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culture sports

Professional wrestling

I watched a pair of documentaries the other day. One was on the history of professional wrestling and the other was on heavy metal music. I think I’ll post something about what I saw as the link between them on my music blog… I’ve been thinking about what I saw with the wrestling one, and I think it may be a bit deeper than you may think.

Well, let me rephrase that, there is nothing about wrestling that is deep. I mean c’mon, what a bunch of tawdry, tacky, rowdy yahoos… No, there is nothing deep about wrestling, but maybe the link between it and what is considered “serious” TV might be.

When I was growing up, the big rap against professional wrestling (at least to a kid) was that it was “fake.” It had the veneer of a sports competition, but it was ridiculous. The punches, throws, locks, etc. were obviously fake, even for an 8 year old. The current organizers (the WWF and WCW) make no pretense of the event being a sporting competition. In their minds, it is pure entertainment, a show. The excitement is all in the struggle of good versus evil, or at least of favorites going up against hated opponents. In the eyes of fans and of promoters, it is nothing short of high drama.

Of course that drama takes the form of an incredibly violent struggle. They punch, throw, elbow, crush, and land on each other. Then there are the props. They hit each other with folding chairs, they throw each other out of the ring (often times crashing through a table for good effect), they throw each other into, onto, and out of chain link cages. Blood is not uncommon.

“Yeah, but what they do is difficult! Those moves are incredible!” It’s true, those guys are BIG. Hulk Hogan was something like 6’6″ and built. All those guys are enormous, but they fly through the air and execute complex choreography. They really are a combination of stuntman and acrobat. But they’re still using all of that physical prowess to make it look like two guys smacking each other around. It’s all about violence.

Don’t look down on pro wrestling just yet. After all, how different is that “fake” display of violence any different than any of the run of the mill “dramas” based around law enforcement/hit men/drug culture/terrorist fighting FBI agent? Seriously, why do the programs that blow stuff up, shoot people, find corpses, etc. get a free pass, hell, be acclaimed, while the guys pretending to punch each other get sneered at? “But the acting is more subtle, the characters are more developed, the plot is more realistic!” Please see my critique of wrestling above… All of that is done just to lead up to the shoot out or yelling/screaming bit. In other words, violence is usually the the prime reason for all of that acting and dialogue. Everything leads up to violence, everything is solved by violence, everything is caused by violence, it’s all the same to me.

When I was living with Rick, I would often come home and find him watching TV. It was usually “Law and Order” or some other crime drama. Seems like 3/4 of all of the dramas revolve around crime… I would take a look and then exclaim, “Oh, you’re watching ‘Good Guys/Bad Guys’ again…” No matter which show he was watching, it was just “Good Guys/Bad Guys” to me. The more I think about it, the more I see most dramas as just glorified wrestling matches. No wonder I dislike watching TV so much… Can you imagine everything reminding you of professional wrestling?:-)

Categories
sports

They’ll break your heart

That’s what my uncle told me in 1983 when I informed him I was a Cub’s fan. This was easily the best Cubs team I’ve ever seen, they were the best team in the league. They then proceeded to give the worst possible performance I have ever seen in the post-season. It’s one thing to lose, it’s quite another to never show up. I know that in the grand scheme of things, this isn’t a big deal, but it still sucks. I’m not thinking of next year, It’s hockey season now. Hopefully my Caps will take my mind off of this…

Categories
culture sports

The Best thing about the opening ceremonies

The opening ceremonies were amazing. I don’t usually go in for that kind of thing, but they did it right. Everyone is talking about how much money they spent on it, around $300 million. Think of it this way, if that had been done in the US or in Europe, it would have cost a billion dollars, easy. The dollar still goes a ways in China…

The general thematic organization of the even was China through the ages. I was happy and sad that there wasn’t a single reference to Mao or the “Cultural Revolution.” I was happy because it looks like they may have started to put that terrible part of their history behind them. It is sad though to not even recognize the amount of suffering at the lives lost due to the misguided principles of Mao. The Chinese have broken away from him, and things will continue to get better and better…

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Categories
sports

Olympics

My favorite sports are baseball and ice hockey, but I enjoy watching sports in general. SO every time the olympics comes around, I’m usually glued to the TV. There are some things that I always enjoy, like gymnastics and volleyball (the real stuff, not the silliness on the beach, more on that in a sec.) but I also enjoy seeing things I haven’t watched before. This year my favorite new to me sports are team handball and archery.

Team handball is very similar to water polo and lacrosse in style. It isn’t as violent as lacrosse and it’s faster than water polo, it reminds me quite a bit of ice hockey in the overall speed. It’s a quality sport, but you can tell that the really good athletes are doing something else more popular…

The archery isn’t all that exciting really, but it is amazing. They shoot at a target whose bullseye is 4.8 inches across from 270 feet away! Watching them hit that thing with so much pressure on them is pretty amazing.

As usual there is a bunch of stuff that doesn’t do much for me too. Track and field doesn’t do anything for me, and most swimming doesn’t excite me very much either. I will say that the 100m relay was pretty exciting though. The silliest thing I’ve seen is the synchronized diving. Diving is kind of dull anyway, but the synchronized thing is just silly.

I have been calling the beach volleyball “Babes in Bikinis” because that seems to be the main draw to the sport. The guys game isn’t even worth watching. It is a much slower, seemingly less athletic version of the indoor variety of volleyball. I’m sure it’s more fun to play, but the indoor, the real volleyball is by far a better sport to watch overall…

In any case, it is always interesting to see athletes going all out and the olympics always brings that out of them. Oop, gymnastics is coming on, gotta go!

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