Canadian heaven: Where all good dead Canadians go

It’s Canada Day! On Canada day, people generally drink beer and then blow their fingers off with fireworks, preferably off of a dock, with the Tragically Hip playing. It’s how we celebrate our freedom!

To the south, Americans have their Independence Day this weekend, which celebrates the time aliens blew up the White House and Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum had to hack the mothership to wait, sorry – which celebrates the time stuffy old British people tried to enforce a tax on tea (which, apparently, Americans were quite fond of at that time – a modern equivalent might be a Big Mac tax) and the Americans responded by kicking British ass, writing a quotable Declaration, and putting their own country together complete with a needlessly busily-designed flag, unsingable anthem, and a proud history of asskicking which has gone pretty well for them. Meanwhile, Canadians have Canada Day, which celebrates the time we very politely asked Britain if we could maybe have our own country, please? Britain responded with “Shit, I thought you’d never leave”, granting us the rights to take the faces of monarchs off of 4/5ths of our monetary bills and the privilege of occasionally having our own Head of State visit.

America is the rebellious son who ran away from home as a teenager to start their own company and is now some kind of hot-shot dickish millionaire, while Canada is the mamma’s boy who waited until they were 32 to leave home and even then still lets their parents visit every weekend. It wasn’t until 1982 that we officially stopped letting our mom meddle in our lives. Think about how embarrassing that is for a second: all of these third world countries that cut the umbilical cords back in the 1700s, and then there’s us, finally getting our independence in the era of Journey and Van Halen.

But enough about our embarrassing founding – it’s time to party! Or, if you’re in Quebec, it’s time to move houses.

Do some really patriotic shit today, like drinking on a Thursday, wearing your crusty old Team Canada throwback hockey jersey, eating poutine, watching the CBC if you must, and enjoying this big, empty, beautiful country you were lucky enough to have your mom knocked up in. For inspiration, please visit this image I made of what Canadian Heaven might look like.

Keep on rocking in the free world!

When she sits around the palace, she sits AROUND the palace!

Happy Victoria Day, drunken Canadians! Victoria Day is a famous holiday invented a million years ago in Olde Englande – possibly the Victorian age, I’ll Wikipedia it later – to celebrate Queen Victoria, a frumpy fat lady (note: fat for the time period, by modern standards she’d wear a size Medium at Wal-Mart) who was Queen of Olde Englande And Her Majestic Vermin-Infested Colonies. She married her first cousin and plopped out 9 inbred kids, continuing a long tradition among British monarchs of fucking their relatives. She was so good at being incestuous and fat that we named a city full of smiling, colonial plump-faced white people in Ye Olde Britishe Columbiae after her. We also named a holiday in May after her, because Canadians salivate over the prospect of getting any possible day off from their miserable soul-crushing jobs.

Victoria Day is celebrated on the Monday that follows May 24, leading to the holiday being colloquially referred to as “May Two-Four”. This is a uniquely Canadian reference to a “Two-Four” case of beer, so named because counting into double digits is hard, eh.

Canadians honour the memory of Queen Victoria, the longest-serving monarch in British history, by waiting in traffic all day on Friday to get away from their suburban gated communities and into “nature”, a term which covers the 99.999%-odd percent of our nation’s land-mass that isn’t within the city limits of a city large enough to sustain an NHL franchise. Canadians often choose to observe Victoria Day by mooching off their buddy for 3 days because he’s got a cottage. Oh, it’s ok, you’re not mooching, you bought the guy some hot-crossed buns from the farmer’s market on the way in, and a case of whatever beer is on sale, Lake-something, sure, grab it.

Then you can celebrate our enduring British traditions and our country’s uniquely close bond to the Queen and to the Crown by getting drunk outdoors and sitting around a campfire as some asshole you knew from high school tries to remember the chords to a Tragically Hip song on the acoustic guitar he just happened to have. You suck back another beer and then decide it would be hilarious to jump into the lake, but it’s fucking freezing, because it’s Canada, and it’s only May. Then you drink some more and tell that story of the fat broad from Hamilton from the shallow end of the gene pool that you met at a bar in university – classic story – and in some whimsical, cosmic way, it’s as if Queen Victoria herself was taking her rightful throne in the storytelling of those young Canadians celebrating the day for which she was named in the country which she half-heartedly let us keep.

Long may she reign.

Clockwise from top-left: M.P. Peter MacKay (Conservative-Central Nova); Governor General Michaelle Jean; and M.P. Shark (Aquatic Predator Party-Atlantic Ocean) enjoy the rising political popularity of seal meat

What’s the hottest, safest political position for Ottawa politicians to take these days? “Support our troops”? “We gotta invest in our children”? “Help out Main Street, not Wall Bay Street”? “Job creation is our priority”?

Nope! The trendy position for hot politicians who want to be seen is “I fucking love seals getting their heads smacked with icepicks!”

We all know that Michaelle Jean grossed out the world by swallowing down a slimy serving of seal-heart sashimi, after which Peter MacKay, never one to be left out, tried some raw seal meat of his own. Now everyone in Ottawa wants a piece of the hottest accessory of the season, a splayed-out butchered seal carcass!

Pretty much every politician in Canada’s all aboard the seal hunt bandwagon. Considering the widespread criticism of the seal hunt across the country, let alone the world, you’d think there’d be some level of disagreement about it on the Hill, but in Ottawa saying you’re pro-seal hunt is such an empty, unanimously-held sentiment it’s like saying you’re pro-Hockey. (For the record, Your MapleRag is totally down with clobberin’ some seals, but we can at least see why it might be controversial!)

So, what was on the menu at Parliament Hill at a luncheon today held by Liberal Senator Celine Hervieux-Payette? Double-smoked, bacon-wrapped seal loin in a port reduction. That dish sounded so good until you got to the “seal” part.

You see, by all accounts seal meat is pretty much like eating hot garbage. It’s a dark, dry meat that smells like rancid fish and is so tough, gamey and chewy that you need an expert chef to mask (i.e. smother in bacon) the meat’s “uniqueness” to make it edible. Not to mention, the seal’s full of fat which is apparently so vile it’s inedible, and the things are crawling with parasites (not unlike MPs themselves).

But hold the phone! Not everyone’s on-board with this edition of Fear Factor: Ottawa Edition! Liberal Senator Mac Harb is the lone voice against the seal hunt in Ottawa, which makes him a favourite whipping-boy of Conservatives. Look what was said in an internal memo to Tories from the PM’s office!

“Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff claims to support the seal hunt but is attempting to play both sides of the issue. In these challenging economic times Ignatieff’s Liberals are playing politics with Canadian families who depend on the hunt for their livelihoods.”

Oh what the fuck. Really? There’s one lousy senator in the entire Liberal party who’s anti-sealing, which is somehow Michael Ignatieff’s fault? And it somehow makes him “playing politics” to have ONE GUY – some useless senator, no less! – who has an original opinion? But hey, it’s the Tories, they can say ridiculous shit like “Michael Ignatieff doesn’t keep his senators on a leash, and therefore he kills impoverished Newfoundlanders” and get away with it, it’s not like any Liberal’s gonna grow a backbone and stand up to th-….. whaaaaa?

“Following the same logic,” a senior Ignatieff official told The Globe, “if Stephen Harper truly believed in airport security, he would have fired Helena Guergis?”

HOLY SHIT! A CHALLENGER APPEARS! Some random Liberal’s here to lay some fuckin’ SMACKDOWN!

“If Stephen Harper really believed in restraint, he would have sent Jim Flaherty walking to the Tim Hortons on Slater [Street in Ottawa, near Parliament Hill] rather than flying in a government plane to London. Should I go on?”

OH NO! NO! HE DID NOT JUST GO THERE! Whoever the fuck this Senior Official is, they’d better be dishing out ointment for all of these BURNS! YES, PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, GO ON!

“Oh, while we’re at it,” the Ignatieff official said, “if Stephen Harper was really ‘tough on crime,’ would he not direct his Minister of Justice to contest Mr. Jaffer’s unbelievably light sentence?”

OH SHIT! HE! WENT! THERE!

Whoever this mystery Senior Official is, they have GIGANTIC SWINGING BRASS BALLS! Why is this Mystery Senior Official not Prime Minister yet?!

It’s now our goal to find out, WHO IS THE SENIOR OFFICIAL GONE WILD?

Our guess is, obviously, Cute From Behind Chick.

[Globe: PMO harpoons Liberal division on seal hunt]

[Globe: Seal on the menu for parliamentarians]

Hey Americans, how do you like our national anthem? You might've heard it in Vancouver, about 14 times.

A new trend is sweeping the nation: contemporary music with increasingly sexist themes is being heard from coast to coast, and little is being done about it. A hit song called “O Canada”, written by Quebecois rapper Calixa Lavallee in 1880, is spreading its message of sexist hatred across the nation. This song’s vulgar message was reportedly omnipresent during the recent Winter Olympics, and is now even in our public schools. I’ll give you a taste of this song’s misogynistic, sexist nonsense, but don’t say I didn’t warn you:

“True patriot love / In all thy sons command”

Filth. Luckily, OUTRAGE IS BREWING!

The Parliament’s going to “consider” doing “research through a Parliamentary committee” to see whether or not, maybe, there’s a possibility, that lyrics changes could be considered, to something more inclusive like “In all of us command”. In other words, nothing’s happening, and nothing’s going to happen. Stop frothing at the mouth about preserving our proud heritage, crazy-eyed National Post columnists ready to pounce. There’s probably no story here, considering that the idea of changing the anthem lyrics to be more inclusive is about 3 decades old by now, and nothing’s changed yet.

But still, let’s all get outraged!

Alright, who can we get to serve up some outrage… how ’bout, maybe a University professor, tee up a talking point, aaaand… here’s one now!

“The national anthem should reflect its population and Canada consists of 51 per cent women.” – Adele Mercier, Queen’s University Prof

[Now play this sound clip]

Hold up a minute, you mean there’s WOMEN in this country? When did THIS happen?

(You guys know that later on it says “God”, right? Like, in the same song? I mean, I don’t want to get you too worked up.)

Alright, this is a dumb, ancient argument, it’s the sort of thing they probably made junior high debate teams argue about in the 80s because (a) people get really fucking worked up about it for some reason, and (b) both sides always win, since if you’re anti-lyric-change you’re a rational sexist, but if you’re pro-change you’re irrational but inclusive.

I’ll outline all your possible dumb, smug-faced arguments, rating their validity on a scale of Smug Emoticons, represented as:

#1: ARGUMENT: Changing the anthem disrespects our country’s history and traditions. Actually, chump, the anthem’s already changed lyrics as late as the 60s, which is why old people look confused when they’re singing the anthem, because they still remember the old version (with a couple extra verses of “We stand on guard”, or something) they learned as kids. Plus, it’s debatable what the original English lyrics were anyways, and the English lyrics are just an awkward copy of the original French. It’s not exactly a firmly-grounded historical landmark of our people, is what I’m sayin’.

ARGUMENT STRENGTH:

#2: ARGUMENT: A sexist national anthem reflects poorly on our country. Here’s a news flash: other than seventh-graders doing geography assignments on foreign countries, no one gives a shit about anyone else’s national anthems. You probably only know the US anthem from watching too much American sports, you know the tune of the badass Soviet-era Russian anthem, and maybe the British anthem as an imperial throwback. If you’re a real trivia buff, you might know a couple other countries’ anthems, with that information stored in the “interesting nonsense that might come up on Jeopardy” cortex of your brain. As you heard at the Olympics, a lot of countries have some truly awful-sounding anthems too, and pretty much all of them have outdated, embarrassing lyrics. The American anthem’s an unsingable drinking-shanty about the British bombing the shit out of Baltimore (if you’ve been to Baltimore lately, you’d probably think the bombing wasn’t so long ago.) The British anthem’s a tune so stuffy and old-fashioned that the only nouns in the first verse are “God” and “Queen”, two concepts the British are increasingly apathetic about. In short, no, the world doesn’t care about our anthem, since they probably have a worse one.

ARGUMENT STRENGTH:

#3: ARGUMENT: If we start giving in to these fringe political-correctness types, what’s next? Easy, National Post columnist. There’s no slippery slope here. Even if you let the feminists win the anthem-lyrics battle (SPOILERS: they won’t), it won’t lead to some topsy-turvy ultra-PC country of your hyperbolic nightmares. Broads already got the vote. Your “If we let them change O Canada, WHAT’S NEXT” schtick is about as strong a point as American wingnuts saying “If we let gays marry, then we’ll have to allow polygamy and bestiality and incest and statutory rape!” No you wouldn’t, you walking First-Year-Psychology-course-lecture-on-logical-fallacies.

ARGUMENT STRENGTH:

#4: ARGUMENT: Harper’s just doing this as political posturing to appeal to female voters. Yeah, probably. But fuck, could you imagine a more miscalculated strategy? Your “base” is white, middle-aged male traditionalists, and you’re considering talking about changing our country’s national anthem to be more feminist? But you’re right, this is definitely some political shit right here: Harper’s basically trying to call the opposition’s bluff here. “Hey Iggy, you guys are all about that feminist junk, you wanna change the national anthem? No? Well, you’re sexist, because we’re considering doing it. Oh wait, you do now? Way to alienate average Canadians, we weren’t actually gonna do it!”

ARGUMENT STRENGTH:

#5: ARGUMENT: They’re not gonna change the thing, because it’d be a huge pain in the ass. THANK YOU, you’re making sense now! You’re right, it would be a gigantic PR mess to try to change a national anthem that we all have implanted in our minds. They’d have to waste all this money changing documents and putting out press releases, and there’d be a huge opposition who just say “fuck it we’ll keep singing it the old way”. We’re a stubborn nation by default, and we don’t like messin’ around with the norm – whether it be getting bent out of shape about Peter Mansbridge standing at his desk, or Torontonians still calling their concrete baseball-toilet “Skydome” after a good half-decade of it having a different name. Our stubborn laziness trumps all other arguments. Yeah, the anthem’s not as ideally inclusive of women and non-Christians as it could be. But it’s not that people don’t care about the plight of women. We’re just lazy. Your Female Editor, and every other ovary-bearing human I polled about this topic, agreed – the prevailing sentiment being “fuck it, I’m not relearning the song lyrics at this point, and no one else wants to either.”

ARGUMENT STRENGTH:

Well, that settles it.

Our national anthem’s sexist.

But, at the risk of presenting an oxymoron, our collective apathy is near-militant in its enthusiasm.

[Article: Globe]

If there's a better way to show your gravitas as a political leader than by acting like a piss-drunk prep-squad cheerleader, I don't know it

And as John Ferguson takes to the mic, honestly, all I have to say: “WELL, YOU ASKED FOR MORE FUCKING FRENCH, YOU GOT IT!” It seems cruel to rip this guy more since everyone on the continent has already ridiculed his offensively bad thrashing of the French language. It started with “Bomb Sawyer” for “Bon Soir” and went downhill from there. I was making an odd mixture of a giggle and a groan anytime a word of mimicked pidgin-french dribbled out of his lips.

We’re talking worse than Reform Party-level french.

Then he did a whole bunch of painfully awkward back-patting patriotism, including a forced “eh”, a word which none of us actually use unless we’re trying to seem drunk and harmless to Americans.

He said that athletes were the “wind beneath his wings“, without a hint of irony or anything that would forgive using such a hackneyed line.

He was trying to explain that Canadians were the most humble, polite people on Earth. Then he went on about how Canada is the best fucking country ever, and bragged about how we won at hockey. (Reminder: this is the official address to the planet after the Olympic closing ceremonies, not Coach’s Corner I’m describing.)

Then Jacques Rogge tried to pretend that he hadn’t just watched all of that butchery of the beautiful French tongue, and called the Vancouver games…. the best ever? Not quite. But “excellent, and very friendly games.” Jesus. Them’s fightin’ words.

And then, amid groans of “awww”, the games were closed. That’s it. The Olympics were done. Nothing to watch on your couch in your pyjamas. No more biathlon terminology to learn. No more Brian Williams telling you the current time in the Eastern time zone. No more goddamn “I Believe”. It’s over.

…

And now, LET THE INSANITY BEGIN!

PART 6: Heart of Gold

Hey hey, my my. Sidney Crosby can never die.

NEIL FUCKING YOUNG came out. NEIL. YOUNG. Anyways, he managed to keep the crowd’s attention using only the power of a harmonica, a guitar and a couple of monitors better than any million-dollar choreographed dancing-maple-leaf routine.

Then the torch went out, and he disappeared into the mysterious floor to hang out with Catriona Le May Doan and a mime.
If you’d have turned off your TV at that moment, you would’ve been treated to the perfect closing ceremonies.

But you didn’t, did you?

Part 7: CanCon regulations kick in.

Words can’t describe how awkward the next segment was. Basically, three famous Canadian actors of the 80s came out and did schtick from the Molson “I Am Canadian” ad. No seriously, the exact same stuff, excepting beating slightly-different dead-horses with the Canada jokes! The sort of stuff that would make you cringe if you heard these jokes told at a high school commencement, let alone the Olympics.

William Shatner talked about having sex in canoes. No, seriously. William Shatner, from Star Trek, talked about fucking, in a canoe. At the Olympic Winter Games Closing Ceremonies. Is this the best, or worst thing ever? It’s probably one or the other.

Catherine O’Hara – y’know, the mom from Home Alone? – told a bunch of Canada jokes that fell flat, but her old-lady cleavage made up for any flatness that might have occured. Her routine started with a cute curling sequence, got kind of awkwardly passive-aggressive, threw around some jokes that reached their pinnacle of popularity in the mid-40s (guests are like fish, they stink after a few days, HAW HAW GET IT, gotta send that one to Leno), and then she disappeared after telling what may be the Olympics’ first pee-pee joke.

And then MICHAEL J. FOX, who’s awesome, got stuck with some more beer-commercial patriotic schtick, the poor bastard.

Part 8: Oh my fuck what the fucking fuck, FUCK, what the FUCK

I haven't seen a beaver that big since my date with Rita MacNeil

I CAN’T EVEN DESCRIBE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. It would take WAY too long and WAY too many ridiculous adjectives.

MICHAEL BUBLE ON A HAT SINGING “MAPLE LEAF FOREVER”, INFLATABLE BEAVERS, SEXY MAPLE LEAF GIRLS, GIANT TABLE HOCKEY PLAYERS, SEXY MOUNTIES, FLYING MOOSE. It was like you took all the drugs in the world and watched a documentary about Canadian stereotypes.

CTV helpfully explained that Canada was “taking the piss”, you see, that this segment was meant to lightheartedly examine Canadian stereotypes. I have a feeling all of the other telecasts watching around the world didn’t get that memo, and now actually think Canada is a land of, well, over-Canadianness. I’ve never seen an Olympics do such a massive inside joke intended only for the home country. Could you imagine if the Beijing Closing Ceremonies were just a bunch of shout-outs to Chinese soap opera stars and regional inside-jokes that no one else on Earth got?

Also, a note from the Maclean’s liveblog about the song choice of “Maple Leaf Forever”: “It’s a great, great song — but isn’t it banned? “Wolfe the dauntless hero came?” Bloc MPs, to your microphones!”

The only thing that could’ve topped it on the CanCon scale would be if the Trailer Park Boys came out and just started telling every country there to fuck off.

Y’know the over-the-top musical number at the end of Producers, “Springtime for Hitler”? It was that, but with Canada instead of Nazis.

Part 9: SERIOUSLY?!

I then proceeded to predict pretty much all the big Canadian musical acts that would come up next. I was just kidding, of course – “oh, haha, what’s next, Simple Plan…. oh fffffu-AREYOUSERIOUS”, and just like that they popped up in a row like the Junos on acid. Meanwhile, athletes danced around on the floor, and quietly left through the exit which happened to be placed right below the stage, giving everyone an embarrassing view of athletes filtering out early.

NICKELBACK AND AVRIL LAVIGNE. ARE YOU SERIOUS.

LOOK AT THIS PHOTOGRAPH. EVERY TIME I DO IT MAKES ME LAUGH.

I actually joked before the ceremonies that this would be who would show up, but I learned a powerful lesson: never underestimate the mind-fuck factor of the Vancouver organizing committee. As a sidenote, both of these acts have huge followings in non-English-speaking countries for some reason, so all the Eastern European  teenagers who make up the bulk of Olympic athletes were eating it up.

FUN FACT: this is where NBC actually cut away from their coverage to show the unwatchable reality show The Marriage Ref, which will be canceled in about 4 weeks. Seriously, right as Nickelback came on-stage they decided to cut the Closing Ceremonies in half – the Closing Ceremonies of the Olympics they paid HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS to cover – and they put an absolutely awful-looking reality show premiere right in the middle of it. Thank God every day that as a good Canadian, you get fantastic Olympic coverage on a plethora of channels and not comical NBC bullshit. Then again, they cut away from Nickelback, so maybe they had the right idea.

Anyways, then you had Alanis with her boobs almost coming out of her dress, there was Simple Plan struggling in an uphill fight for relevance, then… Hedley? Jesus, Hedley, really? No Tragically Hip? No motherfucking RUSH?

Honestly, I’d make fun of all of this shitty music in great detail, but I’m mentally exhausted. After every act, I just burst out laughing. SERIOUSLY, HEDLEY’S HERE? I just had no words left.

Canada had truly trolled the world by this point.

And, uh… there was some French faux-metal crap, Marie Mai or something, and K-Os, who’s awesome, but then there was some acid-washed b-boying, and fireworks, when suddenly…

It’s over.

Wait, what?

It’s OVER? It’s just DONE? One second, you had a breakdancer headspinning, and then, thennn… “Thanks for coming?” I mean, an anticlimactic ending is one thing, but at least it’s an ending of some sort. This didn’t even have an ending, it just… fizzled out! The fizzling is really the perfect ending for the perfect practical joke. This entire 3-hour affair was one long shaggy-dog story.

Was the goal to play increasingly bad music to test the limits of the athlete’s patience until they finally just decided to leave? I mean, making a captive audience watch Hedley is dropping a pretty big hint, like the host saying “boooy, sure is getting late” to the guest lying on his couch.

Welcome to Canada, world.

You got trolled.

I’m pretty sure Canada just trolled the world.

Sit back and think about what just happened. Our nation was given the task of putting together a 3-hour extravaganza to satisfy the varied tastes of a diverse planet.

We produced a series of bizarre inside jokes, shoulder-patting shout-outs, unintentional comedy and Avril Lavigne.

I’m convinced this was some sort of entirely-intentional form of prankery. It was Andy Kaufman via Kids In The Hall. We took the millenia-old Olympian tradition, the largest media and sporting event on earth, and turned it into what Royal Canadian Air Farce might have come up with for a “Canadian stereotypes” sketch in their unfunny years. All coated in a Velveeta-cheesy sheen of beer-commercial patriotic schtick, with a revolving door of “special guests” like a 70s variety show, and a series of moments that left a bewildered planet asking: seriously, what the fuck is up with Canada?

PART ONE: The Greatest Thing Ever.

Honestly, this was the most perfect thing ever done by anyone. Everyone I’ve talked to loved it. It made up for the Opening Ceremonies on its own, and was the perfect start to the show.

Couldn't they have gotten Red Green to fix the damn ice-penis thing with some duct tape?

If you missed it, they had the three ice-penises of the cauldron up, with the elusive broken fourth one still down. After some sparks and flying machinery, a mime (hey, they said they wanted more Quebecois content) pops out, plugs it in, Catriona Le May Doan comes out of a hole, and they light the thing. It was delightfully self-effacing humour. Only Canada could get away with starting their Closing Ceremonies by making fun of their Opening Ceremonies. Whoever thought it up should get a raise.

PART TWO: Early signs of trouble.

Some band I’ve never heard of called “Inward Eye” show up, seeming like a budget version of a U2 cover band, singing a song with lyrics that seemed to entirely consist of the words “Whoooaaooaoaoa, Vancouver.” Meanwhile, a bunch of high school student did a choreographed running-around sequence, with snowboards. It actually looked pretty cool, but after the lock-step Communist precision of Beijing, anything involving humans moving simultaneously will look like a sloppy, haphazard orgy.

Then they trooped in the Native chiefs, with their silly, fanciful Indian names like “Bill Williams”, along with Harper (SEE, I JUST REFERENCED A CANADIAN POLITICIAN, you can’t claim I don’t write enough about politics on this “politics blog”) and Gordon Campbell, who was fucking embarrassing the whole time. I mean, I get it, we won at hockey today, it’s exciting, you’re probably still drunk, but you’re a PREMIER, and you’re on WORLDWIDE TELEVISION. Don’t stand up and wave a gigantic flag you somehow smuggled into the VIP box inches away from the faces of foreign dignitaries, you look like an ass.

Then a bunch of Kidz Bop drop-outs mimed and force-smiled their way through an agonizing sugary-sweet upbeat version of O Canada, which at least wasn’t as bad as the arrangement at the Opening Ceremonies, but wasn’t as good as, say, the actual arrangement, the way the song always fucking goes.

PART THREE: There’s athletes at the Olympics?

Then they marched out all of the athletes in a confused huddle, with Canada looking sharp in vintage caribou-adorned knit sweatervests, and Germany looking like neon LSD vomit.

Joannie was our flag-bearer, because… y’know.

John Morris was there too. <3 <3 <3

After we watched all the athletes slowly shuffle their way to their seats after having pointed their camera-phone at every possible physical direction, we got a pretty painful musical number. Nikki “Overstayed your welcome, kid” Yanofsky, some chick who I’m told [by my mom] was a winner of the canceled show Canadian Idol, and a dude who I’ve never heard of badly pretending to play guitar. (I was informed by the NBC telecast that he was Native, so… what, I’m not suggesting that, he was there just because he… I mean, I’m sure he’s a great… just that, with the…) They droned through the sort of Up-With-People pop drivel that appeals to no one of any age, and THEN THE PARTY STARTED.

PART Я: IN SOVIET RUSSIA, OLYMPICS CLOSE YOU!

Must... crush... capitalism...

Just to make Canada’s sloppiness look bad, we got treated to Glorious Mother Russia coming out to annihilate all of our brains with a precise, choreographed, sensory-overloading preview of Sochi 2014. A choir came out to sing what seemed like the 25-minute extended-cut remix of the Russian national anthem, which is a spine-tingling tune if there ever was one. Then, as Mounties raised the Russian flag over Canadian soil (and Cold War-era baby boomers had a stroke at the sight of their old nightmares realized), we were treated to an onslaught of Russia-overload that reminded me of the now-dated Simpsons episode where Russia switches back to the USSR, leading to parade-bears becoming tanks and Lenin crushing his glass tomb.

There were bowling cosmonauts, ballerinas, orchestras, supermodels, some sort of freaky modernist Madame Butterfly rendition, and the combined powers of Olympics failures Evgeni Plushenko and Alex Ovechkin (combined nose weight: 3.7 kg.) It made me want to drink some vodka.

Oh, and there’s SO MUCH MORE TO COME!

[CONTINUED IN PART 2! TOO MUCH FOR ONE POST TO CONTAIN!]

• > CROSBY CROSBY HOCKEY HOCKEY SWITZERLAND GOAL WIN SHOOTOUT CANADA CROSBY CROSBY 87 CROSBY. This is what most Canadians are currently discussing – most of them very drunk – so we’ll stick with that theme for every other bullet point.

• > Both are also carbon-based, and belong to the scientific class of “mammalian”: Hey, remember Ross Rebagliati? He’s that guy who smoked a ton of weed, then won us a gold medal in the 90s, then lost his medal, then got it back because for God’s sake, he’s a snowboarder, you IOC narcs. Anyways, he’s now a Liberal candidate in BC, and as a Godless bong-toking Monarchy-hating hippie, he’s also a favourite punching back of Tories. Also, Tories like making HIGH-LARIOUS puns about how Rebagliati is always high. Anyways, Jane Taber’s pooped out a bunch of words about how Ignatieff and Rebagliati are basically the same person. Irrefutable proof: both spent time outside of Canada, and both are hip with young people. These two vague descriptions could also describe about a million people other than Iggy and Rebaggy (another similarity: hard-to-spell names!). Justin Bieber is another person who has both travelled outside the country and is liked by young people, so we suggest the Liberals run him as a candidate in the riding of Toronto-Twitter.

• > SIDNEY CROSBY EATS SWISS CHEESE FOR BREAKFAST, AND SHITS EXCELLENCE.

• > The rumours of his death are greatly exaggerated: Gordon Lightfoot’s not dead, stop twittering it! Lightfoot now joins the illustrious ranks of other celebrities who were rumoured to be dead, like Margaret Thatcher, William Hung, Steve from Blue’s Clues, Britney Spears and Abe Vigoda. (As an aside, I’d give any organ in my body to be in a room with all of those people at once playing Twister.) Anyways, Lightfoot’s alive, so let’s all go to the bar and get more wrecked than the Edmund Fitzgerald.

• > SIDNEY CROSBY COULD WIN EVERY GOLD MEDAL IN THE OLYMPICS IF HE TRIED, BUT HE DOESN’T BECAUSE HE’S A REALLY NICE GUY. SIDNEY CROSBY COULD WIN THE MEN’S FIGURE SKATING GOLD BY STANDING PERFECTLY STILL AT CENTRE ICE AND STARING AT THE JUDGES UNTIL THEY CAVED IN.

• > Competition tighter than Charles Hamelin’s speedskating suit: Everyone’s pretty much forgotten about this silly “politics” thing recently, what with the much more exciting and attractive people competing in an obscure regional sporting event called the “Olympics”. Anyways, the Grits and Tories are just about statistically tied in the latest polls. The NDP trails with 16.5% of voters, with the Greens and Blocs hovering around 10%.

• > SIDNEY “THE SIDNEY CROSBY” CROSBY SHOOTS LIKE A SNIPER, MOVES LIKE A BALLERINA, LAYS DOWN MORE CHECKS THAN BOBBY FISCHER AND HAS MORE FINISHING MOVES THAN SUB-ZERO IN MORTAL KOMBAT.

• > And then there’s this: we remarked yesterday that Swiss curling skip Mirjam Ott and US Snowboarder Shaun White look pretty much identical. After the jump, WE’VE CREATED PROOF!

Why must we resort to fighting? Can't we just... dance our differences away?

Georges Laraque is a man born with such God-given badassery that he says “Good luck, man” before casually deciding to enter into a bare-knuckle face-punching contest with a loose acquaintance.

He’s also a vegan who, in semi-retirement, is putting his heft behind the Green Party.

BGL will probably be using his star power in Quebec, where he’s still enough of a big name to star in softcore porn-influenced commercials for alcoholic high-caffeine heart-attacks-in-a-can (here’s the link, in case you enjoy watching videos of sweaty French girls in bikinis play ball hockey, but are afraid to enter those terms into Google on the same computer your girlfriend uses.) Laraque has recently been associated with a shabby, disreputable gang of thugs operating out of Montreal calling themselves the Canadiens, but luckily he’s severed ties with this gang of lowly, widely-reviled trash. (Save the snarky comment, you’ve got nothing on me – my Leafs suck, and at least I know it.) He’ll now be focusing his talents (face-punching, etc.) towards a loosely-associated group of environment-nuts, rebellious teenagers and social Conservatives called the Green Party. It’s debatable whether Conservative Westerners should hold more contempt for him as a Montreal Canadien, as a Green Party spokesman, or as a black guy.

Now, let’s untangle the political connotations. Laraque’s a hockey goon, which is something of an anachronism in the field of modern sports: a man whose entire job is to commit common assault in exchange for millions of dollars, something akin to a mafia hit-man. The hockey goon appeals to the kind of knuckle-dragging, dart-hacking, beef-jerky-chewin’ good ol’ boy whose entire wardrobe consists of t-shirts they’ve gotten from 24-packs of Labatt Blue. And then you’ve got the Green Party, who love animals, the environment, and general topics that our aforementioned good ol’ boy would consider “some kinda queer stuff.” All of this, including a possible run for office by Georges in the future, will be playing itself out in Quebec – an already politically confused climate where the Bloc fights for the good-ol’-habitant vote, pockets of Grits and Tories aim for the masses, the NDP awkwardly fits itself into the fray, and the Greens have a motley crew of lefties and righties telling people to try vegan poutine.

OVERALL CONSEQUENCES: Nothing. You’ll never hear from this story again, Georges probably won’t run for office, but for 15 minutes during a prorogued parliament it was fun for political beat-writers to crank out articles about how a tough hockey guy was joining a bunch of wimpy hippies. Oh, the humourous juxtaposition!

[Source: G&M]