Gold Rush

The summer Olys are back. With all the usual suspects. Danny Boyle who
directed films,Slumdog Millionaire, and Trainspotting among others is orchestrating the opening ceremony from London. Find it hard to believe that anything will ever dazzle and push the envelope the way Chinese did when they hosted. If you missed that spectacle, you missed the wedding, my friends. Adam Gopnik wrote a piece in the New Yorker about nationalism and the Olys. Uh, yeah, but some of us watch for other reasons than the red white and blue medal count. We watch for those moments of great drama and human courage that push mental and physical stress over the edge and into some other unimaginable stratosphere. There are extraordinary stories of performance victories, but greater gut wrenching downloads in defeat. Names erupt from other countries, and you never forget them: the great and ageless Kip Keino. Michael Gross 'the Albatross' a German swimmer with a 7'4" wing span. Vasily Alekseyev the strong man from the former USSR. The great Tamara Press who medaled back to back in the shot put. And the diminutive Olga Korbut and Nadia Comaneci, of the perfect 10, both of whom set the gymnastic world on fire. Four years is a long time between drinks. Dust off the recorder, and set em up. One of the greatest shows on earth is about to roll across your screen.

Pulling the Pin

Uh, if you don't know the meaning of the title, google that baby. Woke up today and finally cracked. I've been craving potato chips for a couple of weeks now, and just bought a bag. Mmm. Never eat these, but you only live once. Lapsed Catholics always fall hard, but judiciously. Eat half the bag, spare the whole.

1. The Boy Scouts. My bro was a cubbie. One of my best childhood friends was the highest ranking eagle scout in the USA. Now, filled with conservative Mormies, and Cat'olics, the Scouts have be-
come a prehistoric org that is living in denial. Scared that homos
might disrupt tying knots, or striking flints in the wilderness, the scouts 'ixnayed' gays. That's right. Ixnay. Pig latin for a bunch of pigs.

2. Frank Ocean. In the world of xtreme machismo rappers,
Frank Ocean came out on Independence Day and declared his love (1st love) for another man on his blog. The revelation blistered the media and scorched hip-hop city. While not everyone, some chose silence (Ocean did receive death threats) was showing him the love, droves of his contemporaries including 50 Cent, and Jay-Z shouted out their support.  Frank Ocean, dog, from the other 'city' by the bay, props to you my man.

3. Katie Holmes. Pulled the pin. And chose the RSCJ's, Religious of the Sacred Heart, to educate her daughter. A smile crossed my lips when I read the blurb. My collegiate years were spent frolicking on the west coast campus of the afore mentioned 'madames (the order hated the nick-name). The RSCJ's were/are the Jesuits of the nunnery. Once a convent girl, always a convent girl. DNA runs deep. Ask Gaga, or one of the Kennedy girls. Or me. You can take the girl out of the school, but you can't take the school out of... Nice choice, Katie.

...'Just to ride the Ponies'...

1. Some traditions never change. You just don't mess with collective conditioning. As certain as bluebirds fly above the rainbow...every December somewhere in this country, 'A Wonderful Life' glows off thousands of telly's; just as on every 4th of July, 'Yankee Doodle Dandy'
beams the story of Georgie Cohen into hundreds of living rooms across wheat filled plains and congested city scapes. I'm 12, in my pj's, watching the old black and white Admiral when scampering across the 14' tube comes a guy singing and dancing Yankee Doodle in verses I'd never
heard before. And then he does the impossible. He dances up the vertical sides of the stage. I looked for wires. I looked for magic. I looked at me. How did he do that? CGI was 70 years off. The mystery was in the man, James Cagney. And he hoofed it, in black and white my friends, because he could.

2. Fireworks are in the DNA. Asians wave punks before they can sharpen
pencils. I dissected my first firecrackers, leaving a trail of gunpowder to a tin can, long before I dissected a frog in biology. It's all about luck, baby. You fire up those strings of crackers to boot the 'bad' away from residences; no one wants misfortune to hover over their abode. But we never had those lofty thoughts as we blew things off hinges, or sky high into the night. It was the pyrotechnics: the dazzling spangled light, the constant din of ka-booms, near and far, and the night air filling with a glowing claustrophobic haze that you never forgot and will always remember.

3. Amelia Earhart. They're looking for you again. I like the original image
that you left us with. Flying off into the deep blue...the stuff of legends.