It’s not that I think Connor Michalek isn’t deserving of the WWE Hall of Fame Warrior Award. As a mother of two, pediatric brain cancer is a darkness I can hardly bring myself to focus my eyes upon. I choked up this week when I watched the recap of his struggle when they announced that he would receive the Warrior Award; that kid fought an epic battle. Part of me also has great respect for…
The Spectacle of Excess Posts
And then there appeared a curious GIF on my Twitter timeline: https://twitter.com/TraskVancity/status/574481893069955072 Seth Rollins waving the Russian flag. And over John Cena at that! Think of the thematic implications! Look, I know there’s deep thinking to be done about this one. I’ll update this post when and if it comes to me. 🙂
I grew up in a carny-friendly household and I married a corporate executive. My dad was on a first name basis with a local midget wrestler named Dirty Dan and my aunt and uncle were itinerant sellers of cowboy hats at fairs, festivals, and rodeos across the country. I have met some interesting folks — there’s a certain ethos that is distinctly different from the vibe coming off the corporate set. I grew up around…
Friends, I have discovered a subliminal message on Smackdown this week. Remember the email Rusev received from Vladimir Putin? I took a look at the Russian for my own nerdy purposes and compared it to Lana’s translation. Her translation of the email was more or less accurate except for one small phrase. And what a phrase it is! Here is the sentence in Russian: Как президент великой державы, Матери-России, я с гордостью хочу выразить вам…
I’ve taken a look at the analytics. When people hear Rusev udrya Rusev machka they hear udrya as mudria, kidrya, pudrya, and budrya. An impressive number of hits to my earlier writings suggest that the search engine gods have deemed me an internet expert on this topic. I couldn’t be more proud. In a month and a half my original Rusev post has more than 200 hits. For some nerd’s literary wrestling blog that’s less…
I deleted a post from earlier today about Sting that didn’t make sense. I still think I have a point to make about how his whole gimmick is stupid, but I can’t seem to make things grok. I tried to write it again, but I ended up sucked down into a weird childhood memory vortex and had to abort the mission. I did, however, write a lovely paragraph right in the middle of that mayhem:…
Oh, how pleased I am to have new material for Quoth Bray Wyatt! Months have passed since he has said anything worth writing down, but this one is sublime in its simplicity. Here’s what he said at Fastlane when he entered in a coffin to Undertaker’s music, and soon I’ll transcribe for the annals his promo from RAW. In the past his monologues have smacked of Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams — what does this one…
True kayfabe is a rare bird at this stage of history on wrestling’s timeline. The fact that it is a scripted performance is now firmly a “no duh”. Or maybe a “yeah, and?” We all think about the meta in wrestling now, considering it in terms of storyline, product, and character development. We are completely aware that we cheer and boo for quality of performance, intensity of presence, and for surprises we weren’t expecting. It’s…
I’m seriously working on push ups; I want to master this as a yoga pose. But DDP challenges his yogis to do them in a most difficult sequence: set up in plank pose, then take the push up down on a three count, then hold for three hovering just off the floor — and here’s the hard part — then back up on a three count! I can almost never pull this off. I can…
I seem to have become a go-to internet source for the thing Rusev says at the beginning of his entrance music, and the posts I’ve written about Lana’s general linguistic curiosities get a fair number of hits as well. But it turns out I have neglected to translate for you, not-so-gentle readers, the thing Lana always says in Russian as she begins her promos. I was perusing the google search terms that have brought people…