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/wrestling /guests /Laura |
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/wrestling /guests /Laura |
| Guest Columns | NPR's Laura |
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Pop Culture Indicators & Rankings for the week of Sept. 20, 1999 So I'm sitting here listening to this record by Windsor for the Derby, not having much opinion about it really, much like I feel about the WCW, actually. This week's significant pop culture moments are brought to you by the letters W and K, and the number 8. Wow, get a load of the signs that people bring to the matches. Did everyone at the arena get handed a piece of poster board and a marker at the entrance? Actually I thought the Nitro signs were funnier (read: more bizarre and incongruous) than those at Raw. I've gotten so this is a big part of why I tape the shows...rewind, read, review, react. It's a chance for people to say something clever in front of a national audience: about 10 percent actually do! How cool is this? Everyone is getting older, no doubt about it, and it beats the alternative. On the other hand, not everyone wrestles professionally for a living. With the exception of Shane and Test over on WWF and that opening match with Juventud et al. on WCW this week, I felt like I was adrift in a sea of the elderly on both shows. Is it just me, or is Debra lookin' seriously ragged these days? Jeez. It's everywhere, not just on wrestling. I mean, watch the morning news shows: all this stuff about sex after 50 (?) and features on, like "the menace of drafts" or "how to improve your rheumatism." The world of sports entertainment reflects who we are, and I guess the higher-ups want us to all follow along in the wake of the baby-boom, the single most over-rated demographic group in history. When they were young, youth was king. Now they're getting older, and so now it's hip to be aging. Buncha selfish jerks. They ruin casual drug use for us...ruin casual sex for us...now they're ruining the cachet of casual clothes. D'oh. Michael Cole, suffering through a Rock interview draped stoically in a t-shirt. Lilian Garcia, doing her usual marginally adequate job and looking frightened. Schiavone, Heenan, whatever...Having one of these jobs is pretty much like being in the service-economy, I think. Why the insistence on wrestling all day, every day? I love the stuff and I'm getting overwhelmed. So much to see. So much to remember. I think that Vince & Ted are operating on the so-called "Lottle" principle: if a little is good, a lottle is better. I don't know, I think they're gonna get audience fatigue. On the other hand...I never thought people would want to watch 24 hours of news a day, either. Here's an idea I saw once in a magazine -- based on the idea that people literally DO watch CNN endlessly all day, why not develop a channel called "CNN -365", which would basically be (get this) *last* year's CNN feed. I mean, hey, *someone* would tune in. How about an all-wrestling channel, with no censors, just showing this stuff over and over and over? I'd watch...for a while, anyway. I feel like I sort of do that now. Dadaism as a guiding force in the formulation of programming universally derided as the lowest possible form of culture. The "Pepper on a Pole" match? Tell me this isn't avant-garde performance art; I'll laugh at you, because it is. Rottweilers (with handlers! And leashes!) running around. Jericho zooming around the ring in such a way that you can almost hear the Carl Stalling Warner Bros. cartoon-chase music in the background. Debra in a parody of a wrestling outfit, Jarrett decking the makeup lady, some guy handing another guy a vibrator. The president and owner of the company coming out and basically intimating that he can't just fire the guy who's bugging him. This is the future of entertainment. It's hilarious, if you have the background to identify what's going on. We are the dreamers of dreams. What is with the intensively produced little pieces at the beginning of (and salted throughout) Nitro? What is with the heavy-production segments of Raw and SmackDown! ? Anybody remember when local station put wrestling on because it was cheap to put together? Somehow, the ghost of Busby Berkeley has gotten loose and set up shop down on Peachtree Plaza in Atlanta. Make it bigger, make it better, see who you can manipulate with darkly dire music and intense shots of very large men stalking around, looking annoyed. Perhaps someone will care. Hmmm. The revolution will not be televised, people. (Now, if only The Revolution would not be televised, we'd be getting somewhere.) (While I'm on the subject, does anyone here remember the "house band" for the Lancelot Link Saturday morning show? They were called "The Evolution Revolution." What with Turner Broadcasting's big obsession with chimpanzees on TV, one would think that this would be exploited on WCW, in some way.) (God, I'm far afield here. Time for a new topic. What was I writing about, anyway?) (oh, yeah.) Lots of leather outfitting going on. I don't know what this means, but I noticed. Let's look around this fall and see how many people (other than, say, Bono) are walking around in leather coats and hats with no shirts on. See if leather bras really take off in sales this year. The ridiculous accommodation of Stone Cold Steve Austin is really starting to wear on me. I suspect there is some sort of connection to be drawn between this and the news that there has been an increase in the proportion of wealth being held by this country's wealthiest people. (No, really, give me a second, I'll convince you!) Here's the deal: does anyone know what proportion of WWF merchandise that gets moved has something to do with Austin? Does anyone know how much stuff Hogan has basically moved for WCW? It's all economic, it's all incredibly tedious; all I wanna do is watch some wrestling, can we PLEASE get past the capitalist motivation of keeping the focus on these guys? Everyone's playing hurt. Seems like a good time to gin up some interest in your younger, more flexible, non-cortisone-resistant talent. It's kind of fun to watch the machinations being created to keep people from believing that some of these guys are the walking wounded, but on the other hand, it's getting really tiresome. How is this culturally relevant, I ask you? A study this week said that more people than ever are carrying around boatloads of sick leave, because fewer people want to admit they're ill -- for fear of being dropped by their health plans or their employers. Wow. I took a good look at that IPO document for the WWF: these wrestlers are NOT provided with health insurance by the company. Hmmm. Interesting. A trend to watch, said one media analyst. That's it for now. I'm moving to Chicago on Saturday. Wish me luck. I'll try to watch "Unforgiven" but this may not work out. I'll of course try to write more next week, but don't know what the future will hold with regard to either time or access to cable television. Thanks again to all you who have written lately. Laura [slash] wrestling Mail the Author |
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