The Olympics represent the best and the worst of all humanity has to offer, except sex (which would be inappropriate - in much of the world, it's considered to be a televised event for the whole family and we should respect that). The thrill of victory! The agony of defeat - and some poor dude caroming all to pieces down the ramp! Do you get a medal for that? Not hardly. They have to judge hard, because when human excellence is the arena, having some hard-assed standard to hold up to is way more important than making people feel good for sucking at something they've spent their entire lives on, when the chips are down. And how do you get over something like that? Well, you can be like Tonya Harding, and be ridiculed for the way you go about it, or you can go the other route and be lionized on Wheaties boxes and married into the Kardashians. Isn't that what Bruce Jenner did? He married into some damn family of tabloid people! But the point is: that journey began at the pinnacle of Olympic Glory - and too many people seem willing to gloss that over.
Man, when I was a kid the Olympics were some major stuff. Guess what, chumps? They still are. But it's no place for mawkish sentimentality! Olympic athletes are hard, fierce, brash, honed competitors with a huge chip on their sculpted shoulders, and these are not your ancient Olympians like the Greek Gods throwing boulders around, or hurling strokes of lightning, no! These athletes are larger than life by virtue of their embrace of human limitation: and by embracing it, they seize it and push it and milk it for all that it's worth and more, until suddenly: "IT'S A WORLD RECORD! THE CROATIAN JUDGE JUST LOST HER SHIT!!" You better believe the crowd is right on board with it when that happens, holmes!!
Point is: the Olympics. These games aren't for kids, and these players ain't playing. Get on board the O-train and let's go play some anthems and get some medals.
No comments:
Post a Comment