July 11, 2004

YOU know, today was going really well. The sun was shining, the birds were singing and the police had finally stopped digging up my cellar. Then, my precious ones, I made the mistake of clicking on a link a friend e-mailed to me and I was transported into the depths of Hell itself. For I have just seen the horror that is the Trampoline Wrestling Association and shall never surf the Web again.

TLW (angelfire.com/oh/extremeTWA/) is a website your eyes will never forgive you for visiting. In fact, it’s the kind of thing that, much like a plane crash, renders you senseless and wishing you’d never been born. It’s bad enough that such a thing as trampoline wrestling exists, but did they have to get a 12-year-old with ADD to do the website?

The history of the TWA is not only pretty interesting, it’s also barely legible as the designer has put it in pink text on a flame background. Kewl. Anyhow, the TWA was founded in 1996 and, by May ’97 it had its first ever crowd. Its "Xtreme Behaviour" match in 1999 attracted 250 fans, which isn’t much but beats Cwmbran Town’s average attendance by a mile.

I couldn’t find a page of rules on the site, so I really don’t know what it’s all about, but judging from the picture galleries it seems to involve wrestling on a trampoline (clever how I worked that bit out, eh?) and using said trampoline to perform all kinds of horrible smackdowns on your opponent.

Ah yes, the picture galleries. If you want to know what rednecks get up to when they’re not hunting squirrels for supper, here’s your chance to find out. To be honest, it kind of looks like fun, although it would help if the cameraman could a) focus and b) use a scanner.

And if your eyes aren’t completely burned out by the rest of the site, you HAVE to have a look at the characters page, if only to strengthen the call for enforced sterilisation in certain American states. With characters like "Cono Cabeza" and "La Prima De La Corrida" staring out of an appallingly-designed page like circus freaks in an asylum, it’ll have you running for the hills in no time.