Owlspotting

If it would be available I’d add “putting someone through a table” to my Amazon wish list. Boy, that would be quite a day. Until someone figures out transformative pro-wrestling experiences make a perfect gift (like the whole dying on your birthday experience Sean Penn bought Michael Douglas in “The Game”) I’m stuck with paying $50 to watch WrestleMania and dealing with self-induced credit card cuts.

And pay I did. On Sunday I watched WWE’s WrestleMania 22 on a webcast; I hooked up my laptop to the TV, set the speakers on a table facing the couch and devoured some pizza and coke while doing play by play:

“He’s bleeding like a faucet, JR!”

“You are right King — the monarch of the mat had turned his face into a runway for his fists!”

“Yeah, he bust him up well, fed him a stew of his own teeth!”

“This is carnage!”

Cool manly man stuff. And since I paid to see the show, I’m still trying to get an essay about it printed somewehere (anywhere!). Below are some choice quotes. I assume I’ll print it here in its entirety when it gets rejected from all the places I sent it to (Slate already said they’d rather print a week’s worth of receipes for making toast):

“There were druids, worms, a casket, lingerie, ladders, thrash cans, middle fingers and prayers. It was one of those Sunday nights when a man gets hammered with a bat wrapped in barbwire and then tackled off the ring apron onto – and of course through – a burning table.”

“Wrestling allows for a displacement of self – you can for or against any of the guys in the ring and you need no excuse for your actions and allegiances. You could hate or love everybody: the Arabs, the Canadians, the Mexicans, the hobo-looking brawlers and the perfect-body Adonises. Whatever you choose you’re guaranteed to go to bed happy because you watched a great show.”

Speaking of the WWE — here’s a great immigration-themed story in the Onion headlined: “WWE: Illegal Mexican Wrestlers Taking Smackdowns American Wrestlers Don’t Want.” Here are some choice quotes that put mine through a table any day:

“These masked luchadores are hard-working, energetic, and always willing to learn new skills that Americans consider beneath them — such as being powerbombed from the top turnbuckle or chokeslammed though the announcer’s booth (…)”

“The WWE just wants these men for cheap labor they can use at non-televised house shows,” Sweet said. “They believe luchadores lack the looks, personality, or basic speaking skills to headline main events. Even if one did succesfully climb to the top of the company ladder, he would immediately suplexed off of it and through a table.”