I didn't post this.

It concerns a wrestler from the 1960s, I met as a kid.

It was meant for my personal blog.

# posted by  Frank Partisan : Saturday, October 21, 2006 at 12:36:00 AM UTC

In the 1930's US there was a new invention. It was called radio. There were regular programs, audio plays, continued situational series, comedy shows based around some mythical family. For the younger here, it was pretty much like today's TV, but you weren't bothered with having to watch and the size of a woman's breasts were not a feature. Those were the years when there was still something called "music". That was nice and much better than either the 12 inch vinyls on acoustic wind up record players or the crap masquerading as music today. Families would gather together around the invention and make faces about what they heard. The only thing anyone was allowed to say was "Shhhhh!" to those that didn't. How dare one talk to despoil such a wonderful invention.

Another invention came along in the late 1940's. Its use for propaganda wasn't discovered until 1952, the year of my first vote and television's first entry into politics. That's when Ike Eisenhower beat Adlai Stevenson for US president. Stevenson was an intellectual who discussed issues. Eisenhower was, well nobody knew because he wasn't for or against anything, and that was the strategy of his campaign. The television just showed one person after another saying "I like Ike". It worked. Things went downhill from there.

Aside from that lapse into political unreality, television had been mostly about wresting, every night of the week. Families still gathered together and watched big guys jump on each other at the home of the one among them or a neighbor who had a little 8 inch, or maybe 16 inches for rich people, circular screen television. We weren't either. Everyone had their own technique for twiddling the separate knobs for focus, brightness, contrast, horizontal alignment, vertical alignment, heigth, width, and I forget the rest though there were some. There was no more need to say "Shhhhh!". Instead, everyone argued loudly either about how to twiddle the knobs, who was the best twiddler, or whether or not wrestling was real or fake. I was for real. So was my grandma who liked Baldini, the bouncing ball. After all, how could such a wonderful invention as television with all those knobs have fake things. And, reality continued down from there.

Today we get to watch la lucha real like it or not, as people wander around looking like they just got off a space ship and use all kinds of electronic gadgets to find people dressed more sensibly and then guide explosives to slaughter them. Families still gather around. Some pretend it is not real and switch the single dial to lighter shows they'd rather think are. Others, those of families surviving the ones slaughtered, gather too. They know what is real and cry a lot as they wonder why it is. Things are almost all the way down.

# posted by  furtherleft : Saturday, October 21, 2006 at 12:56:00 AM UTC