AMCdoingherthing
Originally uploaded by JungsPN
Since we all need something to look at during this difficult Olympic time when everything shuts down for Tae Kwon Do, I thought another picture of our hero, Anne Maree Cooksley, with Miss Poland no less, would be a treat for everyone. She even has her free glass of champagne - god she's brilliant. So, let me be perfectly clear on one thing - that Miley Cyrus live clip is the greatest thing in the world...um...oh yeah, the other thing is, I hate the Olympics. I hate the Olympics for many reasons. My Dad hates them because he never gets to see anyone Scottish competing, just Australians winning bronze. I'm pretty much annoyed that Garry Wilkinson, the Coogee Bear, never gets to front our coverage here. In one of those legendary moments everyone remembers but no one ever actually say, Garry was asleep at his desk during a morning shift at the 92 Barcelona Games, and had to be poked with a stick to wake him up. As you may have gathered, I'm also far more into the machinations and fascinating interplay of local pride, national pride is a little bit militant to me. All that flag waving and anthem singing, and the opening ceremony, what's all that about? Nothing will ever beat the AFL Grand Final the year the goal umpires all did a choreographed dance. Oh, you can put a whale in the top deck of the stands all you want China, but if you don't have streamers and balloons and kids in footy tops, what's the point? And that's before we get to how hard it is to see anyone hot for two weeks - I just struggle to see what's attractive about Amanda Beard (nowhere near as hot as Bronwyn Eagles), in fact the only funny thing was Ian Thorpe was dating a beard (funny gag) - shallow, but true, the best you can get is the really small womens weightlifters. Actually, that comment just came because I have a copy of FHM in the house, it's making me sexist...
My hatred of the Olympics though really stems from two seperate incidents - the first was back in 1984, when I was in Grade 1, and we sent our young hopeful athletes off to Los Angeles, and somewhat inevitably, my school decided everyone had to do a school project. I hated projects, due to my inherent laziness, and desire to do something far more enjoyable, like playing with my Ju Jitsu Heman figure or pretending to be Rod McCurdy in the back garden. In my school, projects were never judged on content, but on things like colours and presentation, my absolute weaknesses in life, especially with my pen licence defying bad handwriting. As you can imagine, there wasn't exactly a lot of information in Penguin on the small African country, and it's not like outside the US Army anyone had ever heard of the Internet, so I had to go to the library and do proper old fashioned research. Now, Penguin library was many things - a wonderful shelter for the homeless, a place for mummys and daddys who loved each other very much, and a place where you never quite sure if the librarians hated you or not, but what it wasn't was a rich source of research material on Botswana. Despite a frantic one night cram session with the parents, all we could find was one paragraph in the dictionary - and so, we did the only thing we could do, we made it up. We got about 6 paragraphs out of maize being the chief export alone, made up the presidents name, made up the anthem, every fact apart from a drawn by my Dad flag was completely made up. And of course, I got an A because it looked shiny. And so, that's the first reason I hate the Olympics - it taught me to lie, lie like a homeless man in the gutter. It's appropriate, given 1/2 the athletes are on drugs...wait, who let Tamsyn Lewis write that last bit?
I guess the second reason I hate the Olympics is because it's just a lot of pointless sports that you are supposed to care about when the rest of your life you wouldn't give a toss about them. Lauren Burns winning at Tae Kwon Do or that bush pig girl who won the shooting gold medal last time for Australia are suddenly national heroes because they won at sports that, be honest, if they were on TV you wouldn't watch except they are on at the Olympics. Do you watch the womens weightlifting normally? Of course you don't - but if we load some Aussie girl up with carbs and put her in the super heavyweight judo we all get the flags out and cheer her on. When the Sydney Olympic opening ceremony was on, we were watching the Royle Family on the ABC. In Scotland, I don't remember the Olympics meaning anything to anyone - except for Tom McKean in Seoul, that was the one person we all got behind - and then the stupid bloke got boxed in by 6 Kenyans in the heats and was stuffed. We lost interest after that, mostly because it's impossible to unite all of Scotland behind one person, given we tend to find out their religion before we decide if we like them or not. I love here in Australia we have elevated a modern pentathlete (meh, I liked ancient pentathletes way better) to a national hero because she's fighting some pesky Greeks just for a place in the team. Who cares about modern pentathlon? Anyone? And the inspirational montages set to Coldplay...bring back 1988s One Moment In Time by Whitney Houston...now that was an Olympics song...all of my dreams are a heartbeat awayyyyyyyyy...
Mind you, the Olympics did give me my one moment of true sporting glory - 1988s parade of nations at my school in Burnie. We all had to pick a country and benny around for a day representing a country in sport with the winner getting a trip to generic chip and chicken restaurant downtown (McDonalds was an Olympiad away) - a much better way to celebrate the Olympics than making the Tanzanian flag in glitter glue (I love glitter glue). It was also a wonderful way to legally play catch and kiss under the guise of Olympic spirit. Our bit of the school represented Germany, a country which at 10 years old we didn't know a lot about, other than Hogans Heroes and Allo Allo (oh Renee, you and your antics). However, I did want to win, as there was this other kid on the Greek team that I really didn't like. So I absolutely caned him in the most traditional of all Olympic events...the 100m egg and spoon race, beating him by about 20 metres after he tripped over his own big trendy shoes. As it turned out, my victory on that cold, grey Burnie afternoon won the event for our team, and I lapped up the attention and wore my little blue first place ribbon, not even noticing that the quality of chicken was slowly rotting my liver due to it's 1980s "treatment" via chemicals. I felt like a winner in a way that I just haven't managed to since. I guess I understood why people give their lives in dedication to sport, just for that kind of attention, to go back to their home town and know they are loved and that they never have to pay for chicken or chips again. I guess I should try and appreciate all the modern pentathletes and male synchronised swimmers, they are in it for the glory (and the chicken)...but I know I won't, I'll be yelling at the TV what happened to the good programmes...I know I will...
Still, if it stops Southern Cross showing Collingwood games...
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