Track and Field events are a big snooze for me. The folks at NBC pay over a billion dollars to broadcast the summer Olympics every four years, and try to get me excited about these finely-tuned machines, running fast in straight lines and occasionally jumping over things. And every four years I respond with a deep, heartfelt yawn.
Call me when you have to run down your dinner from behind
Once in a while, a video surfaces that brings a little more excitement to TnF and gets me to watch. These types of videos usually involve less-finely tuned machines struggling to accomplish the same fetes as their Olympic superiors. These are the true amateurs, the ones that train by playing Wii Track n' Field.
If running fast in a straight line is the upper limit of your athletic ability, let's throw in some obstacles to make things interesting. We'll call them 'hurdles.' Give it a try. We'll tape it. That way you can see what you did wrong and improve, and the internet can have some fun watching you fail.
I've been sitting on this video for a while, partly because it's kinda dickish to be laughing at these girls' struggles. I'm sure many of you have already seen it. For those who haven't, enjoy:
But failure is often funnier in slow motion. With a soundtrack. The soundtrack to this one is Radiohead's Creep, so there are a few naughty words. But it's sung by a choir, so it's beautiful, right? Just try to tell me this isn't a thing of beauty:
I guess there's two sides to this coin. It's kind of sweet to see her getting up every time she tanks it. Sure, it can be used as a "never give up" motivational thing. That doesn't mean it's not funny. This was like a hybrid of track and baseball. Someone should have told these two girls that you don't have to slide into the base after every hurdle.
Maybe the IOC could consider making Baseball Track into an Olympic sport. (Heck, they let ribbon gymnastics in!) Then I might watch. But once you add the competitive factor and the coaches and the PEDs, it sorta loses its charm. There's something more appealing, something special, about the unintentional stumbling and sliding of true amateurs.
You ever see one of those loose threads hanging from the tapestry of one of your cherished childhood memories? The image woven so beautifully in time, but you see that thread and you just can't resist giving it a tug, only to have the whole thing unravel before your eyes? I've done this so many times, I should know better than to go fooling with the things I loved when I was a kid, because it will ruin them. Rarely are things as good as you remember. More often, they're total crap.
Condor Man. Duck Hunt. Pitfall. Cloak and Dagger. Any Schwarzenegger movie not directed by Jim Cameron.
So just leave 'em alone, right? Leave them to their remembered beauty.
Tonight was Thunderbird's Global Gala. This is the party that the school throws for each graduating class, and it is generally a can't miss event. I didn't leave the dance floor for three hours straight. On the ride home, all danced out and feeling mellow, I was sitting on the bus next to an Indian classmate of mine who is a huge classic rock fan. We were discussing great wind-down music for the end of an awesome evening when Billy Squier's "Lonely is the Night" came on the radio. Billy Squier was huge back in the early 80's, with three albums going platinum from '81-'84. Thanks in large part to my older brother Slut Rock, I had grown up listening to Squier. My Indian friend had never heard of him. So I promised to send him some YouTube links to educate him. In trolling for songs to send, I stumbled upon what may be the single worst video of all time: Rock Me Tonight.
It was Squier's most popular single ever based on the pop charts. Yet some credit the release of the song's video version with the cratering of his career. As I watched in gape-mouthed horror, I had little doubt they were right. If Freddy Mercury, Elton John, and George Michael were to write a song and direct the video, they couldn't have conceived of a gayer vision than this. Which is fine, if your name is Freddy Mercury, Elton John, or George Michael. This is your milieu. But Billy was/is a purely hetero rock and roller. He's married to a German soccer player, for crying out loud. You'd never guess it from the way this video plays out.
[Fade in to a shirtless Billy lying on a bed, wrapped in satin sheets. He stands up and pulls on his lace-up jeans and ties the laces. Slips into Jennifer Beal's ripped t-shirt from Flashdance. Begins limp-wristed snapping, then skips stage-left to dance in front of the mirror. Falls to the floor and army crawls back stage-right, but sexy-like. Gets up, sugar-foots his way around the room, and rips his blouse (slo-mo.)]
Just as you think the ripped shirt will bring some machismo back to his rock persona, he grabs a pink tank top and continues his sugar-footing. Then, as you feel the hope of rescue slipping out of sight, Billy spies his guitar, and goes off the shred with his friends, and you think they'll save him from this awful video. But those are foolish thoughts. Nothing can save this video. Come to think of it, this is sort of like the gay version of Thriller, when Michael Jackson and his girlfriend are surrounded by the zombies and she clings tight to him for protection, and you think she's safe. But when she turns around she sees that Michael is a zombie, too.
You think, "Yeah, Billy escaped the satin sheets and dancing mirror! Now his friends will take him safely back to Rocklandia." But then surprise! They're in on it. And what was a Richard Simmons clip morphs into a full-fledged Wham! video. The only way it could have been gayer is if Billy had spontaneously combusted in an explosion of glitter at the end.
Watch the whole thing if you can. I had to look away by about the three-minute mark. I'm not the type to stand around roasting marshmallows on the smoldering coals of my memories. I'll be sure to keep my Squier intake in audio form from now on.
The rugby team went to LA this past weekend to play UCLA's MBA team. Rugby teams are a special bunch of guys, and you have to leave your pearls at home, lest you wear them out from constant clutching. Drunken, stupid behavior is the norm, and is only exacerbated by road trips. We rented two 12-person vans to make the 6-hour drive.
Six hours is what it takes a normal group. But a group that starts drinking in the parking lot before you leave Phoenix takes significantly longer. The first half of the drive was a lot of fun. Drunkasaurus Rex regaled us with non-stop stories of his travels with the Navy, and we had some good fun reminiscing on how Bilbo T. Baggins came by his nickname. But fellas that ben drinkin' need frequent bathroom stops. The first stop, I thought "Really? Already?" The second stop brought some humor as The Ambassador occupied a urinal, only to be shouldered aside mid-stream by a Drunkasaurus itching for a sword fight (I've withheld the picture to protect the guilty, but Drunkasaurus won). By the third, fourth, and fifth bathroom stops, the level of inebriation rose in inverse proportion to my drop in humor. The last hour was filled with The Ambassador, Mayhem and His Supreme Uteness arguing about the pureness of Greek and Georgian bloodlines and anything having to do with WWII. Mayhem spent a good half hour trying to convince me of the imperative nature of a strip club visit once we got to town. I politely informed him that paying one tuition bill is enough for me. We made it to LA in eight hours.
UCLA sent two of their fattest, dumbest, drunkest players to greet us at the hotel and take us out to a bar. When we arrived at the bar, there were only two other UCLA players waiting. I figured they had sent a token delegation of guys to make sure we were in the worst possible playing shape for the game the next day. Our guys admirably recognized the strategy and decided to turn in early rather than accompany Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum to the strip club. Except for Mayhem's jihad on trash cans on the walk home, I was so proud of our lushes that night.
The game on Saturday was rough. We barely had enough players to field a full team, and none of our guys had size. Our biggest player probably weighed 215-220, and many of our players had never played the position we were asking them to play that day. Because of this, we decided to play two games with 20-minute halves rather than the usual one game of 40-minute halves. We basically played the first game to a draw. The actual score was Thunderbird 5, UCLA 7. We missed the after kick, but they didn't have real goal posts, so I don't count that.
The second game, their size wore us down. We just couldn't keep putting the punishing hits on them that we were in the first game, and they had plenty of players to keep fresh legs in the game. We lost the second game 14-7. But they didn't score their two tries until the last 20 minutes when we were exhausted.
I spent much more time tackling big bruisers than I should have, and am feeling the effects of it still. My shoulders are creaky, I've got abrasions all over, my back/neck are stiff. It really is interesting to walk behind a rugby team after a game. Gonzo calls it the Robocop walk. You pivot stiffly on your feet, taking care to avoid any rotation of the trunk. You don't just turn your head when someone calls you; you turn your whole frame to look at them. This game brought an extra special treat for me: a knee to the head, with an accompanying knot. Oddly, the bump has mostly dissipated, but I still can't feel my scalp on the left side when I scratch my head. I may have damaged a cutaneous nerve. Hopefully the feeling will return over the next month or so.
Rugby is very social. After every game (at least at the level we play at), there is a social where both teams get together to share meat and mead, and to sing filthy songs together. The UCLA boys put on a good show at a decent bar in Santa Monica, and we all had a good time mingling and watching the UFC fight on Saturday night. Mercifully, we were spared the filthy songs.
The ride home on Sunday was decidedly more subdued. It is always so nice to be home. To sleep in your own bed. To take a cap full of Nyquil and drift off into the abyss and not think about how much it hurts to roll over. It's not Thanksgiving yet, but I'd still like to express how thankful I am for Nyquil and ibuprofen. It has gotten me through the last couple nights.
