This is the Point at Which I Swerve You: Loving the Rock's Boston History Themed Promo on John Cena

I would like to thank the kind folks over at Salon for featuring my piece on Rush Limbaugh and the Crisis in White Conservative Manhood (Crooks and Liars also gave it some love which is always appreciated) The piece is running about 12,000 views as of today...that ain't bad for a little armchair psychologizing of the Tea Party GOP's number one bloviator. I will also be on Ring of Fire Radio this weekend. The always supportive Mike Papantonio asked me to sit in for a few minutes. Of course, I accepted the generous invitation.

Consequently, there are some new readers here at WARN. I welcome you all. Do come out of lurking and introduce yourselves. By way of introduction, I am an unapologetic ghetto nerd. Blogging is an exercise in self-indulgence and narcissism. I try to write about issues of public concern, but I am ultimately beholden to my own interests, odd predilections, and hobbies. In short, you never know what you are going to get: for me, that is the fun of talking to different folks about random and varied topics both online and in person.

Wrestlemania is in the air. I had drifted away from the WWE's programming the last year or so. But as always, in the build up to Wrestlemania, things got interesting with the rise of "new"talent (CM Punk), the return of the greats (Undertaker, Shawn Michaels, and Chris Jericho), and the feud between the one and only Rock and that guy who goes by the name John Cena. The Rock is an amazing talent. We know this. But, his promo on Monday's Raw which managed to break the fourth wall by winking at the audience in the first segment, play around with the movie Back to the Future and racial identity (just what would the Framers do if they met the Rock?), and end by talking about Paul Revere's famous ride was genius.

Boston was an excellent prop for some highly entertaining storytelling through the devices of physicality, dexterous speech, and athleticism.In all, the Rock's promo was so solid that it rivaled the Revolutionary war revisionism in my favorite episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

[Perhaps some intrepid soul will do a drunken history version of the Rock's rewrite of U.S. history? Could be fun...]

Those of us, we old time, smart marks who lived through the Attitude era were really and truly spoiled. Little did we realize what we were witnessing. Beyond the goodness of the Monday Night Wars, and early ECW, the mid to late nineties (into the first few years of the 2000s) was a golden age. Kayfabe had been broken; but, we still believed. There were performances like the Rock's on almost every show.

Is anyone else looking forward to Wrestlemania? Am I the only ghetto nerd excited to watch Cena and the Rock do the dance? The Rock has to drop the bout to Cena because Dwayne Johnson does not need to win. Nevertheless, the match should be a classic.For my ghetto nerd wrestling compadres, did we simply outgrow professional wrestling? Or has the product changed so much that it in fact left us, those who came of age in the 1980s and 1990s?