Ready to Rumble

A few weeks ago, we made a bargain with Taylor. If he ate sushi, we'd watch professional wrestling. Actually, the whole thing was his idea, so last Saturday we took him to Sinju and enjoyed a variety of tasty dishes. We didn't want to scare him away too quickly with squid and eel sashimi, so we focused on the rolls, including Sinju's tasty Las Vegas roll which, if you haven't had it, is stuffed with cream cheese, battered in tempura, and deep fried. Sushi or dessert -- you decide. But it was tasty enough for Taylor to eat two pieces., plus three pieces of the Cowboy roll (also fried), and one piece of the rainbow roll (not so fried). "Not bad."

So Monday night it was our turn to try something new, and we sat down to watch WWE Raw. Now, part of me was looking forward to this. #1, you're supposed to watch what your kids are watching, right? So good parent points. But #2, Taylor had told us that there was going to be a special fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and I was curious to see how they were going to do that! We set the scene by ordering hot wings and tater tots from Fire on the Mountain (conveniently located at the end of the street), plopping down in front of the big screen and getting ready to rumble.

The first few fights were some kind of tournament between wrestlers that Rob and I had never heard of before. It was pretty damn funny when the leprauchan battled a 7-foot giant with a shelele. But halfway through these fights, I was impressed to discover that Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama AND John McCain had each taped a message to WWE fans, and each candidate used this opportunity to deliver a few political remarks and a lot of bad wordplay with WWE references. Kinda cutsey, kinda obligatory, whatever. OK, I thought, that's what their election thing was all about tonight.

Then, about half an hour later, I realized we weren't done yet. As Taylor had told us, Hillary and Barack were actually going to fight. And, as I suspected, this fight would be waged by actors who delivered terrible charicatures of the candidates: Hillary coming into the ring with a terrible wig and bobbling Bill close behind, arguing with each other for the spotlight. Then Barack, a tall handsome black man with -- what's this? -- big Dumbo ears. Ugh. So rude. These "contestants" took turns addressing the audience, who booed in reply, which left me to wonder whether (1) they were booing as if demonstrating their conservative values to the candidates themselves; (2) they were booing because the charicatures were so god-awful, or (3) they were booing because this silliness was holding up the title fight of REAL WWE wrestlers. I suspect it was actually a few parts of each, and I haven't seen the demographics of the typical WWE audience member but you gotta think most of them are Republicans, no?

And now it's available for everyone to see on You Tube. Enjoy. Ugh.