[This is my favorite picture of Hulk Hogan.  Ever.]

At an open mic last week, a very angry man took the stage and declared that poetry among black people was really shitty and/or “dead.”  This was literally eight seconds after I had stepped away from the microphone to politely microwaved applause.  Dejected, I mentally put a line through the intensive four-part serial on spoken word I had planned for dwende:  What would become of Graphite Passion and Charred Krylon From The Rap-Hipster Fringe: A Kevin Spacesick Odyssey?  I fixed some coffee and hit up my old enemy, Jon Reyes, through the creature comfort of AIM, bouncing around ideas for what to write about this week.  I don’t know how to do screenshots (or much else) with my computer so here’s a transcription of our brainstorming:

“…swear to god you will be fired and laughed at.  you have until monday”

“lol no”

40-60% of any given conversation between Jon and myself (or myself and myself) involves pro-wrestling; be it random references, discussing childhood favorites or elaborating on the damage we would do to one another if given half the chance in a lawless world where the criminal justice system had eroded into villainous pageantry.

I’ve loved wrestling for hella days, since I was like eight.  This tidbit about myself is something that catches people off guard a good 80% of the time because I’m so cosmopolitan and debonair imagine – a fresh coast James Baldwin for the 09, if you will.  I guess its difficult to see me any other way than reading up on the disastrous economic & ecological mismanagement of Dubai in my leisure moments, by my side a hand-crafted leatherbound journal scenting fainly of Irish dusk and genteel courtship.

But man, I fucks heavy with wrasslin.  I’ve never once tried to explain it, opting usually for a blushing, coquettish chuckle and an “I just do…” whenever the question of why is broached.  Which isn’t often:  Pro-wrestling tends to rank with most folks somewhere between “Hella Gay, Bluuh” and “Retarded”, both of which are securely below the minimal cool level required for an honest inquiry (this also goes for the anime I watch and most of the graphic novels I read.  Fuck dude, I’m sort of a loser.)  So I’ve never even tackled the question for myself.  Let’s go over some basics:

Professional wrestling is a performance:  An exaggerated spectacle of combat and feats of strength.  This is the fundamental premise of the whole she-bang.  I think for myself and all other wrestling fans today, its kinda imperative to look at it as its own type of theatre utilizing a set of conventions based around spectacularized violence unique to its history and intended function.  Matches are generally built around a plot, following the rising action/climax/falling action/resolution of any other conventional storytelling medium.  Easy enough.  The kernel of wrasslin’s charm for me, however, rests within the workings of each individual match-play and the mechanisms involved that go into ensuring a successful outing.

Again keeping in mind that its a staged exhibition, everything the performers do in-ring is in service of telling some sort of story to a live audience.  This necessitates a larger-than-life approach to communicate in the most visible ways possible all the going-ons involved (Compare stage-combat or performance choices to that of the silver screen, for example.)  I think this is what gives wrestling its distinctly circus-like flair that hella folks find tacky and unpalatable.

[Or its this.  Could be this.]

Now even though the match is a representation of combat, the participants can’t just go out and start doing fake maneuvers all will-nilly to win their fake match as if they were real opponents; its not like some weird real-life bout of Magic: The Gathering.  Instead, as co-workers, fellow actors/actresses, the two (or three, or four) must work together so that the match retains a cohesive feel and an understandable plot that the audience will buy into.  This can range from the basic (“He’s putting on headlocks to soften him up for his finishing move, a piledriver”) to something a bit more complex (“See, he’s slappin the shit out of him right now ‘cuz four months ago dude visited his grandpa in the hospital and went hella bad on him; its comeuppance, feel me?”)  Given that the available vocabulary for this is pretty specific ddn requires an almost-on-the fly sense of what sequences may pique and sustain audience investment, this is actually a pretty sophisticated undertaking – especially considering that these are largely improvised.  As a life-long student of improv theatre, you can probably see how this kind of thing makes me wet myself

[Pictured Above:  Sophisticated Undertaking]

But of course, when I was just a sprout of a D.Scott, this isn’t what first caught my attention:  It really was the larger-than-life caricatures and combat, and the easy-to grasp sense of who to cheer and who to boo.  Easy investment, easy return.  Its a pretty American invention:  The pick-up mis-en-scene nature of most spectator sports + carnival kitsch + the timeless tradition of the people’s theatre.

Plus, it gives me license to say shit like “Nikka I will Cobra Clutch your life away.”  And I have wanted for nothing more ever since.

Get at me:

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