Insomniactive Productions, 1630 Cullom Street #2, Birmingham, AL, 35205
O, Canada...
Finally, we can get back to normal life, whatever that means. No more having Must See TV (and, more importantly, late night MSNBC coverage) precluded in favor of Duo Figure Skating or Women's Snowblowing (if only...), no more heebie jeebies about terrorism in the land of the Mormons, and no more arguing with roommates that the Simpsons is preferable to KISS violating their retirement again and Jon Bon Jovi wrapped in an American Flag.
In the aftermath, we can feel good in knowing that there was no thirty year anniversary repeat of the 1972 Israeli Summer Olympics. The Americans finally managed to gather a respectable amount of gold in games that require snow and ice. We may even get lucky and spread the joy of Joseph Smith's door-to-door messenger program overseas. But maybe best of all, Canada's hockey team finally gave their country something to be proud off, beyond Molsons and... er... a little help, here?
I know I shouldn't pick on Canada -- after all, they make it too easy. But watching the Canadians (or at least, the fans of the Canadian Hockey Team) gloat across the Internet the morning after was more than a little irritating. It's not them, I wager; rather, it's the fact that I live in Birmingham, Alabama, the college football capital of the States. This is exactly the sort of behavior that I have to put up with for four months out of the year: gloating, bragging, and posturing by people who probably didn't even go to college. There are fights that erupt over a freaking football game -- how ultimately ridiculous is that? And it all starts with the gloating.
It amazes me to some extent that we don't see more radical behavior in the Olympics, honestly. And not among the hockey players; I'm talking fan competition. Down here in Alabama (and not too far away in Texas), you can blame the violence that stems from athletic events on any number of things: the heat, poor education, or the fact that Bourbon drinking is considered a legitimate hobby around here. But in the Olympics, you've got the intense competition coupled with political pressures. If ever there was a ticking time bomb waiting to explode, this seems like it to me.
I was discussing the Games with my father, expressing my irritation at the hubbub surrounding the Canadian figure skating duo that cried foul at losing the Gold Medals to the Russians. Not that I think they deserved to lose; on the contrary, I couldn't care less. This is figure skating, after all. But in a world filled with death, war, and an instable economy, did accusations of unfair judging in a game really deserve to take the top spots in news broadcasts? If you listened closely during those days of the scandal, you could almost hear Enron executives exhaling for the first time in months.
It all sounds like whining to me, judge's misbehavior or no. My father reminded me of the political pressures at stake, which makes me think of fraternities that used to get into fights outside the club across from my old apartment. Every weekend night, around 2 AM (when the bars close up around here), the drunken college boys would file out into the middle of the street, screaming "Come on!" and "Bring it, bitch!" at each other, until ten or twenty of them ended up in the middle of the busy intersection, pushing and shoving each other like schoolkids on the playground. It was so entertaining that I would sit at my window from 1:30, drink in hand, waiting for my weekly show; I can picture it so clearly that it's not hard to make the leap from frat boys to politicians, pouring out of the arenas in Utah to throw drunken punches and shout ethnic slurs at each other, all while the Mormons watch from the sidewalks.
This, my friends, is the real way to get a ratings boost for the Olympic Games.
Dad also noted that the difference between a gold medal and a silver can be a vast financial amount. After all, would we have ever been so inundated with Kerri Strug or Bruce Jenner on Wheaties boxes and TV commercials and TODAY show appearances had they placed second? Not that it really matters; advertisers tend to go with Americans anyway, for some strange reason, so the difference probably won't amount to much (although the scandal probably did more for the duo than anything else; rumor has that there have already been five network and cable offers for a movie of the week). Even without the money, I'll tell you from experience that second place sucks rocks. That may have been all the reason that they needed; who wants to turn in the performance of a lifetime, only to lose out to inferior competition?
Not that that doesn't happen every day. It happens on sales charts in the music and book industry, with publishing contracts in the comic world, and with actors and directors in Hollywood. In a perfect and just world, THE LONE GUNMEN would have been given more opportunity to build a fanbase, and NIKKI wouldn't. TRANSMETROPOLITAN and BARRY WEEN would outsell X-Books. N'Sync would pay us millions of dollars to listen to them, and not the other way around. It's the nature of capitalism, of fame and fortune and the American Dream. It's the curse of political power struggles and religious bickering.
Pardon me -- I feel a Rodney King moment coming on.
I think the Olympics are a good idea. Not that I watch them; matter of fact, I'm pretty much bored to tears with any sport outside of soccer. But allowing countries to compete in an arena with hard and fast rules, letting representatives prove which nation is the best in a given category, probably lets us all blow off some collective steam. Who knows how many more wars there would be if Germany and France didn't get together once every four years to Curl? What kind of trade tariffs and export regulations would we see without biannual medal counts? The negative comes in when people insist on bringing the politics and religion onto the field with them. For all the good that it does to let the US face off against China in an arena with referees and fair play, it can all be countered when cries of cheating are leveled based on national boundaries and religious differences.
So for the most part, it's over, and we can all go back to our normally scheduled programs. We can look forward to the eventual book deals from the Canadian skaters the French judge, the commercial endorsements from Sarah Hughes, and the Total Request Live appearances by the infernally irritating Apollo whatshisname. As long as politics and economics continue to exist, so will competition, whether between local coffeehouses or famous authors or national sports teams. And hey -- spring training starts soon!
I wonder if I can still get into my old apartment? Maybe just for one weekend night?
Kenn McCracken has Five Rings to bind you all.