I'm not much of a sports lover, but the other day I found myself at the opening ceremony of the Special Olympics. This sporting event is held every four years and mirrors the usual olympic events, only in the Special Olympics you need an intellectual disability before you can take part. This is the first year the event has taken place outside the United States of America. Being in the crowd for a big event is a somewhat strange experience... there is always the creeping suspicion that you are there not to be an audience yourself, but to appear on television as an audience. the coloured flags they distributed to turn sections of the stadium into solid blocks of colour certainly contributed to this. but getting to wave the flags enthusiastically all the time was essentially enjoyable. Less successful were the organisers attempts to discipline we flagwavers. They had these cheerleader types down the front holding up big placards telling us what to do with the flags, while shouters would shout instructions. Sadly when you have a load of flagwavers in front of you it was a bit hard to see what the placards said, and the noise of cheering drowned out the shouters. Still, some amusement did ensue from the process. One of the placards contained the word "SHIMMY", but the shouters all seemed to render this as "SHIM-MAY!" like on South Park. it was great fun cheering for all the athletes, who were themselves delighted at the proceedings. the Iraqi team got a standing ovation. The USA team did as well, partly because they had Muhammed Ali as a celebrity supporter. the other great feature of the USA team was that it made up at least a fifth of all the athletes, suggesting a hope for winning medals by weight of numbers. There was a lot of music at the event. The Corrs were rather lame, but they did prove a hit with the intellectually disabled. There were a number of drumming based acts, all reminiscent of popular Japanese mentalists Kodo, so I thought they were G*R*A*T*E. Samantha Mumba's almost certainly mimed R&B fluff was poptastic, U2's performance a bit generic, but the actual musical highlight was a performance of that Riverdance. Taking a leaf from the USA team, the largest EVER line of Irish dancers was assembled, something like a hundred strong. The sound of two hundred feet tapping away on the stage completely drowned out the orchestra behind them, a moment of extreme strikingness. Sadly Belle & Sebastian did not get to play, as they are neither Irish nor special. anyway, enough shite about sport. now let me tell me why I am going to be unsubscribing for a little while. It is because I am going to the Glastonbury Festival tomorrow. who knows, perhaps I might see some of you there. usual shoutouts apply - Pinefox, ~Stine, Foranotherdream, Carsmile, etc. you know who you are. bless you all, ian +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+