This is the third time I’ve written this post, and for whatever reason, WordPress refuses to save the draft and when I come back to it later, it’s MIA. It’s the bronze medal post, I guess.

Speaking of bronze medals, how good were Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier in their final performance? Vincent is one of my favourite songs (mostly through the NOFX version, but the Don McLean version is also great, which is what they used).

I’m not a figure skating expert by any means, but I always question the subject nature of the judging.

I mean, France was good, and the Americans technically sound, but Piper and Paul brought actual tears to my eyes. The story, the skill, the moment – I legitimately cried. How the fuck that rated a bronze is beyond me. The Kazakhs were brilliant as well, their high energy performance was head and tails above the eventually top two finishers.

The Americans shouldn’t even have rated. Sure, they were technically perfect, but there was nothing eventually remotely connective about the performance. Nothing about it touched me in any way. Nothing even seemed to be connected to the source material, in which they were were the fourth team to do Romeo and Juliet. The only part that actually seemed to be connected to the story was the ending, in which I’m pretty sure one of them stabbed themselves?

I thought they died by poison?

Anyway, Vincent was the performance of the games, better than any other performance we saw, and we’re very proud. Fuck the judges. Fuck America.

Paul and Piper, you were fucking brilliant – one of the all-time great performances ever at an Olympics.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 1419 words, short story: Ultra Mundane

Read: Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Comics: Fables 156-159
Music: 50 Cent Essentials, 50 Cent

Everything is wonderful and collapsing.

Shared experiences are kind of fun, as a community, as a country.

I’m not exactly a patriot, but I believe in the values we profess – kindness, strength through community, an independent and welcome demeanour.

Sit down and have a beer beer, bud. We’re going to game six together.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1698 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: The Faded Sun: Kesrith, C.J. Cherryh
Comics: Grifter/Badrock 2, Vogue 2, Youngblood v2 3, Chapel v2 5
Music: Wicked Nature, The Vines

I finally feel a little liberated. I honestly never gave a shit about football, but like many of us, I trudged out to some kind of Superbowl party every year, to watch two teams I did not care nor know anything about battle it out.

I used to say it was for the commercials, but I only buy experiences and not stuff now (at least, as much as possible – I still have to clothe myself, wash dishes, that sort of thing), so I don’t really give a fuck. Functional or experiential, not collectible.

Most commercials are shit anyway, trying way too hard. Wazzup wasn’t that funny.

Plus, the orange menace was going to be there, because, of course, he fucking was, and the less I see of that absolute piece of garbage, the better.

The half-time show is occasionally interesting, but I lost interest after they forced the Red Hot Chili Peppers to lip sync. I have seen anyone I actually cared to see since Tom Petty.

(Scratch that, the year with Eminem was pretty good).

So, yeah, I did what’s now become our new tradition and a much more enjoyable one – the Puppy Bowl followed by a movie.

A glass of wine.

Maybe a shot of cream liqueur, because we fancy.

Or some shit.

Anyway, enjoy your sport named after another sport that doesn’t have anything to do with the original sport and has very little to do with feet connecting with balls, making it aptly misnamed.

America. You’re so predictably boring, and your favourite sport?

It’s tedious as all get-out.

Target: 1100 words
Written: 108 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: The Personal MBA, Josh Kaufman
Comics: Images Of Shadowhawk 2-3, Shadowhawk v3 1-2
Music: In Between Evolution, The Tragically Hip (feels like where we are now, on the cusp of an evolutionary leap, or complete destruction.)