Wednesday, February 19, 2014

From Russia with love...Your 2014 Winter Olympics

Dear Sochi Olympics,

I have a question to ask. Russia, remember when you were relevant? You use to collect gold medals like Kate Upton collects fan mail from prisoners. You brought the world Communism, the arms race, vodka and Ivan Drago but as soon as the great Ronald Reagan uttered those historic words, “tear down this wall” and the Soviet Union began to crumble it brought an end to drug use among your athletes, women who frequented the men’s bathroom more often than the women’s and your athletic dominance. Vladimir Putin I get it. While I’m not a supporter of your politics I am a huge fan of your personal endeavors. The most interesting man in the world pales to your exploits of flying with Canadian geese, bareback rides through the Russian countryside topless and the general wrestling of bears and catching fish with your bare hands. Your antics are the standard for every man out there. While there is nothing wrong with the winter games being staged at a resort community in your homeland you failed in the delivery of the product. First when picking a community to present the Winter Olympics try not to showcase the one on the “Russian Riviera” where 70 degrees and sun are the norm this time of year. Winter in most parts of the world other than California and now Sochi is associated with snow and parkas. When you have to store the precious white stuff (snow not coke Hollywood) in large man made insulated structures it means you have picked a bad place to put on this event. I mean you have Siberia. As you drift closer towards your Cold War era politics you could have shown off the jewel of that time. Who doesn’t love prison camps, a lack of pigmentation and vodka as a form of warmth. The next challenge you presented yourself was once picking the wrong community you decided to spend 100 times your GDP in lipstick for the proverbial pig. $52 billion dollars on bad snow, subpar venues and a below average gold medal count for the host country is unacceptable on all levels. If I was a Russian athlete who failed to medal I would be smuggling myself out of the country as quickly as possible because that priceless look on Putin’s face after the men’s hockey team failed to show the Finnish what the “Motherland” was all about in the quarterfinals has a whole different meaning to the natives. Finally please stage the events live in a time zone that is meaningful for the country’s that dominate international competition in the winter genera. Yes, I’m talking about us the United States and our favorite fashion accessory the “hat” or as it is known on maps…Canada. I don’t feel that it is fair to us or the Maple Leaf’s above that we have to be awake at 3:30 AM on a Tuesday to cheer our countries on to the perennial gold’s we collect in hockey, skiing, snowboarding. You know the sports that actually matter to people more than every 4 years. You try to solve this problem by bringing us a tape delayed saturated version of the events of the day in prime time but that is about as exciting as giving a teenager a Playboy and telling him to only read the articles. Plus did someone fail to inform Bob Costas that he should shy away from the pillows that aren’t his own after Taco Tuesday in the athlete’s village? My god I’ve not seen a case of pink eye like that since grade school. As 9:30 AM approaches here on the west coast and I find myself scampering to find an establishment that is both open and serves cocktails on a Wednesday so I may cheer my beloved USA men’s hockey team to our inevitable gold I leave you with these words…..USA! USA! USA! God Bless.

PS. Happy hump day peeps on a surprisingly wet Wednesday and remember….Hangovers are God’s way of giving you a thumbs up for the previous night’s performance.


#sochi #winterolympics #empireliving

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