8.17.2007

And some nights you just watch wrestling.

When I was small, my family bonded over Friday night wrestling. We had one TV channel in Zimbabwe, and it had two highlights during the week: wrestling on Friday and X-Men on Saturday morning. On Friday nights we'd make pizza, congregate in the living room, and watch big men in small clothing hit each other. Mom and I had in common a particular appreciation for Razor Ramon, who would walk jauntily into the ring with a toothpick tucked into the side of his mouth. Razor Ramon, I would like to note, eventually turned his back on WWF, joined WCW, changed his stage name to Scott Hall, and became part of the NWO--lame. Anyway, wrestling has always had this strange, kitschy charm, just because of the way I grew up with it (I just saw a clip of the Undertaker's being beaten up, and how old is he anyway? He should not be in the ring, okay?). I'm watching it tonight, because there seriously isn't anything better on (seriously!), and I just love the staging. It's so clear that the posturing is simply that--none of it is real--but it's so fun. There's this development of mythologies (the Undertaker's the prime example) that just never disappear.

I have nothing profound to say here. I'm just having fun watching wrestling.

1 comment:

Amber said...

you crack me up. i'm glad to be back with regular net access so i can enjoy all this. i like the picture. but i think i want something more portrait style that gets the henna patterns (which i/m sending soon) on the borders or something. i don't know if i'm making sense. -arp