Random Reminiscence (pt. 2)

A personal favorite, from February 12, 2006 ...

In the movie Fallen, Denzel Washington plays a character who makes the following statement. "There are moments in life that define your existence. Your entire life is separated into two parts: time before this event, and time after this event."

Ok, so that's not exactly what he said, but that's the gist of it. Anyway, I had one of these such moments. Now, Denzel's moment was when he found out that a demon was seeking to possess his body and ultimately destroy him because he was responsible for the execution of his former host. That's not quite what happened to me, but I believe the two events are of equal magnitude.

This moment I speak of occured 16 days ago, on January 27, 2006, when I attended for the first time the finest source of entertainment in the Denton, TX area, if not the world. Yes, that's right. I attended the weekly program of Xtreme Championship Wrestling (XCW, to those in the know) and it was everything I thought it could be. If you've never been to an independent professional (read: fake and ridiculous) wrestling show, go get about 12 guys and go right now. Get up and leave the computer behind. This post will be here when you get back. Go on.

There! Wasn't it amazing!?! Aren't you glad you went? As am I.

Our venture to XCW started on a whim one night and turned into the most fun I've had down here. A big, obnoxious group of about 15 of us showed up in force at the XCW arena, and they had no idea what hit them. My initial plan was to try and get us all thrown out, but it became quickly apparent that that was absolutely impossible, shy of brandishing a firearm. Some of the guys figured we should try and fit in with the locals, so most everybody tried to redneck themselves up as much as humanly possible, and they did a pretty darn good job of it. I chose not to even try, because I would just look like an idiot. Come to think of it, they all looked like idiots, too ...

Anyway, I'll have to post one of our group pictures later, when I can get my hands on one of them. For now, you'll have to settle for a picture of our favorite wrestler the whole night. His name is Sidd Murder, and he was the first one we saw. In fact, it pretty much went downhill after Sidd. He was awesome, though. His intro involved him coming out to a Lil' John song and dumping a gallon of water on his head while he danced around. Hilarious. Anyway, here's Sidd: (edit: apparently, the link to Sidd's picture doesn't work, but if you go here, you can see a thumbnail shot. Well worth the click ...)

Tell me he shouldn't be the XCW Heavyweight Champion!

Anyway, what made XCW such a success was the endless heckling of the wrestlers. None of them were that good, so we had to invent our own fun. This consisted of thinking of the funniest thing we could, and then screaming it. The arena was pretty small, so they (and everyone else) could hear whatever we were yelling. We would pick our favorite at the outset of the match and then obnoxiously spur him on. One of our favorites on the night was participating in a title match, and unfortunately he lost. All of us were disappointed, but not all of us gave up hope. Chris Babiak, mild-mannered film student from UT-Austin, decided to let the retaining champion have a piece of his mind. He ran over to the railing, no more than 8 feet away from this massive wrestler proudly holding his championship belt in the air, and screamed with conviction:

"I've got your momma's belt at my house!!!"

The guy was stunned. He actually started laughing. None of us expected that out of Babiak, but we sure were glad to see it.

I could talk for days about XCW, but I'll have to cut it short for now. If you're interested, check out tcwonline.net for more information. I'm sure you won't be disappointed.