My redneck weekend.

I was invited to a NASCAR/Wrestlemania party yesterday by some of my minions from work. Originally I wasn’t going to go. I’m not into NASCAR and the last time I followed wrastlin’ was when I was a freshman in high school. Neither really holds my interest. My minions gave me grief that I never go to any of the parties they invite me to, so I thought, “What the heck, what else do I have to do?” (Besides make a possibles bag, repair re-enacting gear, make new gear, finish 5 other re-enacting related projects, etc). So off I went to the party. I got there about half way through the Race.

I find racing pretty boring and repetitive. All they do is drive in a circle. If you’re lucky there will be an accident (with no injuries) to break up the monotony. Plus it just seems long. Of course I can watch 3 – 4 hours of football with out a problem, but that is different. Football is fun and exciting, there is action and thrills. Racing lulls me to sleep. So true to my nature, I started making fun of the race. Let me state first off; Auto racing is NOT a sport. It is a competition and the drivers need a lot of skill to be able to handle these cars. I caught a lot of flack for that statement. To me a sport does not involve a machine that has a power source other then the athlete. This was my first faux pass for the night.

The second was that I started referring to Dale Earnhardt JR. as “Marketing Whore”. That Faux Pass became an acceptable joke quickly. I swear that 3 out of 5 commercials had him in it. He was hocking everything from Auto parts to Zit cream! There is nothing this man wouldn’t try to sell. After I verbalized my observation, we started counting his commercials. Needless to say he was in a lot of them, and the rest of the people there started to refer to him as “Marketing Whore” as well.

After the race there was about 2 hours to kill before Wrestlemania 21. We filled this time by watching the WWE Hall of Fame induction that had been taped from the night before. For those of you that don’t know what Wrestlemania and the WWE is, I wish I was in your crowd. Wreslemania is like the World Series of professional wrastlin’. Wrastlin’ is not the same as wrestling. There is wrestling, the Olympic sport. Then there is wrastlin’ which is called “Sports Entertainment”. Again this is not a sport; anything with a scripted outcome can NOT be considered a sport. . Stating this was the third faux pass for the night. This then led to someone threatening to “drop an arm bar on by ass.” However I conceded that the participants were athletes due to their physical training and conditioning. This seemed to settle things down until I pointed out that the whole thing was fake. At this point a small riot broke out. I had three grown men trying to beat me down or throw an arm bar on me. Fortunately, they were not like the “wrestlers” we were watching and wasn’t able to do the moves they where attempting.

My highlight of the whole Wrestlemania thing was when they brought out Nikolai Volkoff, The Iron Sheik, Jimmy Hart, Paul Orndorff, Bob Orton Jr., Rowdy Roddy Piper, and Hulk Hogan. They had been inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. (I didn’t realize that wrastlin’ needed a hall o’ fame.) Back when I was in grade, middle and high school when I watched wrastlin’, I remember watching Nikolai, the Iron Sheik, Jimmy Hart, Hulk Hogan and Roddy Piper wrastle/manage. It brought back memories of when I thought that wrastlin’ was real and not much more then a hyper-violent play.

Other then the reason for the party, I had a good time. It was fun hanging out with the guys, talking smack, eating food our wives don’t like us to eat and just general horse play. Next Year Wrestlemania is in Chicago. They want to get tickets and me to go with. All of them think they can convert me to a wrastlin’ fan. Personally I don’t see that as happening. But you never know.