A priest glimpses hell
Tonight I went to the Staples Center. That in itself isn't a bad thing. But I went to see "Monday Night Raw" a professional wrestling thing. I won't go into detail how it happened that I ended up there but unfortunately I did. Standing in line to enter the event was very foretelling in how my evening was going to unfold. Now, I don't know what this means, but 60 or 70 percent of the audience would have been deemed clinically obese. I am not kidding you, I am not trying to be mean, but 7 out of 10 people were unhealthy in their weight. Then, there were the tshirts - which said "Hulkamania" "HHH" "I will unleash hell" and various other catchphrases from certain wrestling icons. Oh, and the signs that about 10% of the people were carrying - most of them on fluorescent posterboard - many of which were misspelled and had letters crossed out in extra thick sharpie pen. Mind you, we have not even entered the arena yet.
After standing in line for almost 20 minutes, a woman started shouting direction which I couldn't understand, so I went up to her and asked what she was saying. She was directing the crowd that there was more than one line; we were in the longest line, and we might want to go to a shorter line. Then I asked her why she was looking at peoples' tickets, and she told me something I didn't understand. When she looked at our tickets, she said "Sir, you don't have to stand in line at all; you can go to the VIP entrance." For which I laid hands upon her and prayed blessings into her life from our Lord Jesus Christ.
So, we went to the VIP line which has a barrage of security which checks your tickets to make sure you are supposed to be in that line, then checks your tickets again for a reason I have no idea, and then starts the interrogation - where they ask if you have this and that and whatever, and then you are asked to empty all your pockets. And of course, it just so happens that for some reason I have a pocketknife, a leatherman tool, and a pair of fold up scissors in my pockets. For which I hear from the guy wearing a red jacket, an extremely loud "NO" which I think means that I can't enter. Which actually means I can't enter. So I have to run back to my car and put them underneath my seat and run back. That would be fine if I was parked 30 yards away. I was parked one half mile away. Have I mentioned to you that we haven't actually entered the arena yet?
I get back from returning all my weapons to the car, and we find our seats. Then the festivities begin. There is loud music, there is a lot of whooping and nothing in the arena has actually happened yet. When some wrestling actually occurs, which is nothing like wrestling that you see in the Olympics where guys like really wrestle and throw each other to the ground and someone gets pinned, there always seems to be some kind of vendetta thing, and someone gets kicked in the groin, and someone jumps off the corner thing and misses the other person - and then the other person throws them out of the ring, and so on and so forth. All of this I really don't get.
In that first match, which was a doubles match or something like it, there were a pair of Frenchmen who seemed to be very hated by the crowd and played very dirty. They hit people with the flags that they were carrying. This is when the experience became as if I was living an HBO sitcom, which I normally don't watch, mind you. There was a Hispanic man screaming, "F you! F you! USA, USA!" I think he was in favor of the USA. There were large pauses between the F yous and the USAs. There were two young men in the back debating whether the man saying the man saying F you and USA was cool or just really really drunk. Then there were the two cute Hispanic girls who were very involved in the whole wrestling thing. To my amazement, they actually believed everything that was going on. One even asked the question about one particularly ornery wrestler, "Why is he being such an a--? Randy is so cute." Randy, the underdog wrestler, was being beaten to a pulp at the time. He would later go on to be beaten.
At this point I am just glad to be home. I don't have any theological insights. I've seen human nature at its lowest. I do not understand why people enjoy a theater of the bizarre based in violence and sexual innuendo and straight out debauchery. What worries me about it is that there were children as young as five that I saw screaming at the top of their lungs "YOU SUCK! YOU SUCK!" with their parents chanting the same thing. I don't know what it says about our generation but I don't think it's good.
Kyrie eleison, Christi eleison, Kyrie eleison. For you non Greek speakers - Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy.
Go big or go home.
After standing in line for almost 20 minutes, a woman started shouting direction which I couldn't understand, so I went up to her and asked what she was saying. She was directing the crowd that there was more than one line; we were in the longest line, and we might want to go to a shorter line. Then I asked her why she was looking at peoples' tickets, and she told me something I didn't understand. When she looked at our tickets, she said "Sir, you don't have to stand in line at all; you can go to the VIP entrance." For which I laid hands upon her and prayed blessings into her life from our Lord Jesus Christ.
So, we went to the VIP line which has a barrage of security which checks your tickets to make sure you are supposed to be in that line, then checks your tickets again for a reason I have no idea, and then starts the interrogation - where they ask if you have this and that and whatever, and then you are asked to empty all your pockets. And of course, it just so happens that for some reason I have a pocketknife, a leatherman tool, and a pair of fold up scissors in my pockets. For which I hear from the guy wearing a red jacket, an extremely loud "NO" which I think means that I can't enter. Which actually means I can't enter. So I have to run back to my car and put them underneath my seat and run back. That would be fine if I was parked 30 yards away. I was parked one half mile away. Have I mentioned to you that we haven't actually entered the arena yet?
I get back from returning all my weapons to the car, and we find our seats. Then the festivities begin. There is loud music, there is a lot of whooping and nothing in the arena has actually happened yet. When some wrestling actually occurs, which is nothing like wrestling that you see in the Olympics where guys like really wrestle and throw each other to the ground and someone gets pinned, there always seems to be some kind of vendetta thing, and someone gets kicked in the groin, and someone jumps off the corner thing and misses the other person - and then the other person throws them out of the ring, and so on and so forth. All of this I really don't get.
In that first match, which was a doubles match or something like it, there were a pair of Frenchmen who seemed to be very hated by the crowd and played very dirty. They hit people with the flags that they were carrying. This is when the experience became as if I was living an HBO sitcom, which I normally don't watch, mind you. There was a Hispanic man screaming, "F you! F you! USA, USA!" I think he was in favor of the USA. There were large pauses between the F yous and the USAs. There were two young men in the back debating whether the man saying the man saying F you and USA was cool or just really really drunk. Then there were the two cute Hispanic girls who were very involved in the whole wrestling thing. To my amazement, they actually believed everything that was going on. One even asked the question about one particularly ornery wrestler, "Why is he being such an a--? Randy is so cute." Randy, the underdog wrestler, was being beaten to a pulp at the time. He would later go on to be beaten.
At this point I am just glad to be home. I don't have any theological insights. I've seen human nature at its lowest. I do not understand why people enjoy a theater of the bizarre based in violence and sexual innuendo and straight out debauchery. What worries me about it is that there were children as young as five that I saw screaming at the top of their lungs "YOU SUCK! YOU SUCK!" with their parents chanting the same thing. I don't know what it says about our generation but I don't think it's good.
Kyrie eleison, Christi eleison, Kyrie eleison. For you non Greek speakers - Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy.
Go big or go home.
posted by Father Rich at 11:21 PM
1 Comments:
That sounds tame compared to some I've seen... and isn't that scary that a show like that could be tame?
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