“It’s odd to see grown adults draped in the flag”

In an article about cultural events during the Olympics, Vancouver writer Danielle Egan talks to Ken Lum about the Games and the East Van cross I previously mentioned here. I want to say I’m thankful the madness has finally ended, but so many people here are still driving around with flags on their cars. But they’re torn and tattered and keep flying off into traffic….

“I’m kind of bemused by the public outpouring of patriotism,” Lum says. “It’s odd to see grown adults draped in the flag. I was downtown the other day and it was quite disorienting. I couldn’t recognize the city. So many people and it suddenly felt Baudelairean. When you’re an artist, you can never really be part of the crowd even if you’re immersed in that crowd. It’s not just restricted to the Olympics, which I feel is an elitist, corrupt and dubious institution with several problematic attachments to fascist figures and so on. There’s no doubt there will be a huge hangover, a fiscal nightmare. But it does provide important lessons in terms of art and politics and trauma.”

Matthew Good on the Olympics

What he said.

Vancouver’s poet laureate isn’t celebrating Olympics

Brad Cran, Vancouver’s poet laureate until 2011, has posted his reasons for not participating in the Olympics’ opening ceremonies. Good on him, I say.

There are Canadian writers involved in a few of the other 193 listed events but when it comes to the celebration stages our writers are not just neglected, they are totally ignored. As Poet Laureate I was offered time on one of the celebration stages where I would be allowed to read poems that corresponded to themes as provided to me by an Olympic bureaucrat. One of the themes was “equality” but since VANOC had blown the chance of making these Olympics the first gender inclusive Olympics in history by including a female ski jumping event I didn’t think they would appreciate a reading of the one Olympic poem I had written on equality: “In Praise of Female Athletes Who Were Told No: For the 14 female ski jumpers petitioning to be included in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.”

5 Hole—Animated tales of hockey erotica

Written by Dave Bidini, music by the Rheostatics and animated by Cam Christiansen. Possibly NSFW but fun.

“VANOC did not ask us to do this”

The Tyee has posted a news story about the latest Olympic insanity in Vancouver: librarians being told to protect Olympic sponsors.

The rules are very specific. It’s fine if a Telus employee agrees to be a speaker at a library-organized event. But staff can’t forget Bell is the official sponsor. They should make sure the guest removes his or her Telus jacket, the memo advises.

The same care must be taken for audio-visual equipment. The branch should try to get devices made by official sponsor Panasonic. Should staff only be able to find Sony equipment, the solution is simple.

“I would get some tape and put it over the ‘Sony,’” Kavanagh said.

OK, if VANOC didn’t tell them to do this, then there is something really wrong at the library.

100,000 condoms for Olympic athletes

So… who’s gonna get the world record…?

Local health officials will provide up to 100,000 free condoms to athletes and officials housed in the Vancouver and Whistler athletes villages during the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The program isn’t a comment on the level of testosterone displayed in the villages by young athletes, but an attempt to reinforce the message of controlling sexually transmitted diseases, Dr. Reka Gustafson, medical health officer for Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, said this week.

Rick Mercer gets murder(ball)ed

Are sports skills life skills?

This ad from KidSport Canada has got many of my artsy friends riled up. And for good reason, I’d say. It’s nice to see an organization trying to help kids have access to sports, but to suggest kids who don’t play sports will be lifelong social losers? C’mon. (Via Robert Wiersema.)

Should pole dancing be an Olympic sport?

Well, that should get me some hits.

Credit Barbara Almond for knowing what kind of statements might get media attention.

The Richmond Hill, Ont., entrepreneur, who in an e-mail to the media billed herself as the “region’s leading pole dancing instructor,” proclaimed she wanted to see pole dancing as an Olympic sport at the 2012 Games in London.

A mother of two in her forties, Almond said pole dancing required skills rivaling those used by gymnasts on rings or bars.

PETA’s parody of the Olympic logo

Let the games legal action begin.

CBC bans pansification

The word, that is.

The network came under fire this week from the Ottawa-based gay advocacy group Egale Canada. It protested the term, which was used by Hockey Night personalities to describe how the NHL game would be softened by changes designed to prohibit fighting.

“A stone-cold champion from the frigid streets of Montreal”

As a run-up to UFC 94 last night, which featured the long-awaited rematch between B.J. Penn and Canada’s Georges St. Pierre, the UFC presented a three-part series called UFC Primetime. Alternating between idyllic scenes in Hawaii and the snowy apocalypse of Montreal, the show makes better viewing after the fight. Here’s the first instalment. Check in the YouTube sidebar for the rest.