Flash forward to junior year of college when my roommate began watching the WWF¹ every Sunday and Monday night. Jeremy was one of those kids who really got into wrestling when he was growing up, and at the time his younger brothers were very much into professional wrestling. In addition to bonding with his brothers, I suspect that watching wrestling was somewhat nostalgic for Jeremy, much like finding a toy from one’s childhood. Although I suppose it could also be that Jeremy just really enjoyed professional wrestling, and that would be okay too.

When Jeremy first started to watch wrestling in our dorm room twice a week I did what any good liberal-minded, elitist, English major would: I mocked him relentlessly. Many of my taunts centered around the fake-ness of it all, a charge that professional wrestling has alternately ducked and embraced since the beginning. My taunting had no effect, Jeremy continued to watch. The surprise was that I found myself getting more and more drawn into the world of the WWF. Week after week I found myself pulled in more and more. I knew the affair was in full swing when I found myself discussing the previous nights proceedings and speculating about the next episode over lunches. Imagine my horror, I was supposed to be spending all of my free time worrying about to whom Shakespeare wrote his sonnets, not whether Triple-H would finally beat the Rock for the WWF title.

So there I was, for nearly an entire year, rapt by what might happen on the next episode of Smackdown. While the exact plots escape my memory now, I do remember that I wasn’t entirely surprised when Triple-H turned heel and abandoned his friends. I was surprised that Mick Foley could return each week after the punishment he put his body through. While professional wrestling is certainly fake in the sense that the outcome of each match is known, and that the matches are very choreographed, wrestling is very real in the ways that some of the wrestlers are injured. I find the idea of putting oneself in that sort of danger incredibly idiotic, but at the same time I have an odd respect for the men and women of the WWF willing to push their bodies to those limits.

And then, after almost an entire year, the affair was over. I moved out of the dorm and no longer had cable. I also started dating Jenn and suspected that she wouldn’t find my interest in the WWF very endearing. I’ve occasionally lingered on wrestling on television a little longer than should be expected for someone just flipping through the channels, but I’ve never been drawn in again like I was that year in college. Perhaps it’s because Jeremy is no longer here to encourage me, or that the characters I like no longer seem to be in the spotlight, whatever the reasons I’ve moved on.

Professional wrestling had always seemed distinctly American, not unlike NASCAR or country music. Sure, I knew there was something similar to the WWF in Japan, but I didn’t imagine it to be nearly as popular as it was and is here. Imagine my complete surprise then when, finding myself in a Paris hotel for five hours the day after Christmas², I found professional wrestling in France. Could this be true? Could the French, who we normally think about as being very cultured (which some interpret as snobbish), also enjoy watching two grown men pummel each other surrounded by soap-opera-like drama?

Of course it was very late at night (or very early in the morning depending upon your outlook), so professional wrestling may not have the following in France as it does here. But then again the WWF didn’t start out in Prime-Time here either.

I enjoyed my wrestling relapse in Paris. I didn’t understand a word of what was spoken, either by the announcers or the wrestlers, but thanks to my earlier affair with the WWF I didn’t need to know what was being said. Trash talk is the same in any language. Here I was, stranded in a hotel room half a world away, feeling just a little bit better about the past few days because of a little escapism on French television.

Perhaps the most enjoyable part of watching wrestling in that lonely Paris budget hotel was recognizing characters from my earlier affair with the WWF. At first it was just the character types, but then, in the last match of the evening, appeared a character who seemed to be plucked straight from the WWF in 1999. Everything from his stringy black hair to his attitude, from his moves to his black and green unitard was the same. Even the way he taunted the other wrestler was the same.

I’d like to think that this is the same wrestler I had watched and rooted for so many times in college. And I’d like to think that he’s moved to France to bring his love of professional wrestling to another culture. After-all, as I know all too well, it only takes one other person’s enthusiasm to get drawn in and to start to love it as well.

So here’s where I need your help. If you’ve ever heard of a Norwegian band called Born Monster email me so I’m know I’m not going crazy. Of course what would be really great is if you know where I might be able to find a copy of their album(s). You’d probably be my hero for at least a month or so if you could make that happen.

Update

Mertz is my hero for the next couple of months. First for helping me find the Born Monster album, Nipple. Second because he got me some tickets to the greatest reunion concert ever, Hum. That’s right, you can all be jealous of how much great ’90s music I’ll be enjoying over the next few weeks.

And in case you’re wondering, I found the album at GEMM. According to Mertz, if it isn’t on GEMM it probably doesn’t exist.

Update 2: The Big Let Down

Turns out that GEMM wasn’t able to find a copy of Born Monster’s Nipple. So if anyone out there has another lead please let me know.

Unfortunately for those of you who like the big purple dinosaur you won’t find any of his songs here. What you will find is a song I wrote and recorded with my band in high school called “The Barney Song,” which includes the ever-inspired chorus “I hate Barney, oh I hate Barney…” I still think it’s a pretty clever little song for having been made up on the spot at a party.

So for those of you interested, here is the only album from the band Post, three C. Grab the individual tracks (highlights include “Dropped (The D Song), “Words”, “Good Night Dear Lover,” and of course the cult classic “Farmer”) , or grab the entire album as a zip (60MB).

three C

1. Mic Check (367 KB)
2. Dropped (The D Song) (3.56 MB)
3. Downstairs (4.13 MB)
4. Something (3.44 MB)
5. Emily’s Song (2.48MB)
6. Words (5.53 MB)
7. Answer the Phone (99 KB)
8. 3 to 9 (1.93 MB)
9. Angst (4.01 MB)
10. Tim and Jon’s Journey (1.73 MB)
11. Silence (91 KB)
12. Toss of the Die (3.72 MB)
13. Swimming (3.30 MB)
14. Soya (5.78 MB)
15. Shut Up Jon (296 KB)
16. A Song (2.48 MB)
17. Good Night Dear Lover (4.16 MB)
18. The Barney Song (3.78 MB)
19. Glue Gun (3.71 MB)
20. Farmer (3.01 MB)
21. Amnesia (3.59 MB)

I recently had a chance to visit the newly opened Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum in Springfield. The museum, which opened to the public April 19, is the more public-facing portion of the Presidential Library complex. I’ve read some reviews of the architecture that were rather harsh, and while I agree that the buildings probably won’t win any awards they do fit nicely into what seems to me to be a tradition in Central Illinois (and perhaps the entire Midwest) of building very pragmatic and functional structures. Some of those same reviews also took the museum to task for catering the exhibits to a grade school audience. To me, it makes perfect sense for the museum to do this as their core group of visitors are going to be grade school children on field trips. I’m guessing those responsible for making this choice did so hoping to create a spark of interest in history in at least a few of these children. I’ll agree that we would live in a much better world if we didn’t need to sugar coat our history lessons, but if it takes a little bit of that to reach an otherwise uninterested child so be it.

Overall I greatly enjoyed my visit to the new Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum. I’m not sure I learned a great deal of new information, but then again I’ve read quite a few biographies of Mr. Lincoln. Even so, my interest in our 16th president has been reawakened.

Scholarly Endeavors

Because I recently discovered Google Scholar the other day, and because requests for these documents are still showing up in my logs here are a few papers I wrote a couple years ago:

• Talkin’ ‘Bout: The Oral Poetics of Hip Hop
• Rainbow Gravitism: The Mysticality of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow
• Experience Design: It’s Not Just For Disneyland Anymore

Green Businesses

Speaking of Google, one of my coworkers, Joseph Juhnke, came up with a great idea for a green business directory that leverages the power of Google’s nearly ubiquitous search technology. The site is Seeking Unity, and it gives businesses that care about the environment a chance to get a little recognition and possibly a little free search engine optimization. Seeking Unity is in beta right now, which means that it needs your help to grow.

But it doesn’t really matter which one of us is “right.” What matters is that Bradway has penned a collection of essays that treat Decatur and the surrounding rural areas fairly. While the picture painted of my hometown isn’t the prettiest, it also isn’t the typical depressing picture painted by the media of a dying factory town. To me that is refreshing.

Perhaps this book will only interest those of us who come from Central Illinois, but I doubt it. While the place of the stories is centered around Decatur, the essays tackle much more than just place. while the people in Bradway’s essays (herself included) seem to be informed and molded by the places they inhabit (city/country, country/back country), they are also shaped, like the land itself, by time.

I think i’m going to recommend this book to everyone I know, especially those of you who aren’t from Central Illinois.

Jenn brought OX home to me one crappy day a few weeks ago, and, as sappy as it is to say, he cheered me up. So in the spirit of so many commercials from my childhood, I want to collect them all.