Olympic levity

Finally a bit of mordant wit about the Beijing Olympics. You'd think the German commentators had to have their tonsils tickled by the broomstick up their collective bums to crack a smile.

Here then is an excerpt from the Letter from Beijing in the New Yorker magazine:

"The victory was not without its hiccups. Phelps stepped onto the winner’s podium, flanked by his compatriot Ryan Lochte, who had taken the bronze. (It’s the old Ben Jonson problem: you’re a fine playwright, and at any other time you’d be the best, but by lousy luck you happen to overlap with Shakespeare, who takes gold in every medley in town.)

It was time for the winner’s national anthem, which began with an ominous pop, settled down for a while, gathered itself for the finale, and then stopped. We got the land of the free, but apparently the home of the brave was no longer available. Did someone foreclose? Accidents will happen, but, as a rule, if you’re going to screw up the national anthem of another country, especially a major trading partner, try not to do so when the President of that country is in the audience.

George W. Bush was indeed in the Aquatics Center, standing at attention, and, even across ten lanes of water, I could tell that I was looking at a confused man. Was this insult calculated, and how should he react? The world held its breath. Somewhere nearby was a briefcase with the nuclear launch codes, possibly held by a man wearing trunks. The crisis passed. The President sat down. The semifinals of the women’s hundred-metre butterfly got under way.

As for the Assistant Button-Pressing Technical Manager for National Anthem Digital Recording Systems (Aquatic Branch), I don’t know the poor fellow’s name, but his extended family has just been rehoused inside a hydroelectric dam."

I can't believe it's only been a week of Olympic games; it feels like forever here, since every time I go for a quick bite or to check my email, there it is on the telly.

Oh, so I'm in La Paz and off to scale Chacaltaya at 5300m in the space of but a few hours tomorrow. Messages of congratulation may be adressed to +491636000225 after midday (GMT-4), Monday 18th of August.