08/16/2024
O-Rings...
A few friends have asked for my take on the Olympics... A Mort Report In the works after I ask around. I've been happily hiding out 900 kliks to the south.
In brief, I'm thrilled they went well for the sake of all those brave souls who found what I expected the Games to be -- a wild-ass party free of contretemps and ugly surprises -- and for all those competitors who worked so hard to prepare for competition.
As it turned out, it seems, so many Parisians got the hell outa there that those who watched events and were able to sort out credentials/tickets and whatnot report a very good time.
I loved the Serbs showing that basketball is exportable, and that killer US-France game. (Reminded me of World Cup finals when all of the color-conscious rightwing buttheads suddenly realize that although white guys can jump (or kick), but...
Roger Cohen of the NYT, to no surprise, did a sh*t-hot analysis on how the whole thing reflected a new and different Paris/France, which blows all to hell that old châtaigne: plus ça change... It ain't la même chose, for better or worse.
However, I'm no fan of the Sun-Queen mayor of Paris, whose conclusion seems to be the old city so many of us have loved for so long (bitching aside) ought to be a full-time playground for able-bodied tourists and timeoff-ers, leaving its multiple millions of a workaday residents to seethe polluting traffic snarls or to hike long distance while Paris pretends to be a much smaller Amsterdam, without canals, trams -- or the Dutch.
And the Seine. CNN did not cover itself with glory when Melissa Bell took a brief dip in the river that the mayor to prove it was safe for swimming. It is cleaner now than in recent years. But it is the main drag through a big city with industry and heavy diesel boat traffic upstream.
Having spent half my life watching what floats by on calm early mornings -- sharp detritus, bloated dead pigs and whatnot... Much worse are all the chemicals and toxic waste that get dumped into the upriver Seine and its multiple tributaries... Human waste that spills into the river in Paris after rains is organic, and it floats downstream pretty quickly. However...
Wait, did I say brief?
