To Whom It May Concern

Flying Into The Turnbuckle

So I’m flipping thru the channels today and I come across professional wrestling. And of course, for some oddball reason, I end up leaving it on. And I don’t really know why. Why do I still watch this stuff??? I know it’s fake, I know that it’s basically like watching a male version of a soap opera, yet I still find myself drawn to it.

So much involved with pro wrestling is just ridiculous. Rick Flair and Hulk Hogan are both old enough to be living in a retirement community somewhere in Florida. Fake blood is used liberally, along with a lot of yelling and cussing and screaming. Maybe it reminds me my childhood? Haha, who knows?

Oh, there was a time when I actually believed what I was watching. I can remember in the afternoon on Sundays, after we get home from church, sitting down with Dad and watching some guy named Bruno wrestling, and how it wasn’t nearly so filled with outbursts and crazy behavior outside the ring, it still had plenty of fun inside the squared circle.

Then they moved it to Saturday nights, so we’d switch channels back and forth from Saturday Night Live to Pro Wrestling, with Hulk Hogan, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Junkyard Dog, Randy Macho Man Savage, The Ultimate Warrior, Hacksaw Jim Dugan, oh the list goes on and on. Even then it still seemed real, even Hulk Hogan getting up, shaking, as Roddy Piper pounded on him the entire time, only to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Of course looking back at it, I know it was all scripted out, a well acted out event for drawing in as much attention as possible, but it was still exciting.

Then as I got older and got more into watching real sports, football, basketball, boxing, etc, I realized just how phony professional wrestling was and basically got away from watching it throughout my late high school and all my college years.

Nowadays I don’t look to watch it, it’s just funny how it’s on what, 5 or 6 times a week now? I sometimes wonder if pro wrestling helped spawn the ‘reality television’ explosion, considering that it’s promoted like reality, only grossly exaggerated with steroid enhanced muscular personalities acting out to the adoring fans that pack every arena they go to.

So, I indulge in the ridiculous farce that pro wrestling is, watching two men fighting in a ring with a ladder in the middle, only to have another wrestler come into the ring and beat up on both of them, but wait, a ‘surprise’ as one of the wrestlers gets an ‘unexpected’ upper hand and wins!! THE CROWD GOES WILD!! I just chuckle and wait for the next match, or I try out one of the movie channels over here, if there is something with a better script, well, I watch that instead.

Current Lyrical Ramblings

You never doubted my warped opinions on things like suicidal hate
You made me compliment myself when it was way too hard to take
So I'll drive so fucking far away that I never cross your mind
And do whatever it takes in your heart to leave me behind

Hate Me – Blue October