Muse Droppings
By:
C.C. Youngren

Thin-ice Dancing

February is such a quirky little month.  Sandwiched between two 31-day behemoth gods, Janus & Mars, it has no immortal namesake and a schizophrenic length.  It is the only month that can pass without a single full moon.  And what’s with that “bru” at the core being pronounced in mimicry of Tweetie-bird trying to say “bureaucracy” or “Brunhilde?”

With Greco-Roman Divinities (Aphros, Maia, Juno) including the self-proclaimed Cesarean ones laying claim to rest of the non-numerical months—Julius & Augustus absurdly displacing the 7 through 10 to 9 through 12—February is certainly the step-child.  Even its quadrennial expansion is misunderstood by many.  Century years are not leap years unless divisible by 400, a detail most were surprised by in 1900 and overlooked in 2000.  My grandmother once perplexed me by announcing that on her 80th birthday she was a day younger than I will be on my 80th (her life spanning the 365 day 1900, while mine—assuming I get to 80—will have consumed the 366 day millennium).   

In its favor, February is the only month whose etymology (from februum, Latin for “purification”) has contemporary relevance.  An interval which launches amid the Super Bowl hype and concludes with pitchers & catchers reporting to Spring Training is indeed one of decontamination and renewal.  There just doesn’t seem to be an analogous rebirth anywhere in the solar cycle—at least to be witnessed in the latitudes between the polar circles.

But February, like the Federal Prescription Plan, has a doughnut hole in the middle—a vacuum of need between football’s Gotterdammerung and baseball’s resurrection.  Well most Februarys, anyway; and yes, there have been lame attempts to put some jelly in the doughnut.  I will even grant the President’s Week “Winter Break” has some value over the singleton Lincoln & Washington holidays of yore in the academic calendar. I suspect however, that this has more to do with avoiding the frustrating task of pinning the elusive Easter/Passover events to a traditional Spring Break bacchanalia than adding mid-month muscle to February.

Another desperate filler makes its appearance in the even, non-leap years (called “mid-term election” years in the U.S. and World Cup years in the rest of the universe).  This mid-February bridge attempt is, of course, the Winter Olympics.

Both the Summer & Winter Games are more spectacle than sport and while I appreciate the commercial value of the former, my interests lie with the competition.  On this front the Winter Games’ higher concentration of sequential, as opposed to simultaneous, athletic efforts leave me wanting.  After observing two bobsled runs, indistinguishable save the rolling two-decimal numeric value at the bottom of the screen, my fix is more than satisfied.  Add to that the higher incidence of events that disdain any physical metric (time, distance, etc.) for the subjective judgment of a panel (calculated to three decimal places) and I cannot ignore my circumstance—suspended in deep doughnut.

Please consider the following event modifications as a modest tweaking of the spectacle to amp up the drama.  :   

Thin-ice Dancing.  Figure skating, the most watched spectacle within the spectacle, does have an aesthetic appeal somewhere on the continuum of ballet, Riverdance & synchronized swimming, but the drama is confined to those few seconds when the panting contestants are seated on the bench gripping their bouquets awaiting the digital display that consummates their effort.  Let’s put the drama on the ice, or in the ice actually, with a slowly degrading surface requiring those split-second reactions to circumstance which punctuate most sports.  A graceful and appropriate poisson submergence beneath the surface, or a triple-lutz to oblivion would certainly deserve a 10.

Downhill Sprint.  The “Downhill,” probably the most appropriately named sports event, still suffers from barely distinguishable repetition, like watching water drip into the sink.  The ability to sit through more than one heat of 20 or so reps reveals, I think, a sinister desire to witness a wipe out.  So, forget the skis.  Twenty competitors on foot bounding down the mountain, plowing through drifts, tumbling head over heels in a dash to the finish line would spike the drama.

Luge Jump. Ski Jumping (called Ski Flying in some venues) has had its moments—Eddy the Eagle and Vinko Bogataj (the “agony of defeat” guy)—and while the inverted lambda profile of the ski-flier has some mental permanence, it is hard to remember any specific successful try.  In contrast, I can replay in my head “distance events” such as the Bob Beaman long jump (1968, Mexico City) Mickey Mantle’s mammoth Griffith Stadium shot with little effort. So if success is evidently not the object, how about launching sled and feet-first rider into space?  The inevitable separation of sled & rider and high-tech network coverage would provide viewers with a much more polished version of those fall-out-of-the-boat home video shows.

Elimination Biathlon.  The combination of skiing & shooting is not as absurd as some other hybrids I am tempted to contemplate: backstroke/weight-lifting, sky-dive/boxing, or the cartwheel marathon.  But since it has a military genesis (as a training exercise for Norwegian soldiers), why not incorporate the survival aspect of warfare and have the competitors target each other?  The survivor gets the Gold, last to die the Silver.  I am suggesting paint-ball simulation here, leaving the live ammunition event for the X-Games.

Curling.  An activity accidentally invented at a Canadian Old Age Home where some of the senior citizen residents confused Ironing Tuesday with Shuffleboard Thursday, curling evolved to eventually include the janitorial staff.  Known by some as “Tundra Bocce,” curling is to me the epitome of Winter Olympic competition.  I wouldn’t change a thing.

Let the games begin.

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