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I sure hope you savoured these Games as much as possible, because I'm going to tell you the dead honest truth, straight from the heart of a proud Canadian and true Vancouverite: We are not going to top this in 2010. There is no way the Vancouver Olympic Committee has anywhere near the ambition, the style, the foresight, the adventurousness or the brass ones to attempt anything this damn cool. The Italians threw it down. It was off the HIZZ-ZAY (as the kids all say). They showed us why they are the undisputed masters at artistic expression. We Vancouverians are too green at this. We are too uptight, too progressive, too sensitive, too tolerant and just too damn lame to ever do anything this exciting.
Yes, it's true: The Torino Winter Olympics kicked more ass than a donky at a lead boot convention. This was the first Games in my entire storied career of covering the Winter Olympics since way back in Salt Lake City (in the days when you didn't get your news from myspace) that the Opening Ceremonies was not only enjoyable to watch, but actually re-watchable. Repeat viewings were at hand. The futurism segment, full of speed, vitality, musculature, power and strength--all things a global sporting contest should ostentatiously worship--accompanied by blistering acid techno music (the music, in case you weren't wondering, was a remix of FUSE - Substance Abuse, an alias of Canadian techno legend Richie Hawtin), roller skaters with fire shooting out of their helmets, intricate human design patterns, the largest scale model of the Olympic logo ever assembled.....and then to top it all off, just to show that unflinching "It's our games and we'll do whatever the hell we want" Italian zeal for style, fashion and showmanship, they launch an F1 racecar which squeals out noisy, smelly skid donuts all over the holy Olympic floor. And the crowd went wild. Even I, sitting on my couch and getting caught up in something that seemed as much as a big middle finger to stuffy IOC functionaries as it was a bold display of the Torino automotive industry, cupped my hands around my mouth and breathed hard into them giving my living room the standard crowd noise atmospherics in enthusiastic appraisal. Only the flamboyant Italians have the audacity to try something so stupid it inverts itself into awesome.
(note: it wasn't something out of place given the locale. Torino is the Detroit motorcity of Europe; Ferrari has its head quarters there, and the city is forever linked with motorsports like Daytona is)
You can't show anything but admiration for a move that gutsy. Olympic Opening Ceremonies have historically been trite, pompous, boring affairs. Once again Italy, the country that has for centuries been the focalpoint of culture, art and passion in Europe, shows us how to really rev up the Games (literally), and they do it with a smile, a wink, and a sheepish shrug of the shoulders.
Vancouver.....sadly.....does not have this sense of identity. Vancouver is a very young city, which is why it's frequently voted #1 in global polls because it hasn't yet acquired all the problems that older modern cities have, but one look down Main and Hastings will tell you we're well on our way. Vancouver, being the new kid city on the world stage, still has an inferiority complex to wrestle with. And that is why our Opening Ceremonies is going to be a safe, dour, conservative, multi-ethnic milquetoast mess of conflicting imagery and design by committee, replete with hollering Haida cheiftains, Inuit inukshuks, Metis indians, furtrappers, goldrush miners and lumberjacks representing every common stereotype that Canadians have spent the past century violently dispelling. If the Closing Ceremonies did just one thing for Vancouver, it is re-convince Americans in the Bible Belt that yes, we do indeed live in igloos and eat whale blubber up here in the land of no sun.
I've never seen an inukshuk before (no, hippies down in English Bay needlessly stacking rocks on top of each other don't count). People beneath the arctic circle (you know, that place that is 2000 miles away from Vancouver) don't build them. Yet this is our logo and mascot, welcoming the world to the flavour of Vancouver. So let me ask the burning question: Why are our games being represented with ice fishing, igloos and inukshuks--things that are barely indicative of Canada let alone Vancouver--in the Closing Ceremonies?! Way to go to perpetuate the myth of Canadians living in perpetual cold, you gimps. Why don't you throw in a couple logrolling lumberjacks eating maple syrup on their way down the Fraser river to Barkerville, singing Gordon Lightfoot songs while you're at it?
Let's face it: The problem with Vancouver is we try too hard to please everyone. We're too afraid of offending some minority class, group, race or organization by not including them in this grand sporting event of ours. Already the politicians, corporate CEOs and everyone who has sunk their fangs into this juicy morsal are proclaiming it as "Canada's Games". And that is where they'll fail. Torino wasn't "Italy's Games", it was Torino's Games. I didn't see anything about Rome or Sicily there, I saw Torino celebrating its own cultural aesthetics and relishing in it.
Thus far, everything put forth by the Vancouver Olympic Committee has had little to do with Vancouver and even less to do with the Olympics. The slogan of Torino was "Passion lives here", and they showed it with their vitality and excitement for two weeks. The slogan of Vancouver is "Come play with us", as if the Games are a fancy little tinker toy for Inuit children to hide in the snow from the sled dogs. The 2010 logo is a bland piece of championship corporate decision making: An inukshuk named Ilaanaq, which means something in eskimo that no one knows, no one cares, and no one understands because there are no fucking eskimos here. The design committee for the logo was a team of over 40 award-winning graphic designers and artists who worked collectively to produce something a five-year-old could have made just before naptime in Kindergarten class.
Our Games have been hijacked by the land of Nunavut. We have the chance to really show the world who we are, and we have chosen a culture with a population barely numbering more than 200,000 and whom don't even see liquid water eight months of the year to represent 33 million Canadians, none of whom speak Inuit and don't care to. What the bloody hell are you morons thinking!?!?!? If the Committee is so hellbent on making this a far-far-far-far north Games, then move the bloody thing to Iqaluit already and rid us of all this idiotic cultural pandering. And as if that's not pathetic enough, the first natives don't think it's such a great logo either. It's just about universally loathed by everyone.
Vancouver, home of NIMBYs and rich hippie yuppies with too much time and money and not enough brains, is one of the most uptight cities in the world. Greenpeace and Adbusters were founded here. PETA makes regular stops. It's Noam Chomsky's favourite location on his lecture tour. It's like Seattle, only with more marijuana. There is no nightlife--all the best clubs were closed down when they started building condos in the late 90s and the new residents complained about the noise. We protest everything, especially if it's fun. This city almost didn't win the Games because its own citizenry didn't want them, complaining that the money should be spent on healthcare instead (I guess the realization that having worldclass sporting facilities means more people playing sports which means healthier lives which means decreased healthcare costs was too much logic for them to grasp). We had an Indycar race once--then people complained about the noise and the inconvenience of closed roads, so we don't have it anymore. Time and time again, every time a festival, a Games, or project is thrusted upon the sour citizens of this rainy town, they without fail find a reason to bitch about it.
Projects done by committee are always doomed to failure, so projects done by committee and that don't have full support of the public have no chance at all. In 2010, terrorists will be the worst of your problems. Instead you'll have to face the wrath of bitter Vancouver protestors who have no love for sporting achievement and even less love for the Olympic movement telling you why the Games are an abomination to mankind since the crowded streets won't let them get to their double latte at the appointed time.
Italy showed us how to do the Games right. Now watch as Vancouver shows us how not to do the Games at all.
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