Big Party
When The Wife and I were younger, we often had people over to the house for little parties. Dinner and drinks, ya know, conversation and music, maybe share in a friendly game of cards or something like that.
At first it was about having fun but over time we realized that if we didn't do that then we probably wouldn't clean up the place as often as we'd like. Spending an off day sweeping and dusting never seemed agreeable to us. We refused to be like our parents who would obsess over little things constantly, polishing up their self-pride along with the end tables. We needed a sure-fire reason like potential humiliation or public embarrassment to spruce the place up and having family or friends over always did the trick.
In fact, I can distinctly recall several times where I would find The Wife standing in the kitchen, one leg in front of the other, hands on hips, looking sternly about and announcing, “We NEED to invite some people over this weekend ... otherwise we'll never get this place cleaned up!”
These days, since the “happy hour” neon sign of life went dim several moons ago and little feet no longer tumble across the living room floor with such abandon, we don't have the need for so much of that. We keep up appearances mostly for ourselves now. Maybe we slowly turned into something more like our parents but maybe we also learned over those leaner years that cleaning windows or making the kitchen inspection ready actually made us feel better.
But the reason behind all the washing and mopping hasn't changed. It's still all about holding our head up high among our community, a common cause which may enlighten even our most stubborn neighbors around the world.
The job of hosting the world's biggest and only worthwhile party, the Olympics, is passed around to different nations regularly. Typically, today, that honor goes to the highest bidder. As we know, along with the glory and pageantry comes a lot of responsibility to get the house in order.
I admit, as this year's Games in Beijing approached, I dreaded the entire affair. I'm always glad when somebody else has to do the housework but it's been a long time since I took anything more than a trifling interest in the Olympics anyway and I know a lot of people are the same way.
I once followed it all religiously when I was a kid. The pureness of the competition seemed to have more meaning to me then. I might be more jaded and cynical now ... yes, that might be true for many of us ... but the game, modernly qualified as much an economic as athletic opportunity, has changed as well. In the case of Beijing, I expected even less pure spirit and more political propaganda from the strict government of the People's Republic of China.
Looking back, those like me were really fortunate to grow up when we did. We were raised before the Super Bowl was super, before March Madness lasted for 3 months, when sporting games weren't televised 24-7, when you couldn't TiVo a midnight tennis match and then watch it at your leisure. The Wide World of Sports only came on once a week. That meant when we did get to see even time-delayed bobsledding or month-old replays of boxing matches, we took “the thrill of victory ... the agony of defeat” to heart and we took notice.
Yeah, we also took notice that East German female swimmers had shoulders as large as your average adult buffalo and we had our suspicions about that, too.
But it's got to be hard for kids today to take notice. All they may see now is fanfare, visions of Hollywood, and overwhelming commercialism. It's probably very difficult for modern American kids to see the difference between the Olympic Games and the WWF.
Gratefully, for my generation, we know the difference. And we expect whoever hosts the Games to take notice and act accordingly. We know the Games are not Little League and are not just more of the same crap that oddly passes for sporting events on midnight cable. These are rare, special parties where all the world's neighbors come together and that means we expect the host to take out the trash, dust off the end tables, and prepare the kitchen for inspection just like we would do.
As we've witnessed, while I was dreading it, the People's Republic Of grew more and more anxious as the Games approached and they started doing exactly what we've come to expect. And, I gotta say, they attacked their preparations not unlike The Wife and I did in those last few frantic moments just before the big party.
“Where do you want this beach ball?” I would ask.
“Throw it in the closet!” she'd reply.
“What about these wooden shoes? Who the...why do we have wooden shoes in the living room?”
“IN THE CLOSET! Just throw it all in the closet, dammit!”
I wasn't surprised when the Chinese locked up unruly dissenters and tightened access to dangerously free internet sites. It made sense to me that they shut down their smog factories and made driving in the streets a crime. I even understood when they started building brick walls to hide unpleasant views of the poorest corners of the city. I knew they were in a pinch. They've been in a tight spot for some time now so I didn't find it unusual for them to take our lead as time started getting short. Throwing all the old, scattered, embarrassing stuff in the closet at the last second was something I did for years.
In fact, as I watched all this go down, I became quite pleased with myself. You see, Bamboo, I told myself, these communist, socialist tyrannies, or whatever they are, are all the same. They don't give a damn about the spirit of the games, the guts and human determination it takes to play in them, they're just painting a happy face on their own personal shit cake. It's all a facade, a political masquerade ... they're all just phony, poor, pitifully phony creatures...
Yes, I was so very happy that the evidence proved for once modern life had finally caught up with my cynical foresight.
So, this weekend, when I clicked to read Olympic Games Begin in Beijing, by Jim Yardley for IHT, I gleefully expected to read about all the stuff the Chinese had been busily hiding in their closet.
And I read of those who came to the Games ...
“One of these people, Yang Bin, a disc jockey, had traveled more than 500 miles from Chongqing and was playing hip-hop music along the city's most famous shopping street, Wangfujing.
'I came to Beijing last night to celebrate the Olympics, even though I don't have a ticket,' Yang said. 'China is never more glorious than Friday. The whole world is watching us.'”
Well, you're damned straight, Yang. We are watching and you better do it right. And you ... you ... you know the world is watching you? Really? You're playing hip-hop tunes on the street?
Really?
“This is a great honor for my culture,” said the famed composer, Tan Dun, whose score will be played during the gold medal ceremonies. “This is a lot more than about China. If we think this is only China's moment, it's a big mistake. It's the moment of the world.”
Ehh ... yeee ... whadhesay?
Oh, that's just pointless words from some superfluous fancy, just another inbred communist cadre. He's probably been paid by the Chinese G-Men to say that kinda thing. Surely the average rice farmers are pissed off about the way the communist jackboots are clamping down on normal life just to provide security for this silly political show.
“Anyone who tries to disturb the Olympics now by arousing social instability should be severely punished,” said Ma Jie, 53, a taxi driver. “What could be more despicable than that?”
Despicable? What? Who the ...? Taxi driver? How the hell did he get in here?
Dammit! As a general rule, I may disregard disc jockeys and famed composers but I respect the hell out of taxi drivers, especially those in Beijing. The sincere honesty of Taxi Driver Wisdom is a magical gift to the world.
I once talked to a college professor who had recently returned from China and he told me about a conversation with his Beijing taxi driver. The professor asked the driver, if he could drive any style of car, which would he choose? The professor expected to hear Mercedes Benz or some other classy Euro import. Instead, the driver answered without hesitation, “a Volga”. For those who don't remember, the Volga was a symbolic Soviet automotive engineering disaster that looked sorta like a bulging 1950 Plymouth sedan.
Surprised, the professor asked, “Why would you want to drive a Volga?”
“Because,” the driver answered, “they always break down and I could spend more time with my family.”
Brilliant! Do you see what I mean about Taxi Driver Wisdom? I can't deny this guy, Ma Jie. He's winning me over.
But those scary, secretive goons who hold positions of power in the People Republic of China, the shriveled up ogres of human rights who get wheeled out for public viewing every few years, the ones who regularly trample on the freedom of their own people, surely they have no idea what the Games are about and they just planned this extravaganza as a boost for their state-sponsored propaganda machine. They're not gonna talk about what the games mean to the world. They're gonna spin it as proof of the wonders of their inglorious regime like they always do.
“The historic moment we have long awaited is arriving,” President Hu Jintao said earlier Friday at a luncheon with visiting heads of state, including President George W. Bush. “The world has never needed mutual understanding, mutual toleration and mutual cooperation as much as it does today.”
Goddammit! I wonder if he really means that?
No, no, no.
Ehh, geesh, ok, maybe I was wrong. Again!
Maybe hosting the Games is more deeply enlightening than I thought. Maybe the requisites for hosting need to be reconsidered by the Olympic committee. Instead of the highest bidder, maybe only those nations who really need to clean house should ever be allowed to host the party. Maybe they'll never clean it up if they don't get that chance to have the world watching them. Maybe, after a while, after they spruce up their own kitchens, they'll get to liking that and keep 'em clean just to make their own people feel better. Maybe we should let China host the next one and the next one after that until they get used to it.
Why not? For once, on appearances anyway, the Chinese rightfully seem to be holding their head up high.
Cheers,
Mb
At first it was about having fun but over time we realized that if we didn't do that then we probably wouldn't clean up the place as often as we'd like. Spending an off day sweeping and dusting never seemed agreeable to us. We refused to be like our parents who would obsess over little things constantly, polishing up their self-pride along with the end tables. We needed a sure-fire reason like potential humiliation or public embarrassment to spruce the place up and having family or friends over always did the trick.
In fact, I can distinctly recall several times where I would find The Wife standing in the kitchen, one leg in front of the other, hands on hips, looking sternly about and announcing, “We NEED to invite some people over this weekend ... otherwise we'll never get this place cleaned up!”
These days, since the “happy hour” neon sign of life went dim several moons ago and little feet no longer tumble across the living room floor with such abandon, we don't have the need for so much of that. We keep up appearances mostly for ourselves now. Maybe we slowly turned into something more like our parents but maybe we also learned over those leaner years that cleaning windows or making the kitchen inspection ready actually made us feel better.
But the reason behind all the washing and mopping hasn't changed. It's still all about holding our head up high among our community, a common cause which may enlighten even our most stubborn neighbors around the world.
The job of hosting the world's biggest and only worthwhile party, the Olympics, is passed around to different nations regularly. Typically, today, that honor goes to the highest bidder. As we know, along with the glory and pageantry comes a lot of responsibility to get the house in order.
I admit, as this year's Games in Beijing approached, I dreaded the entire affair. I'm always glad when somebody else has to do the housework but it's been a long time since I took anything more than a trifling interest in the Olympics anyway and I know a lot of people are the same way.
I once followed it all religiously when I was a kid. The pureness of the competition seemed to have more meaning to me then. I might be more jaded and cynical now ... yes, that might be true for many of us ... but the game, modernly qualified as much an economic as athletic opportunity, has changed as well. In the case of Beijing, I expected even less pure spirit and more political propaganda from the strict government of the People's Republic of China.
Looking back, those like me were really fortunate to grow up when we did. We were raised before the Super Bowl was super, before March Madness lasted for 3 months, when sporting games weren't televised 24-7, when you couldn't TiVo a midnight tennis match and then watch it at your leisure. The Wide World of Sports only came on once a week. That meant when we did get to see even time-delayed bobsledding or month-old replays of boxing matches, we took “the thrill of victory ... the agony of defeat” to heart and we took notice.
Yeah, we also took notice that East German female swimmers had shoulders as large as your average adult buffalo and we had our suspicions about that, too.
But it's got to be hard for kids today to take notice. All they may see now is fanfare, visions of Hollywood, and overwhelming commercialism. It's probably very difficult for modern American kids to see the difference between the Olympic Games and the WWF.
Gratefully, for my generation, we know the difference. And we expect whoever hosts the Games to take notice and act accordingly. We know the Games are not Little League and are not just more of the same crap that oddly passes for sporting events on midnight cable. These are rare, special parties where all the world's neighbors come together and that means we expect the host to take out the trash, dust off the end tables, and prepare the kitchen for inspection just like we would do.
As we've witnessed, while I was dreading it, the People's Republic Of grew more and more anxious as the Games approached and they started doing exactly what we've come to expect. And, I gotta say, they attacked their preparations not unlike The Wife and I did in those last few frantic moments just before the big party.
“Where do you want this beach ball?” I would ask.
“Throw it in the closet!” she'd reply.
“What about these wooden shoes? Who the...why do we have wooden shoes in the living room?”
“IN THE CLOSET! Just throw it all in the closet, dammit!”
I wasn't surprised when the Chinese locked up unruly dissenters and tightened access to dangerously free internet sites. It made sense to me that they shut down their smog factories and made driving in the streets a crime. I even understood when they started building brick walls to hide unpleasant views of the poorest corners of the city. I knew they were in a pinch. They've been in a tight spot for some time now so I didn't find it unusual for them to take our lead as time started getting short. Throwing all the old, scattered, embarrassing stuff in the closet at the last second was something I did for years.
In fact, as I watched all this go down, I became quite pleased with myself. You see, Bamboo, I told myself, these communist, socialist tyrannies, or whatever they are, are all the same. They don't give a damn about the spirit of the games, the guts and human determination it takes to play in them, they're just painting a happy face on their own personal shit cake. It's all a facade, a political masquerade ... they're all just phony, poor, pitifully phony creatures...
Yes, I was so very happy that the evidence proved for once modern life had finally caught up with my cynical foresight.
So, this weekend, when I clicked to read Olympic Games Begin in Beijing, by Jim Yardley for IHT, I gleefully expected to read about all the stuff the Chinese had been busily hiding in their closet.
And I read of those who came to the Games ...
“One of these people, Yang Bin, a disc jockey, had traveled more than 500 miles from Chongqing and was playing hip-hop music along the city's most famous shopping street, Wangfujing.
'I came to Beijing last night to celebrate the Olympics, even though I don't have a ticket,' Yang said. 'China is never more glorious than Friday. The whole world is watching us.'”
Well, you're damned straight, Yang. We are watching and you better do it right. And you ... you ... you know the world is watching you? Really? You're playing hip-hop tunes on the street?
Really?
“This is a great honor for my culture,” said the famed composer, Tan Dun, whose score will be played during the gold medal ceremonies. “This is a lot more than about China. If we think this is only China's moment, it's a big mistake. It's the moment of the world.”
Ehh ... yeee ... whadhesay?
Oh, that's just pointless words from some superfluous fancy, just another inbred communist cadre. He's probably been paid by the Chinese G-Men to say that kinda thing. Surely the average rice farmers are pissed off about the way the communist jackboots are clamping down on normal life just to provide security for this silly political show.
“Anyone who tries to disturb the Olympics now by arousing social instability should be severely punished,” said Ma Jie, 53, a taxi driver. “What could be more despicable than that?”
Despicable? What? Who the ...? Taxi driver? How the hell did he get in here?
Dammit! As a general rule, I may disregard disc jockeys and famed composers but I respect the hell out of taxi drivers, especially those in Beijing. The sincere honesty of Taxi Driver Wisdom is a magical gift to the world.
I once talked to a college professor who had recently returned from China and he told me about a conversation with his Beijing taxi driver. The professor asked the driver, if he could drive any style of car, which would he choose? The professor expected to hear Mercedes Benz or some other classy Euro import. Instead, the driver answered without hesitation, “a Volga”. For those who don't remember, the Volga was a symbolic Soviet automotive engineering disaster that looked sorta like a bulging 1950 Plymouth sedan.
Surprised, the professor asked, “Why would you want to drive a Volga?”
“Because,” the driver answered, “they always break down and I could spend more time with my family.”
Brilliant! Do you see what I mean about Taxi Driver Wisdom? I can't deny this guy, Ma Jie. He's winning me over.
But those scary, secretive goons who hold positions of power in the People Republic of China, the shriveled up ogres of human rights who get wheeled out for public viewing every few years, the ones who regularly trample on the freedom of their own people, surely they have no idea what the Games are about and they just planned this extravaganza as a boost for their state-sponsored propaganda machine. They're not gonna talk about what the games mean to the world. They're gonna spin it as proof of the wonders of their inglorious regime like they always do.
“The historic moment we have long awaited is arriving,” President Hu Jintao said earlier Friday at a luncheon with visiting heads of state, including President George W. Bush. “The world has never needed mutual understanding, mutual toleration and mutual cooperation as much as it does today.”
Goddammit! I wonder if he really means that?
No, no, no.
Ehh, geesh, ok, maybe I was wrong. Again!
Maybe hosting the Games is more deeply enlightening than I thought. Maybe the requisites for hosting need to be reconsidered by the Olympic committee. Instead of the highest bidder, maybe only those nations who really need to clean house should ever be allowed to host the party. Maybe they'll never clean it up if they don't get that chance to have the world watching them. Maybe, after a while, after they spruce up their own kitchens, they'll get to liking that and keep 'em clean just to make their own people feel better. Maybe we should let China host the next one and the next one after that until they get used to it.
Why not? For once, on appearances anyway, the Chinese rightfully seem to be holding their head up high.
Cheers,
Mb
posted by M.E. Bamboo at
2:30 PM
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