Olympics for the Rest of UsHow come they always have the same old sports at the Olympics? Run, jump, play with a ball — you've got to wonder whether the Olympic Committee isn't really a front for some very powerful dogs. Just because they call it "discus" doesn't mean it's not Frisbee. So where does that leave the rest of us — those who have been working for years on skills the committee has yet to recognize? With China aching to make a splash, maybe it's time for:
NEW OLYMPIC SPORTS FOR LARGE, BUT PREVIOUSLY NEGLECTED DEMOGRAPHIC GROUPS —Group: People Who Don't Know What Else To Do With Their Coffee-Table Books. Sport: Coffee-Table Tennis. Identical in most respects to table tennis, except instead of paddles, participants use "The Art of the Nude" or "Edward Hopper." —Group: Cuteness Addicts. Sport: WrestLing-Ling. Participants wrestle with giant pandas, tickle them and feed them bamboo. Be honest. Could you not watch? —Group: Frat Boys. Sport: Chicken Croquet. Drunken young men with mallets hit balls between the legs of angry chickens. Think this doesn't happen all the time? —Group: Couples. Sport: Real-World Boxing. Married couples are handed boxes containing brand-new printers. After assembling the parts, connecting them to computers and inserting any necessary cartridges (which must be retrieved from the opposite end of the field, where they have been sealed in clear plastic blister packs and twist-tied to a cardboard goal post), the devices are found to be defective and must be returned immediately. Couples who successfully fit each item back into its place with no missing pieces AND get the box to FedEx before 7 p.m. qualify for the finals: assembling, connecting, disconnecting and disassembling an Xbox while the wife's father calls out helpful suggestions from the couch. —Group: The Recently Unemployed. Sport: Hello, My Name Is Bob Sledding. In this first Olympic event open only to long-term workers suddenly laid off, participants hurling downhill feet first must "accidentally" run into five of their fellow sledders and exchange business cards. —Group: TV Pundits. Sport: Zugby. Zugby players tackle their Sunday morning guests to the ground then ask them what they're looking for in a tax plan. —Group: Mothers of Preschoolers. Sport: Sadmitten. One mitten, red with a snowman motif, has been lost somewhere in Beijing. —Group: Artsy, Aspen Types. Sport: Downhill Guggenheiming. On a shiny silver surface designed for China by Jeff Koons, skiers circle their way downhill, swooshing around giant Mylar breasts. —Group: American Tabloid Editors. Sport: Spears Tossing. Points won for the tossing of any reference to any member of the Spears family. —Group: Girl-Camp Counselors. Sport: Tug of S'more. Five molten s'mores are placed on a picnic table with 10 camper/counselor teams facing each other. Counselors who successfully persuade their camper to give the child across the table the bigger half advance to the Tug of Care Package. The top two teams compete in Tug of Summer Boyfriend. —Group: Frequent Fliers. Sport: Weightshifting. Participants saving the $15 American Airlines checked-baggage fee must stuff a wild boar into the overhead bin and remove him five hours later. Warning: Contents may have shifted. Or worse. —Group: Olympic Tourists. Sport: Buy Kwon Dough. Tourists are locked in the Olympic village gift shop for 20 minutes. Anyone to emerge without a giant pencil, folding fan or gold medal wins a gold medal. Second prize: folding fan. Third prize: giant pencil. Lenore Skenazy is a columnist at The New York Sun and Advertising Age. To find out more about Lenore Skenazy (lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
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