armed and dangerous

The 2004 Arm Wrestling Nationals are on ESPN2 right now. Incidentally, unless they start airing reruns of the Brady Bunch on ESPN2, this is the first and last time I will ever tune in. As I was scanning the channels, I happened to hear that the contest was taking place at the Queen Victoria Casino in Rising Sun, Indiana which is about 30 mintutes from where I grew up.

Fascinating sport. These are the great minds of our society - especially the guy with the cleft palatte and missing tooth. What a philosopher he is. I wonder if doctors will EVER come up with a treatment for cleft palatte...

I digress!!

"This mah son. He guna be a world champion" he says, as he proudly showcases the green blob tattoo on his forearm that probably vaguely resembled a portrait of a young child at some point.

On to the competition! Physiologically, these men look...how shall we say..."interesting". I'm watching the "Left-handed" championships. Of course! I mean you have lightweight, welter-weight, heavy-weight boxing. It stands to reason you'd have leftie and rightie "arm-wrasslers". So their "wrasslin" arm bears a striking resemblance to two full-term pregnant hogs wrapped end-to-end in a flour tortilla. The "non-dominant" appendage, however, looks like someone tore off his real arm and replaced it with Paris Hilton's arm.

That's hot.

Finally, the hogs-in-tortilla-armed men step up to the competition podium...table...thing. With pads. The referee sets their chalk-covered hands in position after much trash talking, bitching, and struggling between contestants, the whistle blows, and 0.075 seconds later, our blob-tattoo, philosopher friend is baring his gap-toothed grin in victory. He's happy, but I can't help but have lingering sympathy for the guy who lost. He probably trained for months, raised money, perhaps even earned sponsorships, loaded up the RV and drove clear from Kokomo, Indiana to attend the championships, only to be eliminated in .075 seconds. Even in drag racing, you at least get to travel a quarter mile. Having your forearm slammed into a cheap vinyl pad hardly seems worth the tank of gas it took to get there.

All this arm-wrasslin talk gave me fond memories of the blockbuster Stallone hit "Over the Top". This movie is horribly wonderful in the same way that "Roadhouse" is horribly wonderful. If you haven't already, I highly recommend you watch the mis-adventures of James Dalton and Lincoln Hawk IMMEDIATELY. Don't thank me. It'll be the best 4 hours of your life, I sewar....I mean, I swear.