wrestlers aren't there for competition or groovy titles -- they're there for me. It makes me feel better about spending $100 on tickets, and $58 on T-shirts. 
In the end, I had a pretty good time. However, it did have a negative effect. A few days later, I decided to leap over a guardrail as I was walking home, attempting to land with a sort of flair that mimicked wrestler Jeff Hardy. Hardy, however, is an athletic professional who does that sort of a thing for a living. I am beer-drinking journalist who has a tendency to walk into things. I ended up falling and splitting open a rather large and deep gash on my knee. Now, with my leg bandaged, it's hard to move around and I'm forced to watch whatever my wife wants. Hey, that Alexei Yagudin is one heck of skater, isn't he?
This year, however, I took a page out of the president's playbook, opting for a pre-emptive response to figure skating. I dragged my wife to a live professional wrestling event -- where we could watch the movements of big people in silly outfits. Despite my having been a long-time fan of pro wrestling, extending all the way back to the days of Kerry Von Erich, I have to admit that I had never been to an actual show. No doubt this stems from the fact that my father is sane.
To ensure their 0.05 seconds of fame, wrestling fans have taken to bringing large signs to the show. One of most popular sign styles is a simple enough concept. You write your name, draw a down arrow, then hold the sign over your head for three hours. A variation of this theme is pictured below. "What's your sign gonna say?" a friend asked when I told him I was going to an event. Obviously, the sign was a big deal. As an alleged humor columnist, I felt extra pressure to come up with something brilliant for my sign. It had to be the sort of sign that would earn me the Pulitzer Prize. "Nidia Gave Me V.D." was my personal favorite (Nidia is a female wrestler). But it was vetoed by my wife, as were most of my sign ideas. I finally gave in and went with, "(619) Is Local." Just like video game characters, professional wrestlers have "finishing moves." Rey Mysterio's finishing move is "The 619." See, my sign was witty ... uhm ... 'cuz 619 is also the area code in San Diego, Rey's hometown. Obviously, "(619) Is Local" is lame, and didn't get shown on air. If you have ever been to the rodeo, or a monster truck show, you know they are put on with the attention deficit disorder sufferer in mind. Things happen so fluidly that it is often difficult to tell when one event has ended and another begun. (Figure skating, pro wrestling, rodeo, monster trucks -- this column is really hittin' the mainstream audience, isn't it?) I had expected that wrestling would be much the same, but with the added danger of a the maniacal, screaming-for-blood sort of crowd you see in a futuristic gladiator movie. Not so. Since "Smackdown!" is televised, nothing happens between the matches -- that's where the commercials go. And the crowd has become so media savvy, that they sit patiently and quietly during the lulls in action. That's not to say that we were all sitting around discussing the father themes in James Joyce's Ulysses. The wrestlers were still able to get us on our feet and screaming like lunatics. The match between Eddie "Latino Heat" Guerrero (a heel, or bad guy) and Edge (a babyface, or good guy) pretty much wrecked my ability to speak for two days after, because I had been screaming so hard. How can you not love a match that involves tossing people from 8-foot ladders? To that end, I feel I should stick up for wrestling a little bit. Yes, it's all fake. But that doesn't mean that much of it doesn't hurt. There's no magical way to get thrown on your back from 8 feet in the air and not make it feel like you didn't just get thrown on your back from 8 feet in the air. For reasons that I cannot explain, wrestlers beat the living tar out of themselves solely for the purpose of amusing people. And I'm sure it's a sign that I am a sociopath, but that makes the whole thing pretty endearing to me. The wrestlers aren't there for competition or groovy titles -- they're there for me. It makes me feel better about spending $100 on tickets, and $58 on T-shirts. In the end, I had a pretty good time. However, it did have a negative effect. A few days later, I decided to leap over a guardrail as I was walking home, attempting to land with a sort of flair that mimicked wrestler Jeff Hardy. Hardy, however, is an athletic professional who does that sort of a thing for a living. I am beer-drinking journalist who has a tendency to walk into things. I ended up falling and splitting open a rather large and deep gash on my knee. Now, with my leg bandaged, it's hard to move around and I'm forced to watch whatever my wife wants. Hey, that Alexei Yagudin is one heck of skater, isn't he?Distributed by Internet Broadcasting Systems, Inc. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
