The Olympics are Over, For Now

Part 1

Learning Things About Norway

People always wig out a little when Scandinavian countries kick ass at the Winter Olympics. The US has companies that dump hundreds of millions of dollars into the IOC coffers and are rewarded with host countries that agree to have events live at strange local times so they match up with American prime-time Television viewing hours, as well as the addition of American-friendly winter sports (see: snowboarding events).

While some American fans scoff at biathlon, Europeans have been cross-country skiing and shooting rifles for decades. In fact, those sports started off as Norwegian military training exercises, so it makes sense that they tend to score well at them.

Germans have earned something like 34 of 42 possible medals in luge throughout the entire history of the Winter Olympics. They do have, like, seventy luge ice-tracks in Germany, compared to the six we have here in the States.

On one of the websites I read regularly there were plenty of think-pieces on Norway and their sports heavy culture, and country in general, and I learned some things I didn't know. 

Like the fact that Norway is one of three countries that still whales. And that's a verb, as in "hunts whales commercially." (The other two are Iceland and Japan, if you're curious.) It turns out the market for whale meat in Norway is rather soft right now, so the majority of the meat and blubber is sold to the, ahem, mink farms or ranches, to feed the minks before they're rectally electrocuted to death and skinned for fashion. 

Kinda a double shit-sandwich on that one. 

But Norway has ranked on top of the global happiness index for a few years now, usually trading spots with Sweden or Denmark in the past but now on top, and they have lots of money. But the wealth disparity is nothing as drastic as here, so everybody is doing well. And they invest heavily in sports. I mean, LA city proper has nearly as many people as Norway, and if LA city proper were a country the size of Colorado, with proper national agreements in place that make international trade easy and profitable, and low levels of wealth disparity, and an eye for making sure everyone gets the most benefit possible from smart government choices, you better hope it would resemble what Norway and other Scandinavian countries look like.

Maybe without the whale-blubber fed mink coats...

Something else I didn't know about Norway is that they don't keep score in youth sports until the age of 13. They want the children to enjoy the physical activity and learn how to cooperate (for team sports) without the emphasis put on "winning". 

Now is a good time to note that they just won the most medals ever for a Winter Olympics.

Norway also has a skier named Rocky and Bullwinkle.

No, wait, her last name is Mowinckel. And her first name is Ragnhild. 

Seriously, try and say that full name outloud and tell me that I'm crazy that I swore every time I heard it I was hearing "Rocky and Bullwinkle." 

Ragnhild Mowinckel.

And she looks like this:

Part 2

New Favorite Winter Olympic Sport

I have decided that I have a new favorite. Not sure what my old favorite was, but now it is Parallel Giant Slalom.

This is a snowboard race against an opponent (the "parallel" part) in single-elimination once the heats are over, as they wind back and forth between the flag dealys called "gates" (the "giant slalom" part).

The sport is okay enough---races and all---but my love for it stems mostly out of vanity: hearing the announcers say over and over "She's so good at PGS..." and "...this is turning into such a classic PGS battle..." and all the fighting over PGS and PGS-this and PGS-that...I'm easily amused.

The gold medalist for the women is the Czech snowboarder Ester Ledecka. This is the sport she does mainly---PGS and snowboarding. But because she comes from the Czech Republic and is naturally gifted at snow sports, she qualified for the Winter Olympics in downhill skiing. As a qualifier, she was one of the last racers down in the Super-G event, a skiing event that's the second most effed-up looking one. All of the late skiers are after thoughts as they interview the eventual medal winners who hang out in front of branded backdrops playing out the string.

Only Ester, on borrowed skies, came down two-tenths of a second in front of the leader, a heavy favorite from Austria. Everybody was stunned, including Ester, who couldn't believe it, telling the camera guy who was suddenly in her face, "No, you're wrong," and "You must be joking."

This is the first person to ever medal in two different sports. And they're both gold.

Like I told Corrie: just because she was an "unknown", doesn't mean she's not a supremely talented athlete with abilities that can't be contained and don't care if you haven't heard of them. I've followed sports long enough to see this kind of thing before...Hank Aaron before he was famous...Tony Romo and Kurt Warner from the NFL...

Surprise!

Part 3

Do I actually like Ice Dancing?

I found myself rooting for the Canuck pair that inspired a GQ writer to quip: "THE CANADIANS ARE ICEFUCKING!"

While that's obviously hyperbole, it's closer than you think:

Tess Virtue and Scott Moir have skated together for years, retired, then un-retired to go for one more gold medal. They beat a supremely talented French pair that Corrie was rooting for.

See? Rooting interests makes it interesting.

Ice Dancing is not to be confused with figure skating, which is the throwing-jumping-spinning craziness that has a colorful history that I can easily associate in my own memories (Katarina Witt and Kristi Yamaguchi; the Kerrigan-Harding situation being out-shined by Oksana Baiul; Brian Boitano making it into a South Park movie song). I mean, who can forget watching this bad look for bitter and impatient Nancy when seeing it live:

This year saw on the ladies side an epic battle between the once-untouchable 18 year old Ruskie Evgenia Medvedeva, and her new nemesis, fellow Ruskie and new champion, 15 year old Alina Zagitova:

They both skated masterfully, with the elder Medvedeva more elegant and classical, and the younger Zagitova a little stiff and robotic (only in comparison to the other Ruskie, though), but the younger dared to be bold, and saved all the jumps for the end of the program. Doing that takes advantage of the percentage boost in the scoring---tired legs are harder to jump with.

***

And now we wait four years to care again about Winter Sports, and then again lament why we don't just win everything.

Having trouble commenting...

I can't seem to figure out how to comment on my own blog posts. Every time I try, it kicks me out without saving my text. I've tried different things, save for searching how online somewhere, which is next.

In any case, to answer my mother from the comment in the previous post:

"The whir of the helicopter eventually faded, and they were packing it in when we were making it home, so I assume they dispatched him in some manner."

I'll try and figure it out so I can stop tripping.

Excitement in the Neighborhood

I was leaving the apartment the other day when I was greeted by this on my stoop:

Police tape blocking both my sidewalk and my street. I took the Boy in his stroller out to that cop in the middle of the street and asked what was up. Way up the street near Atlantic were five other patrol cars and a helicopter swirling overhead.

The cop in his car in the street said that a "stabber" had been on the loose and he'd been contained in mostly this area. "So, you and that stroller may want to go another way."

He literally said "stabber" and "on the loose."

Very tactful, this officer.

Cass and I took the long way to the Aquarium.

Chewing Gum Flavors

Here's some nonsense, or filler, or whatever, but it had been lodged in my head for a while.

I came to the conclusion of what I would consider my favorite gum flavor, and then I went down the rabbit hole about it.

I like some of the minty gums, like the blue planks, and the light green planks, but not so much the white ones, that Wrigley white stuff that likely originated the mint-gum idea. Sometimes the blue planks can get a little overbearing, which is how the light green Wintergreen flavor probably tops out my favorite mint flavor gum.

You know what I mean about "planks" right? Not the trident chubby sticks, nor the fruity cubes, nor the other weirdness (shredded or balls or tape).

But I probably prefer the fruity gums to the minty gums. I do find those cubes a little big, and they lose their flavor too fast, and they're a little too sweet. And I like blowing bubbles, so it helps if my gum allows for that. For practicality purposes, I almost never buy them; I see them as more a candy than a nervous-habit-fulfilling device.

Let's just say that's a hard No to cinnamon flavored gums...clove gum at least has some novelty.

And then I realized that my favorite flavor was actually "bubblegum" flavor. In gumballs it fades within minutes, in those dried out planks in baseball card packs ditto, but as an essence, as a flavor, I probably like it most. One evening I had an upset stomach and chewed up a couple of Pepto Bismol tablets, and it was like they were flavored with the essence of bubblegum. It was then I realized it was my favorite gum flavor...and I had to do some research.

I don't know why those Pepto tablets tasted like that; the box didn't say anything about bubblegum flavor.

Bubblegum flavor came about when a flavor scientists mixed two fruit flavors together: strawberry and banana, maybe then a pinch of mint and one of cinnamon (like 4 parts, 4 parts, 1 and 1), and that was it. Four separate esters, with the majority being strawberry and banana.

And now that I know it, I can't taste anything but strawberry and banana.

On a School Night?

Corrie's youngest sister came to town a few weeks back, her and her boyfriend drove in all the way from Austin. They had tickets to a concert of Michael's favorite band, or rather, a mash up super-band containing the heart of two bands.

Two people who were going to be making the trip with them ended up not being able to come, and since it was in downtown Los Angeles, which is understandably in our vicinity, we got invited.

The show was at the fancy Orpheum theater, at 9th and Broadway:

If I've been coy with the bands' names, it's because I had never heard of them; er, it, eh, who is playing?

Corrie and I had that conversations a few times. But I want to be clear: it was awesome. The main band is Streetlight Manifesto, if you couldn't read it from the marquee above, and the other band is labeled as BOTAR. When we arrived I couldn't tell what the hell was going on, but Michael explained it to me as best he could later in the night, after the show.

BOTAR stands for Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution, and is comprised of members of Streetlight Manifesto who fought with their label, lost money but retained the rights to their songs. Bandits started playing those songs with an acoustic bent, and the rest is...history?

The stage was set: an 80+ person orchestra backed up the musicians in front, five horns (trumpet, trombone, and all three saxophones (alto, tenor, baritone)) two guitarists, a stand-up bass, and a drummer. On one side of the stage was a grand piano, but the pianist only played in between the songs.

When the band came out and started the show, the crowd went wild. It sounded pretty cool, like a symphony playing punk rock, with horns, but that's because it was. Afterwards as Michael tried to explain the intricacies of the band to me, he touched briefly on the different eras of ska, and how Streetlight came about during a good time for ska...or something, and I remember the punk-with-horns ska band that he called awful and "giving ska a bad name" from back during a bad era.

The show rocked and I enjoyed it, but obviously I wasn't singing along, like nearly everyone else. Also, plenty of the fans were quite drunk, and the desire to mosh---only natural at a punk show---was rendered moot by the fact that everyone had nice chairs in this art-deco theater. Drunk punk fans in sweaty tank-tops head banging at their seats populated the view from our spot in the back.

The pianist would play before the band, and at first it sounded like he was playing a punk song on the piano, and the crowd would go crazy, and then the band would actually play the same song; the pianist did a lead in to each and every song.

One thing that was difficult for me, since I knew none of the songs, was that they all sounded like the same song. I started to have a philosophical inner-conversation: if someone had never heard Led Zeppelin, but was invited to see a band backed by an orchestra acoustically play the entirety of the album Led Zeppelin 2, would it all sound the same to them? I have the double album Wu-Tang Forever, and if it all sounds kinda similar to me, imagine what my late Grandpa Tom would have thought?

There was no opening act, and after about twenty minutes I figured that this wasn't the kind of show that would be having an intermission, so our original guess of it ending near or after midnight (it started around 8:30) seemed unlikely to come to pass.

That was always the concern: a concert? In DTLA? Starting after 8? So we need a babysitter? And on a school night? Corrie's sister even asked, while we chilled in our seats beforehand, "Is everyone ready for you to be completely out of it tomorrow?" I smiled and said I could pull it off, but really, we weren't about to eat mushrooms or get into the evil, so what was anyone really worried about?

When it ended just after 10, we all went for a drink at a nearby watering hole where we had the educational conversation about the Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution.

The show was awesome, and my ignorance helped shape my feelings through what can only be a natural open-minded curiosity.