Wasn’t this wrestling thing the end of Andy Kaufman and isn’t this the kind of thing that Stephen Colbert would do rather than Jon Stewart moving toward retirement? How big of a jump is it from fake news to fake wrestling?. Which reminds of my big and only night out in New York City.
Wrestling With God
It was February 1981 and the cold Connecticut evening bit at Rack’s thinned Texas blood as he skittered over the ice from the sales meeting to the bosses’ car. He horsed the bosses’ twelve year old twin boys into the back with him, asking again where they were going.
“Madison Square Garden! To see the greatest show on Earth, you’ll love it!” His boss shouted from the front where he sat with the sales manager at the wheel.
The car lurched forward while Rack imagined front row seats to a Led Zeppelin reunion concert. “Yeah, that’s what y’all been saying, it’s not the where but the who I’m concerned with.” The twins wanted to tell, but there had been some earlier command from the boss, though wet-their-pants excited, they were tight as clams.
Nothing for Rack to do but wait it out.
Soon they gained the vicinity of the Garden and from the tinted back windows Rack could see the crowds with the cars stopping and tickets scalped to flashes of $100 bills. The fans consisted of far too many parents with little kids in tow to be a Zeppelin Concert. “Greatest show on Earth” the boss had said, Rack now figured it was the circus, and he liked circuses! They rounded a corner and to Rack’s dismay the marquee blared:
SOLD OUT! ANDRE THE GIANT VS THE 7 DWARFS! SOLD OUT!
After parking the car, what was left of the sales meeting rattled through the excited throng with the boss leading, smiling and joking in a better mood than Rack had seen him in years. What with Reagan as the new President, he was no longer being visited regularly by the FBI for putting up all those Wanted Dead or Alive posters of Jimmy Carter. So too, company dinners out were now much less embarrassing for his staff as he no longer slammed his fist on a table making flatware and utensils crash to gain the attention of all eaters before he would stand, point to some structure on the ceiling and scream, “WE SHOULD HANG THAT SON OF A BITCH CARTER RIGHT NOW FROM THAT GODDAMN…”
Kids, parents, teenagers, many elderly, all with an aura of nitwit about them clamored down the isles with enthusiastic abandon. Rack couldn’t help but notice the lack of Blacks in the crowd who he figured had enough sense to not waste a hundred bucks on this silly poo-poo.
They worked their way through the excited fans to a third row seat. Rack decided to try and get into the show as well as he could by poking and hammer locking the twins during the Rock & Roll lead-ins which were far more lengthy than the actual fights. But try as he might, the fake at such close range was so much more obvious than on television, he decided to go on a lengthy beer run.
The line was surprisingly long for a family venue, but it was closer to reality than what was going on down in the ring. Rack started talking to people fore and aft, building waste-your-time-in-line acquaintances as he always did. He noticed a banner above the refreshment stand stating professional wrestling was now the top spectator sport in America.
“Yeah, give me a Miller.” Rack stated when his turn came. A Miller Lite was slopped on the counter in front of him.
“No, I want a Miller, not a Miller Lite please.”
“Don’t have it.” They replied.
“Okay, what else to you have?”
“Coors Lite and Bud Light.”
“Yer kidding? I want a real beer, you know, REAL BEER.”
“I’m sorry sir, that is all we have in the Garden. Make your choice or step aside please.”
“Well crap.” He said feeling an angry soapbox speech coming on…
“This country has gone to Hell in a hand basket! My God, we got a stupid B-movie actor as President, fake wrestling is the number one spectator sport in America and you can’t even get a Goddamn real beer in Madison Square Garden. I QUIT!”
One little guy with a Miller hat applauded in the next line as Rack stormed down to the front, got the car keys from the boss, told them he would pick them up in front at 11pm and left them on his trek to find a real beer in New York.
Driving Manhattan for the first time in a cowboy hat looking for a six pack was an overwhelming experience, by the time Rack had found some real beer, he guzzled it in mad vengeful gulps until it was no more. He then got in line with the cabs who all yelled at him calling him humiliating cowboy names. Soon he saw his specific morons among the thousands of morons, got out, waved their attention, walked around the car and got in the passenger seat with an attitude to finish off the six pack for the ride home.
Reasoning with the boss did little good, but with a 6-pack of real beer in him, Rack felt the mood upon him to have his say.
“Look Lynn, here you have a growing company with 50 employees, manufacturing and selling hepa, electrostatic, mechanical filters and safety systems to the workplace that we both know is directly related to State and Federal OSHA standards. You campaign and donate God knows how much money to get Reagan elected, who a dollar to a doughnut is going to at the very least take the bite out of OSHA and may very well disband it, putting you out of business and the rest of us out of work. Is your hate of what you perceive as liberalism so strong that you will sacrifice your company and employees for it?”
A curt, “YEP.” Was the curt response. A few months later the company filed Chapter 11, laid off forty-four employees, and Lynn became a consultant.
Professional wrestling has effectively infused Hollywood and Rock & Roll making it the largest spectator sport in America besides car racing. An industry based on fraud, foolishness, finger pointing, screaming, name calling and premised upon already arrived at conclusions. Pandered with obscene profits to the ignorant and pathetic who will believe anything they wish to believe. What better comparison can there be than today’s evangelical Christianity? Why not put the two together and make a real killing? Think of the hit billings: Judas vs. The Apostles, Luther vs. the Pope, The Virgin Mary vs. Shiva, all building up to winner take all death match in an electrified cage between Jehovah, Jesus and the Holy Ghost.