President Obama sounded strangely familiar as he wrapped up his State of the Union address. It was that mix of mea culpas and defiance. I had heard this somewhere before. Maybe not verbatim, not word for word, but the flow was similar. And then it dawned on me. My God, Obama sounds just like former and fallen World Wrestling Champ John Cena from Monday Night RAW about a month ago! Cena had just lost the title to the dastardly and hated Sheamus (yes that’s how the spell it). The democrats have just lost Ted Kennedy’s senate seat. Obama has failed to deliver on healthcare and the economy. Both men know they have let their most ardent supporters down. For Cena, whether he regains the title is entirely in the hands of the WWE scriptwriters and management. For Obama, it’s a lot more complicated. Here’s selected text from the two speeches and see the similarities for yourself.

First, here’s the President from the closing moments of the State of the Unions speech:

Our administration has had some political setbacks this year, and some of them were deserved. But I wake up every day knowing that they are nothing compared to the setbacks that families all across this country have faced this year. And what keeps me going – what keeps me fighting – is that despite all these setbacks, that spirit of determination and optimism – that fundamental decency that has always been at the core of the American people – lives on.

‘…We have finished a difficult year. We have come through a difficult decade. But a new year has come. A new decade stretches before us. We don’t quit. I don’t quit. Let’s seize this moment – to start anew, to carry the dream forward, and to strengthen our union once more.

And here’s John Cena:

I wanted to apologize to anybody that I might have let down last night. This is… this is kind of hard to understand, but sometimes you can try so hard at something. Sometimes you can be so prepared, and still fail. And every time you fail, it’s painful, it causes sadness, and especially as I saw last night, it causes disappointment. I’ve often said a man’s character is not judged after he celebrates a victory, but by what he does when his back is against the wall. So no matter how great the setback, how severe the failure, you never give up. You never give up, you pick yourself up, you brush yourself off, you get up and move on and overcome and that is what I believe! So… there are those who were so offended by my actions last night that they might have lost faith in me. I absolutely respect your decision to do so. But I’m not talking to them… I’m talking to those people who still believe! Tonight, I speak to those who still proudly stand in my corner! You have not given up on me, and I will NOT give up on you!

E. C. Scott with her band belts out the blues on the set of her video show, “E. C.’s Jook Joint.”

Since shedding the cumbersome bonds of WB-network affiliate status, KOFY TV 20 in San Francisco has truly gone apeshit or at least a bit touched. They’ve brought back the Yule Log marathons on Christmas Eve. They’ve started showing reruns of their 50’s Dance Party which were taped in the 1980s and featured working Janes and Joes of the day shaking it to Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley. The station’s horror host, the alternative rock DJ called No Name, spent several minutes of a recent Saturday night broadcast of Creepy KOFY Movie Time (their monster movie show) screaming in agony while a dominatrix shocked him through a pair of electrically charged nipple clamps. The torture being dished out in that night’s feature film, the proto-Giallo clunker Bloody Pit of Horror, seemed to pale in comparison to what KOFY’s host was enduring. I didn’t think that KOFY could shock me with any more local TV zaniness, but that was before the WTF moment brought on by EC’s Jook Joint.

The show is hosted by East Bay blues woman E. C. Scott from a shotgun shack set that (appropriately) looks like it was slapped together with some old pieces of scrap wood. A sign just behind E. C.’s left shoulder proclaims that a plate of red beans and rice goes for the low, low price of 5¢ at the Jook Joint. Scott, who also produces the show, takes on the long-lost role of media gatekeeper as she introduces us to music videos that look as if they were financed by passing around a tip jar and shot on old camcorders bought at rummage sales (AKA local TV gold).

EC’s Jook Joint quickly confronts you with the knowledge that the blues is still out there – that it’s still being produced in makeshift recording studios across the country. This show also made me realize that the blues is the most underground music in today’s America. Let’s face it: if guys like Christopher R. Weingarten or Chuck Klosterman call something underground, then it’s probably already mainstream, or at least a lot closer to it than most of the clips on the Jook Joint. The 21st Century blues player has to hustle just to get even the most barebones video out there. It’s doubtful that Animal Collective faces the same obstacles as Southern soul singer Carl Sims, who kicked off E. C.’s year-end top-ten list with his smooth anthem “It Ain’t a Juke Joint Without the Blues” on the NYE show.

Sims, garbed in the raddest champagne-colored suit ever belts out lines like “You’ve got a 40-ouncer on the table/You’ve got a trash talkin’ woman named Mable” all while a voluptuous babe gyrates on the stage behind him. Like many of the videos shown on the Jook Joint, this clip was filmed in a nightclub in a forgotten strip mall. Budweiser signs and flat-panel TVs are clearly shown in the background, but that crowd sure was moving. Similarly, a video from Texas blues rockers Smokin’ Joe Kubek and Bnois King for the song “I Saw it Comin’” was shot at the J & J Blues Bar where a large Coors emblem takes up a good chuck of stage space right next to the drummer. But again, the crowd was moving.

The blues can’t be picky. The blues can’t sit on its high horse and wait for a so-called “cool” venue to spring up to host it. The blues happens wherever there’s a sound system and a liquor license. The performers in E. C.’s collection of videos are young, old, black, white, or Latino. Concert clips of B. B. King and Etta James showed the blues legends sitting down throughout their performances; their bodies hobbled by old age or in King’s case, diabetes. Lincoln, Neb. blues man Magic Slim also performed all of his smokin’ guitar solos while seated but rose to his feet when it came time to sing, “I Need Lovin’.” While country radio has jettisoned its legends in favor of better looking young stars, the blues allows its aging players a place even when they can no longer stand. Sitting on his stool is the way that John Lee Hooker went out after all.

Sir Lawrence of Houston brings his own bottle to Double D’s for the grown and sexy.

Probably the bleakest video shown on the NYE show was “It’s the Weekend” by Sir Lawrence, an R&B man out of Houston. The song’s infectious chorus of “It’s the weekend, gotta’ get my party on” quickly gives away to verses that instruct you about managing a budget while living in grinding poverty. Sir Lawrence cashes his check at the liquor store, buys a money order for the rent and saves “a little for the water, for the gas, for the lights.” He also puts 30 dollars in the gas tank because that’s all he needs to get to work next week and he buys a Church’s Chicken 15-piece special so he’ll have some leftovers. After he’s done socking away cash for all of that plus adding minutes on his cellphone and giving a check to his baby mama (his words), he has a little left over to get his party on. The partying depicted consists of playing dominoes on a fold out table in a suburban front yard while drinking 40-ouncers or hanging out at Double D’s, a bring your own bottle joint “for the grown and sexy.”

(Unfortunately, the video for “It’s the Weekend” doesn’t appear to be online but I did find the following clip of Sir Lawrence.)

At number two in her countdown was “Love Again” by Chicago’s Ronnie Baker Brooks, which Scott describes as the “first steamy, hot blues video.” Set to a tune that resembles Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine” infused with an extra two tons of soul, the video resembles one of the episodes of “Cheaters” that shares KOFY’s late night hours with the Jook Joint. After some childhood flashbacks where we learn that Brooks’ heart was irreparably broken, a grown-up Brooks is shown getting in and out of bed with several different barflies. As the inevitable catfights ensue, I half expected Cheaters host Joey Greco to show up with a camera crew. Coming in at number one was a little piece of innovation from John Lee Hooker, Jr. called “The Blues Ain’t Nothing But a Pimp.” Comprised entirely of black and white, computer generated imagery set to a brassy and defiant tune, this video resembles a chiaroscuro “Grand Theft Auto.” Cars are crashed, guns are fired, Hooker punches thugs and gets the girl.

E. C. Scott put her own video at number eight, but I hardly think that any of the other artists on the Jook Joint would mind. The Jook Joint is one of the few broadcast outlets in the US for this material and Scott’s efforts come at a time when the Bay Area blues scene has taken some big hits. The Fifth Amendment club in Oakland has been replaced by a yuppie bar for years now and last year’s San Francisco Blues Festival was cancelled due to “lack of sponsorship support.” (Several alternative rock festivals had no trouble getting sponsors, again showing that blues is the most underground music in America.) While many of these videos are available on the web, and EC’s Jook Joint itself can be watched online, I would have never known about any of this stuff without that initial channel surfing revelation, showing that there’s still the need for that old-fashioned TV host, especially where underrepresented media forms are concerned. With E. C. Scott we have a gatekeeper we can trust.

“EC’s Jook Joint” doesn’t appear to be on KOFY’s current schedule, which is a shame, but Scott is playing at Biscuits & Blues ( ) on Friday, January 22nd. Click here for details.

#6 on the Amazon Kindle Wrestling 100.

My punk-wrestling memoir, Beer, Blood and Cornmeal: Seven Years of Incredibly Strange Wrestling (ECW Press, 2008) was finally released for Amazon’s Kindle this week. This pleases my good friend Len E. B. who only buys books on the Kindle now since he spent around 300 bucks on the thing. Likely due to Len’s purchase (thanks Len!), for a brief, shining moment yesterday BBAC was #6 on Amazon’s listing of Kindle bestsellers in the Wrestling category. My book was behind a download of The Marine Corps Close Combat Manual, which goes for the low, low price of $2.99 a pop and is authored by no less-storied an organization than the USMC. However, BBAC was ahead of Rey Mysterio: Behind the Mask, which came in at #8, and two different digital versions of Hulk Hogan’s 2002 biography Hollywood Hulk Hogan. Surprisingly, The Hulkster’s 2009 follow-up, My Life Outside the Ring, wasn’t in Amazon’s Kindle top-20.

The inclusion of my memoir, with its celebration of the ring exploits of Macho Sasquatcho, El Pollo Diablo (the Devil Chicken) and El Homo Loco, is likely to cause consternation among two types of grappling purists: college wrestling coaches and lucha libre aficionados.

Collegiate wrestling coaches (along with mixed martial arts fighters, Marine Corps Drill Instructors and judokas) are vexed that Amazon lumps theatrical pro wrestling, also known in certain parts of the country as rasslin’, with books on “real” sports such as amateur or competitive wrestling, mixed martial arts, judo, aikido and jiu-jitsu. This creates an odd-listing to be sure, where earnest self-defense manuals written by Ultimate Fighting legends like Randy Couture and Royce Gracie share a category with my book that features a guy who wrestles in a chicken costume while drunks hurl tortillas at him. As I write this, the current #6 on this list is the 3rd edition of Coaching Youth Wrestling, which sports a cover photo of two ten year olds trying to take each other down. Coaching Youth Wrestling is not only on the same list as my lurid account but also The WrestleCrap Book of Lists! (sic). I will agree with these Greco-Roman coaches: there is definitely something wrong with this.

Lucha libre aficionados will be angry at how my book could have come in ahead of the life story of a genuine luchadore for even one whole hour yesterday. I get emails from these guys from time to time, usually railing on how I haven’t “paid my dues” in the squared circle.

For any regular readers, I must apologize for what is nothing more than an overwrought press release here. I’ve abstained from such things for a while now, choosing instead to write what I term “quality blogs” or “essays.” But originally, I started blogging at the behest of my publisher to create a “platform.” These early blogs usually detailed publicity stunts like holding a book reading in front of Cody’s Books in Berkeley after it had closed for good or demonstrating choke holds on booksellers and librarians at the 2008 Book Expo America. Dan Sirota details this phenomenon in his latest OS essay, When Julia Became Julie, Content Lost Its Throne. It is difficult to imagine Robert E. Howard spending the time to prattle on about the release of The Bloody Crown of Conan on the Kindle. Or could you imagine Hunter S. Thompson doing this? Maybe we should crank call Harlan Ellison posing as a rep from Fictionwise Classic and ask him to blog the 69¢ download of Paingod and Other Delusions. I’m sure ol’ Harlan will love that.

Gene Barry (with co-star Ann Robinson) crashed a plane to get away from Martian war machines in “War of the Worlds” (1953), not “Invaders from Mars.”

Gene Barry, a towering figure of my UHF TV viewing in the 70s, passed away in a rest home in the Woodland Hills district of Los Angeles today. He was 90 years old. The Associated Press obituary of Barry didn’t even mention that he was in War of the Worlds (1953). That’s like forgetting that Sir Alec Guiness was in Star Wars!

Look, if you just admit that the greatest achievement of American culture was the output of science fiction movies in the 1950s, we’ll all get along a lot better. Sure Hendrix, Steinbeck and Miles Davis were all pretty amazing, but the greatest artistic explosion this country has ever seen started in 1951 with The Thing from Another World and The Day the Earth Stood Still and drew to a close in 1960 with The Time Machine. Some would argue that the 50s sci-fi movement actually ended in 1963 with The Slime People, but that film, where all of the action is obscured by the constant output of one heck of a fog machine, can best be described as an outlier. A case can also be made for 1962’s Day of the Triffids. Triffids definitely has the quality of such 50s staples as War of the Worlds and Forbidden Planet, but it’s British so we don’t care.

Yes, I know that Barry was nominated for a Tony for playing a gay night-club owner in La Cage aux Folles on Broadway in the 1980s, but that pales in comparison to playing a scientist trying to hold society together while Martians blast the living shit out of Los Angeles (and London and San Francisco and Moscow) with crazy looking heat rays that make a cool assed noise. The Associated Press did credit Barry with being in the other Martian invasion movie of 1953, Invaders from Mars. The only problem: Barry wasn’t in Invaders from Mars. Fact check people! Saying that Gene Barry was in Invaders from Mars is like putting Mark Hamill in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Gene Barry was also in the nuclear scare movie The Atomic City (1952) and he did some pretty crazy kung-fu with that cane of his in 108 episodes of Bat Masterson but I’ll always remember him as the suave but earnest Dr. Clayton Forrester in War of the Worlds, even if the Associated Press can’t seem to. At least Adam Bernstein in the Washington Post bothered to get it right and even imbedded this trailer from War of the Worlds in his Gene Barry piece:

The suspect is up against the oversized red truck. One of the arresting officers has the familiar grimace of many insomnia-fueled cable TV binges. “Steven Segal! It’s Steven Segal!” the suspect exclaims, motioning towards the uniformed cop in question and making the other officers on the scene nervous. The perp is right. It is Steven Segal. With one pullover, the suspect’s mundane brush with the law (DUI, a blown taillight, whatever) has intersected with such Hollywood action flicks as Under Siege or Marked for Death. However, this perp won’t get to test his martial arts skill against Segal on a high-jacked battleship or a speeding train. If he’s lucky, he’ll get Segal’s autograph on something other than a traffic citation or arrest report.

Something tells me that this sort of thing is going to happen a lot on A&E’s new celeb-reality show, Steven Segal: Lawman, which premiered Wednesday with a pair of half-hour episodes. The show follows Segal in his crisp, blue sheriff’s uniform as he patrols the streets of the New Orleans suburb of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana . As loony as the concept of Lawman may be, you can’t really call it a comeback because Segal never left. Sure, the days of $60 million budgets are behind him, but Segal has been cranking out straight to DVD potboilers since the end of his early 1990s heyday. He’s also appearing with Robert DeNiro and Jessica Alba in Robert Rodriguez’s upcoming Machete, the expanded version of the faux trailer from Grindhouse (2007). Still, Lawman has generated more interest in Segal than he’s probably seen in years, although links to A&E’s promotional vids for the show are usually followed by many a “WTF!?!” and calls for Segal’s retirement, at least as far as my Facebook feed is concerned.

Any need for an image makeover is one that Segal shares with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, which made him a reserve deputy 20 years ago. The last time this law enforcement agency got this much national attention was when it was one of the police departments that blocked mostly African American refugees from fleeing New Orleans during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in what is now referred to as the “Gretna bridge incident.” It should come as no surprise that Segal’s partner on the force, Colonel John Fortunato, is also the commander of the department’s public information office. If that wasn’t enough, Captain Alex Norman, another officer that patrols the streets with Segal, serves as commander of the community relations division. Segal is not only there to show them marksmanship and aikido takedowns but also the Zen of Hollywood publicity.

Reserve Dep. Chief Steven Segal demonstrates his command of the zen of backseat driving for his partner, Col. John Fortunato.

The resulting product is little more than an infomercial for Steven Segal’s ego. “As a lifelong practitioner of the martial arts,” Segal informs us in the first three minutes of the inaugural episode, “I’m trained to remain calm in the face of adversity and danger. When the world is speeding by for others, I see things for what they are. A cock of the head, a foot planted forward or back, a flick of the wrist, they all tell me something: whether somebody’s gonna’ fight, pull a gun or run.”

Evidently this extra sensory perception akin to the Marvel Comics hero Daredevil imbues Segal with the ability to backseat drive. During a high-speed chase he tells Fortunato to veer left or right. “Let me drive Steven!” his partner pleads.

“I’m just telling you where the holes are,” Segal replies. Steven Segal can see things no one else can see; do things no one else can do.

Throughout the two opening episodes, Segal reminds us repeatedly that he is an expert in the martial arts. He also mentions “Zen archery” and the “Asian Zen lesson” and the “Zen method of breathing” to the point where I can see the SNL spoof of the show before it’s been written and drinking games conjure themselves. During the cablecast, several ads aired for BBQ Pitmasters on the Learning Channel. Why can’t Segal be BBQ Pit Master instead of a Lawman? Then he can drone on about the “zen method of grilling” and how being a practitioner of the martial arts allows him to sense the meat as it starts to sizzle.

The mostly white sheriffs are shown patroling predominantly African American neighborhoods.

At times, Segal and his cohorts seem like an occupying force as they ride through “the ‘jects” (as Segal refers to the projects) in massive SUVs. With the exception of veteran officer Sgt. Lawrence Matthews, who is African American, all of the officers depicted in Lawman so far are white. Making them seem even more distant from the community they serve, many of them have New York or Northeastern accents. I can only wonder if scene after scene of white cops tasering black men will have the desired PR outcome for a sheriff’s office that was once caught up in the ugliness of the Gretna controversy. It was also hard not to view this show through the prism of Warner Herzog’s brilliant Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. It’s easy to substitute Segal for the manic Nick Cage here and scenes of alligators didn’t help. If only Segal started snorting all the contraband in the property room and seeing hallucinatory iguanas everywhere. Then we’d have a piece of cinema on our hands.

Segal is still trying to prove that he’s the badass he portrays on the screen and his ability to put a slug through his own bullet hole in a target is astonishing. But this approach only makes you want to see less of him. Jean Claude Van Damme, Segal’s rival in the martial arts movie biz, was able to accomplish much more by debunking his image in JCVD (2008). Van Damme’s fourth-wall breaking soliloquy where he speaks of the disillusionment of the dojo, the media, romance and shattered dreams was enough to get me to rent Ringo Lam’s Van Damme cloning epic Replicant (2001). The sight of Segal hurrying to get into each frame to look important won’t get me to tune in next week.

The celeb-reality show as a genre has given us family comedies (Hogan Knows Best, The Osbournes), romantic farces (Flavor of Love, Rock of Love) and now with Steven Segal: Lawman, it has given us a cop show – a bad cop show.

Jesse “The Body” Ventura displays his political acumen.

When Jesse “The Body” Ventura won the Minnesota governorship in 1998, it must have given other high profile bodybuilders a feeling of inadequacy that they likely hadn’t felt since they were skinny runts getting sand kicked in their faces. Less than a month after Ventura’s upset victory, Hulk Hogan announced a bid for the presidency of the United States that barely made it through a couple of talk show appearances. Hogan’s reason for running was that he was “10 times more popular” than Ventura. In 2003, when Ventura decided not to run for reelection, Arnold Schwarzenegger picked up the gubernatorial torch and became “The Governator” of California in the recall election that same year. In order to decisively one-up Ventura (his Predator co-star), Arnold won re-election in 2006 and sunk the California economy in the process. Jesse “The Body” envy can drive an oiled up muscleman to extreme levels of electoral lunacy.

Following last week’s big announcement that Arnold won’t be running for office again, and Hulk Hogan’s signing with TNA, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Ventura is resurfacing. Those guys tend to work like that. Tonight, Ventura is returning to his old stomping grounds to host a three-hour Thanksgiving episode of the WWE’s Monday Night RAW. Like all RAW guest hosts (or all guests on any TV talk show), Jesse’s there to shamelessly plug his latest project, a Tru TV show called Conspiracy Theory that looks like a less funny version of Penn & Teller’s Bullshit!. But as he trades verbal barbs with the current WWE roster, Ventura might be rubbing elbow-drops with the future political leadership of America. After reading the tealeaves, here is my expert analysis of the political prospects of some of Vince McMahon’s top superstars…

WWE Champ John Cena (left) and regular guest on “The View,” MVP (right).

JOHN CENA: The current WWE champ’s freakish ability to lift two wrestlers with a combined weight of over 600 pounds onto his shoulders before slamming them to the mat shows that he could probably even elevate the ailing economy of his native Massachusetts. As a candidate he’d be a dream. He supports our troops, has won an award from the Make-A-Wish Foundation and the Hollywood salute that he learned for his action movie turn as The Marine (2006) gives him a touch of the Reaganesque. However, in order to run for elected office he’d have to lose those baggy denim shorts of his. Even Arnie traded in his Terminator leather jacket and shades for a suit when he entered the political arena. Cena could become a political force in ten years when his rabid pre-adolescent fans finally become old enough to vote.

MVP: This former United States champ has been seen currying the favor of Sherri Shepherd on ABC’s The View a lot lately and that could be a smooth political move. Boosting one’s cachet with that daytime TV audience proved crucial to the success of the Schwarzenegger and Obama campaigns and Sarah Palin’s appearance on Oprah has definitely generated a lot of buzz. Although MVP has the charisma and the oratory skills for public life, he also has a conviction for burglary that could keep him from even voting in his home state of Florida let alone getting on the ballot there. While acts of burglary are often committed by our political class, most successful pols save their lawbreaking for when they are safely in office. Whereas MVP served 8 ½ years in an actual prison for crimes he committed when he was 16 years old, felonious elected officials are usually remanded to appear on Sunday morning talk shows, The Apprentice or Dancing with the Stars.

Tag-team titlist Chris Jericho lobbies for the endorsement of one-time democratic presidential candidate Al Sharpton.

CHRIS JERICHO: Yes, this co-holder of the unified tag-team belts is Canadian but he was born in New York, so unlike Arnold, he can still run for president. His other potential negative is that he’s a bad guy who regularly refers to wrestling fans as “gelatinous tapeworms.” But remember, Jesse always played the part of the heel too and that didn’t stop him from moving into the governor’s mansion. What makes Jericho interesting in today’s polarized political landscape is that he’s a born again Christian who not only gets irony, but revels in it. Some of this may be due to his growing up in a country that already has a universal healthcare system so his faith isn’t automatically combined with a rabid belief in death panels and birther conspiracies. Jericho’s ability to maintain his Christian beliefs while still being way into to 80s metal makes him the ultimate crossover candidate.

SANTINO MARELLA: Marella provides an ethnic comedy relief that we haven’t seen since the days of Chico Marx but it’s doubtful that his clueless Guido shtick will endear him to Italian-Americans. His donning of a tight skirt and wig to win the “Miss WrestleMania” crown is equally unlikely to win the GLBT or women’s vote for him. If only Marella was really Italian instead of Canadian, he might have a legit shot at the Italy’s Parliament. If the Italians would vote in Cicciolina the porn queen or Moussolini’s granddaughter or, hell, Silvio Burlusconi, what’s to stop them catapulting Marrella into high office? Think about it Santino.

JERRY “THE KING” LAWLER: This Southern wrestling legend and longtime RAW color commentator is best known for giving a vicious piledriver to Andy Kaufman, but he’s also a two-time candidate for mayor of Memphis, Tenn. The first time Lawler ran was in 1999 (the same year that Ventura was sworn in as governor) and the second was in a special election earlier this month. Both times Lawler came up short. Although he garnered only four per cent of the vote this last time around, I wouldn’t be surprised if this river boat gambler tries to make the third time a charm. This still begs the question for Jerry: why would you want to be mayor when you’re already the king?

TRIPLE H aka HUNTER HEARST HELMSLEY: By marrying WWE heiress Stephanie McMahon, Triple H has put himself in the company of recent presidential contenders John McCain and John Kerry. Having what Rush Limbaugh would deem a “sugar daddy wife” (but only if you’re a democrat) on your arm, whether she’s the inheritor of a beer, ketchup or grappling fortune, can almost get you to the top but you still might come up short come election day. I’m sure that Stephanie McMahon-Helmsley’s winning ways with audiences will be just as much of a boon to any Triple H candidacy as Cindy McCain and Teresa Heinz-Kerry were to their husbands’ presidential aspirations. Under normal circumstances, the presidential also-ran who is married to an heiress could look forward to a long career in the senate to salve the wounds of rejection by the electorate, however certain familial circumstances may deny Triple H this booby prize…

LINDA McMAHON: She’s Triple H’s mother-in-law, Vince McMahon’s wife, former WWE CEO and candidate for Chris Dodd’s Connecticut senate seat. Like other successful businesswomen entering Republican primaries such as former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina or former eBay Pres. Meg Whitman, McMahon may be “too liberal” for the rabid tea-bagger wing of today’s GOP. 1970s wrestling king and Goldwater conservative, “Superstar” Billy Graham (a big influence on both Hogan and Ventura), has already chastised McMahon over the WWE’s penchant for “bra and panties matches” and encouraging steroid use. Graham is supporting conservative congressman Rob Simmons in the primary and you can expect Glenn Beck to do the same. On her side, Linda McMahon sports a slight lead over Dodd in recent polls as well as a $50 million war chest. Just don’t expect followers of Beck’s 9/12 Project to consider such things when drumming blue-state republicans out of the party over ideological impurities.

* * *

So tonight, Jesse “The Body” returns to the WWE to once again bask in the limelight generated by the company that put him on the national stage. Just don’t expect him to stick around too long. Jesse’s got his new cable show to think about. Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair may be beating each other bloody in a tour of Australia right now, but Ventura won’t follow his contemporaries back into the squared circle. Jesse’s always known that the hard thing in wrestling isn’t making your big comeback; it’s staying away. The same can certainly be said for politics.

The special 3-hour Thanksgiving episode of RAW with guest host Jesse “The Body” Ventura airs tonight at 8pm on the USA Network.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I’ll be back on December 3 with my review of Steven Seagal’s loony foray into reality television, Lawman. Special thanks to Greg Franklin for coming up with the rad title of this article.

Illustration by Brandi Valenza

Roland Emmerich has built a career by putting the event in the event movie. His most famous film, Independence Day (1996), set the pattern by giving us Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith thwarting an alien invasion with a Mac laptop (presumably running OS 7) on the Fourth of July. With the exception of an anorexic Godzilla in 1998 and the Mel Gibson colonial gorefest The Patriot in 2000, it’s been all specific dates and times for this guy. Emmerich’s last movie was titled 10,000 B.C. (2008) and the one before that was called The Day After Tomorrow (2004). His latest showcase of computer-generated cataclysms, opening this Friday, is titled 2012 after every pothead’s favorite Mayan prophesy of the end of the world. If only Emmerich had been tapped to helm the recent Friday the 13th remake, then we could have had Jason destroying virtual models of every non-Muslim landmark with tidal waves and lava flows.

However, Emmerich may have gotten a tad too specific with 2012. If by some miracle the world is still here in 2013, blu-ray discs of the movie will seem more dated than Meteor (1979) or even Beyond the Time Barrier (1960). It’s a little like releasing a big-budget, apocalyptic disaster movie called Y2K in the late 1990s and then expecting viewers to sit through USA Network reruns of it in 2002.

One way to give this film an extra century of shelf-life would have been for Emmerich to scrap the whole Mayan-tsunami mishmash altogether and instead make a film adaptation of the rock band Rush’s dystopian, sci-fi album 2112. According to Mercury Records’ ad copy, the first side of the Canadian power trio’s 1976 opus takes us to a time of “Templevision, Megadon, twin moons, atmospheric domes.” While “Rush’s chilling vision” of a 22nd Century where “city and sky merge into a single plane” would give a director like Emmerich plenty to digitally project onto an IMAX screen, 2112 is also more topical than the seemingly more pressing 2012.

Left to Right: Ayn Rand, the goddess of unbridled capitalism and Neil Peart of Rush, her most rockin’ disciple.

In the album’s original gatefold, band lyricist and percussion virtuoso Neil Peart acknowledges “the genius” of libertarian icon Ayn Rand as the inspiration for the future-shock rock opera. Rand has been getting a lot of press lately despite being dead since 1982. Last year’s economic collapse and election of Barrack Obama have created an upsurge of interest among the American right wing in the enigmatic figure that Slate recently described as the “amphetamine-addicted author of sub-Dan Brown potboilers.” Two biographies of Rand—Goddess of the Market by Jennifer Burns and Ayn Rand and the World She Made by Anne Heller—have just hit the bookstores and South Carolina Governor Mark “Appalachian Trails” Sanford reviewed both of them for Newsweek. Where powerful acolytes of Rand such as Alan Greenspan engineered a global financial meltdown worthy of an Emmerich film (if only the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy could be expressed with CGI), Peart and Rush did the even more impossible by taking Rand’s “One Objective Truth” and making it rock.

Peart joined Rush for their sophomore album Fly by Night (1975), replacing original drummer John Rutsey who left the band for a career in bodybuilding. Bassist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson had already shown their instrumental prowess on the hard-driving jam Working Man from Rush’s self-titled debut album (1974). By rounding out the trio, Peart made Rush the greatest instructional rock band of all time, a favorite of young rockers struggling to learn licks through music store tablature books for decades to come. Lyrically, Peart steered the band away from party songs about ice-cold beers and casual sex and to a synthesis of Rand and Tolkien that probably would have confounded either author.

2112, the band’s fourth album and Peart’s third, wasn’t the first time that the drummer used Rand as source material. The song Anthem (from Fly by Night) takes its title from Rand’s 1938 novella and its lyrics extol selfishness, Rand’s highest virtue. “Well, I know they’ve always told you selfishness was wrong,” vocalist Geddy Lee sings in the song’s concluding verse, “Yet it was for me, not you, I came to write this song.” In a shockingly contentious interview with J. Kordosh in the June 1981 issue of Creem, Peart explains, “I think everything I do has Howard Roark in it,” referring to the pissed-off architect of Rand’s The Fountainhead (1943) who dynamites his own building rather than compromise its design.

In the novel, Roark sums up his and Rand’s philosophy while representing himself during his trial: “I do not recognize anyone’s right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need.” During the Creem interview, Peart paraphrases Roark’s testimony as a defense of his (Peart’s) devotion to Rand. “It is a life that no amount of money can ever compensate for,” Peart explains. “That’s why I could never, ever feel guilty about the dollar I earn.”

With Peart’s uncanny drumming abilities, it’s not hard to see how Rand’s tyranny of the talented, where the masses are “second-handers” and “inanimate objects,” would appeal to him. As the eighties progressed, Peart enclosed himself within 360 degrees of percussion containing almost every chime, cymbal and roto-tom imaginable, almost as if he needed the extra gear to slow down his thought process in the same way that a speedy computer runs extra scripts to slow down a program so that a normal person can comprehend it. In order to compete, Geddy Lee played both bass and keyboards, often at the same time through a system of pedals. Alex Lifeson, whom Creem described as “the only homo sapien in the group,” seemed to pale next to his band mates, despite his comparable abilities on his instrument.

In the 2112 suite that takes up the first half of the album, Peart delves more deeply into the conflict between the collective and the individual and borrows more from Rand’s Anthem than just its title and ethos. In Rand’s sci-fi parable, global society is run by a World Council that burns people at the stake for the merest trace of individualism or innovation. In 2112, the Earth is under the heel of the “Solar Federation,” which is run by priests who cram equality down everyone’s throats with massive computer banks. Red star banners are also unfurled showing that Peart both overestimated the longevity of the Soviet Union and was oblivious to Moore’s Law, which states that the number of transistors that can be placed on a circuit doubles every two years. The Priests of the Temples of Syrinx wouldn’t have needed “great computers” filling their “hallowed halls” but could stamp out free will through a device no larger than an iPod.

The conflict in 2112 comes when “a man” discovers a guitar and learns how to play it. He shows the guitar to the priests but they smash it like a disapproving Pete Townsend. Instead of “going Galt” like any good libertarian hero, the man kills himself to the strains of a really ripping Alex Lifeson guitar solo. Then, all hell breaks loose if the ballsy crescendos of The Grand Finale are any indicator, but a voice over at the track’s end tells us that the Solar Federation has “assumed control.” The individual fails and collectivism triumphs making one wonder what was going on in 1976 for Peart to pen such a bleak outcome. Maybe he was upset by the successes of Soviet proxies in conflicts on the African continent or perhaps it was the Saskatchewan government’s takeover of the province’s potash industry.

2112 was Rush’s first album to go gold and the album cover’s image of a naked guy pressing up against a red pentagram came to represent the band in the same way that inflated lips and a wagging tongue symbolize The Stones. By making the playing of a guitar the central heresy to the Solar Federation of 2112, Peart adds a human element not found in Rand’s writing and connects with Rush’s audience of young musicians in doing so. The priests reject the man’s guitar playing as “just a waste of time” in the same way that many parents discourage their teenaged sons and daughters from wanting to be rock stars. Where Rand’s heroes are belligerent industrial tycoons, Peart’s is an everyman, the listener of the album, the kid cramming himself into an arena to see his/her favorite longhaired rock band. Even when embracing Rand, Peart and company cannot escape hard rock’s populist underpinnings.

A late 1970s Capetronic composite stereo system similar to the one that I had as a teenager. Mine had a cassette deck and I must have played the shit out of “Exit Stage Left” and “Caress of Steel” on that thing. I also wore out my first copy of “2112″ on its turntable.

My own devotion to Rush occurred when I was 16 and took up the bass guitar. Peart’s liner note urgings even had me reading Rand, but I soon found that cranking up 2112 over and over again on my cheap Capetronics stereo (purchased at Gemco) was a lot more rockin’ than plodding through Atlas Shrugged. By the time I puzzled out the meaning of The Trees from the album Hemispheres (1978), a cautionary tale of the evils of unionizing and trying to level the playing field, I was done with Peart’s politics if not his band’s music. As I watch today’s Randian supermen of the market like Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein claim to be doing “God’s work” while raking in millions in bonuses and inflating the bubbles of the future, it’s hard not to think that maybe the trees should all be “kept equal by hatchet, axe and saw” (or at least the return of the Glass-Steagall act), even if Peart would disagree.

Despite my ideological disagreements with Peart, I still get the chills when I hear that wicked note bend that kicks off Lifeson’s solo in The Trees or when Lee strums some bass chords during the end of Red Barchetta. I’d also be among the first in line for 2112: The Movie along with scores of math rockers, Guitar Hero enthusiasts, Canadians, and guys like Ron Paul’s son Rand (I doubt he was named after the atlas company). 2012, however, has to resort to cheap tricks to lure us into theatres like miscasting John Cusack and then drenching him with pails of water as he stands in front of a blue screen for hours on end. My suggestion is to mute the soundtrack of 2012, crank 2112 through your multiplex’s Dolby THX sound system and rock out to scene upon scene of creative destruction. It’s either that or wait for 2112: The Musical.

With acknowledgment to the genius of Darren Norris for coming up with the concept of this post.

Terry Gene Bollea aka Hulk Hogan was able to navigate the psychotic world of professional wrestling for decades, but three seasons of reality TV destroyed his life more thoroughly than a jack knife power bomb through a stack of tables.

Since Hogan Knows Best first aired in 2005, Hogan’s marriage has been in the crapper. His wife wants half and is dating a 19 year-old from their kids’ high school. His son Nick went to jail for eight months for a 2007 reckless driving incident that left his friend, John Graziano, in need of round-the-clock nursing care for the remainder of his life. While Nick was in the Pinellas County stir, guards caught Hulkster and son plotting to spin the tragedy into yet another reality show. Hogan Knows Best got cancelled proving that even VH1’s Celebreality has its limits but the show’s IMDB and Wikipedia entries seem to leave open the possibility that it can return at any time.

After his show was put on hiatus with the disintegration of his family, Hogan has tried to cling to the reality TV gravy train. Brooke Knows Best, a show focusing on his daughter striking out her own, has made it through two seasons, but Hogan is just back story there. His stab at re-branding, the depressing Hulk Hogan’s Celebrity Championship Wrestling, was mercifully ended by the Country Music Television cable network after only eight episodes in 2008. The re-boot of American Gladiators, which employed Hogan as an announcer, didn’t make it out of 2008. While Hogan is most likely proud that Brooke has been able to let the cameras into her life without him, the Hulkster is one of the most limelight starved individuals ever to be ready for his close-up. With dwindling off-network options, Hogan has retreated to the last place that would have him with his appearance tonight on Spike TV’s NWA Total Nonstop Action (TNA, get it?).

Taped in a TV studio in Orlando, Florida, TNA’s flagship show Impact! is a far cry from the comparative glitz of Vince McMahon’s WWE, which made Hogan an 80s icon. While Impact! maintains the gritty feel of traditional big time wrestling that McMahon’s slick shows lack, and TNA does gives a lot of young talent a chance that might not make it on any of the WWE’s three weekly programs, the promotion’s top tier is beginning to look like a last stop for broken-down pieces of meat before they fade into Randy “The Ram” Robinson oblivion, or worse.

Recently, TNA broadcasts have made extensive use of highlight footage from an August pay-per-view match where the grey-haired Kevin Nash (age 50) and former WWE champ Mick Foley (age 44) beat each other into crimson messes with steel chairs, baseball bats covered with barbed wire and hidden razor blades. The most painful aspect of watching these scenes isn’t the massive bloodletting but it’s the obvious pain that both men have from wrestling on bad knees. Sadder still is the sight of Foley going to such extremes after his initial retirement from the ring in 2000. His three wrestling memoirs have made the New York Times bestseller list and he has written three children’s books and two novels. With publishing and commentary duties, Foley shouldn’t be risking his health and sanity by wrestling hardcore matches, but TNA somehow lured him back into their five-sided ring.

Like Hogan, fellow WWE castoff and recent TNA champ Kurt Angle also has marital problems. In September 2008, Angle’s wife left him and shacked up with Jeff Jarrett, TNA’s co-founder and a wrestler best known for smashing a guitar over peoples’ heads. That can’t make for a supportive working environment. In August 2009, Angle was arrested for violation of a restraining order and possession of performance enhancing drugs in a suburban Pittsburgh, Penn. strip mall. Angle parted ways with the WWE in May 2006 due to concerns over his then growing painkiller addiction. TNA scooped him up just four months later.

TNA president Dixie Carter and Hulk Hogan in the sleep-inducing finale of this week’s installment of TNA Impact!

Hogan’s first TNA appearance itself was beyond lame. He didn’t appear in the ring, didn’t call anyone out, didn’t stare down Angle, Sting, Samoa Joe or any of the promotion’s other better known grapplers. Instead we were treated to footage of a boring press conference held in what appeared to be a concourse of Madison Square Garden. Hogan, clad in a tight, pink t-shirt and a matching pink bandana (maybe to make him look less orange) gushed about how great Spike TV was as the president of the network stood beside him. He also referred to himself as a “game changer”.

Dixie Carter, the businesswoman who serves as president of TNA not the Emmy-nominated actress from Designing Women and Desperate Housewives, referred to Hogan as “the man, the brand” in a yawn of a speech that could have been delivered at any sales convention. She was also sure to let us know that she had joined Twitter. I shit you not. Like, that’s so early-to-mid 2009. At 9:30pm PST on Thursday, the Twitter feed itself contains only two posts, the first of which reads: “Celebrated the Hogan signing at staff meeting this morning with champagne and donuts.” In a nutshell, the fundraising symposium I had to go to last week contained more gripping mat action than Hogan’s TNA debut.

Vince McMahon would have never allowed things to go down this way. If Hogan had signed to the WWE, he would have been on Monday Night RAW staring down “The Viper” Randy Orton before being double-teamed from behind by Legacy. Hogan may have also been put through a table or hit with a folding chair right before the show ended, compelling us to tune in next week. At this rate, the Hulkster is far from making TNA “the number one sports entertainment company in the business,” as he promised from the podium. Instead, he will be another budget-draining mistake for a promotion with limited resources.

Yes, Hulkamania is back folks, but does it still run wild?

Manny Pacquiao, the “People’s Champ” of the Phillipines, talks about the worst disaster to hit his country since World War II in the HBO Boxing documentary series “24/7.”

Manny Pacquiao is in the city of Baguio in the Phillipines to train for his November 14 fight against WBO welterweight champ Miguel Cotto. The HBO Sports documentary series 24/7 is there to show us the fighter’s training camp but recent typhoons have left half of the city underwater. In between footage of the boxer hitting the focus bag with lightening quickness are scenes of the city’s poor wading chest deep through floodwaters. Mountains of mud have crashed down upon homes leaving hundreds dead. Actor Liev Schreiber’s somber narration sounds more like something from an installment of PBS’ Frontline than your standard sports doc. Pacquiao “would have to work as his country fell apart around him,” and the disaster takes “the most from those who have the least,” Shreiber informs us. This is heady stuff from a show that’s mainly there to compel us to shell out over 50 bucks to watch two men pummel each other through 12 three-minute rounds.

But HBO Boxing’s 24/7 has always walked the fine line between documentary and infomercial since it first started by building up the De La Hoya/Mayweather bout in 2007. Since then, 24/7 has become an expensive proposition for me. Out of the six completed seasons of the show, three of them have ended with me selecting the fight through my satellite television remote control. That’s a 50% success rate (at least as far as I’m concerned), leaving me out over $150 just to watch a few hours of television. Part of this is because I’ve always been a sucker for training reels ever since I first saw Rocky when I was six years old and 24/7 is almost nothing but training reels.

Even for those seasons of the show where I’ve been able to resist 24/7’s siren’s call, I’ve hemmed and hawed about ordering the fight until the very last minute before deciding not to. Last season, we saw Mexican legend Juan Manuel Marquez prepare for his September 19th fight with Floyd “Money” Mayweather by tossing volcanic rocks around an ancient mountain and drinking his own urine. In the Floyd camp, we saw his reunion with his dad. What HBO didn’t spend too much time on was that Marquez had to come up two weight divisions at the age of 36 to meet Mayweather. There was almost no mention of how this would affect the fight. Such analysis may have dissuaded people from purchasing that PPV. During the bout, Marquez only landed 12% of his punches while Mayweather achieved a 59% connect rate. I’m glad I passed on that fight.

The show’s seventh and current season, 24/7: Pacquiao-Cotto is a somewhat lopsided affair. Pacquiao and trainer Freddie Roach are struggling to train with “destruction all around” while Miguel Cotto is shown eating delicious-looking skewered meats and getting a new tattoo. The attempt by HBO to generate drama from Cotto comes not from the fighter’s present predicament but from his recent past. He quit during the 11th round of a July 2008 bout with Antonio Margarito after his face was beaten into swollen and bloody mush. “That thing that passed through my mind was stop the fight for my benefit, for the benefit of my kids,” Cotto confides.

Boxer Miguel Cotto cries “tears of blood” following his controversial loss to Antonio Margarito.

Like something out of an old film noir with Robert Ryan, Margarito was later caught using illegal plaster in his hand wraps before a January 24, 2009 fight with “Sugar” Shane Mosely. “You had to see how deep his wounds were,” Cotto’s father, Miguel Sr., tells the camera to the tones of dramatic piano music, “It’s impossible to explain. I couldn’t explain how some with gloves could do that.” Although Cotto, Jr. gets somewhat of a reprieve from the news that Margarito possibly had to resort to tampering with his hand wraps to dish out such a beating, questions as to how much Cotto can come back from such a beating remain, at least according to HBO.

HBO has three more episodes of 24/7: Pacquiao-Cotto to convince me to plunk down that $54.99 for that November 14th championship match and there’s little doubt that they will pull out all the stops to get this done. In the meantime they are showing us the wealthy of Baguio (Pacquiao sadly included in this) working out in air-conditioned gyms while the poor of the city languish in Katrina-like refugee camps. With this unflinching look at economic class amidst a natural disaster, HBO just might make a documentary along the way.

The first episode of 24/7: Pacquiao-Cotto can be watched on HBO’s website by clicking here. New episodes will air on Saturday nights until the November 14, 2009 pay-per-view match.

Al Sharpton tries to educate the masses inside and outside the ring on this week’s “Monday Night RAW.”

Capping off a month of rising racial tensions spurred by Glenn Beck and shouting Southern congressmen, this week’s installment of The Ultimate Fighter offers us a bout pitting a muscular black street fighter from Miami against a flabby redneck brawler who goes by the handle of “Big Country.” If that wasn’t enough, earlier in the week, the WWE’s Monday Night RAW was hosted by the Reverend Al Sharpton. While a former president decries racism and the current one denies it, one wonders if the post-racial era has any chance of regaining its pre-healthcare debate momentum after the shellacking it’s taking at the fists of our basic-cable combat sports, both real and staged. Only one thing is certain: the symbolism will be thick enough to cut with a tomahawk chop to the chest.

Al Sharpton is the latest celebrity to host Monday Night RAW since the WWE started this experiment with a June appearance by Donald Trump. While guests ranging from Seth Green to Jeremy Piven to Bob Barker have mostly used the show to hype new books or movies, Sharpton was there to promote his national education tour with Newt Gingrich and Education Secretary Arn Duncan (now that’s a tag team). This made for one of the strangest television hybrids in the process as the USA Network brawl-for-all strayed into the realm of community access programming, only with more body slams.

Sharpton was booed heavily by the audience in Albany, NY as he made his way into the ring to James Brown’s “Living in America” during the show’s opening segment. The surly crowd also booed the mention of the words “education” and “civil rights.” Wow, civil rights and education; what horrible concepts! Remember when wrestling fans used to boo Nazis and Soviets? Full time sourpuss and tag team belt holder Chris Jericho did everything in his power to turn the mob’s ire from Sharpton to him by saying that the people in the arena were “gelatinous tapeworms” who “don’t deserve to be educated.” Sharpton finally earned some cheers by “empowering the people” and making a match between the Caucasian heel team of Jericho and The Big Show and their better-liked rivals MVP (a Barry Bonds/Kobe Bryant takeoff) and the World’s Strongest Man, Mark Henry, both of whom are African American.

Pro wrestling, a phenomenon closely associated with unwashed hillbillies in the public imagination, may seem like an odd venue for Sharpton’s outreach efforts however the WWE in particular is responsible for one of the first post-racial stars with Dwayne Johnson AKA The Rock. Like Barack Obama, the Rock is mixed-race with ties to Hawaii. Early attempts by Vince McMahon’s brain trust at casting then Rocky Maivia as an Islander babyface fizzled quickly. Later, The Rock was the head of a cabal of grappling black militants called The Nation of Domination, but little mention was made of his ethnic heritage by the time he made it to the top-tier of the WWE’s roster. He didn’t have to dance in between clothes lines like his black father, Rocky “Soul Man” Johnson, nor did he wrestle barefoot and wear puka shells like his Hawaiian uncle Peter Maivia. Like Tiger Woods, that other pillar of post-racial America, The Rock was able to become the number one attraction in an athletic field that previously had a mostly white fan base.

Al Sharpton’s classroom of freaks.

After Jericho and The Big Show defeat MVP and Mark Henry (through nefarious means of course), the next time we see Sharpton he is on a soundstage made to look like a schoolroom. We know it’s a schoolroom because there’s an apple on the desk. Any good that the WWE may have done by creating one of America’s first post-racial stars is almost undone as Shaprton’s classroom is overrun by a cavalcade of ethnic stereotypes. There’s an angry Chicano, an Italian with a clueless dago shtick that was collecting dust when Chico Marx was still using it and a grunting dwarf in a leprechaun suit. Sharpton soon waves them away and proclaims that tonight “it’s all about “education.” Yes, I enjoyed this skit, and yes, I feel deeply guilty about this.

As with almost all of RAW’s celebrity guest hosts save for the incomparable Bob Barker, Sharpton participates in some of the worst television imaginable. Luckily, WWE champ John Cena is around to summon a steel cage to descend from the rafters as if by magic, thus restoring our bad TV equilibrium. Still, that large WWE audience was too tempting for Sharpton to pass up and the announcers did mention that you could find Sharpton’s National Action Network on Twitter and Facebook several times when they weren’t plugging this Sunday’s Hell in a Cell pay per view. Sharpton may be all about education, but Vince McMahon is still about the pay-per-view.

Kimbo Slice, the prophet!

If Don King were promoting Wednesday night’s Ultimate Fighter match between Kimbo Slice and Roy “Big Country” Nelson, it would have been billed as a battle between a black ghetto fighter and a white cracker. While the subtext of this match-up amidst the current political backdrop may be undeniable to certain intellectuals writing their blogs, race wasn’t even mentioned during the third installment of this season’s TUF. In fact, much more was made of Nelson’s big stomach than anything else. “He’s got the biggest belly I’ve ever seen,” Coach Quinton “Rampage” Jackson quipped before adding, “I wonder how he aims when he takes a pee.” UFC promoter Dana White, the man who sets the tone, also weighed in on Nelson’s weight by saying that the fighter “looks like he just left every buffet in Vegas.”

Instead of picking the sores of regional or ethnic divides, the producers of TUF let us get to know the fighters as likable guys with human foibles. In the beginning of the episode, Kimbo Slice talked about how he fought anyone and everyone because he felt they were “the enemy” until he had a revelation. “The true you is the enemy,” he said, “the inner me: enemy!” The more time the camera spends with Kimbo, the more you want to get to know him. “A bird that flies high eventually has to come down to get water,” he tells a fellow fighter, dispensing a kind of zen warrior wisdom that would sound cornball if it wasn’t delivered by such an imposing man. In my previous review of the season premiere of TUF, I wrote that this season’s older roster would have deeper back stories, and this episode is paying those dividends.

Nelson, bearded and scruffy, is kind of the John Kruk of mixed martial arts. As a former champion of the now defunct International Fight League, he is also the most experienced fighter on TUF this season. “He has tons of experience,” Coach Rashad Evans observes, “He won’t be intimidated by Kimbo.”

The weigh-in is brought to us by the “superior sludge protection of Castrol GTX.” Kimbo and his massive shoulders weigh an even 230 pounds and Nelson tips the scales at 264 pounds. “You don’t look like you weigh 264,” Kimbo tells Nelson but then Nelson takes off his shirt and reveals his spare tire. There will be two five minute rounds. If the fight ends in a tie, one more “sudden victory” round will be ordered.

The Battle of the Bulge: Slice and Nelson square off during the first round of their Ultimate Fighter bout.

Both fighters are cautious during the first minute of the match. Nelson frustrates Kimbo early on with his jab but Kimbo rushes in and starts throwing the bombs that have sent so many other hard men to the pavement. Nelson ties Slice up and both men’s flesh grinds on the Octagon’s chain link fencing as they vie for position. Nelson finally takes his man down. Kimbo’s head lands at a painful angle on the cage wall. Slice almost bridges out but Nelson maintains the mounted position and starts throwing short punches to the top of Kimbo’s dome. The round ends. “Big Country” has probably won it.

The second round begins. Nelson looks a little tired. Kimbo throws punches with the force of a jackhammer. Nelson looks dazed but takes Slice down again. Both men land hard on the mat. Kimbo, a heavy puncher with little experience in ground fighting is as effective in this position as a fighter jet is on a runway. Nelson lands more short punches to Kimbo’s bald dome. The ref orders Kimbo to fight back or else he’s calling the fight. Kimbo is tied up. He does nothing. The ref stops the bout in the second round. “Big Country” Nelson, the show’s most experience contestant has taken out its best known star.

“None of us could get that big belly the hell off of us,” the ever quotable “Rampage” Jackson muses, “It’s like having the moon sitting on you. How do you get the moon off of you?”

Roy “Big Country” Nelson’s win over Kimbo Slice wasn’t a win of white over black, but a victory for the fat over the fit.