The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
USA! USA! USA!
It’s finally here. The greatest event on Earth. The two weeks every four years that I cry more than the rest of the four years put together. The celebration of global peace and unity when the United States of America reminds everyone that we will always and forever be better than them. THE OLYMPICS.
Even the most French possible opening ceremonies held in the pouring rain because France has something against roofs (and air conditioning) could not stop me from feeling more hope and joy and happiness than I have since… well, Sunday.
For the next two weeks, the Olympics will be my entire personality. I will use the Olympics coasters that I got at the Olympics Museum in Lausanne (why yes, I have been to the Olympics Museum in Lausanne, did I not mention that?). I will suffer through the most god awful sports commentating that NBC can offer because I no longer live in Seattle where I could hack the CBC’s far superior offerings. I will cry my eyes out every time America wins, which will be a lot, cheer on my second favorite team, the Refugees, and my third favorite team, Palestine, and jam out to Le Marseillais which I will never admit is actually the greatest national anthem on Earth, followed closely by the Star Spangled Banner and the Michigan Fight Song. I will absolutely lose my shit watching synchronized swimming, sit on the edge of my seat during trampolining because that is the one sport in which someone is almost certain to die, and hold my breath and cringe while watching those poor swimmers race in the absolutely disgusting and e coli ridden Seine.
As I watch steampunk fencing guy race a steel horse across the Seine to give the athletes time to file off of the 9000 boats they used for the march of the athletes and into the temporary stadium I am reminded of Baron Pierre de Coubertin (yes, a French guy) who singlehandedly revived the Olympics and gave us this joyous, marvelous, extraordinary, thrilling, absolutely magnificent global event. If one man could do that, then any of us can do anything.
Good luck to all of the tiny countries with one or two athletes who have worked so hard to get here. I hope you all win. A bronze, not a gold. Sorry, those are spoken for.
Good luck to the legendary Paris pickpockets who will retire as millionaires after the Olympics are over.
Good luck to the athletes who have been standing in the rain for about six hours now. I hope none of you get pneumonia because the French Olympic Committee thought it would be really cool to pollute the Seine one last time before the swimmers got in.
And good luck to Team USA, the greatest Olympic team in history, and we did it without cheating, who will continue to remind people that if you come for America, you will lose, every time.
Unless you are Vietnam.
Oh yeah, and good luck to the IOC, the second most corrupt organization in the world after FIFA, may all of your brown baggies of cash find a good home in a lovely Swiss bank account.
Citius, Altius, Fortius
Kat