COLUMN: Russell Crowe is neither American nor a real gladiator
I want to take you back to a simpler time, a time when it was possible for steroid-addled, berserker monsters wearing red, white, blue and sequined leotards to manhandle any average Joe with a bad-ass mullet during a competition made up of feats of strength and agility.
If you haven’t guessed what I’m talking about yet … well, may God have mercy on your poor, misguided soul. I’m talking about “American Gladiators” – “AG” for short – which for my money may be the greatest thing ever to grace the TV screens of Americans in the illustrious history of the medium.
Forget the moon landing. Forget Watergate. Forget the toppling of the Berlin Wall. Forget the obese babies episode of “Maury.” Forget the Anna Nicole Smith trial. “AG” gets all those broadcasts in a headlock and chokes them out with its huge biceps.
This is what’s playing on TV in heaven: a show where an accountant from Tuscaloosa, Ala., can compete against a cement truck driver from Gillette, Wyo., in competitions called assault, atlasphere, breakthrough and conquer, joust and powerball, and finish with the ultimate competition, the eliminator. And the whole time, the contestants are getting severely beaten by huge, spandex-clad behemoths with names like Nitro, Laser, Gemini, Zap, Lace, Malibu, Titan, Ice and Thunder.
What, that sounds exactly like “AG”? You bet it does, because heaven is one super-awesome “AG” marathon broadcast in HD.
Even if you can’t agree that this is heaven, you can surely recognize that “AG” was definitely the high-water mark for TV – everything before it was only a build up to “AG” and everything after is rushing away from it in terror. We just don’t make shows like this anymore, people.
Instead, we have “American Idol” and “Deal or No Deal.” I’ll tell you what we should do – let’s put Sanjaya and Simon Cowell from “American Idol” and maybe Howie Mandel from “Deal or No Deal” into the eliminator against Nitro, Gemini and Malibu. Now that’s good TV.
Or, better yet, we could put them in the joust. If you’ve never seen “AG” before, I’ll have to explain the joust to you. It’s great.
It takes place on a narrow platform that’s probably 6 to 8 feet above a sea of blue pads. The contestant and the gladiator each have massive Q-Tips in their hands. And the whole object of this game is to use your super-sized Q-Tip to bludgeon your opponent until they fall unconscious off of the platform.
Actually, that’s really just how I’d like to see it played. The real object is to get your opponent off of the platform without taking your hands off of the colossal Q-Tip. Mostly it’s just pushing, but occasionally someone will land a good blow with their Q-Tip. Oh, there are trap doors at the each end of the platform too, as if it needed to be any cooler.
If you can’t picture it, just get on YouTube and find some joust videos. Maybe look up assault videos too. It’ll be the best time investment of your life.
But, back to Sanjaya getting beaten by – we’ll say Malibu, because he has a rockin’ blond mullet – a man three times his size, who’s wearing blue and red spandex with sequins, and whose blond locks are flowing out the back of what looks like hockey headgear.
Maybe Malibu could grip the mammoth Q-Tip like a baseball bat and take a full swing at Sanjaya, Simon or someone else that really sucks – maybe the whole cast of “The Hills” or the creators of the short-lived CBS show, “Armed and Famous.”
You can’t tell me that wouldn’t be great TV. I’d commit several felonies to secure enough cash to watch that if it was ever on pay-per-view.
And, we need to remember that there’s nothing more American than having 300 pounds of solid muscle beat the piss out of an average Joe, or Jane – females also compete against female gladiators. It’s a philosophy America has lived by for a long time – the bigger, stronger ones beat the snot out of the smaller, weaker ones.
I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I can watch “AG” on ESPN Classic every weeknight. Now all I need is a killer gladiator name.
In true gladiator spirit, Dave Baker makes column writing a full contact sport. Comments can be sent to him at dabake@cc.usu.edu.