Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head

Wow. Warm rain is the best thing in the whole world. NV, DKN, this one's for you.

Poor Losers And Winning Losers

My heart goes out to the USA men's basketball team. No, not because they lost to Argentina in the semifinals at the Olympics. But because they were robbed of their birthright to complain about unfair play by one of their own.

Now that Paul Hamm, the USOC and the entire US media has established ad nauseam that bad calls by judges are part and parcel of sporting competition and should not be used as a reason for future dispute, the basketball team has been deprived of a stock excuse for losing. Now Iverson and Le"Bronze" James and the rest of the multimillionaire stars might have to actually admit they were well and truly outplayed by a better basketball team. With emphasis on the word 'team.'

They still might use the excuse anyway, but it will no longer be universally accepted. They're not poor losers the way you're thinking. They're really are the poor losers.

And on a diametrically opposite note, hats off to Anju George. For not letting the weight of a billion hopes crush you like it has so many others. For placing a very creditable sixth in the long jump finals, a mere two centimetres behind Marion Jones. You may not have medalled, but you're the winningest loser out there.

It's All Sport

The last time I watched the Olympics I was a kid who couldn't really grasp the magnitude of the athletes' achievements. Sixteen years, two tarred lungs, a game leg and a beer gut later, I now have a fuller appreciation for how hard it is and how incredibly talented all the athletes competing in these Games are.

I sometimes wonder where some of the events originated. Most of the sports seem to have some historical necessity. I'm sure being good at throwing a hammer or a discus or a javelin would have won the approval of your reigning local feudal lord. Being able to run fast and jump high probably helped you escape from a rival local feudal lord. And we all know the storied history of the marathon. But dressage? Badminton? Synchronised swimming?

And for God's sake what sadistic marijuana-induced stupor produced the various gymnastic events? The thought process probably went like this: Hey, how's this for an event? Let's hang a couple of rings from the ceiling and have men try to suspend themselves by their outstretched arms alone. Not painful enough? Wait a minute. Waaaait a minute! Something else is coming to me. How about this? Why don't we take a really narrow plank, turn it sideways so it's even narrower and have women do impossibly intricate somersaults on it. Yeah, I think that'll do it. Sheesh!

But in all the multitude of events, my two favourites apart from aquatics and track & field have got to be keirin (cycling) and women's beach volleyball. I like the former because it is a mad sprint with hardly any rules (except I don't think you're allowed to actually bite your fellow-racers). The latter is a no-brainer. Any sport that requires its impossibly tanned, toned participants to wear two-piece outfits gets my vote, not to mention my undivided attention.

Setting The Bar High

Alexei Nemov. What an athlete! And it's not because of his spectacular routine on the high bar in the individual gymnastics events. Six, count them, six release skills in one routine. But the real reason he's a great athlete is because of what he did after the horrible judging fiasco that followed his routine.

When the crowd held up the next competitor, Paul Hamm, for almost ten minutes, booing Nemov's low score, he could have basked in the attention. But that would have made him arrogant. He could have at the very least ignored them. That would have made him a competitor.

But Nemov actually got up and requested them to settle down. And that made him a champion. That made him a man who competes in the true Olympic spirit. Who appreciates the true meaning of the Olympic oath where athletes "...promise that we shall take part in these Olympic Games, respecting and abiding by the rules that govern them, in the true spirit of sportsmanship, for the glory of sport and the honour of our teams... "

It may be that already having won four golds, two silvers and six bronzes gives him a slightly better sense of perspective. But it's hard to ignore an act of magnamity and grace in an event and a week that has seen Hamm's childish I-did-nothing-wrong-so-why-should-I-be-the-bigger-person-waaaaah act and fellow-Russian Svetlana Khorkina's preening and complaining.

Talk about a "high bar!"

Blog Post Outsourcing (BPO)

This morning I wrote a beautiful long post about how gymnastics and similar sports that rely on judges to determine the outcome should not be a part of the Olympics. Unfortunately the post is lost forever because IE crashed before I could hit the "Publish Post" button. But not to worry, because this article covers it perfectly (hence the title).

Don't get me wrong. I think gymnastics is a great sport and worthy of a spot in the Olympics. But until they figure out a way to make it judging-error-free I also think it is criminal to subject the participants to the kind of trauma that Hamm, Young, Bhardwaj, Urzica, Jovtchev and Nemov have had to go through in Athens this past week. They and their coaches work too hard and sacrifice too much to deserve this.

The Olympics motto is "Swifter, Higher, Stronger," not "Swifter, Higher, Stronger Subject To A Judge's Decision." So why include sports like gymnastics, diving, synchronised swimming where subjective judging is the only way to select a winner? Sure all sports have referees, umpires, line judges etc. But their job is make the right call on specific plays, not decide the outcome of a match. (Although in a purely scientific and sadistic way I'm curious to see what the outcome of an England: 2 - Brazil: 1 football match would be if the referee then had to choose the "better" team on the field, whatever that means.)

Look at the rest of the events. There's hardly ever a problem with the 100 m dash - the swiftest sprinter wins. In the pole vault, the highest jumper is declared the champion. And in weightlifting, the strongest athlete is the gold medalist. Even in fencing, boxing and other sports that rely on accurate judging the system is fairly objective, barring blatant error or obvious bias.

I could simply say, shoot the judges that made the mistakes. But that would be treating the symptom, not the real illness.

Road Runner

I'm riding my bike to school the other day. Beautiful sunny morning, not a cloud in the sky, not a care in the world. OK, that's not entirely accurate but work with me here. I spot a squirrel about fifty feet away, in the middle of the road doing whatever it is squirrels do in the middle of the road. I'm immediately reminded of the Geico ad where a squirrel runs out into the path of an oncoming car causing it to crash and then we see the culprit high-fiving another squirrel by the side of the road in celebration.

I don't want that to happen to me, so I decide to keep an eye on this particular rodent. A very close eye. But there is no other traffic on the street, and so far he (or she?) seems oblivious to my presence. I'm now ten feet away and he hasn't budged. Five feet. Now I relax a little bit. Surely the danger has passed.

And then it happens. In a blur of fur, the dumb beast makes a mad dash for the sidewalk, right under my front wheel. I squeeze the brakes for all I'm worth and swerve hard left to avoid making squirrel pie. I barely manage it. The squirrel is unscathed and all I can do is laugh at the incident. And as I ride by, I glance back at the sidewalk, fully expecting to see a second squirrel congratulating his protégé on a superbly-timed and executed performance. I didn't see him, but I know he was there.

Athens Diary

And now the fourth of four men's tennis medal matches has gone the full distance in four gruelling hours. Who the hell are these Chileans?

Athens Diary

What is going on with the men's medal matches in tennis? Doubles final goes three hours and forty minutes. Doubles bronze medal match takes three hours and forty-some minutes. Singles bronze match took a heartbreaking three hours and twenty-five minutes. And the last two were just three-setters! Bring on the Gatorade.

The Big Five-Oh

Not what I would have liked my fiftieth post to consist of, but this article is too good to pass up.

Our Tryst With Destiny

Jana Gana Mana
Adhinayaka jaya hey,
Bharata bhagyavidhata.
Punjaba, Sindhu, Gujarata, Maratha,
Dravida, Utkala, Banga,
Vindhya, Himachala, Yamuna, Ganga,
Uchchala jaladhi taranga
Tava shubha naamey jaagey,
Tava shubha aashis maagey,
Gahe tava jayagatha.
Jana gana mangaladhayak jaya hey
Bharat bhagyavidhata.
Jaya hey, Jaya hey, Jaya hey,
Jaya jaya jaya jaya hey!

Citius, Altius, Fortius? Sure, With Steroids

Is it me or has the Olympics lost some of its glory? The last Summer Games that I can remember following with any interest were the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Barcelona, Atlanta and Sydney came and went with nary an impact, except the negative one of Izzy (short for, believe it or not, Whatizit), the ridiculous mascot of the 1996 Games.

The Olympics started yesterday and I wasn't even interested in watching the opening ceremony until I saw pictures of the spectacular show online. That may be because NBC, hungry for prime-time material like every blinking network in this country, saw it fit to delay the telecast by six hours. But it still doesn't explain why the only thing about these Games that interests me is whether Michael Phelps will get the seven golds that people expect him to. Am I just too busy with other stuff to care? Or am I (gasp) becoming as apathetic as the average American about any sport or sporting event outside the US? No wait, that can't be the reason - I hate baseball and watch as much cricket and soccer as I can possibly find. So then (cringe) whatizit?

I think at least a part of the reason is all the corruption and cheating that has tainted the IOC and the athletes in the past few years. Tales of IOC members selling their votes to the highest bidder and the recent drug scandals have taken some of the shine off what should be mankind's greatest tribute to health and fitness and general sportsmanlike behaviour.

Another possibility is the complete absence of promotion. Maybe this is just true in the US, but it seems to me that ATHOC has done precious little to advertise the Games like it ought to. After all, this is the biggest multi-sport event in the world. And it only happens once every four years. That should be plenty of time to get your act together. Terror threats or not.

Which brings me to the final nail in the Olympic coffin. Given the state of the world right now, it is small wonder that sports is taking a (hopefully temporary) backseat. When one country's population hates another country's enough to destroy it in a retaliatory (oops, pre-emptive) act that is only topped by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki forty-nine years ago, the milk of human kindness becomes slightly hard to distinguish in the river of blood.

Maybe the modern Olympics has outlived its usefulness. Or maybe, just maybe, it is the only hope for an increasingly cynical and destructive species to unite and find peace. But before that happens, everyone involved in the Games has to first clean up his/her own act.

"A Good Day To Be A Bad Guy"

Just wanted to see this date and that line together.

Dead Man Walking

I'm supposed to play tennis with some friends at the exact instant that a convicted rapist-murderer is scheduled to be hanged halfway across the world in my home city. And try as I might to put it out of my mind, I can't. The damn thing is giving me goosebumps as I write. It's a feeling I recognise all too well from the time I watched Sean Penn in the movie whose title I have stolen.

I'm conflicted. On one hand, I fully subscribe to the view of an eye for an eye. All these tears that are shed for the "victim" killer are a lot of baloney. How about shedding those tears for the real victim? The kid who'll never celebrate another birthday, who'll never drive a car, who'll never again feel the warm monsoon rain on her face or see the sun rise.

On the other hand, there's something about state-sponsored and state-blessed murder that is equally spine-chilling. The government and judiciary are set up to protect the citizens of a country. Even as we speak people are working round-the-clock to secure the release of Indian hostages in Iraq. How can we put so much effort into saving one individual's life and actually be responsible for ending another's in cold blood?

But I think the most gruesome factor of a death sentence is its inevitability. The dispassionate, almost clinical, nature of the preparation that would be commendable if it wasn't so terrifying. The clock ticking inexorably to the final moment... What must go through the mind of a human being who knows - absolutely knows - that he is going to be killed at a given point in time in the future. I'm not on his side, not by a very long shot, but at the very least his victim didn't have that to deal with. I wonder if he is sleeping. I wonder what he's feeling right now. Hell, I wonder if he's still sane. I know I probably wouldn't be.

Fat Psychopathic Wives And Cardboard Boxes

Take one huge wall. Add a psychedelic light show, an unlikely assembly of musicians, the military orchestra of the Soviet army, gigantic blow-up dolls and close to half a million spectators and what do you get? "The Wall" live at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. Roger Waters' mega-spectacle-cum-benefit-cum-socio-political-commentary. Only a Pink Floydian could pull off something of this magnitude. Only a Pink Floydian should.

Not everything about the show was perfect. The motley assortment of guest singers was surprising to say the least. Cyndi Lauper? Bryan Adams?? Dave Gilmour and the rest of the megaband were conspicuous by their absence. And it was Waters' show all the way, whether he was throwing furniture out of a "room" perched high up in the symbolic wall that was constructed on-stage during the show or singing in full Soviet military regalia complete with de rigeur dark glasses.

But that's how it should be. No rock concert is, or should ever be, perfect, musically or otherwise. A rock concert is about the experience. The crazy extended jams that nearly-but-not-quite snap a guitar string, the shrieking vocals that nearly-but-not-quite crack, the flashing, spinning, sparkling lights that nearly-but-not-quite blind you and the solid wall of sound that nearly-but-not-quite deafens you. Which is why, as rock concerts go, this one's as big an event as I've seen, because it was about all of those things, but also managed to be nearly-but-not-quite all about the music.

The only band that could even begin to compete is The Beatles. My personal favourite, Led Zeppelin's "The Song Remains The Same" is spectacular, but only because it's mindblowing to watch Jimmy Page shred a violin bow to bits during a super-extended version of "Dazed and Confused." The Who, The Rolling Stones, Rush - all the greatest rock acts through the years have been about the music. It took a Roger Waters to top that.