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The Rasslin

Last night after I walked the dog and grilled some chalky chickenbreast for dinner (it's difficult at 36 to stay lean) I settled onto the couch for an evening of a learned PBS documentary. Much to my disappointment they were playing Night at the Pops or some such nonsense, so I cruised the channels, going from an annoying (albeit chirpy) Rachel Maddow to the Food Network (God, I HATE "Iron Chef"), to the History Channel (enough with the Ice Truckers!) to the Myth Busters Network (formerly knows as the Discovery Channel). None of my regulars were working out for me so I resorted to going up the dial (do we still use that term in the age of remote controls?) through each channel when suddenly I was captivated by a beautiful and half-naked specimen of a Greek god emerging through some pyro special effects to the music of some really obnoxious grunge metal. It was WWE Monday night Raw. The Greek god, none other than Randy Orton, aka "The Legend Killer".

Now, there are many things I can find amazing about the whole wrestling concept, the most obvious being the homoerotic nature of the "sport". I mean, these guys come out in the itty bitty bikinin underwear and get so close in each other's face they might as well be kissing, the proceed to roll around half-naked grabbing and clutching each others' half-naked bodies. Not to mention that other than the hair on their heads, they are shaved completely and totally smooth. And they have fake-n-bake tans! The only reason the "sport" is not more appealing to the gay population is that other than the naked muscley men, the aesthetics are not that appealing--cheesy costumes, bad tattoos and hair, silly dialogue and even sillier plots. Plus, we gays are not that keen on sports to begin with, much less a fake sport. While no gays that I'm aware of are loyal fans of wrestling the crowd at these events probably aren't fans of any gays. The people in the audience look to me like the exact same crowd that go to those monster truck rallies at the Lamar-Dixon Expo Center, where the trucks with 20 foot diameter tires run over and crush a row of ten cars. There are ladies with bleach blond hair (of the hydrogen peroxide kind) and beer bellied men in cutoff shirts and John Deere caps holding signs that say such inane things as "Tristan 3:16" and "U Don't C Me". It is not unfair to judge by their excitement that they think the whole affair is real.

Last nigth I was especially lucky because it was the premier of Freddie Prinze, Jr. as the newest host of WWE Monday Night Raw. I've always thought that Prinze was a handsome guy, but I couldn't name one movie he was in. Judging by the delivery of his lines last night it's no surprise he's not making movies anymore and instead has this WWE gig. I'm not sure how these things work in the wrestling world but there are characters (i.e. Orton's name is "The Legend Killer" because he attacks the old champs of wrestling, shaming them into old age, or something like that) and there are plots, most of them very simplistic. Anyway, so Prinze announces that tonight he's pairing Randy Orton with John Cena in a match against Chris Jericho and The Big Show. Well, apparently Randy and Cena are blood rivals and upon hearing this news, Orton busts through the pyrotechnics and tells Prinze that he refuses to be paired with Cena. Prinze stands his ground despite the fact that the scowling and growling Orton is right in his face. Prinze demands that Orton follows his orders. Apparently, you don't mess with Legend Killer Randy Orton, even if you're some B-list dead ender movie star, because Orton picks Prinze up and bodyslams him. Pow! Prinze is on the mat, the crowd is booing, Legend Killer stands in defiance. The announcers then act like they have to cut to commercial break real fast. When WWE Monday Night Raw returns, Prinze is still on the mat with some referees attending to him. The announcers say in what is supposed to be an ad-lib-caught-on-camera whisper, "It's his neck, it's his neck." Wow, it's so much fun! There's nothing like homoerotic sillines to get a crowd going. Finally, Prinze is carried out of the ring and all the raw action commences.

I used to work with a guy named G___, who was the real deal bona fide coonass from New Iberia. This was back in my oilfield days. He was a referee at the weekend cockfights around the state. He and his wife, who he affectionately called "Well Done" because she suffered some burns on her face when a lawnmower blew up, loved The Rasslin (as they called it) and blocked off every Monday night to watch (this was in the '90's) Stone Cold Steve Austin whip some ass. Well, as it so happens, Stone Cold grew up in Edna and G___ and his wife became enamored of me just because they thought I had some sort of familiarity with Steve, even though he was several years older and had left Edna by the time I was in middle school. Anyway, Tuesdays at the office talk was nothing but The Rassling. G___ had his favorite women, who are known as the Divas and his wife loved Stone Cold. I was always amazed at how The Rasslin affected their lives, how they referenced it in many conversations even when the subject had nothing to do with it at all. Most tellingly, they'd say that the only time that they "cut" (this is a term frequently used for "sex" in New Iberia) was after The Rasslin. Something about the staged spectacle, the silly plot lines, the raucous crowds, the half-naked bodies, compelled them to have sex. "Oh, we cut good last night after The Rasslin," G___ would tell me first thing Tuesday morning. "We watched [so and so] fight it out and then I hit that thing real good!" Well, I can't say that it affects me the same way, but I can say that I found watching those guys wrestle around titillating. I'll be watching it again on Monday nights for some raw action, especially when WWE Champion Randy Orton is on the mat defending his title and killing some legends!

Edna, Texas

Rooster and I headed to Texas for my summer vacation a couple of weeks ago. This year has been brutal to the part of the state where I was born and raised--months and months of no rain--and you feel this the minute you drive through Houston and you hit a wall of heat so powerful it saps the moisture right out of the cab of the truck and quickly every part of the vehicle is radiating the same immense heat. It's almost surreal right now, everything so hot and so parched. The river is dry and the cattle stand in the shade of the trees all these long days of summer and then, when it's finally cool enough in the evenings for them to move, there's no grass anywhere. As they scour the bone-dry earth for something to eat with their muzzles, the force of their breath blows the dust. While it was a great trip home and lots of fun, there was a pervasive sense of depression about the place. The heat and drought were the anchor of every conversation: "Is it dry in Louisiana like it is here?", "Have yall been getting rain?","Dubby, we've been so hot and dry". Questions like this made it seem as though Louisiana, or anywhere else for that matter, was like another planet, a strange place where water inexplicably fell from the sky and grass grew from the earth. Here the people only knew the sun and wondered why the rain had left them.

When I was a boy I stayed at what then could only be described as a "daycare" run by a couple known to everyone as Momma Helen and Pa Dewey. I write daycare in quotes because it was nothing like the facilities of today--we kids spent the day locked outside in her enormous back yard with nothing but spoons and a few old Tonka trucks, and were fed sandwiches made of American cheese, white bread and miracle whip along with some chee-tohs and red punch to wash it all down with. It was the most wonderful and imaginary of places, almost a child kingdom where adults were as rare as the rain now is in Edna, and Momma Helen loved her kids more than anything and we were always welcomed. My parents then were still young and it wasn't rare for them to drop me off in the wee hours of the morning before they headed down to the coast for a day (or weekend) of fishing, and it was even less rare for them to pick me up in the wee hours of the morning after a night at a party. Momma Helen was a country woman whose dentures clacked everytime she spoke her colloquial English and I loved her very much. She always told me that I was one of her favorites and I often went to her house on the weekends when the other kids weren't there just so I could climb up into her chair and nuzzle in her bosom and the click click click of her dentures would soothe me to sleep. One of my favorite tricks was to ask her every single day what was for lunch, to which she'd reply without fail, "Poke and grits...poke ya head out the window and grit your teeth!" I still have no idea what poke and grits are but sometimes I like to answer the question the same way when someone asks me what I'm cooking.

Momma Helen ruled her house with a firm but sweet hand. If you violated one of the few rules that governed the place, like biting one of the other kids or being a tattle tale ("Nobody likes a tattle tale," Momma Helen would admonish), you either had to sit at the table for an unspecified amount of time or you got your mouth washed out with soap. During the hottest part of the day, Momma Helen called us inside where we were forced to sit and watch cartoons until the unrelenting summer sun passed far enough in the sky to give some reprieve. The house had only one air conditioner, which was in the living room and this is where Momma Helen retreated to watch "the stories" amongst her collection of dozens of china dolls that peered with their porcelein eyes from the rows of shelves. We kids sat in the sweltering heat of the den, waiting for Momma Helen to announce it was snack time and unlock the back door and dole out some sort of delicious popsickle or ice cream we could then resume speeding our Tonka trucks down our spoon-dug dirt roads to our imaginary houses made of twigs and leaves. When it rained, we huddled underneath the wall-less tin shed that housed our toys. As long as it didn't thunder or lightnening, Momma Helen would let us stay outside, and then we'd pretend to be Indians and perform our rain dances.

Rain rain go away.
Come back another day.

Back then in Edna we used to get daily afternoon showers during the dog days of summer, just like we do here in Louisiana. When the rain stopped falling and the sky cleared, we thought it was us and the power of our imaginations that moved the clouds. We looked around in wonder at what we had done before lining up our Tonka trucks and pushing them down the now muddy dirt roads, laughing and playing until our parents came to pick us up.