WHAT I'M LEARNING FROM WATCHING THE OLYMPICS

From the opening ceremonies: The Industrial Revolution created mass poverty which forced people to eat coal and that rotted their teeth so the UK gov't had to invent free dental care

From watching NBC coverage: The Olympics is a series of athletic events in which a bunch of American compete ... and there are some other people who hang around too

From watching CBC coverage: It's not the medals that count, but the effort but gosh wouldn't a medal be oh so wonderful. To the point that we will claim a medal for Canada any way we can, even if the athlete in question is not Canadian. Oh look, this Korean athlete's grandfather once looked at a picture of a Newfoundland moose ... he must be Canadian!

The Olympics is all about the pure celebration of athletic achievement ... as long as it can be measured. Here are some of the many ways we measure and qualify the beauty and sanctity of human striving:

1) Medals. You are nothing at all if you don't win a medal. Really, it's all about (as it often is) gold. If you don't get the gold then you weren't trying hard enough or you didn't train hard enough of someone else cheated. There are other medals but really they don't mean much. Unless you are a Canadian. Bronze, I think, is the colour of Canada

2) Whining. This should be an official Olympic event. It's an athletic form of a very high order. Athletes whine, coaches whine, the media whines, governments whine ... Oh it's all about all these countries competing together .. long as we get that gold. Then we whine

The podium at the end of the games for Whining will be very crowded.

3) How many ways can you hide the fact that it's all about money. This is another important and complex Olympic event. How to disguisse the fact  that these games only exist to generate profit it a essentially a martial art; think ninjas. There are so many "official" products of the Olympic games I think there are more corporations than countries participating. Some athletes are registering official complaints that they can't wear the logos of their sponsors as they compete .. Crap how on earth can they make money on this without the proper TV exposure.

No one even blinks that these amateur athletes have sponsors

Other random stuff I'm learning:

Make up. The Olympics is all about make up, at least for female gymnasts. Apparently a girl can't keep her balance on that thin beam without eye shadow and glitter in her hair. I learned that make up was important while watching a girl compete and the commentator informed me: "It's all in here eyes isn't it, she's put on a colour that matches her leotard .."

Equality. Some Official High Seated Doofus of the Olympics celebrated that fact that for the first time, every participating country has sent at least one female athlete. Yay. Equality, everyone's coming around. No one has questioned how these women were selected, how much choice they were given, why they have male "handlers" whose job seems to be to glare at any other male who may glance their way, how the woman is being presented by her home nation (often as a whore, for doing what men are clearly only meant to do) or what happens when the woman returns home. Or whether any female from these countries will ever enjoy this privilidge in her own country. Yay. Equality.

Numbers. Yup, it's all about the numbers. How fast, how high, how heavy .. how many medals. And how many events. This may be another unlisted Olympic event: How many events can we shoe horn into 2 weeks. There are a ridiculous number of events at the Olympics. Still, I think they've missed a few.

So, some events that could have been in the Olympics:

1) Coupon cutting. An athletic endeavour that tests your physical prowess (dude, that scissor work ain't easy); your strategy (do you cut coupons for 100 mini size tubes of toothpaste or 70 jumbo size)

2) Cat bowling. Not cats throwing balls, don't be silly. I mean bowling with cats. I'd suggest going with a Persian, they have lots of fur and should ball up nicely. Replace traditional pins with mice, a cat may enjoy knocking over a mouse

3) Boxing. I know we already have boxing in the Olympics but I don't mean pugilism. I mean seeing how quickly a homeless person can make himself a house out of a cardboard box. After London is heavily indebted from hosting these games and private companies claim all the new venues for basically nothing, this kind of boxing may become a much needed and practised athletic endeavour

4) Waving. Waving is big at the Olympics. Just count how many times people wave. Athletes wave tot he crowd, to the camera, to each other. People in the stands wave to the athletes and to the cameras. Coaches wave to the judges ... with a special one finger wave it would seem

Gosh, so little time so much to learn. Let me get back to it. Then I need to work out. Thirty reps of whining followed by a vigorous low impact waving session

THE OLYMPICS & THE OSCARS: NUMBERS VS EXCELLENCE

First we had the Olympics, now we had the Oscars. I'm finding parallels between the two

Both claim to be events that celebrate excellence in their fields, be it athletic competition or artistic expression. The Olympics claim to be about amateur athletics, celebrating the unadulterated joy of competition. Even though professional athletes are allowed to participate and even the "amateur" athletes stand to make millions of dollars in endorsement deals if they succeed

The Oscars celebrate making movies, which is a commercial business, no one is an amateur here but the party line is, that this night is not about making money, it's about the pure art of movie making. But check out your local movie ads today, see how many movies are touting their Oscar wins and see how many movies are back in theatres with images of that little golden guy on their ads

Both are all about the numbers and the numbers relate to money. In the Olympics, you have the medal count. Even when a country like Canada didn't win in overall numbers, we like to say "But hey, we won more gold!"

In the Oscars, it's all about the numbers as well, primarily the number of statues a particular film was nominated for, or awarded. That will be touted in the revised film ads as well

Is one film actually better than another because it won more Oscars? Is an athlete more worthy of attention and fiscal rewards because they won gold over bronze? Is a country made superior because its athletes got more medals than another?

The Olympics and the Oscars are competitions. No matter how fuzzy wuzzy and kumbya they want us to feel, they are competitions. In competitions there are winners and losers. Both pretty much acknowledge there are degrees of victory as well; in the Olympics it's gold over silver, in the Oscars it's the number of awards you win and which awards you win. Nobody pays much attention if you won Best Sound Editing (but they should, trust me, they really should) but everyone wants to know who won Best Picture

I noticed this year that the Oscars do seem to be letting go, a little, this pretense that it's all about love from your peers. In recent years, when an award was presented, the verbage was "and the Oscar goes to" This year they reverted to "and the winner is" Yes folks, it's all about winning. On one hand we listen to acceptance speeches and presentations that tell us that film makers do their thing "for the art" but really, what's important, is who has their sweaty hands on that little golden guy

It's no different with the Olympics. There's a reason why in the next few months you'll see images of athletes with their medals around their necks. Perhaps that won't be their choice, perhaps they'll be coerced into doing by their handlers; but the fact is, they have handlers and they will listen to them, because they want to continue to compete and they need money to do that, and they also know their time at being able to compete at such a high level is limited and e everyone wants a nest egg.

It's not that different for movie makers. As I said, movie making is generally a more straight forward money making exercise but you have to concentrate on where that money comes from, and who is benefiting from it

I'm not completely cynical .. no, really, I'm not. I think there's a few centimeters on my left big toe that are still a cynicism free zone. I do believe that a lot of film makers, even commercially successful ones, are initially motivated to make films from some inner creative drive. But making a film is a ludicrously expensive process and most people (aside from James Cameron or Steven Spielberg maybe) don't have the wallet to finance it out of their own pocket. Production companies become involved, studios, distributors, investors. Check out the opening credits of any film, and count the number of production companies involved. They are not there because they believe in the artistic integrity of the film, they're there for an expected return on investment.

It's the same with amateur athletes. Most of these people begin their journey as kids, young kids, and they sacrifice an awful lot; time, socialisation, etc. For people doing sports like biathalon or skeleton, there probably isn't an initial thought about making buckets load of cash, they are there for the competition. But all that time has to be supported somehow, not to mention the gear, training, coaches etc. And when Nike is drewling over your gold medals, it's because they want your name on their shoes. They expect a return on investment as well

And we all feed in on this. Everyone got caught up in the medal count and "owning the podium" at the recent winter Olympics. People are breathlessly blogging about which film won the highest number of Oscars.

We can admire that athlete on the field or have an emotional reaction to a scene in the film but in the end, we like to quantify things. We like to measure things. We like our numbers

So Hurt Locker owned the podium, the US Olympic team owned the red carpet, and James Cameron is laughing all the way to the bank. After all, he has the number one and number two highest grossing films in history. And he doesn't need to thank the Academy, he's just going to dog paddle in his swimming pool filled with cash ..

AND THE GOLD MEDAL IN WHINING GOES TO ...

One day before the Olympics start in B.C. But the games are already in full swing. The real games, the ones that actually mean something, those being The We're Only In It For the Money Games, and theWhining Games

Let's start with the Money Games. This basically breaks down into two divisions: Money made by athletes and how it affects these "amateur" games and the money generated by the Games themselves, so much money that we really can't pretend that these are truly "amateur" games

CTV is the Canadian network broadcasting the games. They own a local 24 hr news channel that I watch here, so I'm being inundated with their Olympic fervor. Today they were out in Vancouver asking people who they think it should be to light the Olympic flame. Mostly, people didn't care. That drove the reporters into a frenzy; of course you should care! It hasn't been decided yet! This could be controversial ... but it isn't. People really don't care. But CTV really really really wants then to, we all know controversy is good for TV. The same thing happened here as the Olympic torch came through Toronto. CTV treated it as if the torch contained the blood of martyrs or the world's first fat free hamburger, you know, something important.

The other part of the Money Games is the money that athletes make. When professional athletes were allowed into the Olympics, wasn't the facade shattered at that time? Well duh, I guess not, but people still seem to buy in to the Olympic myth ("buy" in, get it? um, nevermind)

Besides athletes who have high paying day jobs, we have the amateur athletes who benefit as well. The Olympics is all about money. In this day and age, it wouldn't exist if it was not.

Then we have the whining game. That is an athlete participation sport. You know, like someone refusing to mount the podium because she didn't win gold, someone accusing another athlete of using performance enhancing drugs .. and there's already been 30 athletes excluded from these games for this very reason

The whining game is off to a good start from the American men's skeleton team complaining that their Canadian counterparts have an unfair advantage due to the fact they had longer access to the facility .. well, duh, isn't that the home court advantage? And didn't the Americans have said advantage at any of the Games they've hosted

I understand why these amateur athletes, who compete just for the glory of competing against the best .. because a gold medal means gold in their pocket. A song from the 80's had this line "all that cash makes a succulent sound"

I think the sound is actually closer to a whine

DON'T WORRY, WE HAVE YOUR EMOTIONS PRE-PACKAGED FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE

Toronto has Olympic fever. The torch is making its way through the city today, on its way to Vancouver. Watching the coverage has made my skin a little twitchy.

People are lined up on the sidewalks, in this burning cold, tears sticking to their faces, clutching their hearts ... why? Some of the quotes: "This is the greatest moment of my life" "I'm so glad my kids are able to witness this (isn't this a school day?)" And the torch bearers themselves are so emotional they're practically orgasmic

"I've been defined" said one torch bearer. Another: "I will remember this as long as I live"

Again: Why? People, you aren't really thinking about all this, are you

More quotes "The torch represents peace and hope" OK, well the murder of Israeli athletes and the Atlanta bombing kind of squashes that whole peace thing

"The torch is for unity among the world's peoples" Really now? With nations boycotting the games at various times, tons of official protests and the games being held in China, a non democratic country where people have no rights to govern themselves and where human rights violations are a daily occurrence

"The torch represents the beauty of competition" This one's too easy: Corrupt figure skating judges, Ben Johnson, human growth hormone, professional athletes.

Are people really thinking about this? Or are they just blithely following a pre packaged emotional construct. Who doesn't think that the Olympics are all about money and corporate greed? Who doesn't understand the subtext of national pride verging on racism? Who doesn't get that the upcoming Olympics in Rio will make a few people a ton of money but will do nothing to help the hundreds of thousands of those who live there in poverty and will, in all likelihood, make their lives even worse. What happened to all the poor people in Beijing? Do you think their lives got any better? I doubt it

Feel free to enjoy some of the athletic performances at the Olympics. Most of that leaves me cold, for a lot of these athletes, who train for monthly, yearly events of more importance, this is an artificial event, that happens every four years under a huge media spotlight and viewed by a lot of people who probably understand nothing about their sport. And its political. Way, way political, from what country hosts, to which athletes compete, to who carries a flag; you have to know it has nothing to do with individual achievement.

Can any adult with access to any kind of media not really get this? Yet here I'm watching all these people, completely overcome with emotion. Even if you can ignore all the incredible bullshit associated with the Olympics, unless you know someone involved, is it really this big a deal? At the most, its an athletic competition. But I hear all these vapid platitudes: World changing, hopefully, fulfilling, life altering ... oh people, give your head a shake

I think not enough people are thinking about this. Not enough people are thinking, period, They sit there in their living rooms and they let the SMPTE corrected colour images wash over them, soaking in this pre packaged propaganda that has nothing to do with reality but has everything to do with TV ratings and product placement .. oh, oh yeh, excuse me, the Olympics aren't about money ... cough cough.

Let's talk about the torch bearers themselves. Yes there was a school teacher, a retired athlete, but there was also an awful lot of "TV personalities" from CTV the network that is hosting (no, not hosting, but paid millions of the dollars) the games on Cdn television. Were they all there to promote amateur sports and the beauty of competition or national pride?

What really bothers me is how so many of these people are emoting and speaking as if they're following a script. They've given up their emotions to the spin doctors, and given it up easily. No wonder we can't see to be able to make critical, viable decisions when it comes to how we want to be governed. We're too fucking passive, we're too bludgeoned by marketing and politics to NOT think, to NOT be critical, to just spread our legs and take, and later, pay for the privileged.

Maybe we should use that torch to help keep warm some to the people sleeping on sewer grates in this city tonight