The Olympic organizers in Vancouver have sent out a directive to all artists, musicians and performers associated with the event. It stipulates that no-one will speak critically of the event, or its sponsors, by any means whatsoever…that means neither spoken to the media, in any song lyrics, in any piece of art or theatre and so on…
That’s a tall (gag) order for most folks in the arts, but if you want to be involved you have to sign this contractual agreement, or face a “stern letter” and who knows what else!
So I thought I’d offer up a top ten list of “nice things that any performer can say about the Olympics without “offending” the wealthy elite in the audience, or the organizers themselves…
10) Hey, homeless folk, being whisked off to a forced shelter ain’t so bad. We’ll have you back on the streets in no time, as soon as the fun is over.
9) OK, so the Native-Canadians in Lake Cowichan got the shaft on the whole sweater deal, but you can still get a $200 Olympic sweater. What’s so bad about a lovely “Lake Kawai-chan” anyway?
8) I know the children’s choir from Newfoundland is heartbroken after being ‘bumped’ from the Olympic opening ceremonies, but as many Vancouverites are saying, “The best spots should go to CANADIANS, from CANADA!”
7) We should all just relax about this whole censorship thing, after all, it was almost this bad in Beijing.
6) Listen, Stephen Harper and the Conservatives COULD have stepped in and helped the girls get their ski jumping, but being out there in the freezing cold, flying through the air, risking their lives – is this REALLY a “woman’s place”, ?
5) Don’t worry about the poor funding of our Canadian Olympic teams, or cuts to school athletic programs in general; we may not win much in the Olympics, but aren’t we “winning” in Afghanistan?
4) Are you worried about the weary, the huddled masses, and the poor? Well, so are the Olympic organizers. Fortunately, ridiculously high prices and gouging along with “protest-free” zones means we won’t see many of those unpleasant people after all.
3) Are you worried that the high ticket prices indicate that the Olympics has become a greedy corporate monster concerned only with profit? Don’t be; much of the obscene profit was snatched up in hours by Vancouver’s infamous ticket scalpers, and they’re mostly small time “entrepreneurs”, not corporations.
2) Just like after Expo ’86, the world’s attention during the Olympics will be on the Vancouver area, and we can expect even MORE foreign investors to snatch up all the real-estate, sight unseen, at even more outlandish prices. The massive increase in rents over the next years will be a GREAT excuse to finally move back to your parents’ basement in Prince George! I hear it’s lovely up there in the summer.
And the number one benefit for artists and musicians to having the games in Vancouver?
1) Just think, all those ‘volunteer’ tasks like shovelling snow, serving food, cleaning up and night-time security?
Those are GREAT practice for what you’ll be doing after the Conservative gov’t cuts funding to the arts by 92% by 2011!!
—baD mR fRosTy
This article appears in Nov 26 – Dec 2, 2009.
Tedious and uninteresting, this bitch is the anti-funny.
Yeah especially since it isnt true. What the Olympic Organizers have said is they dont want protests screwing up the good time everyone will have. Read into it what you want, but save your criticism and far left BS for truth, not fluff.
Arts?
I was expecting a lot from this bitch….
Epic Letdown!!
Gosh, I thought it was great!
Signed,
my mom
PS, if you didn’t laugh at my top ten list, surely THIS will give you a chuckle?
I know it did me…I’m goona use the quote, it’s priceless!!
“”they dont want protests screwing up the good time everyone will have.””
HAHAHAHAHA…
If there was no IOC then maybe I would be more enthusiastic about the Olympics…
It just reminds me though of my I find most sports tedious and uninteresting…
Indeed, Dartmouthy, we finally agree on something.
It’s fucking elitist political posturing…look at the skating scandal…wrapped up in “athletics”…
IF it was still a sporting event, sure…but it’s become a multi-billion dollar fiasco the last 30 years…sponsored by sugary soft-drink companies and rip-off cell phone conglomerates …
The only advantage I can see is in the pharmacuetical research that goes on in order to help the “atheletes” beat the drug tests…has lead to a few good discoveries…
Also, I know someone who is getting 3 months free rent by leaving their apt for 2 weeks so the landlord can charge $1000 a night…so I guess that’s good. Unless the African warlord and his entourage leave bush meat in the compost box…
The olympics are bullshit and a disgusting waste of cash and resources.
Oh no! Economic and political gains well beyond what was spent! Oh no! World attention on a world class city!
Fuck, no wonder Canada goes nowhere. Half the population doesn’t seem to understand the intricacies of an event like the Olympics.
“”Oh no! Economic and political gains well beyond what was spent! Oh no! World attention on a world class city!””
Weasel words, Doc, weasel words…do the reading, ALL the last cities that hosted have lost money, when ALL the costs are totted, not just what the organizers tell you. Atlanta just paid off their debt in 2006…and don’t mention montreal..they’re still paying, lmao…
Sure, money is made by some, but it ain’t the average taxpayer…THEY end up paying for the next 2 generations…
As far as “world’s attention” to Vancouver, I re-direct you to point 2)…
Frosty, the expo in ’86 is nothing like the Olympics, especially considering it happened at a time where The World’s Fair had lost it’s appeal. Apples to Apples please. Despite what you feel in your twisted sense of reality, the Olympics are still relevant. Just look at the amount of advertising dollars and economic stimulus that goes into the local economy, not to mentions jobs created for people that have been hardest hit by the recession in a market that has been decimated by the aforementioned recession.
Finally, I’d hate to break it to you; regardless if we had the Olympics or not, Harper would still cut funding to the arts.
i went to expo 67(trudeau brat) and i used to really love the olympics til ben ruined it for me
Olympic Bore.
Nice one Mr Frosty…Jai,no matter what else you say about it… I couldn’t agree with you any more than I do now . The whole damn thing is a fiasco paid for by millions of us here, that know there’s much more important areas in this country that all that money could be spent on. Yet we have absolutely no input allowed…except our stolen tax dollars.
Lamest list ever. I’m going to the Olympics and I’m going to enjoy it in all its protest-free, vagrant-less corporate splendor! Even better, thoughts of Stephen Harper will not once enter my mind. Heck, now that you mention it, I think I’ll buy an expensive non-microbrew beer from a stand and toast our boys over in the ‘stan.
I’m going in order to see a bunch of athletes come from around the world to a beautiful city and do a winter sport that they’ve worked really hard to be the best at. Hopefully they’ll inspire my daughter. Sorry OP but we can’t all be mediocre amotivational naysayers.
There isn’t a major event anywhere for which you couldn’t come up with an equally shocking and just as tangential list. We throw money at the poor, suffering and intransigent as if it were our national sport. And guess what? There will always be more. So what if funds and attention are diverted for this rare event celebrating excellence. If there were an intellectual or artistic equivalent I’d go there too, perhaps I’d see you competing in the 22-27 female whining competition.
Go Canada Go!
Um, Doubtful, there’s nothing rare about something that happens every two years (four if you count winter and summer seperately, but still not that rare). Also, I just want to compliment you on your combo of inattentiveness, sexism and ignorance. You claim you want your daughter to be inspired, but then you make a dig assuming that the OP is a young woman-guess you didn’t bother to read all the way to the handle at the end-maybe we should add lazy to the list. There are a lot of people (more than there are highly trained athletes, I hope) that work really hard to try and solve the problems that Vancouver is ignoring/exacerbating-That’s something to be admired, far above this (increasingly western-centric) money-pit circus.
“”Lamest list ever…””
Hey, c’mon… ;-(
What about the “Best 10 Halifax Bands Ever” where 7 out of 10 were Joel Plasket?
I don’t much give a shit about how many humdredths of a second faster some guy can run, swim, ski, faster than some other guy. Nor do care which country said guy happends to be from. I don’t give a shit about how many medals Canada wins, nor do I care to support or know the names of any of our athletes just because they were born in the same country as me. I’ll never understand why people go batshit over the Olympics.
My goldfish can swim faster than Phelps but no one seems to care.
My favorite part about this years winter olympics..is the fact that the olympic officials have banned the womans ski jumpers…but they say its the VANOC who won’t let them compete not the IOC…who say its actually the FSI (international ski federation)who won’t let them compete.
While the courts have decided that woman don’t count & please just fuck off back to the kitchen or laundry room where you belong.
Anyone in this country (or any other) who will support this event & this decission by the ASSHOLES who are in charge , are IMO doing a disservice to women & womans rights. I may be a man, but I was brought up that women & men’s rights are equal & deserving of respect, this is a slap in the face to that.
There is no excuse.
By supporting the olympics, you are supporting this sexist treatment .
i completely agree with this. I’m absolutely thrilled that i’m no where near home for the olympics and a few of my friends are planning on coming out here for their reading breaks rather than deal with the fiasco that will be our home province. i also get really upset when i am asked upon making a purchase if i would like to donate a dollar for the olympics. NO i don’t want to give the olympics a dollar. I am going to be forced to pay for all of the ridiculous highway widening and fancy stone and treed meridians in whistler in my taxes for the next ten years thank you very much.
also, I am from Prince George. i can’t tell if you are ragging on it or being serious.. it is actually lovely there in the summer, and my parents basement beats out vancouver any day. but i hate vancouver even with out the olympics.
Party Poopers. The lot of you. And I’m still gonna enjoy it. Unless I step on a used syringe then I’ll be upset.
I couldn’t care less about a 0.1sec difference either and I’ve never watched an entire hockey game or even a sporting event in at least 9 years but I’m still looking forward to seeing Canada play USA and by rare I meant the winter olympics (better of the two) in Vancouver (arguably Canada’s most geographically endowed city), which isn’t likely to happen again in my lifetime (so rare).
Since many are gagged, I offer to come back to this post and write my personal uncensored opinion of the Olympics on this bitch afterwards. If it sucks, I’ll be honest. If the travesty of women’s ski jumping and the native sweater controversy of 2009 cast a dark shadow over the entire experience, I’ll let you know. If it turns out that the medals are made from the fillings of refugee orphans, and the uniforms from the endangered chinchilla of the Bolivian Amazon, I’ll shout it out.
Seriously though, the only thing that truly bothers me about these winter Olympics is the CO2 from all the air travel to get there effectively threatens the sports the games are intended to celebrate. And that wasn’t on your list!
There’s no way mR fRosty’s a guy, in fact reading it I thought she might be a relative. Your initials aren’t JS?
Go for the Gold!
I dunno, I thought it was a good list. I feel sorry for all the poor saps in Vancouver. I lived in Calgary in ’88, about four blocks from the Saddle dome and most of the ice venues. I couldn’t drive down my fucking street without a “special tag” on my car. The noise of tourists late into the night was unbelievable. I was denied tickets because I LIVED in Calgary, and the only reason that I wasn’t tossed out of my apartment on my ass to make room for high paying tourists and media wags, was that my landlord fucked up and had me sign an iron clad lease he couldn’t break.
I know people in Vancouver, and they’re already making plans to get out. They have to endure this incredible national orgasm, and all of the bullshit that goes with it. Most of them won’t be able to get near an event, even if they wanted to, but they’re still gonna have to pay for it for years to come, just like the rest of us. Probably more so. Like somebody said, nothing but high prices and rents for years to come. If anything, they should get a tax break for the inconvenience. I know I coulda used one.
The Olympics might be all well and good for the country, blah, blah, blah, but having to live in the city where it’s hosted is an incredibly shitty thing to endure. Too bad we won’t see THAT on TV.