Blog Love Omega Glee: Why America Loves Gangsters (25 May 2012)

Benito Crimeinthealli, the mafioso wrestler, has just slapped The Plumper Plumber's aged mother with a stick of pepperoni, a move done totally without provocation and a signal to the crowd that Benito is a lowlying, scumsucking bully of a heel.

Unexpectedly, the crowd cheers wildly. "Hit her again," someone yells, followed by someone else yelling, "No, shove it up her butt instead!"

Jake pauses the online video of the match as Benito breaks out a switchblade comb and fixes his greasy, black hair, jeering at the Plumber who has rushed to the side of his crumpled mother. Jake scratches his head, looks at the flakes of white scalp underneath his fingernails. He clears them out by digging underneath with another fingernail. This sort of mild self-mutilation indicates that he is thinking.

Here is what he is thinking:
1) Why didn't Francine want to see him yesterday?
2) Why did she say she was too busy today as well?
3) Why would a wrestling fan think hitting an old lady with a stick of pepperoni was cool?
4) Why is Benito Crimeinthealli so popular, even though he's supposed to be a bad guy?
5) Why do Americans like gangsters at all?
and 6) How long should he wait before he calls Francine again on the telephone?

Here are his attempts at answers:
1) I don't know.
2) She's dating someone else.
3) Wrestling fans like to see people get hit by weird objects. This is an incomplete list of things wrestling fans enjoy seeing people get hit with: Chairs (especially of the metal folding variety), tables, ladders, bamboo canes, candy canes, walking canes, walkers, wheelchairs, people in wheelchairs, ring bells, microphones, telephones, megaphones, pretty much anything that ends in 'phone', street signs, trash cans, barbed wire, baseball bats, baseball gloves, baseball bases, baseball players, baseballs, cheese graters, toasters, blenders, microwave ovens, other household appliances (especially when used by The Angry Housewife), beer cans, pop bottles, nachos, pies, cakes, bags of chips, sledgehammers, shovels, rakes, hoes, hos, Ho-Hos, pillows, programs, books, DVDs, television sets, stereos, iPods, peapods, stuffed animals, live animals, dead animals, small children, senior citizens, automobiles, and anything else that one person can hit another person with.
4) Ray Hassan, the wrestler who portrays the character, is very talented. His humor and in-ring skills cause the fans to overlook the overt signals that his character is nasty, things such as hitting an elderly woman with a meat product for no reason other than that she's your opponent's mother.
5) Americans like gangsters because the country was basically founded by gangsters, who came over here from Europe and stole the land of the natives. Then they stole some people from Africa to work the stolen land. Then they felt bad about it and said sorry, but never did anything to change the results. As a result, the country loves gangsters in its popular culture, although not in reality since they send today's gangsters to jail. The same goes for pirates and serial killers. Jake is glad his history degrees are finally coming in handy.
6) It's been twenty minutes and that's long enough. Jake picks up the phone.

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.