Hulk Hogan Beer Pong Training Camp

We recently watched the Chernobyl HBO miniseries about the nuclear disaster in the former Soviet Union. It was crazy to see their government preside over a disaster that they then ignored then covered up resulting in a great loss of life. I can't imagine what that must have been like.

In the series they have a Geiger counter at the power plan that blew up. One of the non-idiot characters says something like "that meter only goes up to 75, so we need to maybe get a better one." His manager does not get a better one, and instead just tells his superiors that the instruments read 75 whatevers of horrible radiation. The powers that be then repeat amongst themselves over and over that 75 isn't that bad so this isn't that big of a disaster and it will be easily controlled.

Well the game show host that Russia and the south elected to be our president talks the exact same idiot way:

"The media likes to say we have the most cases, but we do, by far, the most testing.  If we did very little testing, we wouldn’t have the most cases. So, in a way, by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad."

"Don’t forget, we have more cases than anyone in the world, but why? Because we do more testing. When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases."

"You know, testing is a double-edged sword. We’ve tested now 25 million people. It’s probably 20 million people more than anybody else. German’s done a lot. South Korea’s done a lot. They called me, they said the job you’re doing (trails off). Here’s the bad part. When you’re testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people, you’re going to find more cases. So I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please.’"

A recent knucklehead retort to the rising coronavirus death toll is that the people who were dead had other conditions. Rather than confront the truth that the government has bungled their response to this, people that did not do well in high school science class are suddenly armchair epidemiologists. Well one of those comorbidities happens to be being fat. And 73.6% adults in this country are overweight. So why apologists act like "only previously sick people are dying" means anyone is safe is mystifying.

A dream of mine, maybe my most dearly held dream of all, has been to rock a Hulk Hogan horseshoe mustache. Unfortunately "interacting with others who would ridicule me" always held me back form becoming my true self. No longer!

Zoe was always the one with the beer pong table. Well all that power went to her head, and she would cheat and cheat. Well I showed her! We have enough time to train that I think we will be ready for the beer pong olympics when this is all over.

Lydia's Introduction to Pro Wrestling

I like to lurk on the St. Louis subreddit to keep abreast of St. Louis happenings.

Then I saw this beautiful Ric Flair tweet and it was on. Nature Boy and Hulk Hogan?!

I watched this about 50 times to get into the right headspace and to practice my "Wooooo!"

It was funny when I asked Lydia if she wanted to see Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair she quickly agreed. When we arrived at the Enterprise Center though, she seemed confused. She didn't realize that we were going to see professional wrestling! Like did she think this was going to be a book tour or what?

We watched a few fights and waited for the legends to emerge. In between fights the silence was broken with lots of "Woooos!"

I was doing my best Macho Man Randy Savage impression. Lydia agreed that the cream rises to the top.

As far as fan experiences went, there was some left to be desired. For example: they were playing commercials in between fights! The hell?

Lydia was being a bit of a poop and kept talking about the damage all of this stlylized violence was doing to the children watching. Teachers are a real bummer sometimes.

I haven't watched wrestling in a long long time. I understood that bringing the greats out was probably a way to appeal to a certain demographic and get me interested in the new talent. I... really didn't care if the new talent lived or died to be honest. Bring out the Hulk!

Now I assume neither of them wrestle anymore. I know that Ric Flair has had some health issues. Despite that fact I was still happy to see them. It was like a little gift to my 8 year old self. I don't really do much for that kid these days.

Here's a match between the two from back in the day.

It was kind of funny that each of them was sort of like a promoter for another dude who was actually going to do the wrestling. I was a little annoyed that they did get in each other's face and do some trash talking, but they weren't miced! The audience couldn't hear a single thing either of them said. That combined with the ridiculous commercials they kept playing kind of soured me on the experience a bit. Oh well. It was fun.

Back in the lobby we did some important business.

Speaking of business: I went to the merch table for amusement and I was not disappointed. That red and gold belt in the center? $425!!