I Got My Ass Kicked at Dancing With The Stars

I had no idea that a trip to see Dancing With The Stars could make life so interesting. No idea that a few hours that were supposed to be devoted to Foxtrots and Waltzes and Paso Dobles would lead to being handcuffed next to a beautiful woman. Yes, I said handcuffed next to- not handcuffed to a beautiful woman.

And to be clear in different circumstances it would have been great to have been handcuffed to a beautiful woman.  Like in a private room where it was just the two of us with some wine, a fine meal and maybe some soft music. Let’s be honest Mighty Jack has some game, but it is severely hampered by sitting in the back of a squad car because for some odd reason women don’t find the idea of getting it on in the same place as the crackheads, rapists and murderers. Why that is I’ll never know. I just classify it as one of life’s mysteries.

But I digress. I suppose that some background is necessary. My friend Michael called and invited us to go with him and a few people to watch an episode of  Dancing With The Stars be taped. Truth is that I really didn’t want to go but I haven’t had time to hang out with Mikey in a while so I figured why not.

Thanks to LA traffic and DWTS policies we had to leave several hours ahead of the time the show was supposed to start taping. I sometimes wonder if the universe speaks to me, you know, if there are signs that are given to us to read. I can’t say for certain whether there are or not- but I can tell you that traffic was so nasty I almost turned around. So maybe that was a sign. Maybe my guardian angel tried to warn me. Maybe he/she/it thought that turning a 25 minute commute into 90 minutes would be enough to dissuade me.

They were wrong. Maybe they thought that making parking a mighty pain I would have gotten fed up and turned around. They were wrong.  For future reference I ask that any messages that are sent are done so in a fashion that is easily understood, like smoke signals, Western Union or the beating of war drums.

Though it took a while we made it to the taping and joined the line of people waiting to get in. Did I mention the joy that I felt knowing that two hours after leaving my house I would be given the pleasure of standing in the 90 degree weather for god only knows how long. No, well then let me assure you that the smile on my face resembled The Joker.

It wasn’t an ideal situation, but we were finally there and since we had time on our hands I figured it would be a good time to try and catch up with Mike. But people plan and G-d laughs and if you didn’t know, he laughs harder at me than most.

We hadn’t been there for much more than 15 minutes when a group of six or seven people came up and tried to cut in line just ahead of me. It seems that the contestant from the Jersey Shore has an entourage. Don’t know if they were fans, friends or cousins and I don’t care. You can’t walk up and cut in line and expect no one to say anything. I have been around this town long enough to know that VIPs are given real VIP treatment. They don’t leave you standing in line. So when the kid looked at me and said that they were VIPs I laughed and told him that the VIP line started just behind me.

He ignored me and turned around to face his friends. And this is where things took a turn….for the worst. I don’t really care about this stupid show and have no interest in fighting about who gets to see Bristol Palin trip close up and personal. But I guess that when he turned his back on me I glared or shook my head. It doesn’t really matter what I did, it was enough to catch the attention of one of the other boys in the group ahead of me.

He stared back and started talking, told me that there would be consequences if I didn’t turn around. Actually he used far more colorful terms than that, but this is a family blog so I can’t include them here. Being a shy and demure fellow I responded by explaining that if he engaged me he would lose the ability to use his right arm and probably be forced into eating baby food for several months.

Well it turns out that the Jersey Shore crowd has spent too much time watching The Sopranos because seconds later two of them were bumping chests with me. Had common sense prevailed this probably would have been the time to just walk away and find security. Although with the luck I had that day I probably would have found the guys from the Jerry Springer show so maybe there was no way to avoid what came next.

The guy standing in front of me pushed me. It wasn’t a hard push. It was the kind you give when you are trying to either intimidate  or work up the nerve to actually hit the other guy. But I wasn’t having it. You can’t intimidate me and I am not going to wait for you to feel tough enough to take a swing. I stepped forward and headbutted the guy who pushed me. As he crumpled I jumped on top of the guy next to him.

There were too many guys. I never believed that I could take all of them, but I figured that if I moved quickly I could handle the situation long enough for security to arrive. At least that was the plan, but like I said earlier god laughs hard at me so things don’t always work out the way we want.

As I wrestled with the guy beneath me I felt teeth in my shoulder. Yes, teeth. I didn’t find out until later that the “beautiful woman” who I was sitting next to me had been the person who bit me. The guys had a field day with that one- can’t count the number of times they said I was lucky it was my shoulder that she bit.

Anyway, in between, before or right after someone kicked me in the ass. Yep, took a fight in butt, or perhaps the more appropriate description is that I got my ass kicked at Dancing With The Stars. Maybe I should have paid more attention to those Buns of Steel videos I used to see around the house.

At some point two sets of arms pulled me off of the guy on the ground. I stood up and spun around to face the new threat. I am told that the tape shows that as I did I hit three different people. I didn’t look like Mike Tyson or Muhammad Ali- but they all took home some unexpected memories.

Had they been part of the studio audience on the Price is Right or Wheel of Fortune they would have received the home version of the game. Instead they got a broken nose, serious contusion on the side of their head and one hell of a bruise on their back. Would have been great if they had actually been a part of the fight, but they weren’t.

One of them was a security guard and the other two were just bystanders who got far too close to the action. As I sat their in the back of the cop car I couldn’t help but think of Charles Dickens- “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

And the worst part of it all was that I didn’t even get to see the show. It was an elimination episode and I don’t know who got sent home. And that my friends is a tragedy.