Unpopular Opinion: I Don't Give A Shit About The Olympics

Please don't talk to me about the Olympics. I don't care about organized sports and I encourage you not to either. PLUS: Write for Jane for $$!!

Hello doofuses!

Apparently I got so excited on Monday about giving you our best stuff for free that I forgot about the new policy of short intros only from me.* Any of you who are new here and don’t know (or care) what I’m talking about, you now have a say in the matter too if you want it, so here’s the bottom line: I have been banned from writing more than a paragraph or so here at the top of each email you get from me. If you want to check out some humdinger long-ass intros in my former style, here are a couple of verbose examples: one in which I ramble on about women who wronged me and another where I talk off the cuff about my Xanax addiction and miscarriage. Fun lighthearted stuff to glide through before you even get into the daily featured story itself. Tell me in the comments if you like them or if you agree with Charlie and pretty much everyone else here that, nope a paragraph from you is plenty, Jane. And before you read today’s piece from Shawna, here’s one quick question only: Which writers do you remember from Sassy or Jane magazine or XOJane? And would you like for me to ask them to write here also? ‘Cause I will.

I'll see you in those comments to talk about favorite writers and whatever is on your mind today, whether you read today’s story or any of this intro or not. If you prefer to get paid for your words, you can also pitch me your story ideas there or email them to me Jane@AnotherJanePrattThing.com.

I love you!

Jane

*Shorter intro means I WON’T tell you about how giving you AJPT’s most popular and monetizable stories for free reminded me of a vintage Celine wallet that I really really wanted for myself but gave to a friend and now regret because we stopped being friends, so that’s not a good example of the profound satisfaction that can come from giving away your most-loved stuff, but can I ask for it back? I will save that for the comments. I love you again.

By Shawna Willow

It started with the World Series. Innocently checking out groceries, “you lookin’ forward to the game?” I stop myself from asking which game, lest I cause a riot. This has proved an unpopular question in the past during Canadian sports seasons, producing many furrowed brows and looks of disbelief. “Oh yeah…” I avert my gaze and bag my asparagus. Pretend you’re one of them. Go Jays Go.

I remember when the Toronto Raptors (who I had to be constantly reminded was a basketball team) won the NBA championship (I even had to Google this) in 2019, I was living downtown in a condo building beside the team’s coach. The whole city was in revelry, I was gearing up a custody battle and trying to get sober. The bars stayed open late. Elevators packed with people making Airbnb sports pilgrimages . “How about them Raptors?” I rolled my eyes and took the stairs. God damn sports.

A good old shot of me partying somewhere in the bush, discussing the lemon cleanse with some hippies.

So, last week, when my well-meaning Father in law sent me this text (pictured below), with the addendum: “If you want to read the whole article, I could email it to you. Let me know”... I had to play nice. After all, he just lent us money for some vehicle repairs. I need to be friendly, but I absolutely cannot begin an exchange with him that will span the entirety of the Olympics. He’s retired, constantly online, and seems to thrive in the minutiae of inane data, often confronting me with morning screenshots to share his graphs, charts and infographics related to his blood pressure, sleep cycles, etc. As a person who engages with numeracy as little as possible, I’ve barely learned to manage his numerical proclivities without coming off as rude.

I knew going into these Olympics that a boundary had to be placed.

The illustrious text from my Father in Law

I responded with the friendliest, but firmest, tone I could manage: I’m not too interested in the Olympics but I do love Italia! I weigh in whether I should tell him about my aborted night of clubbing in Milan, about the British interior designer who picked me up at the performance art conference in Venice. Me and my friends are going clubbing in Milan tonight, you should come. I gave him my business card and ran off to buy wine and a universal phone charger, spent the night watching a Ke$ha documentary in my hotel room waiting for a text that never came. Whatever. My boyfriend back home wouldn’t have appreciated it anyway. But I’d always wanted to say I’ve been to Milan.

Which brings me back to the Olympics…ugh.

“My boyfriend, who had a large lacrosse stick tattooed on his calf muscle, purchased tickets to introduce me to his much-beloved game…. I went off to the liquor store.”

See, I’m not against all things Hellenistic. I grew up on Saturday mornings watching the foundational myths being retold in 1998 cartoon form on a show called Mythic Warriors. I studied the shit out of Greek tragedy in my theatre undergrad, regularly quote Sophocles like some artsy-fartsy asshole and have two feral chihuahuas named Zeus and Athena to boot. Ok, Zeus is the only feral one. Poor Athena is more often an innocent bystander. All this to say, my sentiments aren’t so much anti-Greek as anti-sports in general.

Zeus. I also have Athena and Freya (but we’ll stick to one pantheon for now).

Even as I write this, I look behind my shoulder for the bludgeoning that I assume is coming from somewhere for uttering such blasphemy. I picture my Mother, smoke in hand, yelling at the television as a bunch of men chase around a puck/a baseball/whatever. I think about my bestie, an 80 year old novelist/pugilist, who calls me up to troll me with sports trivia (one of his novels was titled, wait for it, Save Me, Joe Louis). And, as always, the omnipresent Whatsapp loving Father in law, who regularly left his family to take long, dangerous bicycle rides all over Europe/the Americas, and sends links to my husband about tour de France articles.

“With that orange-haired tyrant running amok below the border, it’s now thirteen dollars for a cabbage. Forgive the sportfishing reference, but I’ve got bigger proverbial fish to fry.”

I think about growing up in a small town, and the imported hockey players- aptly called THE WILDCATS- that would come down from the city and attend our high school classes, gang rape our classmates, and generally send the town into temporary pheromone, sports-induced chaos. I would steal vodka from my Stepdad and sneak the water bottle containing it into the games under my hoodie, chug rapaciously from the stands as We Will Rock You blasted out for the fiftieth time. I wonder what poor Freddie Mercury would think of all this? I chug again, allow his theatrical spirit to nourish me as I attempt to block out the fact that I’m at a sports game. I’d rather be watching Shakespeare.

Me with M.T. Kelly, my 80-year-old bestie and together again on the right at the beach trying to avoid my lawyer (who I thought I saw that day at said beach).

Which brings me to my next live sports experience, the ever-riveting lacrosse game that I was forced to attend in 2010. My boyfriend at the time, who had a large lacrosse stick tattooed on his calf muscle, had purchased tickets in order to “introduce me to” his much-beloved game. I reluctantly agreed, straightened my hair, slipped a Pinter play in my handbag and went off to the liquor store.

Me, in my theatre school, vodka chuggin’, sports hatin’ glory.

We got to the venue- a garish, massive stadium downtown teeming with sports folk- only to find out that they were checking bags. Just ditch the mickey, we’re gonna miss the face off. Unable to cope with the idea of facing hours of lacrosse without a buzz, I promptly went and drank the entire mickey in a bathroom stall. I drunkenly complained his ear off throughout the entire first half, focusing largely on how lame I thought lacrosse was, only to spend the last third of the game nose deep in the Pinter play. These sports people are insane, I would bellow into my cell phone to my gay theatre school classmate. My boyfriend was practically in tears. I was only waiting that relationship out anyway, needing someone to split the rent. I certainly wasn’t going to spend my forever with a sports fan. Especially not one with a tattoo of lacrosse. Yuck!

So when I heard a few weeks ago that the good ol’ Olympic games were gearing up in Milan, thanks to that text from my FIL, I began to make a plan to avoid them. It’s not that I don’t believe in the perspicacity of the human spirit, or am not inspired by the athletes and their dogged push towards greatness, glory and, more often, terrible injuries.

Me being campy, one of my favorite hobbies instead of sports. [I don’t know why this image has a number 15 on it, but I will take this opportunity to say that Shawna meekly, sweetly and self-effacingly withheld most of these photos until after the piece was published, so I am adding them in after the fact and encouraging everyone not to be shy or think it’s too self-promotional to include pictures of yourself here ever. They can add to the story! -Jane]

I remember tearing up when I was ten years old watching the 1998 figure skating with my Nana. A lone French skater named Surya Bonaly, knowing she wasn’t going to win, decided to abandon choreography and do a rebel backflip- much to the chagrin of the judges and the delight of the audience. What a badass! Notably, I also remember being offended on behalf of Canadian snowboarder Ross Rebagliati, who had his gold medal revoked for testing positive for marijuana. I had to Google this and, apparently, this was also 1998. So it’s been twenty plus years since I’ve given a shit.

Marijuana and unplanned backflips aside, I’m no longer ashamed to say that I don’t care about organized sports. I have a two year old who appears to be on track to breastfeed until he’s thirty, a sassy as hell eleven year old with head lice, and an upcoming art show called FLOOZY where I attempt to support my family with fine art photos of disassembled Barbie parts. I’m one of those “artsy fartsy”, high-falutin’ jerks who quotes Yeats with my geriatric bestie, attends odd performances in burnt out warehouses, and revels in opportunities to wear a petticoat under just about anything. I married someone with an art history major. We would rather discuss Marcel Duchamp’s readymades over breakfast than the results of the men’s slalom.

What I’m doing instead: Learning to yield a nit picker with gold medal precision.

So, if you are planning on texting me about the Olympics, please, don’t bother. With that orange haired tyrant running amok below the border, it’s now thirteen dollars here for a cabbage. Forgive the sportfishing reference, but I’ve got bigger proverbial fish to fry. Unless you have some tips on weaning an adolescent, promoting an art show, or getting rid of head lice, I’m good in my little art-bubble. Even if we have to borrow money from my sports-loving Father in Law until that elusive day when we make it in the arts, I’m happy to say that I couldn’t care less. Bah humbug to the Olympics, basketball season, hockey season, and all that jazz. We can wipe ourselves with our arts degrees when we run out of toilet paper.

Also what I’m doing instead.