See Rock City, Then Tiny Montenegro

The other day I saw a SEE ROCK CITY bumper sticker on a parked car. Hadn't seen one of those in years. Or the side of a barn with those words. But I remember them well, as long ago as 1969. Repetition has that effect.

The Schleswig-Holstein High "Calendar/Handbook" arrived in the mail yesterday, ahead of Lilly's first day of high school, August 23, which is right there on the calendar. The handbook section is lengthy: 25 pages, twice as many as the calendar itself, and chock-a-block with policy and regs. The index includes, among many other subjects, Behavioral Intervention Policy, Bullying, Disabling Products, Excessive Show of Affection, False Fire Alarms, Gangs, Hazing, Loitering, Pranks, Search & Seizure and Sexual Harassment. Sounds like the subjects covered in Room 222.

The list of disabling products, in case you're wondering, includes stink bombs, mace, pepper spray and other noxious substances. Do kids even make stink bombs any more? If so, leave them at home, kids.

I've been too busy to pay much attention to the Olympics, but I did check the medal standings this evening. Not so much the big-damn-deal headline contest between the U.S. and China, or the home-team surge by the British, but for more obscure medal winners. I didn't see Togo on the list this time. Too bad. But I have a soft spot for the places that are taking home exactly one bronze, which so far is quite a few: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Puerto Rico, Trinidad, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Morocco, Hong Kong, Latvia and Argentina.

Maybe no Togo, but Botswana has won a single silver, its first-ever medal: a fellow named Nijel Amos in the 800m footrace. Other countries taking home medals for the first time (according to CBS; NBC can't be bothered with anything but Team America): tiny Montenegro -- Google the term, you get some hits -- and even tinier Grenada.

End of July Notes

I saw some Olympic diving out of the corner of my eye last night and wandered over to the TV for a look. Svelte lads in ridiculously tiny suits -- wait, there are two of them jumping at the same time. Since when has that been an Olympic event? Shows you what I know: since 2000.

Somehow or other, I'd never seen synchronized diving before. Actually, I know how that happened. I didn't watch much of either 2000 or '04 Games and simply missed the contests in '08, when my viewing was less-than-fanatical.

A credit card offer came in the mail today. Nothing unusual about that -- based on the continuous stream of offers, you'd think there had been no painful recession recently. It was a Disney-themed card issued by a too-big-to-fail bank. But not just any Disney theme: a mockup of the card attached to the letter features the Sorcerer's Apprentice Mickey in full-magic mode. On the back of the card is Mickey and a couple of the broomstick servants he created.

I thought about that. He's one of the iconic Mickeys, of course. But he's also the one who inadvertently creates a catastrophe instead of the useful servant he imagined he was getting. It started small, but got out of hand. You know, something like a credit card can.

The toys of the moment for Ann are her Monster High dolls. They're Mattel creations, released only a couple of years ago now, and the conceit is that they're teen offspring of famed public domain monsters -- Frankenstein's, Dracula, the Werewolf, the Mummy, et al. Lately Ann has been creating derivative characters on paper based on monsters not mentioned in the series featuring the dolls. Sometimes she asks me for input.

So far, we've come up with the children of the Bogeyman, the Devil, Godzilla, the Loch Ness Monster, a Bug-Eyed Martian, a Roc, the "Seaweed Monster" and -- my favorite -- the daughter of Them. As in monster ants, the kind featured in Them. That was her idea.

She's also been taking pictures of her Monster High dolls.

In black & white, for some reason.

Those Weren't the Days

The XXX Olympiad has put me in the mood to read about the III Olympiad, among other things. I'm funny that way. But it's interesting to read about, mainly because the St. Louis Games had fiasco written all over them.

Back when Chicago made its futile pitch for the 2016 Games, I thought one claim the city had on the event was the fact that St. Louis had snatched the Games away from Chicago in 1904, to complement the Louisiana Purchase Exposition -- the Meet Me in St. Louis world's fair. Some sources say the fair organizers essentially bullied Baron de Coubertin by threatening to hold separate athletic events to overshadow the Olympics. In any case, the Games ended up being overshadowed by the fair anyway. Also, they were badly run; hardly international at all, since most of the best European athletes didn't want to come; and marred by various notorious incidents, both in the opinion of people at the time and more recently.

The story of the marathon that year is bizarre in the extreme, and well-told at Marathon & Beyond. This amusing podcast is about the runner who actually won the race, as opposed to the guy who cheated. Throw in a Cuban who stops to eat apples along the way, some Zulus recruited to the race at the last minute, and racers having to dodge auto-mobiles and horse-drawn vehicles on dusty, pre-modern roads, and you've got kinetic comedy. I'm surprised no movie along the lines of The Great Race or Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines was ever made from the story.

The disgraceful history at "Anthropology Days" at the Games is discussed by Slate in 2008 and the Daily Mail this year. Go to the IOC web site, and the incident is downplayed considerably in the short page about the 1904 Games. That is, not mentioned.

Be Not Afear'd; the Isle is Full of Noises

About four years ago I wrote, "the London Games would do well not to ape [the Beijing] show, but instead try for something simpler, more focused on individuals, rather than masses. China's got masses, that's for sure. Western Civilization is about something else."

We watched most of the opening ceremony on Friday, and liked it in spite of NBC's dumbed down, annoying presentation (and its ludicrous decision not to show the implicit 7/7 tribute). I don't know that I'd call the '12 ceremony simpler than '08, since there were a lot of moving parts. Sure was more festive, though.

And something of an answer to Beijing's message: Look here, we're strong and modern! To which the London replied, we invented modern. While having a spot of fun. Do the Chinese have an equivalent to Mr. Bean? Probably they do, but the party mandarins wouldn't dream of putting him front and center before a worldwide audience of a billion.

Ann was full of questions for me: What's that? What are they doing? What's that supposed to be? I told her as much as I could, but the references were flying by. The onrush of British content was something to behold, and must be bewildering if you're nine. Still, she'll pick most of it eventually. Such are the connections between the UK and the rest of the English-speaking world. I was reminded just how fortunate I am, being able to understand (most) of what the British have to offer the world, in the original language.

How is it I never made it to Glastonbury Tor? I don't think it was that obscure before the opening ceremony featured a model of it. But when I visited Bath in '83, which isn't very far away, I probably hadn't heard of it yet. During later visits to the country, it never occurred to me. Ah, well. Just another place to visit if I live long enough (and there are many such places in the British Isles).

We sat through the Parade of Nations, though as usual it was butchered by NBC. Why, for instance, since it's on tape delay, does the network pretend that a number of teams paraded by when the commercials were on? Sometimes the patter of the announcers told me some interesting tidbit about the teams, especially about one or another of the competitors, but a lot of the time their assumption was that the audience didn't know anything about anywhere, and didn't really need to.

Also as usual, I got to wonder how it is that some subnational places get Olympic committees, while others do not. American Samoa, Aruba, Bermuda, the BVI, the Caymans, Guam, Hong Kong, Palestine, Puerto Rico and the USVI all count as non-nation participants, though in the case of Palestine, it's pretty much a de facto nation (or two) and Hong Kong makes sense because it was a distinct entity for so long. But if Puerto Rico can get its own team, why not French Guiana? American Samoa but not French Polynesia? The British Virgin Islands but not Martinique? Maybe Martinique isn't big enough to field a team, but I'm sensing a pattern. French territories compete for the glory of France, or not at all. C'est la vie.

The Olympic cauldron lighting was pretty cool, with 204 copper petals, one for each team, rising up to be conduits for one of the many fingers of the giant flame. Not bad, but it couldn't top Paralympian Antonio Rebollo shooting a flaming arrow into the cauldron in Barcelona (or near it, since I've read the flame wasn't actually lit by his arrow, but who cares). Still, the London lighting was effective, and I didn't learn until today that the unexplained girls in floaty dresses carrying cup-like items along with each team were in fact carrying the copper petals that would be part of the cauldron. Nice touch.

One more question: What about Ringo? Couldn't he have played drums with Sir Paul? I haven't heard that he's ill, and surely he could have played that short set list. Maybe there were other considerations. Still, it would have been fitting.

I suspect the '16 ceremony will be a whole lotta festive. After after, it's Rio. But we'll have to wait and see.

Ilanaaq

I didn't look into it until today, but I did recognize the logo of the Winter Games as soon as I saw it. That's because of a curio I bought at the airport in Toronto a couple of years ago:

Among a selection of key chains, coffee mugs and t-shirts, this bit of glass sculpture stood out. Made, the label took pains to assure buyers, by a genuine First Nation artisan, not a chap who speaks Cantonese. It's supposed to be reminiscent of the cairns (inukshuk) built by the First Nations of the Arctic, or at least one kind of the cairns, the man-like variety.

The Games logo, known as Ilanaaq, is likewise supposed to evoke the cairns, though the one built in Whistler is a good bit larger than my two-inch curio. Naturally, not everyone is happy with the design, since there's no pleasing everyone. I'm curious why the logo wasn't more British Columbia-specific, though I'm not sure what that would be.

The cartoon mascots of the Winter Games -- based on native mythology and called Miga, Quatchi, Sumi and Mukmuk -- are more forgettable than Ilanaaq, and about as pre-school as Olympic mascots usually are, but at least they're supposed to be British Columbian (I think). Still, something's missing from this group of mascots. A cross-dressing lumberjack, maybe?

Endless Winter

February stasis is here. It's hard to remember when the trees weren't bare or the ground didn't sport snow or coats weren't constant outdoor necessities. All that must have true six months ago, but it doesn't feel like it was ever possible. We've slipped into Endless Winter. (But no; April, come she will.)

Google "endless winter" and you'll see, among other things, an imdb item about a documentary ski movie so obscure it has only two external reviews, and no trivia, goofs or crazy credits. It's probably a fun movie to watch, though, if the cinematography is worthwhile -- good clean kinetic fun.

Something like the men's half-pipe competition I was persuaded to watch last night. I've asked this rhetorically before, but I'm going to ask again, as an expression of wonder: How is it possible to do that? How? The everyday physics I've lived with for nearly 50 years, and which provides clumsy moments from time to time, tells me human beings experiencing normal gravity on Earth can't half-pipe. And yet Shaun White does a Double McCheese with Extra Onions on live TV.

Still, physics demands a toll, like the troll under the bridge. This from philly.com: "Already, this Olympic competition was marked by who was not here. American star Kevin Pearce is still in a brain-rehab hospital after a traumatic head injury on a half-pipe in December. Finland's Antti Autti, a medal contender, broke three ribs and punctured a lung in a crash earlier in December."

Up Vancouver Way

What, no flying acrobats or 2,010 Dancing Mounties in the opening ceremony of the Winter Games? Lilly said she was a little disappointed with Friday's ceremonies, compared with the big-do that Beijing put on. I pointed out that dictatorships are fond of mass spectacle. I'm not sure what she made of my geopolitical soapboxing, but she's young yet, and hasn't seen the likes of this or this.

I skipped most of the opening ceremonies myself, but did sit down with the rest of the family to watch the parade of nations, which always gives me a chance to field geographic questions from the girls. Every other answer to their questions this time around seemed to be, "It was a part of the former Soviet Union."

Lilly had heard about Jamaica being in the Winter Games, and we paid special attention as its team paraded by. No bobsledding this time around, it seems. But the island nation did send a fellow named Errol Kerr to do some freestyle skiing. I hope he does well. That might encourage more people (at least more Jamaicans) to name their baby boys "Errol."

I'm not planning to watch all that much of the Games this year, but I might take the time to learn the difference between luge and skeleton. It was hard to miss coverage of luge, considering what happened to Nodar Kumaritashvili. Skeleton gets less attention, but seems just as insanely dangerous.

Medal Map

One more posting about the Olympics; but it's really about interactive maps. Mostly I still prefer static maps over the interactive kind, maybe the same reason that reading from paper is more nourishing than off of a screen. Still -- this is a hell of an interactive map.

I hope the New York Times maintains it for a while. Under the "geographic view," run it backward from this year -- when the US and Chinese bubbles are vying for the honor of biggest-ness, and a nest of European bubbles sit next to a nest of Asian bubbles. For one thing, it's interest to compare the 2008 and 2004 maps. It looks like China's sucking medals not from its other big rivals such as the US and Russia, but smaller European and Asian competitors, though we'll have to wait until Sunday to get a full picture.

Run the map backwards in time and watch the Chinese bubble shrink across the decades to nothing; the Australian bubble peaks in 2000, then shrink, but then gets bigger in during and after the Melbourne Games in '56; the South African bubble disappears in 1988 and reappear in 1960 (all of the tiny African bubbles vanished in '76 -- I forget why they were boycotting); and the behemoth Soviet bubbles of yore, except for 1984. Then there's the case of the insanely large East German medal totals, well reflected in the bubbles during the '70s and '80s, except for '84. The golden age of undetected doping, it was.

Except for 1980, the US bubble has always been pretty large, but not always the largest. But check out the 1904 Games in St. Louis -- it's as if the US is the Sun, and everyone else are planets. Then again, transit was more difficult in those days, and the Olympics wasn't the big hairy deal it would become later, so most of the Europeans skipped it. If the Games come to Chicago in eight years, it won't be the same kind of US medal sweep.

Sure, the Games should be in Chicago in 2016: the Daley Olympics. But looking at the map, I can't help but think awarding them to Rio would encourage South American Olympians, who have won so few medals over the years.

More Olympic Folderol

Focus groups must have told NBC that some all-important consumer sub-psychographic wants to see gymnastics and more gymnastics, followed by another round of gymnastics. Not me. I'm glad the Olympic gymnastics are nearly over. It's a little too amazing watching people do motions in the air that should be physically impossible, or at least result in crippling injuries. Not only that, pondering the scoring methodology, which seems as arcane as calculating Nestorian Easter, causes headaches.

By contrast, swimming and running are refreshingly straightforward. Whoever gets there the fastest, wins. Not only that, most people can run, and many can swim, and what distinguishes an Olympian is a matter of degree -- it's still fundamental locomotion.

The network is using "Bugler's Dream," but only a few seconds at a time, and obscured by voiceovers. This is no good. It's a full-bodied theme, and deserves better. Even NBC ought to realize that. If I remember right, the network didn't use the theme at all in 1988, the first time it aired the Games, and probably millions of Americans reacted like I did: Where's the Olympic music? So it was back in '92. This is from '96, and a better treatment than the current one.

Much ado is being made about totting up the medals. China's running away with the golds, of course. Nothing like that home-team authoritarian-state advantage. But as usual, the Australians are really remarkable when it comes to gold medals, a fact probably stressed only by Oz media: 11 so far, out of a total of 33 medals. This by a free nation of about 21 million.

Baseball and softball are out next time around, I hear. Can't muster much indignation about that. A few other sports could be trimmed, too, such as "beach volleyball," without impairing the dignity of the Games. And here's one that should be revived: Tug of War, last played in the 1920 Games. Why was it discontinued? Anyway, it's perfect for the Games of the 21st century. Think of the fine television such matchups would make.

Carping About NBC

When the Olympics are on, I probably watch more sports than the entire rest of the year, or maybe the rest of the Olympic Cycle, though even so I'm a fairly casual watcher. But why bother with the Olympics at all? It really isn't that different than other pro sports. There's genuine competition and sometimes amazing physical feats, certainly, but at heart the event is about making money, with the added twist of stoking national pride.

That said, the Games are pretty much the only sporting event that captures my imagination. Maybe it's a function of growing up during certain decades. Ed Martin, a writer at JackMyers.com, says this about watching the Games in the olden days: "...the Olympics truly were something special that only came along every four years (the Winter and Summer Games weren't separated by two years back then). They offered sights and sounds that weren't commonly available on pre-cable (and especially pre-ESPN) television: Live programming from other countries; taped coverage of athletic competitions that were not compromised by advance spoilers; sports that were usually only available on ABC's Wide World of Sports on Saturday afternoons."

Some of the sentiment lingers on. But my fondness for the Games doesn't have anything to do with NBC's current coverage. Memory's a trickster, but I can't shake the feeling that ABC knew how to televise the Games much better than NBC, which of course is offering up its usual dopey coverage this time around.

"We at NBC have heard about a Jamaican who ran really fast not long ago in these Games. As many of you in the audience who've been there on vacation might know, Jamaica's an island south of the USA. We'll see if we can get a tape of that run, but right now we're going live with an interview of Michael Phelps' chiropractor, to get more insight on his god-like performance in these Beijing Games."

I will give NBC a small amount of credit -- a micro-amount of credit -- for admitting that another country, namely China, is an important competitor in the Games. As usual the network is doing its best to characterize the Games as a "Team USA" event, with some other people also competing to make it more interesting. China's too big to ignore, however, so this time around of "gosh, golly, look at those Chinese athletes. It's a new China!"

Naturally, I'm not the only one to complain about NBC's style of coverage. But it could be worse.

Go Togo!

The opening pageantry of the Beijing Games was one thing, but I preferred watching the Parade of Nations, which came right after. This time it was particularly interesting, since the teams appeared -- except for Greece first and host China last, per Olympic custom -- in order according to how many strokes it takes to write their names in Chinese, and then by stroke order. In effect, at random, as far as anyone unfamiliar with Chinese is concerned.

I insisted that Lilly watch some of the Parade too, as an impromptu geography lesson. I will raise no geographic illiterates if I can help it.

Later I wondered why subnational places like French Guyana and Greenland compete with the French and Danish teams respectively, but places like Puerto Rico, American Samoa, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda (for example) have their own teams. So I looked into it. Teams are fielded by National Olympic Committees, not nations, and those places have their own committees, for whatever historical reasons. But it's good to have some geographic oddities.

I also looked up the nations represented by one person in the Parade of Nations -- one-man or -woman teams in this year's Olympics. They are Grenada, Guinea, Haiti, Micronesia, Nauru, and Togo. Go Togo! I'm happy to report that as of August 14, Togo won a bronze. The event was Canoe/Kayak-Slalom, the winner Benjamin Boukpeti. According to the Olympic web site, he was born in France and lives in France, but paddles for Togo. Which is part of Francophone Africa, so I guess that's close enough. This post gives Mr. Boukpeti his due. Togo too. It's their first medal.

Speaking of Africa, I was much taken with the hats worn by the Lesotho team, among other colorful African garb that caught the eye during the Parade. Later I turned to Google, which knows all, and sure enough, they are called Basotho hats (after the main tribe of Lesotho), or Mokorotlo. Which are for sale on the Internet, if you really, really want one: $175. (And how much would it cost to buy one in Lesotho?).

This article's abstract claims that the Basotho hats were, in fact, relatively modern creations that have retroactively been attributed great cultural significance. This portrait of Moshoeshoe, everyone's favorite southern Africa king (or paramount chief) (except for fans of the Zulu Shaka), shows him wearing a top hat, though that image might have been for use by foreign newspapers. Hard to say.

Bird's Nest Soup

Like a lot of other people, I watched part of the elaborate opening ceremonies of the XXIX Olympiad, as it is called, or perhaps the Third Despotic Olympics, late last week. Take note, tyrants of Beijing: roughly a decade after the Nazi Olympics and the Soviet Olympics respectively, both of those totalitarian states were gone, though I have to add that the Russian Federation seems eager to return to authoritarianism and Soviet-style imperialism, if not the full trappings of the workers' state.

"An extraordinary 15,000 performers were included in the opening ceremony, and almost two-thirds were members of the armed police and the People's Liberation Army, according to reports in the Chinese media," noted the Globe and Mail a few days ago. That only seems appropriate. A police state is putting on a show; why wouldn't police be involved?

Early on, I saw most of the "let 2,008 drummers drum" extravaganza, but went outside to mow the lawn ahead of the part that was supposed to illustrate Chinese history. Were there going to be 888 gymnasts doing a Long March on balance beams? What about 88 dancing intellectuals in dunce caps, prodded along by 888 Red Guard dancers, to warmly recall those spirited days of the Cultural Revolution? I had a feeling I wasn't going to miss anything like that, so I attended to yard work ahead of sundown.

Afterwards, I returned in time to see the dancing on the huge luminous globe, a tribute to the '08 slogan, "One World, One Dream, No Interfering in China's Internal Affairs," and the lighting of the torch, both of which drew heavily on the "flying Chinese" motif established so well by martial arts movies. Despotism or not, I have to give the Chinese their due: it all seemed like a spectacle and a half. For all my disparaging remarks, if I could have teleported to the Bird's Nest to see it myself, I would have, instantly.

Still, the London Games would do well not to ape this show, but instead try for something simpler, more focused on individuals, rather than masses. China's got masses, that's for sure. Western Civilization is about something else.

Olympiastadion

I don’t check very often to see who’s been reading my writings here, because I have a fairly good idea of who does. But the other day, I took a look, and noticed that in the last few weeks that someone from Chile spent about eight minutes looking at my pages, and someone from Indonesia visited as well, spending about four minutes. This makes me glad, even though I’m sure they came to my site via the “next blog” function on Blogger -- i.e., at random -- and that they’ll never come back.

Still, in case they do, I want to extend the hand of international friendship and hey-nonny-nonny to my readers in Chile and Indonesia, who may only think they know us here in the United States, since they’ve surely seen a lot of our movies. It might be more informative to read more of our blogs instead. But they’re probably busy following the World Cup these days, rather than random web logs.

Like with the Olympics, I’m more interested in the venues of the World Cup, and the circumstances surrounding the events, than the actual sport itself. I looked around at the FIFA web site recently, and discovered that the Olympiastadion in Berlin is not only being used for some of the matches, but that the finals will be played there on July 9. Also, the stadium was renovated recently with the World Cup in mind (from FIFA):

“Reconstruction had to be carried out with the greatest of care due to the listed status of the structure, originally designed by architect Werner March and built between 1934-36 for around 42 million Reichsmark.

“The new stadium incorporates VIP and Sky executive boxes, Business Seats, a Hertha BSC megastore, underground warm-up facility (including a 110m running track and long-jump pit) and an underground car park. The rebuilding project was primarily aimed at optimising functionality and spectator comfort. For example, practically all the 74,200 seats are covered, whereas previously only 27,000 seats were protected from the elements.”

Sure, the Germans can spend 242 million euros putting on a roof and adding VIP and Sky boxes, but it’ll always be the stadium of the Nazi Olympics, though of course the Olympic Committee had originally awarded the games to Weimar Germany, shaky as it was. Or, if you prefer, it was the Olympics in which Jesse Owens seemed to have been the only competitor, considering how often his participation is highlighted in ten-second spots mentioning those games. In any case, I hope the new boxes are nice, full of amenities far beyond the twisted dreams of the Führer.

In July 1983, drawn by the place’s historic associations, I took the U-bahn out to see the stadium and the Olympic pools nearby, famous from Leni Riefenstahl’s Festival of Beauty, which I’d seen in film class a few months earlier. Nothing was going on that day, so the place was almost empty but open anyway, so I wandered around. What I remember most were the large statues here and there on the grounds, a sort of stern German interpretation of the archaic Greek style, probably meant to evoke heroic Aryan youth. They had weathered the war and perhaps caused mild embarrassment to the Germans of the Federal Republic, but they weren’t overtly Nazi, so they stayed. The FIFA site doesn’t mention them, but I assume that since the stadium has “listed status” (it’s on a list!), they’re still around.