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ARTICLE: More Unsolicited Olympic Opinions

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With the possible exception of the Salt Lake City Olympics, most Games lose money. Most cities that agree to host the Games lose money. After the Olympics leave a city, in some cases those venues fall into disrepair (See: Rio). Finally, depending on the location or other circumstances, some countries boycott the Games like Moscow 1980 and LA 1984. I’ve always felt there’s a viable solution to this, and for that we look to a little cartoon from 1980.

Animalympics was an absolute sendup of the Olympics, voiced in part by Harry Shearer, Billy Crystal, and Gilda Radner. That alone should get you to watch this movie. Back in the day, you could count on HBO or Cinemax to have it in rotation during the Games. I’m not sure if it enjoys the same attention today, but that’s beside the point. The point is that all the games took place on Animalympic Island. One location made for the Games. Now, it’s not realistic for anyone other than Dubai to whip up an island out of thin air, but that’s not where you’d want to have Summer Games in any event. What would be more realistic would be for the IOC to pick one place where the Summer Games have been played, and one place where the Winter Games have been played. Bonus points if one location could do both, and the event venues are still in good condition or could be repaired for a reasonable amount. It’s got to cost less money than selecting a new place that’s never had the Games before, and possibly even less than a place like LA, who has hosted the Games twice before and about to have it a third time.

It’s time to give some consideration to making a permanent venue for the Olympic Games, so that we can remove the politics, territorial disputes, and the river of red ink that has followed it for decades.

When I-95 Isn’t a Route, It’s Content

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I swear, there are some days when I happen upon something so weird out here on Beyonce’s Internet that it beggars belief, but then I have to remember that it is the Internet we’re talking about.

On my bucket list are items like driving to Key West, Route 66, and the Pacific Coast Highway. On a lark, I decided to see if anyone on YouTube had ever recorded it, and not only had they but there’s a whole genre on YouTube of POV driving. To my amazement, this stuff gets massive subscribers and views. After thinking about it, I suppose it might be a kind of white noise or something someone puts on while doing something else. I find it fascinating, so I decided to make a few videos and see how they performed on my channel. To my surprise, they are the most popular videos I’ve made.

I’m not sure if I should be grateful for the new subscribers and likes, or bitter that my podcast performs so poorly by comparison.

Of course, I plan to continue making my podcast. However, this driving content works for me on a few levels. First, it’s bringing people to my YouTube channel. Secondly, I am one of those freaks who likes driving long distances for the view and the quiet so I get some therapy out of it. But most importantly it’s a kind of content I’ve found that I love and that I can do. I can start here in my hometown and grow outward to a regional thing. I’ve already made videos of driving the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, Ocean Highway in Ocean City MD, driving to Williamsburg, Shore Drive, and Atlantic Avenue here in Virginia Beach. Shortly, I plan to drive from Nags Head to Hatteras and make the circle from Virginia Beach to Elizabeth City, taking the Currituck Ferry. At some point, I wish to take the Cape May-Lewes Ferry and drive to Atlantic City.

I’ve also decided that some longer journeys will require train or plane journeys and a rental car back, like trips to DC and Maine. These are in the more distant future because that will require a budget. It was suggested that I push the Patreon for stuff like this, but I don’t know if I want to do that. Right now, this is just for fun.

I’d like to increase my subscribers and views on the YouTube channel to join the Partner Program, that much is certain. That takes 500 subscribers and 3000 watch hours in the last 12 months. I’m a long way off, but it’s not a sprint. Even if I don’t make it work in the next year, I’m happy for whatever I get.

In Praise of the Bad Guys

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In 1979, I was nine years old, and I had this goal to stay up past the 11 o/clock news, past Saturday Night Live, and watch the local horror movie, a guy named Dr. Madblood. This is a goal I never reached, but what did happen changed my life and gave my Dad one of the larger headaches he ever had to put up with. I got jarred awake by the TV set by a man screaming at the camera. Dressed in a suit, sunglasses on, screaming at the camera. There was some stuff about kiss stealing and jet flying, but then he let loose with the thing we all know that man for. WHOOOO! The we cut to a heavy synth beat that I’d heard before on the radio, and went to commercial.

That was the longest commercial break of my life. What I had just found at the early hour of 2am Sunday Morning was Mid-Atlantic Wrestling, and that was my introduction to professional wrestling. I’ve been a fan ever since. I never had the luxury of believing it was ever real, that was made abundantly clear to me by the Chief because he couldn’t believe his son was a fan of that garbage. To be fair, in my defense, I wasn’t THAT stupid to believe that bouncing someone’s head off the concrete floor wouldn’t hurt someone, and frankly, some wrestlers were better than others at making things look real. The same can be said for folks behind the camera. Of course, back then, none of that mattered. What did matter—what has ALWAYS mattered—was the characters. Some good, some absolutely horrible.

Of course, the first person I ever laid eyes on was Ric Flair. After a while, I wasn’t so interested in him anymore. There were other interesting characters like Sweet Ebony Diamond, Sgt Slaughter, Blackjack Mulligan, but no one ever grabbed me like that first great bad guy. Piper. Piper hooked on the bad guys for life. I’ve never liked the good guys. Bad guys were WAY more interesting. Piper. Savage. Snake. Goldust. Austin. Foley. Taker. Punk.

And then we come to the news from the past couple days. Terry Funk, of course, although I never saw him wrestle but once in a dumpster match with Foley at a WrestleMania against the New Age Outlaws, but I want to talk about Windham Rotunda, the wrestler known as Bray Wyatt. The first time I laid eyes on Bray it wasn’t as the Husky Harris character from his early days, but as the head of the Wyatt Family, this Apocalyptic charismatic cult leader. There was a theater to what he was doing that I was instantly taken by. Also, and this is not something that you could credit a lot of performers with, there was a method to his madness. If you listened to him, he let you know WHY his character was doing what he was doing. He was a true storyteller, in the same sense that you understood why a Marvel villain like Magneto was doing what he was doing. I need y’all to not take that for granted. In an age where a lot of what you see on wrestling TV is the equivalent of a strip and bang, or spot monkeys doing flippy shit, Windham Rotunda gave you a fully fleshed out character with motivation, reason, and movement. And why not? He grew up in the business. His father was Mike Rotunda, his grandfather was Blackjack Mulligan, Barry Windham—one of the Four Horsemen-was his Uncle. He had a front row seat to some of the most memorable people and events in the history of the business, and he must have just soaked that right up.

The people that were closest to him have long said that he was a never ending font of creativity. A stream of consciousness that threw out story upon story upon story, and I believe that. I can also relate to that. I guess that might be a reason why this particular death has hit different for me, but it’s also a reminder that like so many creative geniuses that left us so early, he burned so very brightly that it seemed almost inevitable that it would only burn half as long. One of his last bits of merchandise, from a vignette marking his return after being laid off during the pandemic told us to revel in what you are. That hit me so powerfully, that it’s how I choose to remember him. I’ve wanted to get a 2nd tattoo for a long time, I think that’s what it’s going to be.

Yay. More Reality TV. Great.

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This may not be a very popular take, but what the hell. I think there are two kinds of reality TV. There’s one that takes you through a process that has a tangible result at the end. The other kind is trash tv that manufactures conflict for the effect. Laughs, Screams, WTFs, whatever it is. You might have guessed that I’ll watch the former but hate the latter. It wasn’t always the case; for example, I watched Gene Simmons’s Family Jewels. I’m sure I watched other stuff, but so much of it is so forgettable…I’ve forgotten it. I have never watched a Kardashian do anything, I have no interest in Real Housewives of Insert city here, I could care less about your love before, during, or after lockup, I just don’t care. About the only things you can count on in 2023 on TV are a Law and Order, an NCIS, a Chicago, and somebody upending a table and going after someone nails first because they…well, I assume a producer told them to.

I mean, we all know the drill at this point, yes? Reality TV is not real. Maybe it was at one point that I was naive and gullible in my “When people stop being polite and start getting real” youth. I thought The Real World NY and LA were legit. I thought Survivor season 1 was legit. Of course, living here in Virginia Beach, I had to root for Rudy the retired Navy Seal. But after that, and before Gene Simmons, certainly, by the time Gene Simmons came around, Reality TV started blurring the lines. Manufacturing conflicts, Inventing roadblocks, and conjuring plot twists are all designed to get you…to the other side of the ad break. Cynical, I know, but let’s face some facts. If reality TV was really “Reality”, as in totally unscripted, it would be boring as fuck. So they gin it up.

The other thing about Reality TV that you may or may not know is how utterly cheap it is to make compared to scripted TV. The reason is that they have a simple production value and a much higher ROI than NCIS. Hell, Game of Thrones was around 6 million per episode in the first season. Reality TV episodes might reach 1 million per episode these days, but that’s probably the big ones like Real Housewives. They are not paying a million for Mama freakin’ June’s latest train wreck, I promise you that.

Regardless, TV is chock full of ‘reality’ish TV, and I hope you’re OK with that because that’s gonna be the only new stuff we see for a minute. For the first time in 60-some-odd years, the Writers and the Actors are on strike together at the same time. That pretty much stops everything being filmed right now that’s not reality TV, I would imagine. Hell, it might stop *some* reality shows but not all, and it certainly won’t stop the networks from coming up with every crazy idea you can think of. Also, if you believe some reports, management will try and wait this out. I saw a quote somewhere about the WGA coming back to the table once people start losing their homes. That’ll be around October or so, and depending on how desperate management is, I expect a phone call. I’m joking. Not really. If you get to me and my crazy ideas, you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel, I assure you. And just so we’re clear, I’m not scabbing for anyone. If someone seriously ever wanted my shit, they will be paying me.

But what can we do? Well, for a start, if you’re a creator, don’t give your shit away for magic beans when they come calling. Don’t cross the line. You’ll be remembered if you do. Consumers? I’m not sure what to tell you. I want to tell you to stop watching TV, but that’s tricky. One of the sticking points that caused the strike is streaming. If I’m binging Season 12 of NCIS right now on Paramount Plus, for example, am I part of the problem? And what about AI? I had heard that they want to take an extra, scan them, pay them once, and use that image in perpetuity. I don’t believe that’s cool at all, and if that’s true, they need to come up with another arrangement.

Finally, if we just leave the labor unions’ point of view for a second, I heard something this morning that may not cross your mind so I’ll bring it up. Keith Olbermann on his Countdown podcast—yes, I’m a fan, don’t hate—brought up the tiers of businesses in and around the film and TV industry that a prolonged strike will hurt. Caterers, Dry cleaners, Custodial staff, Waitpersons and Bartenders, the people down here like you and me that work in what Keith called possibly the last company town in America. He may not be wrong. For that reason alone—the little guys who take your order at that bar on Sunset—that this gets resolved quickly, and someone can get back to work writing Gibbs back onto my favorite GD tv show.