I'm a joker, I'm a smoker, I'm a midnight suicide at the Olympics

Still awaiting Canadian authorities to provide details on the autopsy, but it’s official. More tragedy and heartache at the Winter games.

Another former Joker; Andrew Koening, like Heath Ledger before him, discovered dead.

One was a suicide contemplated while ‘sitting on a park bench’ (sorry, another Aqualung reference) in Stanley Park in Vancouver. Andy was sitting in the city garden a little after midnight waiting for the sun, when his emotions overtook him. In the case of that other joker; Heath Ledger, it was an ill-timed overdose. Wasn’t exactly executed in true rock star or Hollywood fashion, didn’t involve a sex worker, but it was a ‘masseuse’ that discovered his body the next morning nevertheless. 

This was hopefully the last tragedy in Vancouver, which began with a Luger's broken back, on a mountain of sorrow.

Livening up the macabre mood a bit. The Canadian woman’s hockey team stirred up a bit of conversation with their on ice celebration after winning the gold. Captain Hayley Wickenheiser dismissed the underage drinking of 18-year old Marie-Philip Poulin, the center who scored both goals, in the 2-0 defeat of the United States.

‘Trust me, there's a lot worse things that go on at the Olympics than this. Everybody just take a deep breath and just chill out. It's not a big deal."


Champagne, cigars, and under-age drinkin’, what’s not to like?

Still, the fallout continues. The last time I remember anyone getting this riled up over woman’s sports was when Brandi Chastain stripped off her jersey at the 1996 Olympics in celebration. In doing so, she revealed a black sports bra that had everyone talking about the US Soccer team for months to follow, albeit for all of the wrong reasons.

Both sports had been going through their own respective ‘Growing Pains’ at the time of these incidents. Who knows, maybe there will be a renewed enthusiasm for woman’s hockey as a result? Wonder what Boner would have had to say? Maybe we can get a some celestial guidance, or at least a statement from Chekov? 

Expert, textpert, choking smokers,
Don’t you think the joker laughs at you?

See how they smile like pigs in sty,
See how they snide.

The Americen woman lost...
...and I’m crying

Mistaken Identities Along The Way

I was thumbing through a magazine in a barber shop, listening to this gray-haired black man talking about the Olympics. He asked if Shaun White was that standup comic with the red hair that he recalled seeing on MTV.

“Yeah, right… He trains like a SOB by day, and hits the comedy club circuit at night”

It was a funny exchange when I heard it, until I realized what Scott Thompson looks like these days. Easily confused with the Flying Tomato?  I don't know, maybe.

That was a couple of days ago. Last night I experienced a different case of mistaken identity. It was cold and wet as I stood in line outside the bus terminal waiting… A guy emerged from the late afternoon shadows and edged closer to the huddled masses. We were all waiting to board our bus. There was something vaguely sinister about this guy. He was Charles Manson and a little Bob Seger in his appearance, rotting garbage in his aura, and otherwise soulless in his existence, or so I imagined. More Manson in his homelessness, but because this incident took place in Colorado where the Coors ‘Silver Bullet’ is king, maybe I was also subconsciously connecting him with the front man of the Silver Bullet Band.

He was a train wreck and I couldn’t stop staring. I caught a glimpse of a dirty turquoise medallion, a 60’s era bauble of some sort that was visible when his cloak and robe-like ensemble parted briefly. Surely this was an exiled gypsy king, sage of the Boulder gutter, or the forgotten Traveling Wilbury.

I wasn’t and will never be sure.

Still, I stared.

More people joined us in line. He didn’t walk, but kind of shuffled over. For a moment, I turned away. I was somewhat mesmerized by this being, sort of in a Squeaky Fromme or Susan Atkins kind of way. I looked back just in time to catch his contorted face. In the next instant he grabbed his nostril and sent a lugie splattering down on the pavement. I jerked out of the way as he hockered and cleared more phlegm from his aqualung. He assured me in a self amused hoarseness that he wasn’t going to get me. I wasn’t assured nor amused at barely escaping the virulent spray. He continued about his business, his greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes.

I boarded the bus as the afternoon faded away and could hear him behind me, muttering about the fare before his mind was confronted with the driver. Again, there was that image of Bob Seger as I heard his worn out voice grow louder and more animated than before. Dirty and downtrodden, yet oddly intriguing.

He spied an acquaintance of his. Damned if this guy wasn’t the spitting image of the Zig Zag man!  The three of us sat in close proximity. They immediately started catching up, while I mindlessly stared ahead.

I listened intently as Charlie told his tale about how the city had worn out his body, was eating at his mind. Said he no longer felt, and then without warning his raspy voice trailed off for an uncomfortably long time. Heads suddenly turned when like a cold hard slap to the face, he began to exclaim that he would be going to California for the summer. Alarmed, most of the passengers quickly looked away.  His outburst was like a sidewalk sermon, and his friend was immediately caught up in the hellish homily which followed. Charlie the evangelist, started rattling off obscure western destinations as if they were stops on the way to purgatory or eternal hell.  Small towns that nobody ever heard of, or at least I never did. He went on for several minutes this way, like an over caffeinated meth addict.

The bus ride quickly became claustrophobic, and I was instantly transported to the rowing scene from Willie Wonka’s Chocolate Factory:

There's no earthly way of knowing

Which direction we are going

Is it raining, is it snowing

Is a hurricane a–blowing

Not a speck of light is showing

So the danger must be growing

Are the fires of Hell a–glowing

Is the grisly reaper mowing

Yes, the danger must be growing

For the rowers keep on rowing

And they're certainly not showing

Any signs that they are slowing

Then he stopped. He resumed in a far less animated fashion and took on a somber tone. Staring out the window at nothing in particular, he said a trip to the Motor City was on his immediate horizon. I strained to hear him murmuring that his mother asked him to spend a week in Detroit, and he was planning on staying for a couple of months. That brought a slight smile to my face.  He said that his mommy wanted to hear him sing his songs. Then an uncontrollable sniffling arose from this pitiful creature.

Between quiet sobs he said his mother died back in ’62, and that he has been on the road wandering aimlessly ever since. Almost inaudible, he started softly humming a song from 1962.

Ain't it funny how the night moves?

Guess that’s why this event is also called, “NASCAR on ice”…

South Korean Lee “Chim Chim” Jung-su won the gold, while Apolo Ohno, a.k.a., ‘Speed Racer', and J.R. Celski, a.k.a., ‘Racer X’, took the silver and bronze respectively.

I watched the 1,500-meter short-track speed skating event, and maybe I had a little too much Daytona 500 on the brain or something, but I couldn’t help thinking I was watching an old Speed Racer episode in the instant when those two South Korean skaters collided and careened into the wall. Images of countless Speed Racer episodes where so many of Speed’s adversaries met similar fates immediately came to mind. Anyway, I actually found myself laughing out loud at the spectacle of those two guys wiping out.

That crash was so perfect in it’s timing and absolutely beautiful in its synchronicity, that it looked almost choreographed. It was also a little ironic that the two ill-fated skaters hailed from the dog-eating nation of Korea, the same country that eight years ago had a skater disqualified for blocking, which resulted in Apolo Anton Ohno receiving the gold at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City.

In addition to the gold medal that year, Apolo Ohno also received a number of death threats from irate South Koreans who directed their wrath at both Ohno and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). They sent so many accusatory letters and e-mails protesting the race, that the volume of e-mails crashed the Olympic Committee’s e-mail server.

Crashing definitely seems to be a bit of theme here with these Korean skaters.

Man or Beast - Who Do You Love?

Hopefully you’ve got someone to love, someone who loves you, or at least something you love doing on Valentine’s Day.

Not surprising, for a lot of people that someone in their lives is their pet. Some take this to extremes (like billionaire Leona Helmsley who in 2007 famously left her dog $12 million, and two of her grandchildren jack shit), while organizations like PETA and Friends of Animals have a long track record of over-the-top animal advocacy.

Fringe groups like those black masked fur fanatics that vandalized at least one kiosk selling Olympic collector's pins, and have generally been wreaking havoc at the Winter Games in Vancouver, is yet another high profile example.  Not sure these are the same cats that have threatened American figure skater Johnny Weir, but apparently he's elected not to wear his trademark white tuft of fox fur on his shoulder. THAT my friend, is the true travesty of these Olympics to date.

Speaking of transgendered atheletes... er, I mean... track records, the other day I was reading that Horse of the Year Rachel Alexandra is scheduled to race against the undefeated mare and Breeder's Cup Classic winner; Zenyatta in the April 9 Apple Blossom.  Now I don’t know Jack about horse racing, but racing affectionados (not horse lovers necessarily), are calling this the greatest thing to happen to thoroughbred racing in America since Affirmed captured the Triple Crown in 1978.  Stay tuned for that animal exploitive sports spectacle!

Still, for those of you who love horse racing simply for the love of the horse, find something for that special someone on this Valentine's Day...

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Oh Canada... Rain, Mud and Glum

The horrific death of luger Nodar Kumaritashvili from the republic of Georgia added a black cloud of despair to the grey skies looming over Vancouver. The games haven’t even started, yet you get the eerie suspicion that more tragedy and heartache awaits us.

"With Glowing Hearts, We Kill the Arts,"

The various protest groups got things started with their predicable pleas and demonstrations, and managed to cause the route of the torch relay to be altered. If those stunts bring attention to their cause, well ‘yippie’ for them. On the dark underside of their movement, you can be assured that many of those protestors looked on with glee as the Georgian luger crashed and sealed his fate. The irony in their mantra, “With Glowing Hearts, We Kill the Arts” was not lost.

Evening turned to darkness and the opening ceremonies got underway and softened our collective memory of the afternoons cold hard slap of tragedy. Yet, as the lighting of the Olympic cauldron was coming to a climax, a moment Canada spent seven years building towards, a technical malfunction marred the event. In the awkwardness of the moment, speedskater Catriona LeMay Doan improvised a salute to the crowd with her torch, while skier Nancy Greene, NHL legend Wayne Gretzky and NBA All-Star Steve Nash proceeded as planned.

The uncharacteristically warm weather contributing to the rain, the mud and the glum, has forced the cancellation of training runs, and has delayed both the men's downhill which was scheduled for today, and the women's super-combined which was originally scheduled for Sunday.

Prior to her interview in a room that was oddly decorated by several candles, a jubilant Lindsey Vonn was heard to selfishly squeal out a ‘yippie-yi-ya’ for what the delay would mean to her badly bruised shin. No doubt NBC’s Olympic guru Dick Ebersol was also girlishly giddy over these developments.

None of this is surprising in this age where the pursuit of personal fame and television ratings trumps all else. Still, although I’m pulling for Bode Miller, Shaun White, a.k.a. The Flying Tomato, Apolo Anton Ohno, Shani Davis, Gretchen Bleiler and the other Americans, I feel a bit sorry for the Canadians this Saturday.

"Oh Canada" indeed...