04 03 00

better than wrestling

Sheesh. It's rained all day and all last night.

I'm not really sure what happened to my day, here. I went to bed at a reasonable hour, intending on waiting up a bit early to finish my critiques for the workshop. Instead, I stayed up incredibly late reading a book I just got, and I was in bed until noon.

That's right, folks. Noon.

Anyway, I still got the critiques done and even managed to take a shower. I couldn't understand why I would have slept for so long. (Well, other than the obvious, anyway.) Then I realized that my body still thought it was 11am when I finally rolled out of bed.

Curse you, Day Light Savings Time. You always mess me up!

In Lieu of Professional Wrestling

I have a new TV show to watch.

It's only on for an hour on Sundays on PBS, but I'm hooked already. I've heard about it before, but I've never actually watched it.

It's called Robot Wars. It's professional wrestling for geeks. I love it.

If you're familiar with British TV shows, you may already have met the host: Craig Charles, who plays Lister on Red Dwarf. Some prettied-up fluffy chick provides the "locker room" interviews. Beyond that, the contestants are armored robotic war machines and their creators.

I sat through both half-hour shows without so much as getting up to use the bathroom. Each show starts with six robots, named ominous things like "BioHazard" or "Wheelasaurus." The elimination rounds start with the gauntlet. The teams must maneuver their robots through an obstacle course while avoiding being crushed by the obstacles or the "house robots."

(Side note: The house robots seriously kick some ass. The only one who's name I remember was Matilda, but they were all very heavy and very mean.)

Not all robots will make it through the gauntlet, so their progress is measured. The robot who makes it the least amount of distance into the course is bumped out. And then there were five.

The Tug-o-War is next. One of the house robots is hooked up to each competitor individually, and they pull against each other. Since the house robot is so heavy, most of the time the competitor is pulled into The Pit. Not all of them fall in, however. The robot who gets pulled into the pit fastest is bumped out.

On one of the shows I watched, one of the competitors pulled the house robot (who's name is Heavy Metal, I think) into The Pit. Oooh! Humiliation!

And then there were four.

The Main Event begins. Each of the four remaining robots is paired up with a competitor, and they are thrown into the ring with the house robots. The rules are fairly simple: you incapacitate a rival by immobilizing it. There is lots of destruction as well, since the robots are armed. Yes, armed with chainsaws and pneumatic battering rams and clubs. The favored method of immobilizing an opponent is to flip it on its back, so most of the robots have some way to right themselves if they are flipped over. If no robot is immobilized for any length of time, the judges make a ruling based on damage and aggression shown by the robot, and a winner is declared.

But once the robot is placed in the ring, the creators can only control where it goes and what it attacks. If it blows a fuse or loses a wheel, that's par for the course. If your robot is damaged so much that it is "dead," you can watch the other robots beating the shit out of it.

There's an audience, separated from the ring by a high wall of Plexiglas. They scream and shout and cheer for their favorites.

It's fun. And let me tell you - it's a hell of a lot more entertaining than that "Smackdown" shit. Pro wrestlers, while they might not be "acting" (in the sense that their injuries are real), are certainly not in any real amount of danger, except by an accident. What fun is that?

The robots, on the other hand, are putting their little virtual lives on the line whenever they roll into the ring. Mechanical glory can be theirs. Now that's entertainment.

Quit-o-meter

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