Sunday, February 28, 2010

Angry about the handling of the Olympic Bonfire


Sadly overly quarantined yet otherwise splendid like a fiery Fortress of Solitude bursting from beneath a polar cap.

There should be parents holding their children up to touch the skin of the massive thing, young eyes all spiraled up with wonder.

There should be cheery pickers parked discretely nearby that for a modest fee will raise ticket holders up to roast marshmallows and s'mores on the outlier flames.

There should be enthusiastic young Asians contorting bizarrely to best capture the dynamic leaping and victory V finger flailing of their friends with the multi-pronged pyre in the immediate background.

There should be huddled groups of amateur camera enthusiasts attempting to advise one another on the right mix of lens to aperture to exposure to while balancing to best capture the brute majesty of the thing.

tomorrow is the last day of the Olympics, so wanted to catch a peek before the officials extinguish the flames.

The Olympic Bonfire...

Should not feel as though it's about to whisk the elite and a few lucky lottery winners away to settle a brave new world elsewhere in the universe, leaving the huddle masses behind in a maze of fences, security forces, and the constant drone of helicopters overhead.

Should not resemble visiting a loved one in prison.

Should not appear exclusive or withdrawn.

Fences should not be a part of this memory.

A12I

Saturday, February 27, 2010

The Tense 90 & WTF FTW and a long distance call with Chris Rock while watching live TV

Ever see a game where nothing seemed like that big a deal until the clock runs down, and then suddenly everything is ball-clincher to turtle-up tense as what you though you knew and could easily, offhandedly take for granted turns out to be utter rubbish? Any rate, apparently my fever dream reaction to the final seconds of the metal qualifying match last night for Canada's Men's Team in the 2010 Winter Olympics revealed my increasing indoctrination into the institution of Canada's National Sport. Other than curling, which I'm also growing increasingly fond of. Oh, Canada indeed. More like Oh! Oh! Ohhhh... OH! OH! Oh, Canada, yes! Yes! Yes!

I walked by a shop yesterday that had a new, freshly printed sign taped up inside their cluttered display window, Olympic Special - All Swords Half Off! I had to pause for that one as if ingesting to comprehension the hefty meaning of the declarative and clearly non-VANOC sanctioned marketing promotion.

For non-attendees, VANOC will cite anyone displaying the Olympic rings or using the word to imply their goods are official Olympic merchandise as an effort to protect the sanctity of the legitimate Olympic vendors and sponsors. For example, athletes enjoying an energy drink on camera will be enjoying one with duct tape over the labels and logos, good thing the bottle shape and general Predator blood color doesn't give the non-sanctioned beverage away or anything.

This morning had a dream I was sitting on one of the squeaky faux leather couches in my parent's den, cigarette smoke wafting as a sanguine haze overhead through the open hutch that overlooks the recessed den from the cherry wood laden kitchen. My folks were making dinner, while I sat chatting with my good friend Chris Rock on the phone as we watched the live feed of a slow motion, sputtering car chase along one of LA's evening commuter traffic strewn highways reminiscent of the OJ Simpson chase except at night and with zombies intermittently getting knocked down or rolled over.

Apparently the brilliant plan Rob Lowe coerced Brendan Fraser into to better help fund their Weird Science style experiments to make the perfect recreational drugs for seducing underaged teen pageant queens had backfired and while Rob did manage to aquire and melt into a rather fetching collection of commemoritive Olympic coins a staggering amount of gold liberated from exhumed celebrity graves in Westwood Village Memorial Park. The plan occurred to Rob apparently after reading an article about how Richard Poncher's widow put his grave, adjacent to where Marilyn Monroe is interred, and discovered that Hugh Hefner owns a nearby plot as well. Unfortunately, while the rich and dead often do try to take it with them, they also tend to be open to and quite fiscally able to afford some rather extreme forms of protection, natural and supernatural alike. Not long after Brendan told Rob that this had gone on far long enough and quit the illicit scene for a surfing jaunt across Thailand, now exceeding cheap to do since the tragic anti-Swedish tsunami of a few years ago, ol' crafty Mr. Lowe and his foul weather friend Corey Haim cracked a tomb loaded with more that gold fillings, and also failed to adhere to the time honored truth among distributors everywhere: don't get high on your own supply.

Now the flesh craving former Teen Beat idols were meandering down an LA boulevard with a flock of helicopters overhead and Cory on a tapped cell phone feed shakily asking for authorities to send more cops, more parametics, more teenage beauty queens. And Chris, man, Chris is going nuts on this stuff. Then he'd get quiet, so quiet I think he's wandered off or fallen asleep, and then he'd explode again over something with that raucous barking laugh of his we all love so much and of course I can't help but think how different this would be if it actually was OJ down there in that SUV nudging it's way past startled commuters and bumbling old school infected or cursed or whatever the bleeding club goers are now that Corey and Rob have unwittingly unleashed on the world.

And like Milk Cult (or was it Propellorheads?) once sang, maybe California really does deserve whatever it gets. Southern California anyway. Or maybe I just mean LA? But I digress.

Then I remember that 2sisterscomics still hasn't sent issue #4 of Deadpool:Merc w/ a Mouth that I'd paid out the Buy-It-Now option on EBay over a month ago. And then I felt a stab of shame for buying a Marvel comic issue by issue instead of as a trade, then further shame that I'm buying a Marvel comic book at all. All because I read a panel from the series posted on Topless Robot that made reference I could commiserate with to how the newer installments of Star Wars don't speak to me so severely I feel nerd rage. And that line of thought shames me further and so I get up to feed the dog. Literally, not a metaphor.

FTW today? Elman's Pickled Eggs

12 inches of angry 27th of the Short Month, 2010 or the Year w/ Didn't Join a Joint USA / Russian Mission to Recover HAL After All, Much to My Disheartened Chagrin