The Games

So that’s it.  If you are living in the United States, NBC has shown how the world has come together as one, once more in the spirit beauty and peace of the Olympic Games. They have shown us how we’ve been able to compete with one another and against one another and we have come out with a few scars and some heartache, but also with the ability to celebrate the memories and the heroes and the ideals of what makes life worth living. We’ve seen threats to security largely dismissed or at least controlled, but then what did you expect, 007 was there.

You know, I bet Betty Windsor, who has now become the ultimate Bond Girl, must have waited almost 50 years to say, “Good evening Mr. Bond,” on film. That’s probably a decade or 2 longer than I’ve been waiting to say, "I expect you to die Mr. Bond," in my best Goldfinger accent while looking like Yaphet Kotto wished he had  looked like when he did Live And Let Die….sorry but you can’t be humble when you’re doing or talking about being a Bond villain. But I’m starting to digress.

Apart from the usual corporate prostitution that our friend Mitt perfected in Salt Lake City, there was very little scandal this time out at the events. In fact the only thing I can think of was the guy from St Kitts or somewhere who got sent home for sleeping with his wife or the 4 badminton teams that were dismissed from the Games for deliberately not playing at their best. Actually the badminton thing was almost unforgivable. I would have been highly pissed as a spectator to have gotten tickets to one Olympic event that I could probably get into for the rest of my life and see a team play with less athletic skill and ability than my 60 year old Aunt Sally with her rheumatoid arthritis. Instead I’m just highly pissed because I remember the absolute joy of playing badminton as a child. I remember hitting the shuttlecock into the air as fast and as hard as I could and just watching how it would hover as it cleared the net giving me time to figure out who on the over side would lob it back and where I would have to be for that rapid gut wrenching volley to begin in earnest. It was like chess with a racket and a net; you always had to think at least 3 or 4 moves ahead.

The thing with the Olympic Games is that I end up watching things that I would never ever do or watch in real life.  Not the running or the swimming or anything with a stopwatch, but gymnastics. I’m not talking about the regular gymnastics where I know I could rip out my shoulder from its socket in say the rings or snap my neck from doing the vault, but like the floor exercises where you see the little girls run jump and leap…and then you see them run jump and leap… and then they run jump and…you get the picture. At least I hope you do because I don’t. But worse still is the competition with the little girls with the ribbon and the hoops. What the Hell is that and what does it mean? But I watched it. I watched it all. All being provided by our good friends at NBC for my, our, viewing entertainment even though it was 5 hours after the fact.

I won't mention the inane droning on by the NBC correspondents about things people already know about or their apparent lack of interest in non-US athletes other than those with the initials UB or even their failure to even grasp the significance of Isambard Kingdom Brunel or Tim Berners-Lee to the worlds of design engineering and information exchange; but I will say that they have an uncanny ability to turn any world event into just another version of Dick Clark’s Rockin’ Eve and that must be an achievement in and of itself.

But you know, if I’m still around 4 years from now….well.

Rambling Relays

I think I’m trying to avoid writing about something. There are a couple of things that are on my mind, but I don’t know how to go about writing them. I tell myself I just need to season the idea little, turn a phrase here or there and relate it to this or that so that I can be comfortable with it, but I never do. I have a few unfinished pieces on Word with one or two paragraphs and that’s it. Truth be told, even if I were to go back to them, they’d be so old that I probably couldn’t figure out what it was that I was trying to say originally. So I will just ramble on a bit.

It’s Penn Relay weekend and I have nothing that I want to do. There are of course the games. But I think that I have gotten to an age where I am just interested in the athletic performances and not the ancillary performances of the spectators looking for dates or whatever both in and out of the stadium that often accompanies the Relays.

If I were to go with friends, I would be the one seen as putting a downer on the whole thing because I would be the one looking to see who was winning a race, whereas they would be the ones looking to see who had the most to jiggle up front, or behind, or see who was built like a brick shit house and what they’d like to do with them. Not that there’s anything wrong that, but what the hell does it mean to be built like brick shit house anyway? I can see the brick house part, but where and how does shit make it even more of a compliment?

Anyway, since it is Relay Weekend that means that it’s the official or unofficial Black Gay Pride weekend in Philadelphia. It also means that there will be plenty of parties that I will not be invited to and I few where I wouldn’t show up even if I were invited because I never have been a real party person unless of course the liquor was flowing the way that it should be and or I was comfortable with the people that were there. It also means that there will be the clubs or bars dedicated to getting that black gay dollar this weekend from people of questionable ages that I will also avoid like the plague, just because I know how the kids get when they are trying to act all grownup and Miss Thing. God, was I ever like that? Also could I make these sentences any longer? Changing gears.

Today I was out in the sun for a few hours doing a few things and decided that I would go to my gym for quick shit and a shower because I was feeling sweaty and stinky. Actually I’m joking about a quick shit because I have something about public toilets that one or two therapy sessions still wouldn’t be able to help me with and why I thought showering and putting back on the same stinking clothes would make a difference is beyond me. But there I was drying off and I noticed I had a tan line on my upper arms from wearing a tee-shirt.

And?

Well for me, that’s a big thing. I am dark and I can get even darker. One time I went to Guadeloupe and I turned so dark there were highlights that I saw on my chest that were actually purple when the sun hit it just right. That was interesting. It was also fun. Nice work if you can get it and it’s time to start working on that again and getting back to my Maasai roots. "But the Maasai are from East Africa” you say, “and slaves were taken from West Africa.” To which I would reply that my family has always travelled and who is to say that they weren’t vacationing in sunny Ghana or Nigeria at the time?

I was going to downshift even further and talk about another “Golden Girl” leaving us but I think that I’ve gone on too long as it is and may leave it for another day. Nevertheless I truly believe that Betty White is going to survive everybody and keep working although at this point that’s not going to be much of a bet, but I’m still taking wagers right now if you’re interested.

Benefits and Shit

One of the benefits of having a membership at the The Sporting Club at the Bellevue, is that it is considered to be the premier gym/spa in the City of Philadelphia. Of course that's not really taking into consideration the Philadelphia Tennis & Racquet Club two blocks away, which I think may very well be so much better, but I have never been there. You have to be invited by a member, or be to the manor born. But at my gym, apart from the people like me who struggle from paycheck to paycheck, you are surrounded by local politicians, a US Senator and a governor. There are also high priced lawyers, judges, doctors, a few celebrity athletes who have passed their prime and others who are wheeling and dealing in some sort of scheme to get even richer than they are now.

Occasionally at the gym you will see some level of media celebrity, ranging from Butch who works one the access free TV cable shows and throws the underwear party at a leather bar and Heidi from the first season of Donald Trump's The Apprentice. Who?...Moving on. There have even been reports of Oprah showing up at the gym whenever she is in Philly and there was of course the time that I saw a celebrity and was kind of rude to him.

I had noticed some black guy running around the track and I had thought to myself, at last some new color on the premises and I continued doing bench presses. But, I must have paused in the middle a little to long because all of a sudden some female lackey whom I had seen with the black guy came up to me and asked just how long I would be on the bench. Naturally, this meant that I would have to inform her that I would have at least 2 more sets to do out if spite, which I did. She then walked up to the black guy and I suppose told him what I had said. They nodded at each other in agreement and they both left. It was then that it hit me. I had been rude to Denzel Washington who was in town making a movie without even trying. I had blown my chance to get to know someone famous. I had thrown away the opportunity to become tight with a Hollywood star, and believe me we would have become tighter than my nuts on a cold day in January if I had known what was what. Oh well, life goes on.

So needless to say, but I will, there is a large number of gym members who have reached shall we a say a certain age. Muscles don't build as easily as they once did for many people there. That gut that many of us endeavor to get rid of seems to hang around like the hookers used to do at the entrance of the Lincoln Tunnel on the Manhattan side. Something familiar but something you know you should get rid of. The smell of Ben Gay will sometimes permeate the locker rooms as old men try to relive their glory days while relieving themselves of the pain of strained ligaments, joints and unfulfilled dreams. I have even seen once when I was in the showers an elderly gentleman became so weak and disoriented that while he was pulling down his powder blue swim shorts, I saw the stain of fecal matter run down from between his legs and into the floor drains.

On Monday this week, the men's whirpool was shut down by the time I had entered the men's locker room and wet area. It was out of order and I looked down at the pool and wondered why instead of just draining the water and filling it up once a week with a quick wipe around the edges, why didn't they ever clean it properly and scrub the walls and the floor and pick up what looked like grit that had sank to the bottom. I was told that they had just refilled the pool and poured a bucket of some white fluid. I assumed that it must have been some sort of disinfectant, because when they use chlorine it's usually in a powdered form.

On Tuesday, I dipped my right hand into the whirlpool to see how warm it was. It had been months since I had gotten in and I thought this might be the day when I got in it again. Curtis told me as I was about to drop my towel, get naked and feel the rejuvenative powers of the water jets that the reason the whirlpool was shut down on Monday was because someone had taken a shit in the pool.

I decided not to get in. You would have to have a particularly piquant set of sensibilities to overcome something like that, and I'm not sure I would qualify. I don't like to worry unecessarily.

By the way, it may be just my imagination, but my right hand has been tingling ever since.

Change is something you can't Avoid

I was going to take some pictures of the events outside of the Penn Relays yesterday. The last time I had been there was 2002 or 3 and the streets had been filled with young people celebrating their youth, their strength and their beauty and I thought this would have good chance to pull out the new camera and see if I could figure out the advantages of a 10.0 megapixel instrument over what I have had before.

When I arrived on 34th St., I already knew that I would not try to get a ticket to get into the stadium so I walked down to 32nd St. on the overly crowded side walk passing the many food and vendor stands almost all of them selling some of jerk chicken or fish meal. The others were selling T-shirts or caps supporting Obama and I wondered how much of the funds would actually go to his campaign. The rest almost overwhelmingly, were selling shirts, caps, necklaces and other jewelry emblazoned with the flags of Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados and Guyana. There were national flags from the other Caribbean countries but I didn’t know which ones they belonged to.

It was then that I ran into someone that I believe still goes to my gym. I don’t really know what his name is, it could be John but who knows. He had once told me that years ago we had met at a bathhouse before and that we had done the do there. I had tried to tell him that he had gotten his pieces mixed up but after I while I figured if I was going to be his fantasy…well he could do worse. I’d let him live a little.

So we shake hands and he proceeds to tell me that he had been going there every year since ’78 or ’42, I wasn’t really listening and that back in the day the crowds had been filled frat brothers, and sisters I suppose, but now the Penn Relays were full of West Indians. It had become a mini version of the West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn but without the parade. How things change.

I decided to walk up a bit further to see if there was anything that would be of interest to me. I reached the gates of Franklin Field and I realized that everything this year seemed to be very clean and very efficient. The police had prevented people from congregating outside the gates as they had done in earlier years. The traffic moved smoothly outside of the arena and I realized the bacchanal images that I had remembered and was looking for now were not to be found this year. So I left, not spending more than 15 minutes for the whole thing.

Besides, I’m starting to grasp the fact that more isn’t necessarily better and that I made better pictures and was more careful with the 3.5 megapixel camera with the bigger lens than I could ever be with this one. And the pictures I took with the 35mm were even better than those I took with the 3.5. So I will just wait for another occasion or just make up a subject myself that won’t change before I decide to shoot it.

Haircut or Relays?

When I was young, my mother would tell me to finish eating my food because there was starving children in Biafra. Today I still don’t know where Biafra is, Kenya or Tanzania I think but that’s not the point. Starvation has been around with us from since man has stood on two feet. From wars, droughts, disease and now market competition there has always been a shortage of food, and I would get into more of this if I thought more and had more information. Instead I want to talk about something that’s more important to me at this time; getting my hair cut.

The trouble with working with women is that they will be the first ones to let you know when you have a touch of the Wolf Man about you and I have reached that time again.


For the last 10 or more years I have gotten my hair cut in West Philly. It’s not really because I’m in love with the service but I go to a shop that I’m comfortable with and I see someone that I’m relaxed with touching my hair. But this weekend, is the weekend of the Penn Relays. That means that everyone and their unwed sister will be out and about trying to hook up with someone. Girls will be out shaking behinds or their boobs trying to get some dick or entertainment for the evening. And because it’s also the weekend Black Gay Pride, the men will be out shaking their behinds trying to get dick or entertainment for the evening as well. What does this mean for me?

Well I’d like to think that those days are well behind me, but I know that the barber shop will be packed with people trying to get that last minute fade. It will be packed by people trying to look cool and as attractive as they can be just to set the weekend off right. It means that I should be prepared to spend at least 2 hours waiting for a 15 minute haircut. It’s happened before.

Well, maybe I’ll just take my camera along and see how it works since the stadium, Franklin Field, is only 4 blocks away and there is usually more action going on outside the fields than inside. Maybe I’ll make it an event of it for myself.

Anyway, after that I may give my thoughts on how GM crops, farm subsidies and the interests in bio-fuels will send us and the rest of the world into a mass of confused hunger and strife. It depends on how I feel about my hair.

One World, One Dream

I will admit the first time that I heard or even thought about boycotting the Beijing Olympic Games was by reading a post written by the blogger Mes Deux Cents. She had suggested that in order to protest against the actions of the Chinese in Darfur, she would think about boycotting the games and asked if athletes and others should do the same. At the time I said no, but now I’m not so sure.

Like most people, I don’t know about the specific arguments against having the games in China but I am aware of the general disagreements that the world has. I am aware of the human rights violations, the arms for oil deal China has with the Sudan, the oppression of religion and civil rights in Tibet and I start wonder where my 50’s “fight the power” itch is.

Recently, I have seen the disruption of the lighting of the torch in Athens. I have watched the BBC show video of protestors in London express their anger against the games in China. I have observed on CNN the police in Paris dressed as if they were auditioning for American Gladiator protecting the torch on its way through the city streets. And today some people were arrested in San Francisco for unfurling the banner, One World, One Dream over the Golden Gate Bridge in anticipation of the torch arriving there on Wednesday. Angela Merkel of Germany and Nikolas Sarcosi of France both say that they will not be attending the opening ceremonies and Senator Clinton has or asked President Bush to avoid the ceremonies as well and still I question what good will all this do.

After all, a good Olympic event makes for good PR for China. It gives bragging rights for the country to say how good and progressive it is. It helps legitimize the Chinese government public policy and justify the direction that they are taking. And if it doesn’t then the Chinese may just say “oh well” and start counting the cash that they took in.

Perhaps the only way to effectively to protest against the Games in Beijing is to stop financing it. Perhaps if the public stopped supporting American and multi-national companies like McDonalds and Coca-Cola that are sponsoring the Games then maybe whatever political statements that people wanted to say would at least be heard.

Of course by not supporting these industries, one must wonder who would be hurt most, the Chinese government or the ordinary worker trying to make living. If the country and possibly the world is heading for recession, then who really will be hurt most? I suspect it will be those who are trying to feed themselves and their families.

I guess people who are inclined to do so will protest any which way they can. I for one will protest in my own way. I shall stay up late and watch NBC and the track events but refuse to watch the commercials.

Things that make you say hmmm.

Its late and so I really have nothing profound to say. Although some people may think that I have nothing profound to say anyway, but I do have a question. Why do runners no longer seem to wear underwear or support? Wont they be slowed down by all that bouncing flesh?

Just something that has occurred to me tonight.

In fact, now that I think about it, whenever NBC air track metes like the Olympics and such, they always try and avoid showing the front of an athlete below the waist. I guess too much trauma for that housewife in Idaho.

"Harry, get the vapors!"