iMPACT! is Decadent and Depraved Part Two

The esatablishment in question was the delightfully named "Jung Lung's Tiny Bubble Room." It was, in theory, a cocktail palace grafted onto a Chinese restaurant. It was actually a pitch-black, murder-filled hallway measuring approximately twenty feet long and four feet across. Two tables and a jukebox provided perfect hiding places for marauding Tong Hatchet Men. Two fifty-year-old women sat in the back, dressed up as pre-teen drag queens. A scowling figure sat at the bar, chain smoking. Every ten minutes, a disinterested waitress carried a steaming plate of pressed MSG from one end of the room to the other.

We sat at the bar and started setting up beer bottles (there were NO BEERS ON TAP). The bartender paid us little heed, wrapped as she was in a tale of violence and debauchery. "Shannon and Paul had a fight earlier," she explained to no one in particular. "She was throwing stools at him. I had to kick them out." Jesus Christ, I thought. Jesus fucking Christ. A flung stool in a space this small would be like a live grenade in a dumptruck. Someone must have been seriously hurt.

The atmosphere of simmering bloodshed jolted our pickled brains back to the matter at hand. It was still ten till the hour... the CAGE MATCH WAS STILL ON! We nervously began pestering the bartender to let us watch wrestling on the tiny TV that hung above the bar. She turned slowly toward it, as though noticing it for the first time. "Becker" was on.

"Sure, whatever," she said, and passed the remote... to the Smoking Man at the bar.
"What channel you want?" he croaked.
"Spike TV! Spike TV! Ah... we think it's... 57?"
A nicotine-stained fingernail stabbed at the buttons. No dice. It was... I dunno. "Alias" or something. The man grunted and tossed the remote to the bar. We looked timidly at it. We looked at the clock. Five minutes of TV time remaining. Remote. TV. Clock. Remote.
"Can we just sort of surf around with that?" Von Fury's voice did a great job of not cracking with fear. The man grunted consentingly (we hoped).

Click. Click. Click. And there, on a screen the size of a piece of notebook paper, was the bloody BLOODY head of Christian Cage. There were some straightjacket antics. Some chair antics. the steady, reasurring drip of Christian's blood hitting the canvas. Five glorious minutes passed, and it was over.

We ordered a celebratory round of Michelob. It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

And then the SECOND HOUR OF iMPACT! started. We gaped at each other. Had time come unstuck? Were they rerunning the whole damn show? AJ Styles, Christopher Daniels, and Chris Sabin started walloping on each other. It dawned on us that TNA had sprung for an additional hour to ring in their prime time debut. We began to rejoice.

The smoking man glared at the screen. "What the fuck is this?" he snarled, "Fuckin' Gay Boy Wrestling?"

As AJ Styles wrapped his bicycle-short-covered thighs around Chris Sabin's handsome face, we were forced to concede that it was, indeed Gay Boy Wrestling. And all was right with the world.