Skip to main content

odd man out

It seems like I'm always going off against the current Big Excitable Thing, whether it's a scare like H1N1 or the forced lovefest of Christmas or the dirty circus they call the Olympics. I don't know if it's something about me in particular or people from Saskatchewan in general but I just can't set my face on some sort of ragdoll grin and look the other way. I mean, the paper this morning had two whole sections devoted entirely to the Olympics, plus the front page, plus the first eleven pages of the front section (the first real news story was about Colonel Russell Williams, our newest homegrown serial killer, just an hour or so down the highway). I just don't know what, exactly, we are celebrating. Amateur athletics? Well, if you think Jarome Iginla needs a gold medal to toss in his vault filled with millions of dollars, then good for you. And if you think kids from inner-city ghettos pursue careers in alpine skiing, then you're simply deluded. And when someone like Eddie the Eagle does emerge, the IOC is pretty fucking quick to change the rules, because they don't need that kind of embarrassment. I know! It must be about the coming together of nations in the spirit of competition, regardless of politics! Which is why nations boycott each others olympics all the time. Or engage in vicious-minded doping or steroid programs.

All I see is a lot of infrastructure that needed the excuse of a sports spectacle to be built, loads and loads of meaningless merchandising and virtual metric tonnes of suffocating hype.

Just billions and billions of dollars, rushing down a hole.

Winnipeg hosted the Pan Am games when I lived there. It was a modest enterprise, using existing facilities. And people came out. Hell, even I went to a soccer match between Mexico and Honduras. It was fun. And when the games were done, the city had realized a small profit.

We'll see what happens here.
Labels:

Comments

  1. Gorilla Bananas4:24 pm

    Humans are lousy at athletics as any ape knows. But Eddie the Eagle was a prince among men.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lora6:20 pm

    oh come on now! I wanted to talk about how unfair the Olympics are.

    As if poor kids in the ghetto are practicing Alpine jumps (or whatever the fuck they are called) with cardboard boxes and duct tape and old refrigerator doors strapped to their feet.

    I loved the speed skater who took the gold on the short track and they made a big deal about his daddy taking the gold years ago. As if by dumb luck both generations just happened to be excellent speed skaters

    ReplyDelete
  3. Mentally Incontinent3:43 pm

    Good luck with that. i was living in Atlanta during the '96 summer games and it was a fiasco. I think the mayor would have rented out his sister if he had thought it would make the city (and by extension, him) look better.

    Let them only consider cities that already can accommodate the games be considered.

    I think Lora has a great idea and that Disney will probably make a movie out of it: inner-city kid tempted by a life of money and drugs instead spends nights with old refrigerator doors strapped to his feet, dreaming of Olympic gold. . . la

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

glamour, by extension

C is friends with the fashion stylist Rebekah Roy (left in both pics above) ... one of those people who personify calm and smiling success. On her blog she presents glamour in this very sincere, straightforward way ... whether she's taking pictures of people on the street , talking about stain removers , her favourite videos , or attending some glittering party . One minute she's ruminating on hair extensions, and in the next she reveals how she's been featured on the Vogue UK site. A real disarmer and charmer (and this without meeting her yet, although I feel like I know her because we both did our time in Winnipeg). * * * * * Coming home from Russia, we did many bad things. ; mixed media on canvas, 10 x 10 inches. In my own life, the glamour is wholly imagined. * * * * * witches, smoke ; mixed media on canvas, 10 x 10 inches. My second go at this one, and for some reason I'm painting a lot of smoke lately (note to self: tell C that I want to be cremated). *
7 comments
Read more

the indisputable weight of the ocean

People are always telling me that my work is too dark. So I've put up this sunnier story, but even it has a shadow, as its original publisher – a fine Atlantic Canadian literary magazine called the Gaspereau Review – is no longer in business. ---------------- It was a simple enough thing and that thing was simply this: Edmund Kelley was a gentleman. Of course his mom called him her 'little gentleman', as in 'Oh Edmund, you are my perfect little gentleman,' which did seem to hold to a certain logic that these type of things often follow, considering her affection for him and the fact that he was, after all, only ten years old. Still, Edmund himself was not particularly fond of the diminutive aspect of that title. Gentleman was enough; gentleman summed up the whole thing rather nicely, thank you. He was definitely a more refined version of your average child. He lived in a state of perpetual Sunday m
2 comments
Read more

Oona Balloona (doesn't care about new tables)

Well, it's Friday, and since I'm pretty depleted in the chit-chat department, I might as well put up some pictures of Ol' Giggles At Ghosts before Grandma starts sending me hate mail. Man, what a goofball. At this rate it's going to be, like, eighteen years before she has gainful employment and moves out of the house. I mean, come on . * * * * * C is especially crazy and frantic today. About two months ago she decided that she no longer liked our dining room table (take that, dining room table! no more BFF for you!). Since then she's switched the dining room and kitchen table (and all the rest of the furniture in the house -- about thirty times, but that's another story) as a provisional solution while she scoured area stores for an upgrade. And she thought she had found one, on Wednesday, at JYSK ( Whatever , I said). But when she ordered it, JYSK called back to say that they were really low on stock, and that the stock they did have was damaged, and
44 comments
Read more