Blog Love Omega Glee: The League Of Intelligent Wrestling Fans (3 May 2012)

Jake checks his email before work and finds an invitation to join an organization called "The League Of Intelligent Wrestling Fans". The email reads:

"Are you tired of being treated like a mark, a rube, a sucker, or a loser just because you like professional wrestling? Are you tired of wrestling promoters recycling storylines again and again that weren't even good the first time around? Are you tired of wrestlers who are over already but despite their popularity insist on making upcoming wrestlers job to them in humiliating losses instead of building up new talent? Are you tired of a greedy corporation trademarking every clever wrestling name and gimmick in sight so that the creativity has drained out of wrestling and every wrestler wrestles under her or his real name and never comes up with an innovative character because they're afraid their hard work and ideas will get stripped from them forever by corporate conniving? Are you tired of being looked upon as an idiot just because you like professional wrestling, the smartest sport on the planet, so smart that it knows 'sports' are stupid, so it makes fun of competition while still providing the action you crave deeply ingrained in the reptilian recesses of your brain, indeed guaranteeing thrills by choreographing excitement, while still allowing the artists room to improvise like jazz masters aiming for a masterpiece by midnight? Do you like your gymnastics and ballet violent? Would you like to see the wrestlers not treated like pieces of meat and instead be given health care, reasonable time off to recover from injuries, and a pension plan? Are you tired of the image of wrestling fans as people without lives living in their parents' basements, or toothless cretins channeling their miserable lives into soap operas of extreme masculinity and femininity, and venting their impotent rage by homophobicly chanting 'faggot' at the bad guy? Are you tired of an industry that remains locked in its carnival huckster past, afraid to recognize its status as an art form because of the terror that it will lose an extra dollar if it no longer dumbs things down to the lowest common denominator? If so, then join us because alone we're just howls in the Internet wilderness but together we can be a force for change in professional wrestling. Together we can demand higher-quality product. Together we can demand respect for the art form. Jazz was once considered trash. Comic books once were trash. Now it is time for professional wrestling, another underappreciated American art form, to be studied by scholars and treated with the respect it deserves. Great angles and matches should be hailed as the works of art they are. You know you appreciate them. But you are not crazy. You are not alone. Not once you have joined The League Of Intelligent Wrestling Fans (TLOIWF for short--by the way, if anyone can think of a better acronym, please let us know). You know you have exquisite taste in sports entertainment. We know you have exquisite taste in sports entertainment. Hell, just liking professional wrestling proves that you have exquisite taste in general. So let the world know by joining The League Of Intelligent Wrestling Fans. United we can change the industry and its image. Make the people who chatter insipidly about what scripted show was on television last night or the big game around the company coffee pot in the morning jealous when they hear you discuss the intricacies of backstage politics or ACL injuries in an endeavor that combines scripts and sports and features actors who are also athletes. Can your Oscarwinning actor get bulldogged through a table and still remember lines? Can your SuperBowl MVP athlete give a speech while being punched in the head repeatedly? Well, ours can! Bodyslam your boss (figuratively) when you explain who has the heat in the latest feud. Put your friends in the figure four leglock (figuratively) when you speak kayfabe. Put life in a headlock (literally) and squeeze it until it submits to you, the intelligent wrestling fan! They will all be amazed once you come out of the closet as a wrestling fan. Amazed! We're like MENSA on steroids. Um, forget the steroids mention . . . we're like MENSA with attitude! Attitude! Join The League Of Intelligent Wrestling Fans today!"

Jake clicks on the link and finds that it costs $99 a year to join and the organization is run by a subsidiary of Whirligig Whizbang World Wide Wrestling Works (WWWWWW), the huge wrestling company that runs the Grapple Groove tv show, and basically all you get for your money is a certificate and listed in an online directory.

Jake doesn't join. He's not smart enough to be that dumb.

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.