Society in general gives small children a bit of a break. From preferred parking spots to sympathetic strangers giving up seats on public transit. In many countries, their parents get plenty of paid time off work. On airplanes, kids ride free until they're two-years-old. Kids under three get in to Disneyland for free. Not to mention all the free lollipops they get at the dentist, or crayons and small toys at mediocre restaurants and fast-food outlets around the world.
But the London Olympics has put its foot down. All kids, whether a talking toddler or a sleeping newborn in a sling, must have their own full priced ticket. This, predictably, has angered some parents. Organizers have said that it's in part to keep track of the number of visitors so venue capacity is not exceeded. Which makes sense if you're talking about an indoor event, with a fire code and all that. But what about outdoors?
And seriously, if an airplane can accomodate a newborn in the lap, why can't a stadium or an equestrian venue? At least this rule aligns perfectly with the Olympic motto of "Higher, Stronger, More Expensive." And on the brightside, this will teach the little buggers very early on one of life's most important lessons: Nothing in this world is free.
Just when you thought all the year-end awards were over... we pull you back in! OK, OK, so someone maaaay have dipped into the New Year's punch a bit early and neglected to post this before the clock struck midnight on Dec. 31. I'm not going to name that person so let's move beyond blame and towards appreciation for a few more nostalgic nods to the past year.
Worst Projectile Thrown On the Ice At A Hockey Game
It isn’t an octopus. It isn’t a catfish. It isn’t a rat. It’s not a hotdog. It is a freaking DEAD DUCK.
The duck was thrown onto the ice by a fan of either the San Jose Sharks or the Anaheim Mighty Ducks (we still aren’t really sure) in San Jose at the HP Pavillion on Boxing Day. Now if this is someone trying to help turn Anaheim’s season around or perhaps start a new Ducks tradition, they may want to start by throwing the dead waterfowl onto the ice in Anaheim. I really hope this doesn’t start something a trend, as a rink full of dead ducks just isn’t the image the team wants associated with it. And let's hope this whole throwing-dead-versions-of-our-team's-name thing doesn't catch on in places like Florida, Phoenix or Ottawa.
-- PARKY
The Best Canadian Baseball Player To Play For The Toronto Blue Jays in 2011
The Toronto Blue Jays are a baseball team. From time to time they excite fans with the promise of fielding better teams which result in possible playoff implications. However, most times (at least every year since 1993) those promises are empty, resulting in many Red Sox and Yankee bandwagon-ers. Well if there was something fans needed to cheer for in 2012, it could be B.C. native, Brett Lawrie. He burst on the scene with a positive and incredibly infectious attitude. Playing with heart and passion, his explosive power and dazzling fielding make him just the rallying point fans in Toronto needed. Look for Lawrie to continue exciting fans in 2012, and here’s hoping the rest of the Jays play with the same heart Lawrie brings to the park every game.
-- PARKY
The Canadian Best in the World at a Sport Nobody Watches
Winning seemingly every event he entered in 2011, Patrick Chan has taken the men’s figure skating world by storm and, unfortunately, not enough people know about it. CP even named him Canada’s male athlete of the year after he went undefeated in 2011, winning all five ISU events he participated in. He won in record fashion and shows no signs of slowing down, even learning a valuable lesson in PR when he spoke about the different ways in how China embraces figure skating culture versus Canada.
See what I did there in the headline? WORD JOKES. Oh, the punsanity!
So, about that picture of the bar-coded buttocks. British sports gambling site Betfair have enlisted UK female beach volleyball champs Zara Dampney and Shauna Mullin to wear QR codes on the backside of their uniform. Advertisers have been using QR codes for a while now, slapping the smartphone-enabled graphic on just about any surface -- from packaging to movie posters -- to pass on more info to you, the consumer. Problem is, you need to snap a picture of the code with your cameraphone to get all the web goodies. And if you've ever watched someone's derriere during a beach volleyball match (Be honest.), actually getting a usable shot of that code could be a sport unto itself.
On the strategy behind the idea, Betfair's Andy Lulham said, "As far as we’re aware this is the first time QR codes have been used in in-play sports advertising and what better way to test its effectiveness than by putting them on one of the places that is likely to get photographed the most."
Olympic glory is a funny thing. In that moment, the whole world is with you, your countrymen adore you, advertisers clamour for your name and face. You are, for a few fleeting moments, the Most Important Person in the World. But that importance, much like the casual fan's appetite for your sport, tends to fade as the Olympic year draws to a close and attention is shifted back to the more traditional sports landscape. You still have some endorsements and public appearances but the demand has gone from national network morning shows to local fun fairs and corporate conventions. Eventually the spotlight gets dimmer and dimmer, and dimmer and dimmer, until one day you look up to find yourself swimming the butterfly in an oversized bathtub that has your name plastered on the side. Then you look into the camera and, with an enthusiasm usually reserved for informing patients of a terminal illness, you say, "I'm Michael Phelps. Join the swimming revolution."
Okay, it's May. We're probably not thinking about snowboarding, winter or anything remotely cold anymore and instead we're setting our sights on the possibilities of golf, patio BBQs and some much-needed heat and sunshine.
Put yourself back to winter, just for a few minutes.
Last year when Canada proudly hosted the Olympics in Vancouver, a new anthem took hold of the country. It, too, was dubbed 'Oh... Canada', but the anthem we love and sort of know all the words to was spliced and diced in to a rapping tribute to all things we adore that are truly Canadian: from UFC's GSP to poutine and Kids in the Hall to Jim Carrey. The man at the centre of the musical montage was Nova Scotian rapper Classified, who proudly declared his love for his country.
How fitting it is that Classified returned to the slopes of Whistler where his song echoed over the course of the Olympics, inducing a legion of patriotic fans to sing along. Luckily, the East Coaster agreed to hit the slopes and let us follow him as he attempted to navigate down the tricky hills. He even let his body be a ramp for snowboarding pro Cory Gallon to fly off of. He's not just a great sport, he's a brave one to boot.
Almost a year and a half later, it's pretty awesome to think back to what an amazing time it was for Canada and the pride that just oozed from our pores as we showed off to the world what we're made of. I hear the words of the song and I'm just pretty damn proud to be Canadian. Very awesome, indeed.
For the full post by Push.ca, check out the blog here.
I know, I know, really? A year? It seems like just yesterday I was threatening to claw my eyes out with a shrimp fork and set myself on fire if I ever heard this song ever, ever again. Now I kind of miss it. (OK, no I don't.)
Some of you might cite Sidney Crosby's golden goal as the pinnacle of the entire experience. It's a good one to be sure, but I'm a bit partial to Canadian head-first ice slider Jon Montgomery's gold win and subsequent stroll through Whistler Village, chugging beer and high-fiving. Now THAT showed the world a Canadian athlete.
If you were alive and watching basketball in 1992, the Summer Games in Barcelona were like a Christmas, New Year's, Hanukkah kegger in Xanadu. It was the first Olympics in which NBA stars would be competing and it was as if Team USA was coming down from space to play the rest of the world. That's how stacked this team was. Hell, 12 of the players were among the league's official "50 Greatest Players in NBA History." And now the first Dream Team is being inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame tonight in Springfield, Mass.
Names like Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing, Clyde Drexler, Chris Mullin, Karl Malone, Christian Laettner... (insert sound of ear-piercing record scratch) Whaaa?!
Look at the team picture above. It's OK, go ahead, I'll wait. Take a good long look. Now, aside from the criminally short shorts, what else strikes you as odd?
"Hmm, Larry Bird was pretty tall, Mullin was super white, those jerseys are wicked tight, wasn't this the year the Grateful Dead sponsored Lithuania or something? You could set your watch to Ewing's flat-top... hey, why is that guy from Six Feet Under in there?"
Exactly.
You know why you don't recognize him? Because his NBA career was what you might call "undistinguished." Not bad. But not Dream Team material. Not even Light Hallucination Team material. Sure, there's his college career at Duke, where the guy's name is up there with the Baby Jeebus, but nothing on Laettner's CV comes close to Hall of Fame material. Played 868 NBA games with six teams (Minnesota, Atlanta, Detroit, Dallas, Washington and Miami), 45 playoff games, one All-Star appearance, averaged 12.8 points over his 12-year career between 92/93 and 04/05. Respectable, sure.
And now, because he happened to be on the team as USA Basketball's token amateur, the sole college kid among giants, Laettner gets his name in the Hall. Well played, sir. Well-played.
As you may have heard, yesterday Canadian Vivane Forest and her guide Lindsay Debou won a Paralympic silver medal in women's slalom. A podium finish is amazing in itself, but equally impressive is simply having the cajones to ski race blind in the first place.
I think about the few times I've been stuck atop a fogged in run out West and that sickly Fear that weighs on my chest like a ton of lead as I realize I can't see where the hell I'm going. Up is down, down is up, and pretty soon I need a change of snow slacks. So when I watch a skier like Edmonton-native Forest, race through a slalom track, I'll invariably find myself yelling, "HOW THE SWEET BLUBBERING HELL DOES SHE DO THAT?"
Of course, that pretty much sums up every paralympic athlete, non?
While we can't run footage of the actual Paralympics (thanks IOC!), see Forest and Debou in action above, at the 2009 World Championships.
By the looks of this twitpic from ABC News' Jake Tapper, today is the day that White House press secretary Robert Gibbs made good on a bet over the Canada-USA gold medal hockey final.
Also, according to the CBC, "In addition to a case of Molson Canadian (President Obama is sending PM Harper), Gibbs said the U.S.
Embassy in Ottawa has been instructed to send Harper 24 bottles of beer
from Yuengling, a Pennsylvania brewery billed as the oldest in the
United States."
While some Canadians are still recovering from the Vancouver Games hangover, it's easy to forget there's another Games starting this Friday, the Paralympic Games. While anyone who isn't dead inside can support the idea of the paralympic games, it's no secret they don't get the same attention -- from media or sports fans -- as the traditional Games. But after watching this video, if I was in Vancouver, I'd be looking to score some sledge hockey tickets... someone needs to make a Murderball for this sport.
Created so that physically disabled individuals could still fully participate in a hockey-like sports and environment, it seems to be amongst the more dangerous and competitive of the events at the Paralympics.
