Olympic Edition

The Winter Olympics have changed dramatically since their first games in Chamonix, France in 1924. The first Olympics of the modern era were summer games. It was nearly thirty years before the white people from the snow and ice got their first Olympics of the modern era. There was no ancient era for alpine events but their sports were modern. The Summer Olympics have remained fundamentally the same with the occasional juxtaposition of women’s softball for golf but running, jumping, swimming have been the mainstays of the Summer games for over 110 years. The Winter Games have always been more life threatening with events that hurdle humans with their frail ACL’s against the elements. The alpine events were never a strong suit back in the day for the United States. There was the occasional Phil Mahre moment where the US stole a medal. It was mostly an Ingmar or a Jean Claude taking home the heavy hardware. American fan could only pine away while waiting for women’s figure skating. God bless you, Scott Hamilton, also! In 2010, the Winter Games hijacked the X games business model without the snowmobiles. The American snow boarders who had dominated the X games for years stormed the games in Vancouver. Shaun White and his US compatriots slid, jumped and twisted to five medals and captivated our rebellious pedigree. Suddenly, the US had a winter sport we could dominate and it was entertaining. The boarders invigorated the whole US Winter Olympic movement. The rest of the world and NBC eventually caught up with the snowboard revolution but the US flame was lit. Now the US Alpine skiers are carrying the message, US men won their first luge medal in history on Sunday. Southern CA native Chloe Kim’s father started taking her to Mountain High in Wrightwood early on because he thought he might like the sport. His seven-year-old daughter was a required supporter of his efforts. Ten years later, she has become a Korean- American snowboarding superstar. She has never finished less than third in any competition and most she wins. She has scored the only perfect 100 ever recorded in competition. Shaun White blazed to his third gold while Chloe ignited the next generation of female champions. The specter of the North Koreans and South Koreans collaborating in Women’s hockey and overall goodwill for the games was surprising. It seemed after all of the intercontinental ballistic missiles and such fired over the land by Kim Jung that relations with his neighbors to the south could be strained. ICBM’s always seem to bring out the worst in a dictator and their surrounding borders. King Jung did send his hipster sister who sat right behind US VP Mike Pence. Pence never acknowledged her presence or sniffed her air. It was a reality TV moment where the Yard had wished that former US President Bill Clinton had been in the VIP box with Kim Jung’s sister. Billy Bob would have been all up in that business. His Arkansas drawl wafting about while cocking his head and winking. These Clintonian flirt hacks can cause many a woman, not Hillary, but others to swoon. Given an opening, he would have been turning around, changing seats, ordering cabernet with garlic fries and solving the North Korean missile crisis. If you have not heard about the evil wrought by Dr. Larry Nassar, you should have. It is a tragic tale of Olympic success hiding the dark secrets of a sexual predator. Parents were so eager for their little girls to be the next Mary Lou Retton that the Trojan horse inside the walls was blind to them. Since Kerri Strug vaulted and landed her gimpy ankle in the 1996 games in Atlanta, ambitious parents have foisted their pubescent daughters onto US gymnastics. Two premier and highly competitive gymnastics programs emerged as the place to go if your dreams included the Olympics. The famous Karolyi Ranch in Texas and the Twistars Gym in Michigan were those places and ground zero for lecherous Larry. While John Geddert of Twistar and Bela Karolyi whipped their young prodigies into Olympic form, Dr. Nassar soothed their pains behind closed doors. It was a classic bad cop good cop where the bad cop was a dictator but the good cop was a pedophile. Parents who were so excited to see their daughters take the next step towards stardom were dropping their daughters of at Nassar’s house at night for “treatments”. When some the girls balked or attempted to out the evil that loomed behind the door, parents pushed them ahead to reach their dreams blind to their daughter’s pleas. Nassar was sentenced to 170 years behind bars and many of these parents will spend a lifetime reconciling the horrors that their daughters endured under their guidance. The Baseball Hall of Fame is starting to lighten up on the alleged performance enhanced nominees. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are climbing into the target zone the past year years. Their coronation is anything but guaranteed. Sportswriters and other humans are starting to realize that you cannot penalize the unindicted for transgressions that were never proved at a time when everyone was transgressing. Roger Clemens may have had a PED laden curve ball but he was facing a PED enhanced batting order. It was strength against strength and Clemens was stronger and better. He piled up incredible statistics even if he was an arsehole. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame also announced their Class of 2018. Every inductee has tried performance-enhancing drugs. It is a rite of passage in R&R. If you did not enhance your performance with drugs, you were not giving your all. Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis, & Kurt never made their 28th birthday but made the Rock and Roll HOF posthumously because of their commitment to PED’s. They all pushed the envelope in the early, unfiltered days of these PED’s. No one was ever banished from the R&R HOF for doing PED’s. Look up Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers induction in 2002, bassist Howie Epstein is in the late throws of his PED addiction on stage. Not saying Baseball needs to encourage PED but get real about the history. Roger Clemens and Barry Bones did nothing that was illegal by baseball standards in their era. Was it unethical? Yes. Did they lie about it under oath? Most likely. Were they two of the best players ever in baseball during any era? Most positively. Were black athletes ready to play in major league baseball before 1947? Absolutely. Was Ty Cobb a racist? Absolutely. Does the Baseball Writers of America Association uses both B’s in their acronym of BBWAA…enough said. It is surprising with the #MeToo and Time is Up exhausting news cycle that Bill Clinton’s name has never come up. With the public takedowns of many alleged bad actors, that Bill Clinton is still bobbing above the treacherous waters is surprising. Being a former president provides some clemency. Jennifer Flowers, Paula Jones and Monica Lewinski were the only victims that came forward when no one could. We learned about them in a time before camera phones and social media. They were all publicly ostracized with Bill defending every accusation with Hillary at his side. What the Clintons and their emissaries did to an innocent, 22-year old Washington intern named Monica is unconscionable even by today’s standards. Ultimately, Billy had to perspire through a national admission of his transgressions with Ms. Lewinsky. When the FBI confirmed Clinton’s DNA on Monica’s semen stained blue dress, our former president provided more evidence of his abuse of an employee than any of the currently accused. Hillary made her deal with the devil. Matt Lauer’s wife and Harvey Weinstein’s wives already hit the eject button. The Clintons operate with a degree of royal condescension and lack of transparency that is lost on our youth but memorable by their parents. The Bill Clinton proposed concentric circles of matrimonial fidelity while having oral sex with interns is one for the ages. Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer are waiting for Billy’s book on Surviving Sexual Harassment for Dummies. We were out of town at the USC UCLA basketball game a few weeks back. We had to leave on Friday before Tuesday’s State of the Union address had ended. We do not think we missed anything unless Nancy Pelosi never got whatever POS she was groveling about in her mouth during POTUS address out. It is not surprising that speech ran long or Pelosi’s dentures were acting up. Both events are to be expected. Trump’s breathy teleprompter laden speech was paced to eat the time slot so to allow for limited criticism as he butted up against Ellen DeGeneres’ Game of Games. Nancy the P just needs to get some dental floss and break that out next time she is on national TV. UCLA storming back to upset the Trojans was the best elixir for the nonsense in the east. The Yards went to see the hottest ticket in town on Saturday night, the Vegas Golden Knights. It was the best hockey game we ever attended although there were only six in contention before Saturday night. Hockey has never been in our top five sports but it made some recent leaps in our acquired city and mind space. The spectacle of a hockey game in Las Vegas is incongruent and amazing. Knight’s owner Bill Foley has put together a great product with tremendous support. The entertainment value alone does not require hockey expertise. All of the 18,882 people in attendance were having a great time even the 6,000 people from Montreal who were watching their historic Canadians get pummeled by an expansion team. With brilliant hockey and two halftimes, we witnessed nine goals, Cirque De Soleil and the Blue Men. Montreal on February 17 or Las Vegas on the same day? Not a tough call with a hockey game on Saturday and Monday and black 29 available all day long on every wheel in town.