The Only Guide to the Beijing Olympics You’re Going to Need
August is one of the real doldrums periods in the sports calendar. The baseball pennant races won’t begin in earnest for at least another month. We’re weeks away from football games that count. The MLB trading deadline has come and gone. The only guys who’ve started working on their Fantasy Draft boards are the ones who spent most of their formative years hanging from a coat hook by their wedgie. There’s just not a lot going on this time of year.
But every four years we’re rescued from this down period by the Summer Olympics. I’m well aware that at the mention of the word “Olympics,” thousands of Barstool readers just slammed the back of their heads against the window of the train from narcoleptic boredom. Most of us don’t give a tuppenny damn about the Olympics in any way, shape or form. But disinterest in the Olympics makes Bob Costas cry, and ignoring them is not an option. Not if NBC has anything to say about it. Between the cable networks they own, which are many, and the internet, NBC is promising/threatening to air 2200 hours of live coverage, which is more than we’ll see of McCain, Obama and Mylie Cyrus put together.
I’ll admit it’s a stupid investment on their part. Sure, most of us over the age of, say, 30, remember a time when the Olympics were a big deal. We also remember skinny piano keyboard ties, but we moved on from both. The Olympics, even at its most popular, wasn’t a chance to bring the world together and promote peace through the human drama of athletic competition, it was an alternative to the other three things on TV. And since those other things were usually “Flipper,” “Space: 1999" and “CHiPs,” the Olympics didn’t seem like such a bad alternative. But since we now live, mercifully, in a world where “Pulp Fiction” is never more than a clicker button away, it makes it a little hard to flip over to a bunch of anonymous foreigners pedaling bikes around a velodrome.
But like I said, apparently we have to follow the Olympics. There’s no way around it. It’s some sort of mandate. So with that in mind, here are the major stories of the 2008 Summer Games:
China. These Olympics are the Chinese government’s chance to shine. To showcase the Socialist worker’s paradise they’ve created. And they’re doing it just the way Karl Marx always dreamed of: in partnership with companies like Visa, “The Official Debt-Crisis Contributor of the Beijing Games.” (No doubt old Broom Whiskers would’ve thought of Visa and Kodak as real pro-revolutionary.) So expect Beijing to milk this PR bonanza for all it’s worth. We’ll learn about those pain-in-the-ass Tibetans and that punkass Dalai Lama and be grateful someone finally had the guts to stand up and give them the what-for. We’ll be shown 1.1 billion people delighted to be sewing pants for Kathy Lee Gifford and putting lead paint on American babies’ teething rings. And we’ll see how, out of respect for other (non-Tibetan) cultures, they got corporate sponsor McDonald’s to take McSpaniel off the menu.
The Opening Ceremonies. By my count there are three countries on Earth: The US, Canada, and The Rest of the World. The last time I told someone that, they accused me of being a Xenophobe. I don’t think that’s fair since not only am I not afraid of Xenos, I don’t even know what they are. But I admit I am leery of much of The Rest of the World. Especially those large segments who want to kill us unless we give up beer and pure pork sausage. What was I saying? Oh, yeah, The Opening Ceremonies. This is a always a great take because it gives me the chance to learn about other cultures. And what it teaches me is that the world is made up of ridiculous stereotypes which they love to dress up as. This country will parade around in mime make up, holding cigarettes backwards and mocking American tourists. This one will come out bleepfaced on Foster’s and start raping kangaroos. Another country will dress their athletes like Californian domestic servants. Still another will wear costumes that look like they’re carrying explosives to kill people who like beer and sausage. (If so, I hope they ARE costumes, the Olympics don’t have the best record for this sort of thing.) Anyway, all the Opening Ceremony voluntary stereotyping helps culturally ignorant among us keep things sorted out.
Basketball. This gets its own category. Because we are now in our fifth Olympics with the US sending an NBA Dream Team to compete. And once again we’ve got people wringing they’re hands worried sick that we shouldn’t be doing this in the interest of “fairness.” And once again, I’m dumfounded. Why should we need to feel bad about sending our best? Is there another country in the world that feels ashamed to be the best at anything? Did the Soviets ever talk about sending college hockey players? Did the East Germans ever try to send 3rd rate figure skaters? What’s the difference? Because our guys are “professional” and the others weren’t? Puhleeze. What factory did Vladamir Tretiak or Katarina Witt ever work in? They got paid to be athletes, same at Kobe Bryant. So spare me the guilt. There are only three things left that Americans do better than any other country in the world. Win wars, individually wrap our cheese slices, and play basketball. It’s our sport, we invented it, we dominate it, deal with it.
The Silly Sports. I seem to remember a time when the Olympics actually measured athletic accomplishment. When it was about how fast you were. How high you could jump. How much you could lift. How far you could throw something. The Beijing games will have such competitive sports as Badminton, Table Tennis, Beach Volleyball, Archery and Canoe Racing, just to name a few. I mean, we had those things when I was a kid, we just didn’t call it “The Olympics.” We called it “Summer Camp.” I mean, what the hell, why not just go all the way and give out medals for making S’mores and telling ghost stories? The last games, I turned on the TV and they had a woman riding a horse, but the horse wasn’t running, it was prancing around on its front hooves, which my Sweet Irish Rose told me is something called “Dressage.” Assuming the medal goes to the rider and not to the horse (as it should), that means whomever won that event has the same gold medal they gave Jesse Owens for humiliating Adolph Hitler. How is that justified? At least to the Olympic Committee’s credit, they seem to have done away with Ballroom Dancing. Because when would that end? “In other dancing competitions, Mexico won the Macarena, Brazil took first in the Lambada, and the US Dream Team of Drunken Wedding Party struck gold in the Chicken Dance...”
The Other Sports. What else is there to be interested in? As the great Dan Jenkins once said “The only thing worse than Track is Field.” The only sport more crooked than pro boxing is amateur boxing. Amateur wrestling isn’t corrupt enough. Rowing? The Marathon? Soccer? I do all I can to avoid them in my own back yard, why would I watch them on TV? Fencing? Shooting? Judo? Taekwondo? If they were to the death maybe. Gymnastics? To enjoy watching a bunch of malnourished, pre-pubescent girls jumping around on things requires a level of Quagmire in a man I’m not willing to accept.
The TV Coverage. Like I said, NBC is pulling out all the stops to will you into loving the Olympics. It’s going to be like Britney Spears’ upskirts: Nothing you want to see, but everywhere all at once and impossible to ignore. We’re going to be force fed these athletes even if it means strapping us to a chair with our eyes held open like Malcolm McDowell in “Clockwork Orange.” By the end you’ll know everything about them; where they’re from, what their family is like, how they’re competing for grandma who was such an inspiration before she died suddenly... 15 years ago. You’re going to watch it all and get caught up in it because NBC is going to force you to. Let me know how it goes. I’ll be watching “Pulp Fiction.”