The Tao of Vince

Devoted partner claims that were I to write this post using specifics, angry people from across the interweb would somehow find my little site and make anger on me. So, in a nod to the charming paranoia of the charming devoted partner, let's generalize.

Badass. That's what Americans want to be. The cowboys, the marines, the manifest destinizers. And you know what those three groups have in common: they feel no pain. Shoot a marine in the knee and he'll limp at you with guns a blazin' to wreck your shit up. Or at least that's what popular culture has conceived. And frankly, it's an ethos I'm comfortable with. Americans will soldier on uncomplainingly. And if you ask about a hardship, Americans will sneer at you, John Wayne-style, and claim not to know what you're talking about (or, will offer to punch your lights out with their stump of an arm).

Or at least that used to be what Americans were like. In my lifetime, I definitely sense a shift from never letting 'em see you bleed, to doing a 10-talk show circuit discussing the minutiae of your bleeding. Much like explaining the punchline because you think your audience won't get it, today's competitors think that it isn't enough for the announcer to mention that the day before the event a wild moose bit off your thumb - they think the audience won't understand that it is supremely badass to compete with a rabid-moose-inflicted severed thumb, instead they must remind you, ad nauseam, how painful and difficult it was to compete with only nine digits.

Reporter: So, we hear a moose bit your thumb off, how did that affect your performance?

Old American: (ignoring blood dripping from open wound) I don't know what you're talking about. I came here to win Olympic gold and that's what I did.

New American: OMG, I know, it was, like totally, so painful and I didn't know if I was going to be able to compete, and like it just hurt so much.

New American seems emblematic of an easily conquerable people.

We already KNOW that if you're injured, it makes a winning performance that much more admirable; bitching about your injury makes you seem like a pussy. And, after the ninth time you're interviewed about your (in the grand scheme of things, minor) injury and you make a big deal out of something that equates a hangnail with Greg Louganis's losing half of his head to a diving board, my opinion towards you changes: I now want you to lose.

I want you to lose because I don't think you're doing your part for the myth of Americans, and I like the myth of Americans. I watched Ski Cross this weekend, and there was a guy who DISLOCATED HIS HIP 3 WEEKS AGO at the X-Games, and when asked about it, he locked his jaw in a smile and said, essentially, "I feel great, No problems at all. Everything is a-ok."

I hope he wins medals in sports he's not even competing in! He is holding up his end of the American Badass bargain (similarly, the kid who severed half his leg at the Olympic trials in speed skating and then won a medal took a decidedly badass stance as well). I know that when the Olympics are over, all of these winning athletes need to parlay their winning into paying jobs (thus the absolutely ridiculous habit of wearing eye makeup during competition for athletes who are not figure skaters), but I want the guy who DIDN'T complain about his injury and won medals on my Wheaties box!

With all the pat answers the athletes are told to produce when asked about their competitors, the I'm-just-happy-to-be-here-and-do-my-best crap that nobody believes, couldn't the PR firms that manhandle the athletes remind them that no one likes a crybaby? Winning with an injury you never speak about is super cool. You're the ubermensch to everyone else's mensch. You giving interviews to anything with a press credential about how much you had to overcome because you competed with split ends? Untermensch.

Personally, I recommend deportation.

The Easiest Way To Make Me Cry (That Doesn't Involve a Coffee Commercial)

In addition to discovering that I am a rabid free-market capitalist (after responding to a push poll paid for by Cablevision, the bane of my existence), this weekend also proved that I am an utter and complete sap. And it had very little to do with the feast of St. Valentine (though let me say, Devoted Partner brought me breakfast in bed and added to my collection of Alessi decor and for that he should be universally praised - also there was a Carvel milkshake and Dune). While other, less sentimental types were focused on themselves and their ephemeral celebrations, I was glued to the couch (big surprise, I know) watching the Olympics.

When first the Olympics did their special-interest bs coverage of the athletes, they were hamfisted about it. Their cloying interviews and soft-focus montages frankly blew. And I was pissed that I saw fewer events and more stories about people's moms driving 59 hours a day to and from practice for little Johnny Ski Jump. But Olympics coverage has improved. Drastically.

Now the coverage of individual athletes is shorter and more strategically targeted to your heartstrings. And they're running more of the events - even the boring ones like 15k cross-country. And I am lapping it up.

You see, once you take the time to scrape the black black plaque from my heart, I want nothing more than for the Chinese pairs skaters who have come out of retirement to win gold to, well, win gold. And the ski jumper with the older brother who has cerebal palsy? Yeah, give him a medal too. But it's not just the medals. The kids from countries that barely have two nickels to rub together who sold all the goats in all the villages so they could send one athlete to Vancouver? I love them. I want to hug them and make them cupcakes. The teenagers who might be contenders 4 or 8 years down the line? I love seeing their smiling, holy-crap-I'm-competing-in-the-Olympics faces. The earnest interviewees who might actually believe the I'd-like-to-buy-the-world-a-coke idealism they're delivering to jaded NBC broadcasters? Could someone please give them lucrative sponsorship deals?

Yes, it's true, Michael Phelps did nothing for me (possibly because I could almost hear his mother screaming, "sing out, Louise" from the sidelines), and I don't really care how far anyone had to drive to go to practice. But if you blew out your ACL, or broke your back, or, like little adorable J.R. Ceski, slashed your own frickin' thigh with your skate blade down to the bone in September and then won a bronze medal on Saturday? Holy fothermuckin crap I am so in love with you.

I think idealism is a fairly passe concept; people who get idealistic about saving the rainforest, making our political process not about money, banning naughty words in music videos, don't realize those ships have sailed. So, much like getting nostalgic for indigenous peoples who still live bronze age lives, the Olympics is an opportunity for us to (for the most part), see what sportsmanship is like (obvious exceptions are pro-hockey and basketball players and drug abusers), and what dogged pursuit of pure goals look like. It fills me with a kind of happy usually reserved for documentaries about the space program.

So while my gut reaction is of the Go USA! variety, in truth, I want them all to win. All the countries, all the athletes, everyone. And the little part of me that hides most of the time, comes out at Olympic time and really truly believes that just competing at the Olympics is an epic, epic win.