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.
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.
Humans are lousy at athletics as any ape knows. But Eddie the Eagle was a prince among men.
ReplyDeleteoh come on now! I wanted to talk about how unfair the Olympics are.
ReplyDeleteAs 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
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.
ReplyDeleteLet 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