Wednesday, August 04, 2004

Carrying the Torch

The Olympics are on their way in all their overproduced pomp, petty nationalism, Bob Costasness, and general asshattery.

I CANNOT WAIT.

The Olympics give us That Moment, when an entire lifetime of training comes down to one vault, one leap, one race. Is he gonna crack? Is she gonna slip? An entire existence focused on one goal only to see it disintegrate before a worldwide audience: Now THAT'S entertainment. Roll out the Combos and the twelve-packs! We're gonna see the lifelong undoing of a fourteen-year-old!

The events of the Summer Games, for the most part, leave out the element of the Crappy Judges. Shame. Crappy Judges make things crappy, but ratchet up the Piss Level, which is always welcome. Because if you’ve been preparing your whole life to do your job well, and you pull it off better than anyone's expected when it mattered the most, what should happen next?

Thaaaaaaaaaaaaats right. Win.

What happens if you don't?

Ask figure skaters Jamie Sale and David Pelletier. Remember these two? They were The Screwed. After leaping, twisting, and spinning through the best long program of their lives at the Olympic Games, they ended the night standing on the second-place podium. An unreachable two feet above them perched a Russian team that had skated a lovely performance but committed technical errors visible from passing weather balloons.

The Canadians smiled ("Abouuuuuuuuut, eh?") and waved clutches of congratulatory yellow blossoms to a sympathetic crowd and salivating press corps. But the tears shielding Jamie Sale's eyes from a clear view of the Russian flag superseding the Canadian banner also acted as a looking glass: "This wasn't the way… it was supposed to be."

No it wasn't, thanks to a corrupt French judge (shocking!), for one of the few instances in Olympic history, the shattered dreams Sale and Pelletier left behind on the ice that night were gently swept up and awkwardly patched together again with a startling uprising of athletic justice. A week later they were awarded their own gold, and will for the rest of their lives be introduced as Olympic champions.

When Sale and Pelletier marched into the Opening Ceremonies, they could not in their wildest dreams have imagined that they would close out the week sitting at a long table in a press conference, attorneys on one side, coach on the other, and the stare of the world in the middle. This wasn't the way… it was supposed to be.

They may have the gold now, but the price tag attached to it was a nightmare of a medals ceremony and waking up the next morning to see the damn silver thing on the nightstand: "I did my best. I know I won. I know I won. I know how it was supposed to be." For the rest of Sale's and Pelletier's lives, when they recall the capstone of their athletic careers, they will think: Vindication. But first, pain.

Sports are like that.

And life is like that.

And that is the role of sports in life: to reflect, affect, magnify. Every job I didn’t get and every boyfriend you’ve ever dumped was standing up there on that podium. Reach and reach and not-quite-make-it waved to the crowd. We saw and we ached.

The glory, of course, is that that we found another job or a better guy turned up around the corner… but oh, that medals ceremony. That rock-bottom feeling that this isn’t right and it never will be.

If only all of life’s stories ended so happily on that highest step, in that second ceremony, everything smoothed down with an official do-over.

But now we have the comfort that for once, it did.

Tuesday, August 03, 2004

Chicka BAMP

Today’s porn soundtrack riff goes out to one Mr. Smarty Jones, retired today due to tender footsies. Oh, and also the fact that his owners, stud upkeepers Three Chimneys Farm, and various syndicates stand to make approximately one hillion jillion dollars once Smarty starts to get his groove on. To the breeding shed!

Let us now have a moment of shuddering silence to contemplate what may have happened if Seabiscuit, whose greatest moments came as a seven-year-old, had been bounced off to mare duty as a Jones-aged whippersnapper.

It smarts, (sorry) is all. It also sucks.

It’s long been a gripe of the racing fan that this sport is run by the breeders, that owners can collect far more ching by supporting a stud rather than a racehorse. Why chance a potentially fatal breakdown on those thin little Thoroughbred legs-- not to mention risking a few losses on the track here and there, resulting in a sharp drop in stud value-- when you’ve got a fer-shure valuable stallion in your barn?

Breeding never used to interest me until I discovered how shockingly weird it is. It’s this bizarre parallel equine universe of arranged marriages, planned ovulation, and prom night teasing. People actually sit around and discuss this stuff. While eating.

I had to get very literate very fast about breeding when I started writing ad copy for a stud farm (Note to self: Next time I own controlling interest in a minor league baseball team, it shall be christened “Stud Farm”.) Therefore I recently found myself not only understanding, but actually participating in, the following conversation:

BREEDER: She’ll be a blue hen, this one. She’s in foal to (insert stallion name here)

ME: How’d the cover go?

BREEDER: Good. She caught.

ME: Ah.

BREEDER: Twins, though. Had to pinch one of ‘em.

ME: Really.

TRANSLATION:

BREEDER: This Thoroughbred might produce a great many quality foals. She is currently carrying the baby of (insert stallion name here.)

ME: And how went act of holding down a mare while a horse whose sole job is to eat and have sex jumped on her back as two grown men physcially guided his male part into her female area?

BREEDER: Good. She’s pregnant.

ME: I have run out of breeding lingo.

BREEDER: She conceived twins, and because it may be dangerous for the mare and the two foals to carry both pregnancies to completion, I reached into the mare’s uterus and physically removed one of the fertilized eggs.

ME: I need to go call a priest and take a shower now.


Oh, children, we are now officially a far cry from standing next to a launchpad explaining the role of the solid rocket booster to a family of five from Wisconsin. (Although… no, let’s not go there.)

Some far more knowledgeable about this stuff than I am are howling that this is the type of injury that any basically sound horse can recover from with a good measure of patience and time. Many railbirds are already lifting their binoculars to their faces, straining their eyes down the track at the yearlings and the two-year-olds, conjecturing on who “the next America’s Horse” will be.

You know what I think? I don't think you can, or should, predict who the next "America's Horse" is going to be. The core of the charm of Smarty's story is that he and his knock-about jockey and Norman Rockwell trainer seemed to materialize from the mists cast by the racing gods. The best thing about Smarty is that he came along when we least expected him.

Well, young Mr. Jones has a great deal of fun ahead of him. Bless his heart and his four bruised feet. But as a fellow racing fan wrote today, “The flame of Smarty Jones has been extinguished.” It has indeed. He was very, very talented, something truly special. His potential for greatness stretched without end.

Notice how I’ve slipped into the past tense here.

Aw, screw it. I'm gonna start watching racketball.

Ignore the fact that I ended a post about horse sex with the word "screw" at blondechampange@hotmail.com

G-FOOOOOOOOORCE!

G-Force, my good friend, wine companion, and proud fan of pickles, has now been sucked into the blogging vortex. Since she is cool and also a women of excellent literary tastes, she has become part of the chorus informing the world just how awesome I in fact am. I say again: Word, G-Force.

Monday, August 02, 2004

Still MORE BALLOONS!!

The truly awesome thing about the Democratic convention—other than the fact that it’s over and we will no longer be subjected to the sight of rich white people attempting to dance enmass—is that nobody’s talking about Kerry. We are instead discussing Mr. F-ing Balloon Man.

As if you needed further proof that the 24 hour media cycle does in fact have its head entirely too far up its own ass, the second this happened, Wolf "Right, Like That's Really My Name" Blitzer and Judy Dandruff started analyzing the tragically botched balloon drop. They immediately began very solemnly discussing Carter's 1980 convention, and how his balloon drop was also somewhat flaccid, and how, looking back, this was clearly an Omen of Doom for the entire campaign. Was this also the case for Senator Kerry? O Kerry! O he who was so cruelly betrayed by his own balloons!

Well, hell, I'm in the media. Let's see what Mr. F-ing Balloon Man has to say in his own defense:

Q: Mr. F-ing Balloon Man, what does America need the most as we forge into the 21st century?

MR. F-ING BALLOON MAN: We need more balloons.

Q: But how many balloons? Who’s to say how many balloons are enough?

MR. F-ING BALLOON MAN: We need all of them coming down. All balloons, what the hell!

Q: If you could ask President Bush one question in this fall’s debates, what would you ask him?

MR. F-ING BALLOON MAN: What's happening to the balloons? We need more balloons.

Q: And where do you stand on aspects of faith in the personal lives of these candidates?

MR. F-ING BALLOON MAN: Jesus! We need more balloons. I want all balloons to go, goddammit.

Q: Do you have anything to say to young people who may be just forming their political consciousness, perhaps even voting for the very first time?

MR. F-ING BALLOON MAN: What the fuck are you guys doing up there?

Q: Thank you, Mr. F-ing Balloon Man. We appreciate your time.

MR. F-ING BALLOON MAN: All balloons! All balloons! Keep going!

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