Last week was entertainment week for us—we had tickets for two shows in Ottawa, Monday Night RAW and Pearl Jam.
When I first saw wrestling on TV in Canada, I dismissed it right away: “It looks fake and I bet it’s fixed!” I was later informed that indeed, the fight followed a specific “choreography” and that the outcome was determined in advance. This is not the point of WWE anyway. It has to be watched as theatre: characters challenge each other, adopt gimmicks and portray roles. Some wrestlers are booed because they are bad guys (don’t ask me why, they just are), and some are cheered as heroes.
Wrestling fans are a fun bunch, and they are half of the show. I’m not going to say I understood the signs—I’m pretty sure I support “Nutella World Order” but I have no clue what it refers to. Funny enough, wrestling is apparently a kid’s event and they cheered for their favourite character until late in the night.
Then, last Wednesday, we joined 13,000 fans to see Pearl Jam, playing in Ottawa as part of their Canadian tour. I listened to grunge music a lot when I was a teen in the 1990s and while I liked Nirvana best, I also had a lot of Pearl Jam tapes (yes, tapes!).
The band played for over two hours—they just wouldn’t leave. At one point, Scotiabank turned the lights on, presumably to let them know it was time to wrap up for the night. Didn’t work. The band kept on rocking well past 11 p.m. and no one complained.
I finally gave up on taking my DSLR to Scotiabank Place because the staff is very picky about cameras and I’m called on it every time. I find it ironic that DSLRs that are not recording devices are banned while it’s perfectly fine to spend the entire show holding a compact camera or a smartphone and tape the whole thing. Anyway, I took a few shots with our old Kodak Easyshare. Pictures are not as nice but this little camera still does a good job.
I have never thought of you as a WWE kind of gal 😉
Well, to be honest… neither did I! 😆 We got cheap ticket and figured it would be fun. It was!
I’d have passed on WWE but would have loved to see Pearl Jam.
(thanks for your lovely comment – aw, shucks…. 😉 )
The tickets to Pearl Jam were the most important, WWE was the cherry on the cake 😉
Oh well… the joys of being young and having no kids…
Not that I’m jealous, eh? no!
I would dismiss it too Zhu as I often wonder if the wrestlers were merely putting on a show. But having seen this post…it seems like lots of ROCK & ROLL 😀
I’m probably not going to become a die-hard fan but it was entertaining, for sure!
Wow, I’ve never watched WWE before. Although it reminds me of another thing I haven’t seen but only read about, and that was Mexico’s lucha libre. It seems that these events are less about actual competitive fights but more about shows to entertain the audience.
Lucha libre always makes me think of the silly movie Nacho Libre 😆
Wow you had pretty good seats for WWE.
It used to be fun to watch.. but not anymore.
Did it change a lot? I wouldn’t know, I usually don’t follow it.
I remember in school days all of us were such WWF fans, we knew statistics and stories from the matches were discussed for days. Then one day someone said that it was fake and I got pissed.
Now that I think of it, ofcourse its fake! It’s like a soap opera performance. X defeated Y but M defeated N and N and B are buddies so when A and B fight,…..
Did you see lucha libre in Mexico?
I’ve never seen lucha libre but I remember the silly movie that came out a few years ago, Nacho Libre!