Entry 62: God Save the Queen

Try as I might, I was unable to completely ignore the royal wedding. I am living in a Commonwealth country after all. Also, the Thursday NY Times crossword puzzle was devoted entirely to the royal wedding, which caused a lot of grumblings in the puzzle blogosphere. I was one of the grumblers. First, nobody should care about the royal family, the same way nobody should care about Paris Hilton. Why do you care about people who don’t do anything other than be rich and famous? Second, certainly no Americans should care about the royal wedding, and the New York Times shouldn’t be devoting a Thursday puzzle (usually one of the best days) to such an obscenely lavish and boring affair. It wasn’t even a creative puzzle. All the answers were completely straightforward.

There are many cool things in British culture, the comedy, the Premier League soccer, heck, we all owe the Brits a huge debt of gratitude just for their rock-n-roll alone. But this whole royalty stuff is a huge load of malarkey, and I consider it my duty as an American to mock it at all turns.

In this spirit, I give you the Junkyard Dog vs. “The King” Harley Race in Wrestlemania III, 1987. Fast forward to minute 5:00 to see how a real America treats a “king”. (The gimmick: it was stipulated before the match that the loser would have to bow before the winner after the match.)



Actually, the whole clip is gold. Tons of ridiculously fake action, and it’s beautifully commentated by Gorilla Monsoon and Jesse “The Body” Ventura. Before he was a borderline nutjob conspiracy theorist, he was governor of Minnesota, and before that he was a heel wrestler/commentator. Bob Uecker is also in the mix, but you don’t hear him for much of the clip, because he left the booth, supposedly to pursue the Fabulous Moolah who was the presenter of the crown for this match. The joke being that Moolah is a very burly and unattractive woman.

Ever since my déjà vu moment involving wrestling discussed in my last entry, I’ve been going through and watching old matches. Wrestlemania III was definitely the best Wrestlemania from my childhood. My dad actually bought it for me on pay-per-view, and we watched it live. It was in the Silverdome in Detroit, and at the time it set a record for largest crowd at an indoor “sporting” event with over 93,000 people. Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant was the headlining match. At the time, Andre had a back injury that was so debilitating that he couldn’t walk from the locker room to the ring. He had to use this mini-wrestling-ring shuttle thing. The organizers made all the wrestlers use them so that Andre wouldn’t look out of place.

Andre the Giant was a pretty interesting dude. He really was a giant. He was over 7 feet tall, and weighed around 500 pounds. He was a natural entertainer due to his size alone. He was a pro wrestler for many years, and he starred in several movies, most notably the hilarious classic, “The Princess Bride”. (I wasn't able to embed any clips for some reason, so click here for a scene with Andre the Giant, and click here for another great scene without Andre).

Unfortunately, his gigantism led to all sorts of health problems (he had several back surgeries), and he died at the relatively young age of 46. I’m sure it didn’t help his health that he was probably an alcoholic. His boozing was legendary. Somebody I know once worked for a sports venue and used to see the wrestlers backstage whenever the WWF (now the WWE) came to town. He said that Andre would always have a box of wine with him. Along these same lines, this article claims that he would intake 7,000 calories a day in alcohol alone. That’s absurd. I saw a piece on Andre on TV once, and they allude to his drinking by using terms like “jovial” and “festive”. Well, at least he was a jolly drunk. Can you imagine the havoc this man could have wreaked if he were a mean drunk?



Anyway...

I’m a bit tired today, because I woke up earlier than I normally do on the weekend. A dog was barking insanely for a solid ten minutes at about 8:00 this morning just outside my apartment and that got me up. I peeked outside my window and some woman had tied her dog to a pole while she went to get coffee from the café next door to me. Thanks lady.

This dog was going absolutely ballistic. It literally did not shut up for at least ten minutes. I noted the time. Dogs are weird. Some of them are so tame and mellow (the good ones), and others are like a soda that’s been vigorously shaken. Once the top is popped, chaos. I don’t mind dogs (although it does bother me when owners seem to be oblivious to the fact that their dog is annoying everybody else around them), but I don’t love dogs either. I wouldn’t mind if, as a society, we dialed back our dog adulation a few notches. Just a few.

S doesn’t seem to be that into dogs either, so I doubt we will ever get one. Maybe, if we have kids that really want one, but even then, I don’t know. They would have to be old enough to take care of it themselves, which means we're talking junior high at the earliest. My sister got a Doberman Pinscher when she was a teenager and it was basically her dog, it slept in her room, she fed it, walked it, etc. (although, if I asked my dad about this, he might have a different story). Maybe I could do that as a parent, I’d have to see.

Anyway, this dog was pretty cool, much like Andre the Giant he was enormous, and much like Andre the Giant he could consume massive amounts of calories, of dog food and table scraps, of course, not alcohol. (We used to give him old hotdogs and old lunch meat every now and then, and he would eat the meat in literally a split second, *gulp*, and it was gone.) Sadly, like Andre the Giant he had serious back problems and died at a very young age.

Well, on that note, some jokes. Nothing segues better to comedy than a story about a dead dog.

I decide to go with three jokes this week instead of five. The theme is bad pun.

1. The elevator man in my building is really diabolic. Every time I ask to go down to the main floor, he smiles and says, “Yes, I’ll be sending you straight to ‘L’!”

2. I eat a lot of seafood. I’m not sure why. Just for the hal-i-but.

3. I used to eat a lot of eggs, but those days are ova.

You know why they call them eggs? Because unfertilized chicken embryo sounds fucking disgusting.

Eggs must have some good PR reps, because many people eat eggs who are disgusted by other parts of the chicken. The eyes, the neck, the heart, the feet, “Yuck! I’m not touching those parts!” The oozing orbs of discharged reproductive matter, “Get the stove going.”

You’ve been a great audience. Thank you and good night.