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alcibiades_mystery (1000+ posts) Sat Aug-16-08 01:39 AMOriginal message I Don't Like the Olympics Advertisements [?]Don't get me wrong. I really like the athletics of it. I'm constantly astounded by the way people can turn their bodies into special purpose machines through tons of effort and grit. It's impressive. They're impressive. Except for handball. That's bullshit. Real handball involves two to four ghetto kids, a little blue ball that sells for a dollar at the corner bodega, and a big wall provided by the Parks Department of the City of New York. Note to "handball." Whenever a game involves getting an object into a goal, there has to be some physical obstacle to simply running up and throwing the ball into the goal. Water polo: you have to swim. Basketball, the goal is 10 ft. high and horizontal. Soccer (footie, mate): you can't use your hands. Hockey: you have to use a stick, oh, and you're skating on ice. Handball is bullshit. But back to my point. I don't like the Olympics because I really don't like nationalism. It's not that I'm not proud to be an American (although I'm not, and couldn't really care less). It's that I don't feel any particular connection to any nation state, as part of some fundamental identity. It seems stupid. This usually manifests as me rooting for the most unlikely country, and usually against the US players, though if they win I don't care either. All I know is that when the Olympics comes around, otherwise reasonable people I know turn into jingoistic USA chanting assholes, which makes me respect them less, given my worldview. It's like a view into the dimmest psycho wingnuttery, but as if it has taken over even your best liberal friend. They fist pump for the US athletes, scream about bias and cheating, become overnight experts in the intricacies of Asian adolescent development, and generally carry on like unclever imbeciles. And I'm sitting there with a face on like "Whoa, John Birch, why'ncha take a breather before your head explodes into an American flag." It's yucky. When I'm not secretly or openly rooting against the Americans, I'm rooting for the least likely competitor, like a gangly Spaniard I saw running in a 1500 meter heat. He was bound to lose, looking a bit like a hippie Spanish Lurch from the Addams Family, but dammit, he was all weirdly angled elbows and kneecaps aflying, and I think I loved him for a moment. The Kenyan won the heat, which was just fine also, since the announcers were sure the American was going to pick it up on the last lap and win the heat. He came in fourth, and I didn't care. You might think this means that I just root for the underdog. You'd be wrong. In World Cup soccer, I also root against the Americans, and they are the massive underdog in that sport. It drives my friends crazy. I root for the powerhouse Germans. Needless to say, I don't have a drop of German up in here. It just amuses me because it pisses off my Italian friends, who think I should root for the Italians. I don't give a **** about the Italians. In the last World Cup final, I was rooting for the French. I'm not French either. Somebody on another thread said he admired Michael Phelps because Phelps "represents the youthful determination of America." I would say that that's ridiculous, like a Hallmark reject invading that poster's consciousness, but I frankly don't even know what it means. Represents the youthful determination of America? Where? I'm really a social person, with loads of empathy and connectedness, but I pretty sure that there's no there there. Phelps doesn't "represent" anything. He just swims really fact. Which is awesome for him. Body as a work of art, body as machine. It's great. Becoming-dolphin. I love it. Let's all go dorsal, see the world from another angle. And it's all really exciting. I'm more interested in the guy that came in last, that was so far behind that he was perpetually out of the frame, maybe even lapped (though that would be hard to do in a 100 m race, granted). Because that guy is amazing, a thousand times the athlete YOU are (yes, YOU, mother****er!), and yet there he is, still yearning for the touch when the others have already checked and celebrated their time. I don't like the Olympics, but I like that guy.
he's nibbled on a bit too much of the bitterroot!
Another one picked last in gym class.
Quote from: DixieBelle on August 16, 2008, 12:18:40 PMAnother one picked last in gym class. ......and at 'last call'.
Quote from: Tantal on August 16, 2008, 12:22:30 PMQuote from: DixieBelle on August 16, 2008, 12:18:40 PMAnother one picked last in gym class. ......and at 'last call'. Quite the contrary . . . they're the ones that go home quite alone.
But whatever you do...don't you DARE question their patriotism :rolleyes:
Oh God, I posted that DumbBlonde video in a liberal nest and got an instant meltdown! Course it didn't say nuttin bout patriotism just ingratitude but that went right over their pointy little heads.
