Who among us can say they didn’t get swept up with the WWF back in the glory days of the 80’s and 90’s? Hulkamania, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, Ultimate Warrior, Bret Hart, Macho Man Randy Savage, Undertaker, they were legendary heroes. Before this week, I’d only been to two other WWF shows. One house show in like 1991, which featured a match with Ultimate Warrior and Undertaker I believe, Tatanka and Ricky The Dragon Steamboat were both there, and there was a six man tag match involving Earthquake and Jake the Snake Roberts. That’s all I really remember about it, other than I was in row 6, and I was mad because I wanted to be on the aisle because I wanted to see Ricky Steamboat breathe fire, and the ticketperson who sold us the tickets told us we would be, but she sold us tickets on the opposite side of the arena. Other than that it was a good time I suppose. Back then I was huge into WWF, I had the posters, the coloring books, the card sets, the magazine subscription, ate the ice cream bars. I once won $50 of Toy-R-Us dollars at a school raffle, I used it to buy a ring and a bunch of LJN WWF Superstar action figures. I made my parents get cable so we could get WrestleMania VII on pay per view. But soon after I went to high school, and kinda outgrew it for a while.

That all changed when I went off to college. When I was freshmen, I had 4 other roomates, all of whom were big WWF fans. This was late 1999, the heart of the Attitude era. So as a shared bonding experience, we all went together to a Raw taping. Because we needed 5 seats together, the best we could get was the very last row of the lower bowl, all the way on the farthest side of the arena. It wasn’t all that good, mostly because as it turns out, all my roommates were assholes, and we couldn’t see shit. All I remember was there was a steel cage match, I believe involving Shane McMahon. I stuck around through the Invasion, but I got a girlfriend sophomore year and had moved on to other things right before the brand extension started.

That was the last I had really been into WWE until last year. One of the girls I worked with went down to see WrestleMania XXVII in Atlanta, and as she was telling me about it, I got back into it. Along with the CM Punk “pipe bomb” incident, which blurred the kayfabe line got me intrigued. That and the episode of Tosh.0 with the “It’s still real to me” guy. So I started watching Raw again, went on bit torrent, downloaded all the “Big Four” 4 pay per views, and watched them all in order till I got caught up.

So, what’s it like for a childhood lover of WWF to go to a RAW taping 22 years later? Read on after the jump.

So, WWE Monday Night Raw is coming to my neck of the woods tonight, with WrestleMania XXVIII just two weeks away. It should make for some exciting times. Especially since I’m going be be there, front row and center. OK, actually it’s second row and center, that was the best I could do, but I should be on camera all night long. So if that’s your thing, you can catch it live on USA at 9PM EDT (check your local listings for channel number, local Comcast viewers it’s channel 40). Be on the lookout for my sign below, and for my writeup on the whole live WWE experience sometime tomorrow.

And if you got here after reading one of the said signs, welcome, i hope you stick around.

I, literally, could not be any more excited for tonight. Why you ask? Because the best written, smartest, nerdiest, most compelling, heart-wrenching, laugh out loud comedy on TV returns with all new episodes after a dark time of indeterminate hiatus since Christmas. “But The Big Bang Theory has been on for weeks I thought?” I can almost assuredly hear you saying dear reader. While this is a nerd website, and I’ll admit, I’ve liked BBT in the past, you know what I have to say to that? Fuck You, that’s what I have to say to Big Bang Theory. I can’t be the only nerd who has heard a hundred times at work something along the lines of “Oh you like Star Trek / Star Wars / Comic Books / Laser Tag / Other Nerdy Endeavor, you must love Big Bang Theory” from some spinster housewife who doesn’t have a clue. While I am a nerd, and a great deal of what BBT says it true, it does not speak for me. I’m sure you all love BBT, but let me disabuse you of notion that it is the better show in the 8pm Thursday timeslot after the jump.

It may be hard to believe, but there was a time when Nickelodeon wasn’t just reruns of SpongeBob and Dan Schneider tween-sitcoms. Not that either are bad, I actually like both of the just fine. But when I was a kid, Nickelodeon was in the middle of a children’s television renaissance, redefining the very nature of what a childrens’ show was and could be. Some of the greatest shows ever came from the slime factory in the late 80’s and early 90’s.

I’m a big fan of all the emotional episodes of Futurama. Most people just think of it as Matt Groening’s other funny little cartoon, but they told some pretty powerful stories.