by Dave Barry
HEY CHINA! LAY OFF FALUN GONG! OR ELSE!
Also on the streets of Salt Lake City, I saw a person striding along wearing a moose costume. I have no idea why. This could be a Mormon thing.
One final Utah mystery: In a shopping mall here, I saw an escalator with signs reading “CAUTION: PASSENGERS ONLY.”
EARLY OLYMPIC COMPETITION RESULT: In a major upset, Grzjkystan defeated heavily favored Zrbykjstan in the finals of the men's eight-meter snowball fight.
SECURITY UPDATE: In what has been termed “an unfortunate mishap,” a Norwegian ski jumper exceeded the prescribed altitude and was shot down by an F-15.
Competitive Ski Jumping Is a Weighty Issue
PARK CITY, UTAH
I came here to watch the men's 90-meter ski jump, which gets its name from the fact that a sane person would have to drink a 90-meter-high glass of gin before he would even consider attempting this sport.
Of course, ski jumping was not invented by sane people. It was invented by Norwegians. These are people who eat a dish called “lutefisk,” which can be either an entrée or an industrial solvent. So they think nothing of flinging themselves off cliffs.
If you've ever watched ski jumping on television, you've probably asked yourself: How do they DO that? How is it POSSIBLE? The answer to that question is two words—two words that define the spirit and essence of this amazing sport. Those words are: computer graphics. The “jumpers” are actually suspended by cables about a foot off the ground in a studio in Los Angeles. Also “Bob Costas” is an elaborate puppet operated by four people.
No, I'm kidding. I personally watched the ski jumpers here hurtle down an incredibly steep ramp, launch themselves off the end, soar through space long enough to qualify for beverage-cart service, then somehow land on their skis and slide, triumphantly, to the underwear-changing station. After each jump, two enthusiastic dudes would get on the public-address system and analyze it for the crowd. Most events at these Olympics have enthusiastic announcer dudes who are really, really into the sport, and thus are able to explain it in terms that only they understand. At ski jumping, they were always saying helpful things like: “Wow! He got a real huge float off his V!”
The 90-meter ski jump was won by—and in my opinion, this is a growing scandal here—three foreign persons. At a press conference afterward, one of them, Sven Hannawald of Germany, was asked if he could explain ski jumping to people who've never done it. Through an interpreter, he answered: “If everybody tried, they would probably need very good insurance.”
Also, to be competitive, they would need to lose weight. The big scandal in ski jumping is that a lot of the athletes have eating disorders, because the lighter you are, the farther you fly. There's talk of changing the rules to eliminate this advantage, possibly by requiring lighter competitors to carry extra weight. This concept is being studied in a series of experiments in which scientists are putting skis on former top Enron executives, tying anvils to their necks, and shoving them down the jump ramp.
“The early results are very promising,” report the scientists. “These guys are getting practically no float off their V.”
As a winter sports enthusiast, I urge these scientists to continue this important research, and if possible expand it to include the comedian Carrot Top.
OLYMPIC COMPETITION UPDATE: Turkey has won its first Winter Olympic gold ever in the Two-Man Windshield Scrape.
UTAH CULTURAL UPDATE: There is an establishment in Salt Lake City called the “Ho Ho Gourmet Restaurant.”
Gosh! Heck! Utahans Angry About Skating
SALT LAKE CITY
People out here are so mad they could spit, if spitting were legal in Utah.
They're mad over this figure-skating scandal, which has the figure-skating world in such a state of confusion that National Guard troops have been called in to safeguard the mascara supply.
In case you don't keep up with world events, here's what happened: During the pairs finals, the Russian team of Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze made a number of flagrant errors, including these:
• Sikharulidze double-footed an axel landing. Or possibly he double-axeled a land footing. Whatever he did, it was flagrant.
• Sikharulidze also was wearing a disco shirt from 1978.
• During one of her spins, Berezhnaya can clearly be seen, in slow-motion video replay, taking a puff from a cigarette.
So everybody was sure the gold medal would go to the Canadian team of Jamie Sale and David Pelletier, who not only skated perfectly, but whose names are also much easier to spell. Yet the judges gave the gold to the Russians, a decision that had even the normally mellow Utahans screaming vicious profanities, Mormon-style (“What in the gosh darn HECK?!” “I'll be gum swizzled!” etc.).
How could this happen? To answer that question, we must understand how figure skating is judged. There are nine judges, broken down as follows:
• Judges from nations with plumbing: four
• Judges from former communist nations where the most reliable form of transportation is the yak: four
• French judges who hate everybody because the French never win anything: one
After each performance, the judges carefully weigh both the artistry and the technical merit. Then they vote for whomever they were going to vote for anyway. Usually they vote for skaters who are from their own country, or who have an established reputation. This is why in 1998 the Olympic gold medal for pairs figure skating went to a Russian team that had retired in 1996.
In the case of the 2002 pairs gold, all the plumbing-nation judges voted for the Canadians, and all the yak-nation judges voted for the Russians. The balance was tipped by the French judge, who later admitted she voted against the Canadians only because at the time she thought they were Americans, on the grounds that, quote, “they have good teeth.”
So now we have an Olympic scandal, which has quickly burgeoned into an international crisis. Tensions soared on Thursday night when both the Canadian and Russian governments ordered their armed forces to go on highest alert; thankfully, things cooled down a few hours later when the two countries realized that they don't HAVE any armed forces.
But still, this scandal has cast a pall over figure skating, which must get its house in order if it is to be viewed as an untainted sport, like boxing. Fortunately, the International Skating Union has recognized the problem and is taking steps to correct it.
“We're going to have a thorough review of our judging procedures,” stated the ISU. “This will be done by an outside firm with an impeccable reputation: Arthur Andersen.”
Don't Trust Any Judge with Two First Names
SALT LAKE CITY
Despite efforts to resolve the figure skating scandal, it continues to rage out of control here, at least in the media center, where riot police have been called in to quell fighting among roving gangs of Canadian, Russian, and French journalists. As of this morning, seventeen people had been treated for wounds inflicted by Bic pens.
The trouble stems from the now-infamous pairs competition, in which the gold medal was awarded to the Russians, despite the fact the clear winners were the pair from Canada, who have since become the most famous Canadians in world history, surpassing even (EDITOR: Please insert names of some famous Canadians here).
The judges' decision touched off a firestorm of outrage, with most of the attention focused on the French judge, Marie-Reine Le Gougne. Among the highly suspicious facts that have come to light about her are:
1. She appears to have two first names.
2. The letters in “Marie-Reine Le Gougne” can be rearranged to spell “An eerie groin legume.”
3. A person looking exactly like her can clearly be seen in the background of the Zapruder film.
The scandal became so huge that it threatened to tarnish the reputation of figure skating, which is not easy, since, ethically speaking, figure skating already has basically the same reputation as the Soprano family. And so on Friday, action was taken
to restore the integrity of the sport. This action was taken by—get ready for some irony—the International Olympic Committee (motto: “No Longer Openly Accepting Bribes”).
Specifically, the IOC ruled that:
1. The Russians will keep their gold medals for pairs figure skating.
2. A second set of gold medals for pairs figure skating will be awarded to the Canadians.
3. Henry L. Curdlicker, who drove the Zamboni machine, also will be given a gold medal for pairs figure skating.
4. The Trial Lawyers Association will file a class-action lawsuit on behalf of “the potentially millions of other people who might be entitled to receive gold medals in pairs figure skating.”
5. The Oakland Raiders will be declared winners of the Raiders-Patriots playoff game, because a review of the videotape shows that, in the words of IOC president Jacques Rogge, “Brady clearly fumbled the ball.”
6. The Eerie Groin Legumes would be a good name for a rock band.
Unfortunately, these actions have not ended the controversy. The Russians are furious because their gold medals are tainted. The Canadians are furious because their “gold medals,” which the IOC had to purchase at the last minute from a local trophy store, are in fact plastic medallions labeled “FIRST PRIZE 1987 UTAH STATE FAIR BEST ZUCCHINI.” The French are furious because they are French. The only happy group is the American press corps. As long as we can keep the scandal going, we get to stay indoors and write about it, instead of freezing our butts off watching the biathlon.
COMING TOMORROW: Kenneth Lay wins giant slalom.
Buses and Mucus: International Snits Become Inevitable
SALT LAKE CITY
The mood was cranky here in the waning moments of the 2002 Winter Games:
• RUSSIA threatened to walk out of the Olympics if it was not immediately awarded gold medals in women's figure skating, the Nordic combined alpine snowshoe and two events to be named later.
• KOREA threatened to walk out of the Olympics if it did not get whatever Russia got.
• LITHUANIA threatened to walk out of the Olympics if whoever stole its lucky towel did not return it.
• PORTUGAL actually did walk out of the Olympics, but nobody noticed, so Portugal sulked back into town and spent the rest of the Games holed up in its hotel room watching dirty movies.
So basically the Winter Olympics degenerated into a great big international snit. This is what inevitably happens when you gather people from many different nations and force them to sit together for hours in crowded buses, listening to each other's ongoing efforts to expel mucus clots. I don't want to get too explicit, but the dry, cold atmospheric conditions here tend to result in nasal formations the size of Yorkshire terriers.
Some nations were so angry that they threatened not only to leave these Olympics, but also to boycott the 2004 Summer Games, scheduled to be held in Greece. As you can imagine, this caused great consternation in Greece, which issued the following statement: “The Olympics are coming HERE??”
But the immediate issue was not whether Greece will be ready to host the 2004 Games (no). The immediate issue was how to make the snitting nations happy, especially the Russians. The Olympic movement simply cannot allow the Russians to become estranged, because Russia is a vital part of the world sports community, in the sense of having nuclear missiles.
And the Russians were REALLY hacked off, for a bunch of reasons. First, they lost the Cold War. THEN they were forced to share the gold medal for pairs figure skating with Canada. THEN one of the top Russian cross-country skiers was disqualified because, in the words of Olympic drug-testing officials, “her urine sample burst into flames.”
But the last straw came Thursday night, when Russia's top woman figure skater, the veteran Irina Slutskaya, lost the gold medal to an American, Sarah Hughes, who is maybe eleven years old and who passed the time, while waiting for her scores to appear, playing with her Olympics Barbie.
The Russians protested the women's result, but to no avail. The International Olympic Committee interviewed the judges, who pointed out, correctly, that the letters in “Irina Slutskaya” can be rearranged to spell “Russian Yak Tail.” This is a mandatory two-tenths deduction.
The situation was finally resolved Friday when, after a lengthy meeting with IOC officials, the Russians agreed to drop their gold-medal demands and remain in the Games. In return for this act of sportsmanship, they will get East Germany back. So everything came out fine. Speaking of which, I need to blow my nose.
Part Four
* * *
The next section of this book presents a selection of my regular weekly columns. I use this platform to address issues that I believe are of concern to the nation and the world, such as taxes, the economy, and what, exactly, the Lone Ranger shouted as he rode away.
* * *
In a Battle of Wits with Kitchen Appliances, I'm Toast
Recently the Washington Post printed an article explaining how the appliance manufacturers plan to drive consumers insane.
Of course they don't SAY they want to drive us insane. What they SAY they want to do is have us live in homes where “all appliances are on the Internet, sharing information” and appliances will be “smarter than most of their owners.” For example, the article states, you would have a home where the dishwasher “can be turned on from the office” and the refrigerator “knows when it's out of milk” and the bathroom scale “transmits your weight to the gym.”
I frankly wonder whether the appliance manufacturers, with all due respect, have been smoking crack. I mean, did they ever stop to ask themselves WHY a consumer, after loading a dishwasher, would go to the office to start it? Would there be some kind of career benefit?
YOUR BOSS: What are you doing?
YOU (tapping computer keyboard): I'm starting my dishwasher!
YOUR BOSS: That's the kind of productivity we need around here!
YOU: Now I'm flushing the upstairs toilet!
Listen, appliance manufacturers: We don't NEED a dishwasher that we can communicate with from afar. If you want to improve our dishwashers, give us one that senses when people leave dirty dishes on the kitchen counter, and shouts at them: “PUT THOSE DISHES IN THE DISHWASHER RIGHT NOW OR I'LL LEAK ALL OVER YOUR SHOES!”
Likewise, we don't need a refrigerator that knows when it's out of milk. We already have a foolproof system for determining if we're out of milk: We ask our wives. What we could use is a refrigerator that refuses to let us open its door when it senses that we are about to consume our fourth Jell-O Pudding Snack in two hours.
As for a scale that transmits our weight to the gym: Are they NUTS? We don't want our weight transmitted to our own EYEBALLS! What if the gym decided to transmit our weight to all these other appliances on the Internet? What if, God forbid, our refrigerator found out what our weight was? We'd never get the door open again!
But here is what really concerns me about these new “smart” appliances: Even if we like the features, we won't be able to use them. We can't use the appliance features we have NOW. I have a feature-packed telephone with 43 buttons, at least 20 of which I am afraid to touch. This phone probably can communicate with the dead, but I don't know how to operate it, just as I don't know how to operate my TV, which has features out the wazooty and requires THREE remote controls. One control (44 buttons) came with the TV; a second (39 buttons) came with the VCR; the third (37 buttons) was brought here by the cable-TV man, who apparently felt that I did not have enough buttons.
So when I want to watch TV, I'm confronted with a total of 120 buttons, identified by such helpful labels as PIP, MTS, DBS, F2, JUMP, and BLANK. There are three buttons labeled POWER, but there are times—especially if my son and his friends, who are not afraid of features, have changed the settings—when I honestly cannot figure out how to turn the TV on. I stand there, holding three remote controls, pressing buttons at random, until eventually I give up and go turn on the dishwasher. It has been, literally, years since I hav
e successfully recorded a TV show. That is how “smart” my appliances have become.
And now the appliance manufacturers want to give us even MORE features. Do you know what this means? It means that some night you'll open the door of your “smart” refrigerator, looking for a beer, and you'll hear a pleasant, cheerful voice—recorded by the same woman who informs you that Your Call Is Important when you call a business that does not wish to speak with you personally—telling you: “Your celery is limp.” You will not know how your refrigerator knows this, and, what is worse, you will not know who else your refrigerator is telling about it (“Hey Bob! I hear your celery is limp!”). And if you want to try to make the refrigerator STOP, you'll have to decipher Owner's Manual instructions written by and for nuclear physicists (“To disable the Produce Crispness Monitoring feature, enter the Command Mode, then select the Edit function, then select Change Vegetable Defaults, then assume that Train A leaves Chicago traveling westbound at 47 miles per hour, while Train B . . .”).
Is this the kind of future you want, consumers? Do you want appliances that are smarter than you? Of course not. Your appliances should be DUMBER than you, just like your furniture, your pets, and your representatives in Congress. So I am urging you to let the appliance industry know, by phone, letter, fax, and e-mail, that when it comes to “smart” appliances, you vote NO. You need to act quickly. Because while you're reading this, your microwave oven is voting YES.
Camping at Wal-Mart Parking Lot Is Survival of Fittest
I was in my house, which sits safely on the ground and does not have wheels, when I got a call from my editor, John.
