Going for the gold with thumbs, Crocs and multi-tasking
As a newspaper guy, my favorite moment of Friday night's lavish Olympic Games Opening Ceremony production was when an army of Beijing performers paid tribute to "movable type" printing.
"Woowee! Movable type is the stuff that made my newspaper job possible," I shouted in my head. The moment would have been sweeter if I had some other profession to belittle in the attempt to make my career choice seem more important. A deli worker maybe.
"Didn't see the Olympics doing a tribute to the meat slicer, did we?" I could have goaded.
Then it dawned on me that movable type was part of China's ancient history exhibit alongside the Great Wall and the guqin stringed instrument performing "Sounds of Utmost Antiquity." That made me and my newspaper job feel a little behind the times.
But the whole Olympics are behind the times.
The original Olympic Games featured events that revolved around life skills that were essential in the ancient economy - running fast and far, boxing, wrestling and jumping.
People then needed those attributes to settle disputes, escape predators, catch food and communicate with others - sort of like an Olympics for lawyers, shoppers and telecommunications experts. Today, unless you make a living as a mugger, being able to beat up people and run away aren't all that handy.
Instead of Olympic divers attempting a reverse two-and-a-half somersault and two-and-a-half twist in pike position, we should have Barack Obama and John McCain attempt double flip-flops with a political spin without making a splash on Fox News.
Instead of giving the Olympics our athletes who can run the quickest 100 meters, we could send our competitors with the fastest thumbs to bring home the gold in texting - "OMG. I jst 1 d Au medal n txtn!"
Given our widespread problems today with obesity, Olympic athletes qualify as a bizarre breed of human, not simply the best of our kind. Instead of seeing how long it takes Olympians to run 26 miles, maybe we could see how long a competitor could mosey around a mall without succumbing to the temptation to buy a good-smelling Cinnabon.
The hammer throw could be replaced with a competition to see who can safely recycle the most lithium batteries without throwing them away.
While zipping through the 400-meter hurdles in 47.02 like Edwin Moses won't help you in your daily life, setting a MPG record in the 34-mile commute will.
The women's heptathlon lets athletes compete in the 100-meter hurdles, races of 200 and 800 meters, the high jump, the long jump, the shot put and the javelin throw. Basically it's a competition in multi-tasking.
To update the event, we could have the modern woman make a cashback deposit at an ATM, order a "triple Venti nofat low-foam half-caff soy latte with one pump mocha in a double sleeve" at Starbucks, get through a grocery self-serve scanning aisle with four different kinds of apples and an organic avocado, transfer a baby car seat from a Honda Civic to a Dodge Caravan, use a cell phone to forward work e-mail with a 2GB attachment to a teammate's BlackBerry, download the vinyl version of "I Just Want to Make Love to You" from the 1972 "Foghat" alum onto an iPod and get it to play through your car speakers, and put together a bookcase from Ikea and then pronounce the brand name - all while wearing Crocs.
And then, just maybe, I could figure out the mechanics of how this column got into the newspaper and onto dailyherald.com without relying on movable type.