{"id":2012,"date":"2010-05-23T20:54:36","date_gmt":"2010-05-24T01:54:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/?p=2012"},"modified":"2010-05-23T20:54:36","modified_gmt":"2010-05-24T01:54:36","slug":"lets-get-ready-to-polka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/lets-get-ready-to-polka\/","title":{"rendered":"Let&#8217;s Get Ready to Polka!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You know you had a good night when it starts in a wrestling ring and ends on a polka floor.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a title=\"photo.jpg by hopers, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/hopers\/4633428645\/\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4025\/4633428645_203e73196c.jpg?resize=500%2C375\" alt=\"photo.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Why was I in a wrestling ring? Sadly, it had nothing to do with me hitting anyone with a chair or elbowing someone in the face. Luckily, it had nothing to do with me getting thrown onto a table or taking anabolic steroids. I was there to sing the national anthem. Something that is surprisingly hard to do. Those high notes are <em>high<\/em>. Luckily, it was the type of crowd that loves to cheer for the Star Spangled Banner. I held out a long note for &#8220;freeeeeeeeee&#8221; and the applause was overwhelming.<\/p>\n<p>Totally. Freaking. Awesome.<\/p>\n<p>Not only did I get to sing for an appreciative audience, I also got to enjoy me some pro wrestling. Which is way more entertaining than you would think.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and I got to put my buddy Sean in a head lock.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a title=\"photo.jpg by hopers, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/hopers\/4633430993\/\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3471\/4633430993_f43a375953.jpg?resize=500%2C375\" alt=\"photo.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">A very, very blurry head lock.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I think that the highlight of the evening was watching the &#8220;Canadian&#8221; wrestle some guy with the name Moonshine in his name. Oh yeah, and Moonshine was an overweight dude wearing overalls. And no shirt.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a title=\"photo.jpg by hopers, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/hopers\/4633456119\/\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3338\/4633456119_0c59bd1953.jpg?resize=500%2C375\" alt=\"photo.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Note to self: next time you partake of Pro Wrestling, bring a real camera.<\/p>\n<p>The picture doesn&#8217;t really do it justice, but the &#8220;Canadian&#8221; was a dude wearing spandex with Canadian flags on them. He also had a Canadian flag. Mounted on a hockey stick. It was pretty much just as awesome as you are currently imagining. Perhaps even more so. Apparently, being Canadian makes you a villain and, thus, the audience boos accordingly. I&#8217;m a contrarian, though, so I cheered for him.<\/p>\n<p>I booed pretty much everyone else, though. That&#8217;s just good fun.<\/p>\n<p>The audience was primarily made up of old school Somerville folks. And pre-teen boys and their slightly bemused Somerville\/Cambridge liberal Dads. The people watching was almost as good as the wrestling watching. And that&#8217;s really saying something.<\/p>\n<p>My appetite for fun thoroughly whetted, I met up with Kristian and his cousin to head over to the Polish American Club for a polka party.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, you heard that right. A polka party.<\/p>\n<p><object classid=\"clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" width=\"480\" height=\"385\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\"><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\" \/><param name=\"src\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/sOJEDQr_QpY&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1&amp;\" \/><param name=\"allowfullscreen\" value=\"true\" \/><\/object><\/p>\n<p>Words cannot describe how much fun I had dancing to polka music last night. If you think an evening of polka isn&#8217;t fun, let me tell you this: you haven&#8217;t been to the right polka parties, my friends.<\/p>\n<p>I bet you haven&#8217;t been to <em>any<\/em> polka parties. You don&#8217;t know what you&#8217;ve been missing.<\/p>\n<p>My words fail me, so I&#8217;m going to summarize. There was polka music. There were people in crazy outfits. There was a lot of dancing. There was a polka version of James Brown(ski)&#8217;s &#8220;I Feel Good.&#8221; I cut a rug. I cut a <em>lot<\/em> of rugs. I cut rugs with several small children who were probably up waaaaay past their bedtimes. There were pierogies, but we didn&#8217;t get there in time to eat them. I danced some more. Incredibly enough, all of this fun was achieved with the help of only <em>one<\/em> adult beverage. And the kids weren&#8217;t really drinking (lightweights!). \u00a0I guess that polka really is just that fun.<\/p>\n<p>Oh yeah, and my Dad and I tried to start a polka mosh pit but we all ended up pogoing instead. What? You think it&#8217;s weird to hang out with your Dad while dancing to polka and singing songs about grabbing your balls? Well, I think it would have been weird <em>not<\/em> to. My Mom went to the wrestling match with me, so it was only fair.<\/p>\n<p>Hanging out with my parents is just one of the many things that make me so incredibly cool. Awesome, really.<\/p>\n<p>There are pictures, but I don&#8217;t have any of them. And they&#8217;re probably all incredibly unflattering. Dancing makes Hope sweaty. The gross kind of sweaty, not the cute kind of sweaty. There is a distinct possibility that I will be untagging myself in quite a few facebook photos this week.<\/p>\n<p>If there is facebook untagging, you know it was a successful evening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You know you had a good night when it starts in a wrestling ring and ends on a polka floor. Why was I in a wrestling ring? Sadly, it had&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,4,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-photos","category-random"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5yggS-ws","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2012"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2015,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2012\/revisions\/2015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}