The late and great Lewis Grizzard once said, “The three most over-rated things in life are home cooking, extra martial sex, and Rock City”. Home cooking is over-rated because it really depends upon the home. Rock City is over-rated because you basically just walk around and look at rocks. You also get to see the “breathtaking” view of seven states, although, you're not sure which ones you are looking at. I’ve only seen two states the times I’ve been to Rock City: Georgia and Tennessee. Rock City owes me five more states. I have to trust Grizzard’s assessment about extra martial sex being over-rated because I’ve been a good boy, however I would like to add one more to the list: The Olympics.
I like The Olympics as much as anybody. By that I mean, I watch it and then forget about it for four years.
The Olympics this year is being held in London, England. The opening ceremonies were an odd mixture of the very stupid mixed with the bad idea. It supposedly started in the pastoral England-gave some perfunctory lines from somebody named Shakespeare-then went straight into the Industrial Revolution. I couldn’t tell if this was good or bad.
Then the Queen of England was involved in a skit in which she supposedly parachutes into the stadium with Mr. Bean or was it James Bond? That was followed by a Salute to Socialized Medicine. The country that gave us The Magna Carta (which wasn’t mentioned) is now celebrating The National Health Service. Thanks to The National Health Service, the wait for a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down is only six to eight months.
The games have been the games. It seems there is this thing called time and London is in a different time zone than the United States. So by the time the good stuff comes on, in prime time (imagine that) most of us already know who has won the particular event.
I’ve seen a lot of Women’s Almost Nekkid Volleyball, a.k.a “Beach Volleyball”. Up until I was a middle aged man, I was not aware that this was an Olympic sport. Women's Beach Volleyball is two almost nekkid girls playing volleyball with two other almost nekkid girls from another countries. If you have a weak heart, you better take your baby aspirin before this event. Even in the game in which Team USA wore long sleeve t-shirts I still had Jimmy Carter sized lust in my heart.
My cynicism over The Olympics stems from the 1996 Olympics which were held here in Atlanta. How Atlanta got The Olympics, I have no idea. I remember six years of build up just to have the world come to Atlanta and tell her it stinks. The world was pretty much right.
We went to two events. One was the Italy vs South Korea baseball game. What I remember was that the three, four, and five hitters for South Korea were Yong, Dong, and Bong. The uniforms for Italy looked like the Los Angeles Dodgers. That’s my Olympic memory of that game.
The second event we went to was the Gold Medal Baseball game between Cuba and Japan. (Baseball was the easiest ticket to get.) Our seats were in left field of the dearly departed Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. I caught a practice ball thrown into the stands by Team Japan. Really. My wife saw then Georgia governor Zelbert "Zell" Miller walking around the stadium. Cuba won, I think. Team USA got the bronze medal in the sport that we invented.
After the game, we had to wait on the buses to take us back to Cobb County. We waited in a hot August night, with a five year old, for two hours. Never go to an Olympic gold medal game at night with a five year old is something I would advise all young parents. I’m not bragging, but our son did real good considering the circumstances. Once a member of the transportation team walked up and announced that if you are “pregnant or have diabetes, you can go to the front of the line”. My son asked if we were pregnant.
They finally loaded us on a bus, packed literally like sardines, and sent us on our way back to Marietta. Our son fell asleep, standing up. We should have given him a gold medal.
No comments:
Post a Comment