March 2, 1999

By Morgan Carlson

Wow... I haven't written in ages... my many apologies. I've been VERY busy skipping class and playing Nintendo, and let us not forget my intensive sleep schedule. And Internet pornography.

Also, I've been watching some serious wrestling (AKA "wrasslin'") lately. Now that wrestling is 'out of the closet' - both the WWF and WCW admitted to being fake, and are now calling themselves 'sports entertainment' - wrestling can be a reliably guilty pleasure.

Oh sure, the mainstream masses still find wrestling to be a joke, and think that all the fans are backwoods rubes who think each match is a legitimate athletic contest. Please... that's only true for about 71% of the audience. And the rest are too drunk to believe much of anything.

The main thrust of wrestling is still the ring combat.... although it requires a little stretching of the imagination to believe that ancient fossil Hulk Hogan could defeat a super athlete half his age. Hell, Hogan can't even lift his arms without sweating these days. And Ric Flair can barely make it down the entry ramp without being winded.

That's where the second joy of wresting comes in - the male-oriented soap opera. A man who watches 'Days of our Lives' is considered a little fruity, but if he gets torn up because Dean Malenko turned on the Four Horsemen and clocked Chris Benoit with a VCR, that's perfectly acceptable. After all, even we men need a little drama, despite the fact that the actors DOING this drama appear to have failed remedial English.

In fact, WWF on Monday nights is probably the most entertaining two hours in television. Oh sure, you COULD watch a sitcom, and see pretty people in sweaters make obvious set-up/response jokes about each other. But I'd rather watch Al Snow in action, a man whose fighting style relies on worshipping a mannequin head and hitting himself in the face with a chair. Now THAT'S entertainment.

You mainstreamers can have your 'Friends'.... I prefer the Brood, a gang of over-muscled vampire role-players who drink blood before each match. Heck, I'd like to see Dan Rathers drink some bodily fluids before he delivered the news. And Ally McBeal's ability to do a powerbomb is limited at best.

It's actually a little embarassing that wrestling has more entertainment value than network programming. Maybe it's the violent redneck in me.

©1999, Morgan Carlson