March 2nd, 2010

March is beautiful for Canada.

One week after my tirade decrying the Canadian Olympic Committee’s “Own the Podium” program our athletes rallied for a record setting haul of gold medals at the Winter Olympics, forcing me to eat my words, and eat them good. Here’s what I said last week:

At this point it looks like the only thing Canadians will own are the wet blankets the Americans have been dashing our Olympic hopes with.

What likely happened is the Canadian Olympic team caught wind of my negative musings (because my blog is wildly and insanely popular), were like “Hey! Fuck that guy!” and set out to prove me wrong. My blog gave our Olympians the motivation they needed to win!

So basically, I won the Olympics for us. You’re welcome Canada. If you wish to thank me I will be accepting gratitude in the form of cashier’s cheques.

While last week was a truly amazing week to be Canadian, not everything in Vancouver was of the spectacular variety. The closing ceremonies were…what word can I use here…asstacular? Sure, let’s go with that.

The whole ceremony was basically about how awesome and amazing Canada is, which is great if you are Canadian, but I kept thinking about the hundreds of athletes from around the globe who had to sit and endure a great white north wank-fest.

I’ll roll my eyes watching any movie that has one of those gratuitous American flag shots (think any Spider-man film), if you’re not American it’s just kind of annoying. I couldn’t take three hours of that, there’s just no way. Hats off to the world athletes who managed it with dignity.

Of course, then we had to throw a lip-syncing Nickelback at them.

I don’t really need more reasons to dislike Nickelback. Had Avril Lavigne, Hedley or Simple Plan also lip-synced I might have given Chad a pass, but they all performed live. There are two possibilities here: either Chad thinks the public is too stupid to know the difference between a live performance and a clean record track, or he just doesn’t give a shit. Either way he’s an asshole.

For the record, Alanis Morissette was also lip-syncing, but I like Alanis. I’ll cop to being biased.

Speaking of music at the Olympics, I assume you all heard the official theme song, if not here it is in all its schlocky-pop glory:

This insipid song was kind of CTV’s baby, playing it after each Canadian medal victory, which was more than a little pretentious. So when I heard one of CTV’s anchors claim that “I Believe” was a number one hit I nearly leapt from my chair and screamed “my hairy balls it is!!!” Then I checked the iTunes top ten:

You make me very sad, iTunes.

While I think CTV spends too much time patting themselves on the back, I must admit, the coverage for these Olympic games was truly impressive. I also have to give the network props for a fantastic video essay which aired just before the closing ceremonies with a touching, inspiring message.

Over clips of winning performances and a city genuinely alive with Olympic spirit, a narrator spoke. Canadians entered the games expecting to win the medal count, he said, but quickly discovered it wasn’t the count that mattered. It turned out the remarkable stories that unfolded – like Alexandre Bilodeau tearing up talking about his brother Frederic, who has cerebral palsy, or Joannie Rochette winning bronze just days after her mother suddenly passed away – were what mattered and touched people the most.

I must admit, I was quite guilty of eyeing the medal count, myself. Televised patriotism, to me, is rarely moving; mostly it is just contrived. CTV’s essay was refreshingly honest and helped me put the games in a much better perspective.

Filed under: General by Gregg |