International Olympic Committee Is Hopeless Bunch Of Divas So Nobody Wants To Host The Games

Apparentlu, the International Olympic Committe consists
of a bunch of divas.  

We've heard the runup to this summer's Olympic Games in Rio are a mess

What with the zika virus, toxic pollution in the water, high crime, construction delays, corruption and a Brazilian government in disarray, things aren't looking too hopeful.

In the future, it would be nice if the Games were hosted in a nice, stable country, like Norway.

But Norway, who had considered bidding for the 2022 Olympic Games, is out. Part of it is people in Norway sensibly wondered whether it was a good idea to build a whole bunch of sporting venues that would be used for a couple weeks and largely abandoned.'

The International Olympic Committee didn't help their case with Norway because members of that panel are the worst divas in the world.

Yes, that's right. The committee blew with hilarious demands that would make the most narcisstic rock band or politician blush. Donald Trump wouldn't even go this far.

Here, according to Slate, is how Norway would have to treat the International Olympic Committee members if the 2022 event had occured in Norway:

--- They demand to meet the king prior to the opening ceremony. Afterwards, there shall be a cocktail reception. Drinks shall be paid for by the Royal Palace or the local organizing committee.

--- Separate lanes should be created on all roads where IOC members will travel, which are not to be used by regular people or public transportation.

--- A welcome greeting from the local Olympic boss and the hotel manager should be presented in IOC members' rooms, along with fruit and cakes of the season. (Seasonal fruit in Oslo in February is a challenge...)

----  The hotel bar at the hotel should extend its hours 'extra late' and the minibars must stock Coke products.

---  The IOC president shall be welcomed ceremoniously on the runway when he arrives.

--- The IOC members should have separate entrances and exits to and from the airport.

--- During the opening and closing ceremonies a fully stocked bar shall be available. During competition days, wine and beer will do at the stadium lounge.

--- IOC members shall be greeted with a smile when arriving at their hotel

--- Meeting rooms shall be kept at exactly 20 degrees Celsius at all times.

--- The hot food offered in the lounges at venues should be replaced at regular intervals, as IOC members might 'risk' have to east several meals at the same lounge during the Olympics.

Gosh, these demands are especially heavy on the booze, aren't they?  The International Olympic Committee seems to be an incredible gang of lushes.

It also turns out that many members of the International Olympic Committee are members of hereditary royal families from various countries, so of course they want to be treated at all times like super special kings and queens and fragile (but boozing!) princesses.

Really, between the expense of setting up the Olympics and the obnoxiousness of the Olympic Committee, nobody wants to host the games.

As Yahoo Sports notes, the 2022 games will either be held in Beijing, China, which is at least 120 miles from the nearest ski mountain, and Kazakhstan, which is well, Kazakhstan.

Other cities, like Oslo, keep taking themselves out of the running for the Olympics, especially in countries where the citizenry gets a say in the matter.

Krakow, Poland is out for winter, 2022, too. Boston said no to the summer Olympics in 2024.

No wonder the International Olympic Committee seems so intent on drinking so much. Nobody likes or wants them anymore.

Jamaican Bobsled Song Almost As Much Fun As Jamaican Bobsled Team

A video surfaced of a song celebrating the Jamaican Bobsled Team at the winter Olympics at Sochi, Russia.

The watermelon pattern on the Jamaican bobsled
team's helmets is kinda fun.  

It you start the video while simulataneously watching a clip of their run at the Olympics bobsled race, the video matches the run of the course almost precisely.

Even if you don't have a video of the bobsled race, that's OK. The video and song will brighten your mood.

At last check, the Jamaican bobsled team was in last place among the 30 international competitors. But that doesn't mean incompetence. They know what they're doing. But a few seconds makes a huge amount of difference in this sport.

By the way, I love the watermelon pattern on the Jamaican bobsled team's helmets. Nice touch.

Here's the Jamaican bobsled song/video to improve your mood for the rest of the day.

Gus Kenworthy Is Olympic Silver Medalist And Dog World's Gold Medalist

OK, so I was impressed with American athlete Gus Kenworthy's silver medal winning performance in the slopeside ski event at the Sochi Olympics.

Gus Kenworthy with one of the
stray puppies he's trying to
rescue from Sochi and bring
back to the United States.  

But the guy has been making news and waves that gives him a total gold medal in this dog lover's mind.

Sochi was overrun by stray dogs as the Olympics neared and the Russian government hatched a plan to poison and kill them before the cameras and kleig lights captured them during the games, thereby ruining the nice photo opps that go along with the Olympics.

A lot of people of course didn't want the dogs killed. After all, it's not their fault humans let them reproduce and run roughshod over the city. So Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, who underwrote much of the financing for the Olympics, is paying for their care. 

Kenworthy is trying to arrange to have as many dogs as possible shipped back to the United States for adoption.  He seems particularly attached to a mom dog and her four puppies. 

He's doing the legwork to get them back to the United States.

Meanwhile, there's an underground railroad of sorts going on around Sochi, in which Russian volunteers are smuggling stray dogs out of the Olympic area to other spots in Russia where the volunteers hope they can be adopted and live out their lives in peace.

That effort is part of what the billionaire Deripaska is helping pay for.

Canadian Group Has Awesome Olympics Ad Protesting Russians' Hate of Gays

Much has been made of the horrible, hideous attacks on gay people in Russia from the top levels of government on down to many people on the street. 

A still from "Luge" a Canadian group's ad
protesting anti-gay idiocy in Russia.  

The government goes after them, vigilante groups brutally attack gay people there. Disgusting beyond belief.

A silver lining to all this is that the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia are shining a spotlight on these abuses. I don't know if it will force any changes, but there is pressure on the government and the people of Russia to back off.

Sometimes, the best forms of protest involve humor, and a group called the Canadian Institute of Diversity and Inclusion put together an AWESOME 30-second, Olympic themed ad calling the homophobic Russians out.

Here's the video, Enjoy:

"Sochi Problems" Is The Hot New Social Media Destination

Nowadays, when a problem people want to kvetch about pops up, it's all over social media.

And when the topic really takes off in a super viral fashion on Twitter and Tumblr and all those places, you know you have problems.

Some yummy looking tap water at
A Sochi Olympics hotel.  

Which brings us to the Sochi Olympics,  don't seem to be getting off to a great start. Mostly because construction on the venue isn't finished yet, and the work that has been done is, shall we say, shoddy?

If an American contractor worked like this, their reviews on Angie's List and Yelp wouldn't be very good, let me tell ya.

The Twitter account @SochiProblems had more than 58,000 followers as of early Thursday morning. That number was rising fast.

These urinals don't appear to be connected
to any plumbing.  

If you haven't seen some of the issues with the hotels, particularly, and other aspects of the accommodations they're simultaneously sad and hilarious.

Here's a sample:

• Canadian radio host Jian Ghomeshi reports, via Twitter: "My hotel room has no Internet, no hot water, no curtains and no furniture. On the plus side, three of the four lights work.

• Here's an alarming Tweet send by a Stacy St. Clair, who is in Sochi: "My hotel has no water. If restored, the front desk says, 'Do not use it on your face because it contains something very dangerous.' 

• A sign in one bathroom read: "Please do not flush toilet paper down the toilet. Put in in the bin provided." At least the photo showing this sign indeed shows that the bin has been provided.

• Among the rules of toilet use in the hotel bathrooms is you can't take your rod and reel and go fishing out of the toilets. (?!?!?!?)

• Another sign demands that nobody go tobogganing in a restaurant.

• Some urinals are not connected to plumbing. Some toilets can't be flushed. 

• One hotel had no floor installed yet, but the hotel room did have a welcoming picture of Vladimir Putin in a stern pose.

• NBC reporter Richard Engels demonstrated how his computers were almost immediately hacked as soon as he turned them on upon arriving in Sochi.

So, there are some definite glitches there, on top of the security worries and the Russian government's horrible human rights abuses against gay people.  

I have to wonder if this will ever work. Let's hope so.

Jason Brown Might Be Really The Person To Watch At The Winter Olympics

Last week, at the U.S. Figure Skating Championship, which pretty much determined who goes to the Winter Olympics next month in Sochi, figure skating women seemed to take center stage in the media, like they usually do.

Jason Brown, accurately it turns out,
seemed pleased with his free skate
performance last week at the U.S. Championships.  

Which is fine.

But judging from the video, below, I think one of the men, Jason Brown, was overlooked. He's on the team and headed for Sochi, obviously, since he put on such a good show.

He's also young and somewhat untested, but judging from Brown's free skate at last week's championship, all I can say is Wow.

And I'm not a big fan of figure skating. But between Brown's performance and is OMG smile at the end of the routine, I'm hooked and want to keep watching him.

You will, too. Here's the video:

Odd Conspiracies: The Gays Ruin Everything!! Now Wrestling!

Well, the gays did it again, apparently.

Gay people are blamed for every misfortune that happens in the world it seems,

And now the latest crisis: The Gays are responsible for the International Olympic Committee deciding to drop wrestling from the 2020 Olympics, says a Russian wrestling coach

The International Olympic Committee plans to
kick these guys out of the festivities starting in 2020

"If they expel wrestling now, that means that gays will soon run the whole world,” coach Vladimir Uruimagov said, calling the decision “a blow to masculine origins," according to the web site R Sport.

Um, I have a dirty little secret for Coach Uruimagov. A lot of gay guys LOVE watching wrestling. Think about it: Very buff, muscular men grappling with each other while wearing revealing wrestling singlets.

Enough to make many gay men swoon, right?

One cannot speak for every gay guy, but I'm sure many are terribly disappointed with the preliminary decision to ditch Olympic wrestling.

Still, coach Uruigmagov is maybe excessively overwrought about the whole idea of Olympic wrestling going away:

“It is necessary for millions around the world who understand that this is a man’s sport and who understand the need to continue the human race to go out and explain their position to the Olympic Committee,” he said. “We should prove and explain that in any other case there is no future.”

Really? The human race is doomed if the Olympics no longer has wrestling? How, exactly does wrestling ensure the continuation of the human race?

Scratch that. On second thought, I really don't want to know. This is sort of a family blog, after all.

Of course, The Gays get blamed for everything. Apparently, gay people and their wicked ways prompted the Newtown, Ct. and Aurora shooting massacres, Benghazi and Hurricane Isaac last year

The gays have also caused the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack, Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy, and the nation's generally bad, droughty, fiery, stormy, hot weather last year.  Who so many gay people other than me were obsessed with the weather?

Weather drama queens, perhaps.

Anyway, back to the Great Olympic Wrestling Crisis of 2013.  Other prominent people are upset with the potential loss of Olympic Wrestling, too. In  Monday's Washington Post, former Bush Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of all people weighed in on the wrestling controversy.

Said Rumsfeld: "Wrestling uniquely encapsulates the Olympic spirit, even though it harkens back to older and more martial virtues, rather than the arts festival and Kumbaya session that some may prefer the modern Games to be."

I don't know why they have to get rid of any Olympic sport. True, no venue is big enough to accommodate every sport in the universe, but just adding one sport to the mix, and leaving wrestling as part of the festivities makes sense.

Anything to keep Donald Rumsfeld happy. 

Olympic Parents Strike Gold, Too

Part of the fun of watching the Olympics is the reactions of parents and other relatives in the stands.

Debbie Phelps, mom of swimmer Michael
Phelps watches her kid win again. 

Thankfully, there is now a Tumblr site, Parents of Olympians, where you can check out how mom and dad react to their kiddies as they seek the gold.

It almost looks like the parents are more emotionally invested in the competition than the actual competitors.

That makes sense, since a lot of these parents spent their time ferrying kids to and from gyms, pools and whatnot from Day 1.

Still, judging by the reactions, I think some of these parents get as big a workout cheering their kids and the Olympians do in competition.