Blog Love Omega Glee: Coffee, Tea, Or EMD? (21 April 2012)

Speller B likes to spell things. In the ring when he wrestles, he will frequently stop beating on his opponent to spell out what he will do next (for example, "C-L-O-T-H-E-S-L-I-N-E") or what he will bash his opponent's head into ("T-U-R-N-B-U-C-K-L-E"), and then ask the crowd, "What's that spell?" When they answer correctly, he yells "Gold star for you" and then does whatever he spelled out, whether it's clotheslining an opponent across the throat with his arm or grabbing the opponent's head and slamming it into a turnbuckle in the corner of the ring. By the way, it is interesting to note that only in wrestling and other "ring" sports do rings have corners. Usually they're circles. R-O-U-N-D.

Unfortunately Speller B can remain locked in character. Instead of being his usual Darryl Bonjour, the soft-spoken jazz enthusiast who likes to wear sweaters and khakis, outside of the wrestling arena, he can remain Speller B, the loud hip-hop cartoon who loves bling and more bling. Particularly when he's had too much W-H-I-S-K-E-Y.

Today he seems to be Darryl as he talks on the telephone with Jake, who influenced by Francine, has decided to start interviewing wrestlers and writing original articles on his blog rather than just reposting news from other wrestling websites and reviewing the wrestling shows that aired on television the night before

Jake says, "I'm sorry you weren't in Cleaveland on the recent card. I enjoyed your performance last time."

"Yes, I'm sorry too," Darryl says, "I would have been there, but I had a big problem on the flight there."

"What happened?"

"Man, I don't want to get into it."

"Oh, c'mon, spell it out please."

"'Spell it out'? Man, you are punny. All right, there are all sorts of rumors about what happened so I might as well come clean. That's C-L-E-A-N by the way," Darryl says, starting to transition to Speller B, his voice growing deeper.

"Got it."

"Got what? I haven't given you the 'it' yet. I-T."

"Um."

"I'm just playing with you, man. Anyway it wasn't another hairpiece incident."

Speller B refers here to an infamous plane ride he took a couple years ago where egged on by his fellow wrestlers he consumed numerous bottles of airplane V-O-D-K-A in those little bottles and had a manic fit on the plane running around spelling various attributes and facts about his fellow passengers such as "C-O-R-P-O-R-A-T-E-S-T-O-O-G-E", "H-A-I-R-P-I-E-C-E", "N-O-S-E-J-O-B", "B-I-G-T-I-T-S", "T-R-O-P-H-Y-W-I-F-E", "M-I-L-F", "S-H-O-U-L-D-H-A-V-E-B-E-E-N-A-N-A-BO-R-T-I-O-N", and more until the F-L-I-G-H-T-A-T-T-E-N-D-A-N-T-S made him S-T-O-P.

"What happened was even weirder. I got paged at the gate in San Diego and the airline official said I was on the do-not-fly terrorist watch list. At first I thought it was a joke--J-O-K-E--and one of my wrestling buddies was ribbing me, but the airline was serious. I made the official doublecheck and it turned out some dude named 'Darrell Bonjour' was on the list. That's D-A-R-R-E-L-L and not D-A-R-R-Y-L. I pointed out that my name was spelled differently, but the airline dude didn't seem to care. I started arguing with him, and finally he said I could get on the flight, but I had to wear an Electro-Muscular Disruption Bracelet. Or E-M-D for short, or maybe E-M-D-B."

"What's that?"

"I didn't know either, but it's some metal bracelet that shocks you like a Taser or something. There's a remote control that sends a radio signal to the bracelet and triggers the electric shock. It hurts like hell, believe me, man. But I didn't want to miss the flight and the show so I agreed. So they stuck this thing on me and I got to board, but I'm sitting there and the flight's overbooked, and I'm flying this supercheap no frills airline. I don't think the thing even has a name. I mean it's like generic airline. Well, anyway some dude who works for the airline wants to fly at the last minute too but he decides that he doesn't want to ride in the cockpit because he wants to sleep, so they boot me out of my seat. They pick me because I'm a 'terrorist'. I'm like 'No way'. This is even before we take off and they want me to stand in the aisle at the back of the plane during takeoff--that's crazy, C-R-A-Z-Y. So I told them to fuck off. Do you need me to spell that for you?"

"Uh, no, I got it. Go on."

"So then they use the remote control to zap me with the radio waves and I get the hell shocked out of me. I'd rather wrestle in one of those crazy Japanese barbed wire and explosion matches then get nailed with this thing again. Not only did it hurt but I lost all control over my muscles. I shit my pants and everything, man. So they drag me out of the seat and airline dude plops down and I had to ride standing up in the back, without a seatbelt during takeoff and landing, with everybody on the flight staring at me thinking I was a terrorist and a flight attendant watching me like a hawk waiting for dinner ready to whammy me again with a shock. The worst thing though was riding by the restrooms the whole trip. By the end of the flight, those things smelled awful. And that's spelled A-W-F-U-L. Fortunately at the end of the flight, they said there had been a mixup and apologized. They gave me a couple vouchers for a free roundtrip domestic flight."

"Vouchers? Wow! That sounds like they're worried you're going to sue them. Are you?"

"Sue the airline? Are you kidding? No way! I want to use those bracelets in a match sometime, and they said they'd hook me up with a pair. I want to call it a Loser Shits His Pants First Match or something. Maybe we'll write the incident into an angle. I probably shouldn't have told you all this though. K-A-Y-F-A-B-E. What's that spell?"

"Kayfabe, the old wrestling code of silence and pretending wrestling's a legitimate sport."

"Gold star for you. That's okay, man. Tell everybody what happened. It's better than them thinking I had too much airline liquor again, and was D-R-U-N-K. K? C U!"

Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel, which is available in print and as an ebook.