the last breeze goodbye

the breezer's pre-beliveau trophy press conference to announce his retirement. now vancouver's matthew schneider is the only active 1993 cup champion Hab.

in the dark days, i did not boo the breezer. i do not heckle locals, but i sure did want to. the money wasn't important to me--the difference between $2 million and $4 million is not as great as it appears to be--but brisebois #43 made me so mad that if i Could possibly boo the habs, he would be the one. it was as if he was only playing half the game: he could pass the puck and shoot the puck, but he couldn't Get the puck and indeed often gave up the puck. but when hockey returned after the lockout, his salary became a problem to management and when he was released during the post-lockout mega-clearance window, i was less moved or nostalgic than when brian savage was traded. it was, in the end, a huge pity he signed that huge contract because we probably would have kept him otherwise, and he could have played his whole wishy-washy eighteen year career right here in the 514.

brisebois #71 was a player i appreciated more than brisebois #43. he did less but did it better, and was more accountable. when #43 appeared in paris when he was a scratch with the cold angers and baffles me even now, almost ten years later. i don't remember #71 upsetting me at all, possibly because he was almost never a regular player. when he dressed for only one playoff game in the spring of 2009 it was clear he had reached the end.

until his release to free-agency in 2005 brisebois #43 was the last remaining 1993 cup champion with the team--including management, organist, skaters and trainers. this departure is an important and historic juncture in the MTL organization, the exact point of disjunction between Nos Glorieux and the Bleu-blanc-rouge, the RBK spaceage jersey squad, the sexiest brand in hockey and the immortal legends of seasons past, when the past became more and more oblique and irrelevant and the future became more and more uncertain and unknowable.

in 1993, brisebois played with patrick roy & guy carbonneau and OTHERS, who had played in 1986 with bob gainey and larry robinson and OTHERS, who had played in 1976-1979 with guy lafleur and serge savard and yvan cournoyer and OTHERS who had played in 1967-71 with henri richard and jacques plante and OTHERS who had played in 1950-60 with jean beliveau and maurice the rocket richard who had played and so on and so on right back to Aurial Joliat and Howie Morenz, the continuity of championship remained intact right up until 2005, when it slowly began to unravel.

post-1993 pre-2005 brisebois shared the ice with (possible? ostensible?) future un-winners saku koivu, jose theodore & mike ribeiro, as well as imports tervor linden and sheldon souray and mark recchi, and countless others, unnamable and unimportant. some of these players went on to win the stanley cup--elsewhere, of course--and some didn't: is that our habs mojo working the recchi-tranding-deadline deal to carolina? shocker.

in 2004 brisebois #43 was the living, skating, dressing room link to XX hockey hall of famers. when he was gone, so too was that link. it can never be reconnected, and none like it will ever occur again.

there was hope though, in bob gainey and his first five-year plan, which looking back was more like a 5-year cocaine partyboy pogrom, a cleansing. a resetting of the clock. but the idea was certainly win the cup with the players we have.

in 2004 brisebois #43 "passed the torch" to top players and potential winners saku koivy, mike ribeiro, jose theodore, michael ryder, christopher higgins, sheldon souray, mike komisarek, alexi kovalev, steve begin, francis bouillon and andrei markov, who didn't play the next year and today 2009 only markov remains. if the habs do not win the stanley cup with markov, the link will be totally severed.

and it's a flimsy fake-link, a parlour game trivia nothingness, that markov and brisebois shared the ice in a habs sweater. to share the ice as cup champions is now impossible, and the only shreds of living legacy left are the cup prospects of the quietest russian en ville.

brisebois #71, however, (and schneider #24) while not exactly direct continuity of champion foreverness, also gives meager quarter-lives of sustained glory to many of our current roster, everyone left from last year. maybe this was the witchcraft gm bob gainey was up to when he brought beleaguered brisebois back from the rockies to the pleasure of almost everyone, at a contract no one would barf on, and traded for MS24 when the 2009 powerplay when to shit, to atleast infuse the youngsters with a taste of history before jetisoning the KKK + higgins old guard and plowing bravely into the future aloft from the unconquerable legacy around the logo.

bob gainey: blackmagik hockey sorcerer?
stay tuned.

no excitement, no sellout

and maybe i AM a bit excited for the season to start.
and maybe the habs won't stick as bad as i think.
in fact, i'm starting to like the new gang already.
and i haven't seen them skate, or talk, or score goals.

JM says gionta (#21) and moen (ugh... #37?) are really hard workers, and prepared for practice as if it were a game, something which was lacking in the past.

gorges said that the newcomers feel more at home in the dressing room than before. is that from personal experience?

methinks already--sight unseen and only through les medias--that moen and gionta wouldn't let wee higgins and price and the brothers kostitsyn get into as much goodtimes as they allegedly did. perhaps already a good start to the season.

new five-year plan, no sellout

this is with seconds left in game 4 v boston. i thought it might be my last moment with bob, too. jarvis is wondering how much longer this is going to last, while captain kirk is in the b/g, listening to the radio.

ON WHY I AM SO NERVOUS...

i remember habs irrelevancy far clearer that habs supremacy, for i have lived it longer, and endured many season ending moments of lackluster "ohwell"s, for in montreal the end is always in sight long before it actually arrives. this is true about winter, and this is true about hockey.

when the habs scrapped into the playoffs in the miraculous spring of 2002, it was without saku koivu, who had cancer all year; it was without donald audette, who had almost lost his hand due to his shorty-short glovies and the swishing blade of some czeck NYR skater, HR**T**?; it was without sheldon souray, who broke both his wrists; the habs snuck into the playoffs on the amazing season of Jose Theodore, who won the league's MVP award and beat P. Roy for the Vezina. and doug gilmour was here, and richard zednik. and yannic perrault. and the rest of the gang of jokers on that very best of the worst habs teams, the ALMOST irrelevant team. indeed, that team upset boston and went to make a show of it with carolina before losing in 6, the first time post expansion that the team to beat montreal had gone on to win the stanley cup (except, of course, those teams that played montreal For the cup.)

the next year we missed the playoffs. the team was less sick but still quite bad, and jose theodore sank the ranks from MVP to good to leaky to traded. two coaches were sacked because they couldn't get XL back to glory, and he was traded in the afternoon, injured, not too long after he was banned from the olympics for a controlled substance.

but these were not dark days: in the six seasons/ seven years between the rise of the 2002 team and the collapse of the centennial squad the habs beat the bruins three out of four times in the playoffs, were eliminated by the eventual cup champions twice, and finished first in the eastern conference for the first time since the late days of habs bliss, 197x. it didn't feel like it at the time, because of our SOFT teams sublimating in the post-season, but those mostly-marginally talented teams sure did manage to deliver quite some excitement and entertainment on the way out.

the whole time jettisoning talented NHL players in ridiculous trades (or the gone but never forgotten waiver draft), regular players like: ron hainsey, stephane robidas, francois beauchemain (who we couldn't resign in the summer of 09), mike ribeiro, michael ryder, jose theodore.

the whole time picking-up useless meat and bags of pucks on the free-agent market, or in trade, players like: randy mckay, mariuz czercawski, sergei berezin, niclaus sundstrom (how did this guy play here for three years?), joe juneau, yannick perrault, andreas dackel, oh it makes me ill.

the whole time drafting never-were s, and passing on young superstars.
we still beat the bruins three fucking times. one year, we beat them 11 times in a row.

now, at the dawn of the post-koivu-era, we can look back at that 2002 team, the best of the worst, and ask some interesting questions:

-what does that team have in common with the new, as of yet unseen 2010 team?
-are we a better team today than we were then?
-what, besides beating the bruins, have the habs done of worth since 2002? (1993, really, but let's just say 2002)

and does it matter? there was a fucking protest at the BC to RESIGN KOVALEV, which is as close to maschocism as is permitted by the current CBA.

kovalev often contributed little more to the success of the team than youppi.

no koivu, no sellout

i wanted to take a picture of saku koivu scoring a goal in his last game as a hab, but he didn't. he did get on the score sheet though, and i took this picture of him in the penalty box.


scary centennial summer recap
-jacques martin is our coach. this is like a little car flag that says "presently, we know we stink."

-we trade higgins and prospect mcdoughnough and valentenko for gomez and some others. i like gomez, but he is small. and because captain k is still in the mix, this move makes me feel awkward, both for the soon to be displaced koivu but also because gomez is another second line center.

-we sign spacek (a former sabre), gil (a former BRUIN?!), gionta (from the NJ devils) and mike camallerri from out west and spend something like $180 million american blooddollars in an afternoon. gionta is the smallest player in the league, and cams is not much bigger. spacek is signed for 3 years, his contract taking him into his 39th earth year. the addition of gil and gionta feel right immediately, while i am more concerned about cammallerri and spacek. later, travis moen is added, a big upgrade on kostopolous and begin combined. paul mara is here too.

-kostopolous goes to carolina and begin signs in boston (BOSTON?!). higgins signs in NYR and komisarek signs a huge deal to play in toronto. on the morning of the 1st it is reported that kovalev resigns, which made me both nostalgic and warm and pretty damn irritated. later it turns out he didn't, like, he wasn't answering his phone or something, so gainey got bored and signed cammallerri instead. i'll take cams over kovalev, i've riden the K train and it's too bumpy for me. dandenault is gone, bouillon is gone, and koivu is a duck, together with temu after all these years.

henri richard: "i'm surprised they didn't resign that koivu guy, he works like hell."

INTERESTING QUESTIONS

-if gainey suspected he didn't want to resign any of his 11 free agents, why did he sack carbo with 16 games left? if the habs missed the playoffs in their centennial would Both carbo and gainey have been fired? who would fire gainey, gillet or molson? was the team being for sale a big influence on gainey in stepping in on the coach's bench?

-why the split with higgins & komisarek along with koivu & kovalev? and why not a split with the kostitsyns? who was responsible for the awful locker room all these years, koivu, or a rotating cast of everyone else?

-if we are rebuilding, why did we bring in $30million american blooddollars of salary?

-with the early age of free agency, what makes gainey think he can keep carey price here and happy when the same could not be done for komisarek?

-why cams at $5 million USBD and not tanguay at $3 USBD?

training camp opens in six days and i miss: michael ryder, mike ribeiro, mike komisarek, christopher higgins, mark streit, even cristobal huet. maybe even sheldon souray.

les cent ans

The competing teams of excitable nerds on RDS and TQS went too far last week, suggesting that the scandals set to hit the streets at one in the morning would devastate the morale of the 514 sporting community so completely that hockey would be no. 2 tomorrow to scandal and sadness, that Montreal would awake to a chorus of distant screams, people awaking and hearing the news, which would continue for at least fifteen hours. Even on public transportation there would be shocked eeps! of passengers who catch the disaster on the back of a strangers daily, and old ladies weeping into their babushkas in the Point and wandering the old parade route along the lachine canal cursing the disinterested european scum who have replaced her dickie moores and larry robinsons.

The truth, of course, was far less devastating—and so one would assume this would be good. But beneath the relatively mild accusations of fraternizing with seedy elements, it is the lingering stink of deeper, darker rumours, which no one makes up but everyone repeats. Hamrlik had an orgy with twenty callgirls—les canadiesn sont la! I wonder whazt would happen if i called an escort agency and asked for an estimate of a similar experience for myself, like, if i had enough time could i work it out to how Many women would be paid for sexual services and which would be paid Less for hanging around in the nude. Or is Hamrlik counting, does this 30-something czech athlete really want to put it into twenty girls in a short span of time, short enough to have them all huddled together, anyway.

More shocking in Utah, maybe, but this sort of thing would probably seem imediately borring and redundant in the KHL, or NBA for that matter. And then the kovalev suspension—and THEN the kovalev return, three points and cheered from start to finish from the “home” team, then and always comprised greatly of traveling quebecois, not montrealers, who decided to come and cheer kovalev when tickets went on sale back in september and remembered to dance with the one they brought. Sergai “scarface” kostitsyn is safely riding the buss with the bulldogs (the busdogs) and the only live sport on tv Monday night is the tournament of hearts.

The big stink now will be a classic one, the timeless goalie contro. g/c is a constant here in montreal, and perhaps other places too, but in montreal there hasnt been a season since patrick roy left that the newspapers, fans and coaches haven’t made hotdogs out of at least one, and sometimes more, goalies. Theodore’s brilliant season ignited only after cohort and “1a” goalie jeff hacket went down with a broken-arm and jose was anointed the no. 1 without a doubt goalie. These are in the dark days, where our best players were eric weinrich and chad kilger and oleg petrov, when even the players showed wrinkled noses during games and tv interviews and knew full-well how much their team stank.

But it would be the last media interview—at very least with the habs—if anyone had said the truth about that horrible team then, or about the struggling one now... a sweaty postworkout rant right into the microphones:

“yes well, the team kinda stinks. We were all really excited to be here in the begining but things went to total shit. everyone’s kinda into their own thing, and no one likes carbo and carbo’s not going anywhere, so we’re all waiting for ak to pick it up because saku’s injured and tanguay’s injured and lang is injured and chris higgins and carey price and both kostitsyns are all dopeheads who spend more time melting their brains than watching video. Which sucks for the players who do commit 100 per cent, like kostopo-fucking-lous, begin, bouillon, komisarek, dandenault and max lapierre, but dont have the skills to put it in the net all the time, and certainly can’t be depended on if the team is healthy, which it is not. But that can be cured quickly, and suddenly. The work is the deathmask its conception. walter benjamin said that. Kovalev can play on my team if he works hard, this year or any other. I said that.

But that’s it: this year, and maybe some playoffs. And maybe not some playoffs, frankly; and maybe not even the rest of the year. Koivu is more certain—almost completely certain—to stay until the habs’ season is over, whenever this spring that is, but is guaranteed no longer. The habs should be able to split 10 or 11 millions between koivu and komisarek, but to make it work it will be an overpayment of mike and saks taking a big hometown discount, saks Wanting to stay. He Wanted to stay last time, when the team seemed like it was rebuilding quickly, with plek and pereszogin and more importantly higgins and ryder lighting it up. Ryder was given up on and higgins shriveled up, perez split for russia and plekanek lost his juice if he ever really had any to begin with. It makes good sense that koivu is playing (sometimes) with paccioretty because that is the wave of the future, not these wimpy kostitsyn brothers.

It almost seems inevitable that these are the last days of saku koivu as a hab, so few players stick with a team their whole career, even farve and ray bourque sometimes need to be somewhere else. Farve’s team tossed him away, tired of him, like and old plaything, while bourque’s wrapped him in velvet and passed him ceremoneously, like a valued heirloom. On july 1st, saku koivu might just move away, evaporate. We might not even be granted a press conference, perhaps no paparazi at the airport. Koivu might already be out of town by the time free agency arrives, and therefore might never come back. And koivu is as close to a personality as this team has had the whole time i’ve been paying attention, save for the three or four years of Team Clinic and 18 months of Les Trois Amigos. The habs have no players signed beyond 2011. what a better way to celebrate les cent ans than to make 11 free agents sweat it out all year. Markov resigned, souray walked. Streight walked, after being offered a decidedly optimistic but ultimately rude offer of $7m for 3 years, which was still a hefty increase on his salary of 800k. no hometown discount there, we MADE you streight, but Fuck you. Will the same sad scene go down when koivu asks gainey for a six year deal worth a cool $30 mil, which is worth it if saks gets to play with linemates of quality and a waste if he’s going to be grinding it out with d’agostini and kyle chipchura, winger, ne centre. Koivu at 34 looks like he could play two or three seasons more as a top 100 player and then maybe two or three more as a totemic luck charm, but certainly not at five mil a year.

The truth is, however, someone else would give it to him, team with good players who need a cold, dedicated warrior to lead them to glory. The Canadiens of the past 15 years have never come close to having any players as dedicated as Koivu, except for SOuray and Rivet which is maybe why they all got along so well. Koivu in miami, nashville, washington, los angeles, san jose, st louis, chicago, buffalo, long island are not hilarious, from either a hockey or money point of view. The point is Anywhere might be better than here, i give my eye for this team and my line mate is a 20 year old party dude and some rookie, and they don’t want to pay me $5m+ for the rest of my career because i dont put up much more than 70 points ever.

No, too late for koivu to be a 90+ point player with any linemates, on this team or any other, though perhaps if he was playing with simon gagne and jerome iginla for the past ten years we’d be singing a different tune. It certainly didnt help that during his career he’s had six coaches and three gms, but with the cap is becomes impossible to pay koivu for back pay, lost wages from lack of talent on the team and injuries in the course of battle. In a pre-cap world gainey and gillet would let koivu write his own cheques, monthly, at his whim. But now these monetary affairs are very serious matters, and Saks cannot be paid like a scoring-star when he is distinctly Not. If Dustin Penner is making $4 then Saku could make four, but that (d/p) contract was signed two years ago, almost three seasons, and ryan malone’s $4.5 last summer makes a strong argument for koivu and his agent to hit the market this summer and listen to offers from sweaty hockey backwaters in the south for long-term contracts at highly inflated value. If koivu signs in montreal it will be for a cap hit of less than $4.5mil a year at term long enough to ensure his staying here with a no-movement clause, probably heavily front loaded like a mini-zetterberg deal. But if he signs somewhere else, it will be at towards a cap hit of $6m. you would think it wouldn’t happen but look at paul kariya (twice!) and mats sundin: money talks, always.

So who knows about carey price, or yaro halak, or ryan smyth or alex(i) kovalev? All i can think about is koivu, and making a sandwich.

re: my $160.6 cable bill

—23 days of european football. and somehow i became a germany fan? i was also, at different times, a russian fan, a turkish fan, ORANJE!, croatia, romania... france, even? french coach domenech wouldn't appoint any leos to the starting team (no kidding) and thurham and makelele were done like diner (au microonde, en plus!)

interesting fact: it's hard to get into games one has absolutely nothing invested in, besides interest.

—21 days of the tour de france—sans last year's winner and third place finisher, both ostracized by the tour's leaders—still keeps me up late. more than last year, i find myself getting up at almost 6 a.m. to watch the races instead of staying up until 4 a.m. watching the package. phil liget is awesome, i was to buy a book of his "accidental poetry" but the moment passed when ricco was kicked-out for doping.

(liget: "he's all alone now, dancing on his pedals in a most immodest way.")

i took the garmin-chipotle experience, mostly because they were the american team being profiled by oln/versus, but was wowed by kim kirchen and mark cavendish of the columbia team, and mr. george hincapie as always. ALL HAIL csc! the super team. schleck schleck cancellaro sastre eating the mountains like the cookie monster AAAAAARGGGAASGH MUNCH MUNCH MUNCH MUNCH!!!! mr. clean wins the race, but vande velde wins hearts!

—16 days of beijing olijmpijcs. quiet crowds the first few days, before they started commanding their volunteer army to go and "cheer equally" for both sides everywhere at everything. ron mclean's mother died and he left half-way through, just when we started medaling.

—four days of the dnc, prompting the department of obamarama to be opened. i first felt he could be elected when mrs. obamarama spoke on the first night. a few days later the palin thing sure took the wind out of camp change.

olijpijc log #4: see phelps swim

AUGUST 13: not enough cycling!

Days have passed now, how many? Im back to my usual routine now, up at tenish, up til three. I live half in my time and half in olympic time, but that’s just a coincidence. And lets face it: post-midnight is certainly my time.

Phelps took two gold in two hours, was that only yesterday? Tuesday night is Wednesday morning, Wednesday night is Thursday. The cbc loses the signal sometimes, their commercials irritate me to no end. I prefer radio canada in terms of packaging, but they’re always at least 30 minutes in the passed. With all these channels, one would think that live, thoughtfully commentate, cinema-verite style LIVE sportscasts would be abundant. But everything in a package or a rerun already, and the events are happening live. “bold” is quite good for live, sustained coverage, though it for mostly aristocratic sports like sailing (somewhat neat) and equestrian events (not so neat, but i’ll watch it. Olympics!)

Phelps now has the most gold medals. Phelps now has the most medals. See phelps swim. Swim! Phelps, Swim!

Somewhere in the smog today i missed the road time-trial. Yesterday, i was urged by the cbc to watch it live, streaming on their website. Hi, cbc, its nick... if i wanted to watch webcast quality tv, WHY WOULD I HAVE FUCKING CABLE!

I find the radio-canada guy very soothing, the primetime-latenight one, with the manicured beard. He’s very gung-ho and pleasant, and his naivite to sports makes his questions to experts all the more charming. His tossing is very possitive, it makes me think he’s actually 1. interested in and 2. has seen already the packaged clip they’re about to run. Ron mclean in a pro, but ian handsomemanthing seems very uncomfortable in the cbc’s sky-pagoda studios, and seems at ease only when emptily and listlessly thanking an absent presented for their clip he clearly didn’t watch. No wonder the cbc didn’t keep in the olympic bidding, they don’t know what they have anyhow.

If i was the cbc, i would be cutting the live footage like a music video, koyaanisqatsi BAM BAM BAM. Five minutes of diving, ten minutes of cycling, back to diving, toss in some weighlifting. ALL OVER. This is why they don’t let me into the editing truck.

What am i even talking about. Olympics rock, but tv sucks. Who is right?

olijpijc log #3: olijpijc tug of war

Wrrrrrrrr...

Team mcdonalds? Team visa? Team rbc? The american women’s indoor volleyball ball coach is chinese legend, they’re everywhere!

Olympic sailboarding? Didnt my dad used to sail? Rs:x open women???

Cnn didnt mention georgian war at all. Instead was laughing at the olympics with former events: pistols, live pigeon shooting, tug of war, golf, rugby... are the olympics home only to those sports that are not financially self-sufficient i.e. commercially marketable?

Windsailing athletes are really, really fit. But racing two races in increasingly dense algae. volleyball match btw usa and cuba is packed, and really close,24-24 in the second set.

olijpijc log #2: “i’m not supersticious, but whenever i fly i wear my habs socks”

August 10. i wake up on the counch again, just in time for live coverage to begin again. The american swimmer forgets to extend her fingers and loses gold by 7/100 of a second. Phelps’ 4x100 freestyle team somehow win gold in the last 10 meters, and he screams like a warrior. Watching it is not cathartic, i am jealous. Nothing in life pleases me or excites me to the extent where i feel the compulsion to scream my enthusiams... is it a lack of them, or an example of the differences between me and an olympic legend. I am as equestrian. 50 year-old Canadian woman wins a fencing match (she won china’s first medal in 1984), canadian men equal old world record in 4x100 freestyle, brent hayden (team visa) pulling out of the 200m butterfly (semis?) after swimming everything at the world’s last year.

Women’s bike race in the rain... canada gets it’s ass kicked in judo... some 17 year-old chinese kid lifts 160 kg above his head. He looks like chinese superman, short but built like and inverted triangle... i hate the air canada commercials, in english the voice is so fey that i am moved to change the channel to french, who’s coverage is far more interesting than cbc’s anyhow.

“i’m not supersticious, but whenever i fly i wear my habs socks”

yesterday’s basketball game was a huge blowout, but atleast i got to watch with 1 billion other people, 500 million in china. Yao ming wasn’t 100%, but he was still on the cover of every chinese newspaper for like the last three days. Why is no one concerned that china is clearly breeding supermen? The west must be doing it too.

Speaking of the cover of the newspaper, chris schwartz is arrested in tiennamen square and deported for staging a five-person die-in in props of tibet. He’s on the cover of le journal de montreal, which kinda paints his as an activist type. I know the truth, and make a note to look into the tibet movement with more suspicion. I know chris schwartz to be a douche, and suddenly suspect the free tibet movement for distracting massive amounts of international attention away from such real crisises as nicaragua, honduras, palestine i.e. america’s imperial attrocities. The mass media is clueless, and manipulative wimps rise to the top. Does it take conviction to go 12,000km to do the easiest, most obvious thing? Couldn’t his thousand dollar plane ticket be better used in this cause otherwise? And what is this hyping: chris schwartz or tibet?

Lots of beach volleyball. I biked to the mall and bough a team canada tshirt, which was cheaper at the cash than labeled. The hottest cop ever checked me out—either as fresh meat or potential criminal. A fit young cop with bright, died blonde hair is hot enough, but stuff her into tight, faded jeans and throw a red cap and sunglasses indoors and you may as well be setting up a porno. With my summery white t shirt and liberty spikes, i look like a real fan, like someone you’d find in a seat at the event, except it seems there are few people there besides the chinese and the press. I realize the seven spikes of lady liberty as equal to the seven tips of a pot leaf, and i wonder if i will be so gung ho about the olympics when i’m fifty if i’m not still a big pothead.

More and more i’m feeling the elitist nature of the events here. Sure, anyone could swim, but to reach the olympic level, the sport as healthy activity or hobby has to become lifestyle, and who outside of the north can really afford that. Even old powers like russia and france are all over the place in the first few days, while african countries (country) has to be given a buy into the beach volleyball. If cycling and equestrian events are sports, why not surfing and skateboarding? The IOC is wack, the olympics are the demonstration of political stability and prosperity domestically. Fucked up countries don’t have it together enough to play water polo.

olijpijc log #1: "lone nut" means "mk ultra"

slept on the couch for the first time on saturday night, i must have fallen asleep somewhere in between replays of our teenage gymnasts and the live start of the women's road race, which it seems is over when i briefly wake up at six or seven or later. sure i could move to my bed, but there'll be no int'l sports seeping into me as i sleep, and for the next few days that's not sleep at all. there is an extra tv in one of the closets, and i wonder how long it will take me to set it up somewhere, perhaps on the balcony. (i also wonder if the free tibet movement isn't a huge distraction from darfur and palestine.) at ten i am awake just just just in time for the start of the epic usa vs. chine basketball game, with bushes and hintao in attendance. i don't like it when w doesn't wear a tie.

the stadia are mostly empty, the weather is super-humid when it's not raining, and the chinese government gave such a hardtime to tourists worried about protesters that it seems the lot of 'em said "screw this: i'll watch from home" and so they did. there's an article at the guardian.co.uk with a quote from a bemused cabdriver: "(where are all the people?)" except at the hype games and swimming finals (held in the morning, primetime in EST), even gymnastics events were nowhere near capacity.

the usa men's volleyball team beats venezuela a day after their coach's in-laws are stabbed at a tourist tower by a lone nut who jumps to his death.. the father-in-law dies, the coach takes the game off, america barely beats venezuela. "lone nut" generally, but not always, means "mk ultra," right?

canada comes in last in the 4x100 freestyle WMS final.
canada gets whooped by spain in water polo 16-6.
brazil beats mexico's greatest ever beach volleyball team.

and good for kyle shewfelt. feels nice to feel nice.

missed over 4 hrs of the roadrace but caught the last lil bit when cancellara catches the group but is good only for bronze. i guess he's officially my favorite rider, seeing as i've never chanted for vande velde or contador the way i did that morning: "fabianfabianfabianfabian."

that was all day one, after a fireworks display right out of the end of 2001: ASO, unrelenting, mind-expanding.. that little man running slow-mo around the stadium, the gigantic cauldron and BOOOM: the greatest fireworks displays in the history of man.

back to usa vs. china in basketball, usa's led by 11 at the break and by almost 30 in the last quarter. packed crowd is very quiet and bored. cbc commentators are also bored, praising china's athletics programs and saying things like "i don't think... the usa... will be first in the over medal count... for a long long time" when yesterday they led 8-2 over all, tied with china on gold.

here's china's redemption: they're honest about what they do. "it's our tibet. we control it: it's our." america denies its empire, and so are liars And oppressors. china are just oppressors, which seems more honest, seeing some of the people got serve some of the people some of the time.

soon there will be a thirty-minute pothole in olijpijc coverage, as i failed to add nbc when i switched my channels this morning. in between cbc stopping (?!) for the duration of sunday afternoon, and new country canada channel "bold" starting the rowing heats—i will escape to the mall and buy some team canada gear. when i saw it last time i laughed at its awful designs but now it is so, so clear: i need one of those shirts, i've found something about canada i can get behind, almost as if on a 24 month cycle...