CLOSING CEREMONIES
If you gave Debbie Allen $20 million, you'd have the Salt Lake 2002 Winter Games Closing Ceremonies. It was indiscernible from SOLID GOLD 2002 - Live on Ice!.

I commend the person who got the funding for:
1.) Bon Jovi, Moby, Charlotte Church, Donny & Marie, Willie Nelson and *NSYNC all on the same stage.
2.) KISS, Kristi Yamaguchi and Katarina Witt all on the ice
3.) 40,000 people having a snowball fight with enormous cottonballs
4.) Thousands of 5 ft white beachballs avalanching down on the audience
5.) Savion Glover and a Russian ice dancer doing a center-ice, tap routine (no funk, some noise) (White Nights II)

and to end it all

6.) Thousands of gallons of day-glow paint splashed all over the stadium and blacklit and then the athletes of the 2002 games coming down and rolling around it it. They also threw the beachballs back at us and bum-rush Moby's stage.

It was well choreographed pandemonium and I loved it.

CHUCK JONES
1912-2002

a note from Josh:

There's just a little less light in the world this weekend. Chuck Jones, the man responsible for giving two-dimensional cartoon characters more life, warmth, and humor than most 3-D actors can muster, passed away at the age of 89.

The word, "Genius" gets knocked around a lot, almost to the point where it has no meaning. But Chuck Jones was a genius. He could take five minutes of film, and fill it with brain-splitting comedy, lightning-quick dialogue, and even actual moments of pathos. Watch his cartoon, "Feed the Kitty," where a big, dumb bulldog thinks the kitten he adopted has been turned into a cookie. I've already explained too much. Just watch it, and try not to get a little misty.

Chuck Jones had a body of work as big as the 24th and 1/2 Century. Sure, there are his brilliant Warner Brothers cartoons, your, "One Froggy Evening," "What's Opera Doc," "Duck Amuck"...

"Duck Amuck." Man. A 4 and a half minute thesis on post-modernism that could make milk shoot out of your nose. And his work didn't stop with Warner Brothers. In the 1960's, Jones put out abstact shorts like, "The Dot and the Line," and, "The Bear that Wasn't," that challenged the public's very notions of animation. And, of course, they were very, very funny. Everything he touched turned to funny.

I can safely say that I wouldn't be doing what I do (whatever it is I do), if it wasn't for the countless hours of Chuck Jones's brilliance that I absorbed over the years.

Animation is a weird, flimsy thing these days. It pains me that kids grow up lumping Bugs Bunny together with Picachu. It doesn't seem right. Chuck Jones made cartoons art. And he made them live, breathe, sing, dance, and,,,

He made them good.

And he made us laugh.

I miss him already.

--Josh A. Cagan

LAST DAY OF COMPETITION
The Women's 5000 Meter was the last event for the Utah Olympic Oval speed skating venue. The world-record holder was hoping to break her own record and some Dutch, Canadian, and even US skaters were ready to make their mark in this marathon event.

GOLD
As expected, Claudia Pechstein took back the the world record, which had been gleefully broken by a Dutch skater just an hour before. After the event, Claudia became totally distracted with the wig she'd brought to wear during the flowers ceremony (it added black and red -- the colors of the German flag -- to her blond hair). She seemed oblivious that the President of Germany happened to be in the audience and had been brought to center ice to congratulate her.

SILVER
I think I've been clear that Dutch are nuts about speed skating. When their super-cute, pop-star-like Greta Smit won the silver, Holland House just about blew up that night:

1.) The not-ready-for-Utah banner we had to take down in the stands was back up on the bar.
2.) I finally realized that the Disney-like march we'd been dancing to for weeks was Greta's theme song. It's a bunch of Dutch words, then "Greta, Greta Smit" repeated hundreds of times.
3.) Her entrance into Holland House couldn't be topped by Madonna walking the Castro.
4.) She was still doing stage dives when I left.

BRONZE
The allure of Olympic trading pins finally struck me. Here's how it happened:

When the Canadian underdog, Clara Hughes, surprised everyone (including herself, I think) and took the bronze, she could only stop giggling long enough to hyperventilate. One by one, skaters and coaches from her team came up to me asking if we could get her husband down to the press room to help her through the interviews (i.e., hold her hand).

I couldn't let him. He didn't have any (let alone the "right") credentials. But the requests kept coming, they were all coupled with the seldom heard "please" and she was just so excited. Before too long, I broke and devised a way to get him a pass. Some fast talking, then he was set and by her side.

Later, things had quieted. The Canadians had finished the media mix and were off to the press conference, when the first coach who had asked me to help appeared. She quickly placed something in my hand and sheepishly said, "All I have left is the Cheerios one. Thanks again." And she was off.

I looked in my hand and there was a thumbnail-size, metal-cast, red maple leaf with a bright yellow Cheerios box inset in the middle.

I love this pin.

SILVAN
Many thanks to DJ Silvan at the Holland Heineken House for taking the extra time to explain to all the Americans how to do the Dutch "hands in air" dance, the "crouching and marching in a circle" dance, and the "bouncing and yelling 'Anton'" dance.

The dance mix version of John Denver's "Country Road" defied explanation, however.

DEREK'S MOM
see below for back story
In anticipation of Derek doing very well again, his mom and I worked out a carefully timed scenario in which she would call Tiffany in Florida, meet me in the stands, dial the cell phone and then hand it to me. It would be my job to navigate the back-of-house area, locate Derek, hit [TALK], confirm that
Tiffany was on the line, then hand him the phone.

When the work it took to win his last two medals dragged him out of medals contention, I was sorry we wouldn't run our little relay. It pleased me that, though he finished 13th, we ran it anyhow. It seemed just as important to all.

FIGURE SKATING
How can it be that watching beautiful, young, scantily clad women dance on ice is considered less than manly?

I did my best to butch it up.
Last night, I watched Women's Finals from a Park City sports bar, eating red meat, drinking bourbon, and shouting a lot.
And yet, as I felt Michelle's stumble, Sarah's brilliance, and Irina's icy technicality, I couldn't help but think, "I'm totally a chick right now."

I CAN GO HOME HAPPY
I met Winston Alexander Watt and Oneil Lascelles Brown, the Jamaican Bobsled Team. They finished a respectable 28th out of 37 and set a track start record in the process (4.78 seconds).

Guess which one is me.

WORD TO THE HOT
A quick piece of advice if you're pretty hot and trying to enter a secure location: Some (a very few) male security personnel will kick the magnetometer to make it sound an alarm as you pass.
Why?
So they may ask you to step to the side and "wand" you.

My request:
Call them on it. I'd love to see their faces. Or at least tell them to send over a female wander. Or both.

FYI.

METALS
I went to the Olympic Plaza tonight to see the metals given to today's winners. The best part:

Seeing twenty-thousand people take off their hats as your nation's anthem begins.

CELL RELAY
So, we set up a better system for getting medalists families to the ice after competition. However, the system went untested today when a German woman won the Women's 1500 meter. She had no family there..

We discovered a new wrinkle though: Just as the flower ceremony was about to start, a German coach (who didn't have the right passes to get very close) was desperately trying to get a cell phone to the new champion. I ran toward him, explained that he could not go up to the ice and then promised to take the phone to the skater.

I ran up the stairs to her, smiled, and handed her the phone.
"Who is it?", she asked.
And I could only say, "I have no idea."

I'm an idiot. I didn't even check to make sure the guy was her coach. It could have been anyone.
I learned that it was, indeed, her family, and I was told that she left the phone on so her folks could hear the ceremony live, with her.

TIFFANY KICKED MY ASS
It's my job (and the hardest part of it) to make sure only properly accredited people get to the ice for the flower ceremony (which is immediately after competition -- metals are later in the Olympic Plaza). I have a corps of five men and women who assume a triangle, tactical posture to defend the ice. I'm at the top to catch anyone who pushes past the others. We've turned back lots of really mad and unaccredited Russian, German, and American trainers, coaches, and friends.

Derrek Parra came from nowhere (well, Orlando) to take the silver in the Men's 5000m on the first day of competition. Tiffany Parra flew in this week to see her husband go for the gold in his best event, the 1500m. When he broke the world record and took the gold, Tiffany (5'3", 125 lbs.) went flying past three check points and me (6'1", 200 lbs.) to get to her husband. There was just absolutely no stopping her.

I was annoyed at some of my peers who directed her and cheered her run -- until I saw them on NBC tonight.
But it won't happen again! (We set up a better system for athlete families.)

GUNS AND SNOW AND ICE
We were thinking of other games that might be improved by the inclusion of guns -- the way Biathalon improved upon boring old cross-country skiing:
1.) Bobsled - A couple of sled-mounted rifles and targets on the track. The expensive track-side seats would sure drop in price.

2.) Figure Skating - Michelle Kwan with a couple of six shooters would be dreamy. I'd pay to hear Scott Hamilton say "Salchow! -- Pow! Pow!"

3.) Curling - Give the opposing team a 12-gauge and two shells -- Americans would start paying attention. You'd have to work around the divets.

Biathalon
We went to the Women's 4x4 7.5km Relay Biathalon yesterday, on my day off. We had a blast and I'm amazed at the athletisism and the skill required to cross country ski the 7.5km track and then shoot five targets, then do it again. And they are just amazing marksmen (markspersons).

Here's my question:
We are a nation of guns! How can the USA come in 15th out of 15 teams?

CANADA II
Sunday night, after competition and after most spectators had gone, the last two spectators asked me if the medalists were going to come out and sign autographs. I had to explain to this very sweet looking 12-year-old boy and his cowboy-hat-wearing dad that the medalists were in Doping Control and then had press conferences: they wouldn't be out for a long time. The boy then asked if any other Olympic athletes would mind giving an autograph.

Just then I saw a weeping skater walking away from an interview and thought maybe these two needy individuals could do each other some good. I motioned to the skater and she looked at the kid. She walked up to him, saw what he wanted and then proceeded to look past him -- as if he just wasn't there. Then she just walked aimlessly away. Everyone around me sucked in a little breath. It was one of the coldest things I've ever seen.

As I was giving up on humanity, two Canadians came up the stairs. I walked over to the skater and explained (quickly) that there was a boy waiting who was desperately in need of an autograph. She walked out, talked to him about how she skated that day, how she thought others did and wrote him a note on the front of his ticket.

The traces of the earlier snub were immediately gone from the kid's face and Canada had a new best friend.
All was right with the world.
Oh, Canada!

FIELD OF PLAY
The one entrance to the Field of Play (center ice) has been increasingly difficult to maintain. Everyone wants to go up and talk with the athletes and get on NBC. People don't have the right credentials (so we send them away) or they just leave them in the locker rooms.

Best quote so far:
A Canadian skater kept approaching the stairs up to the ice, only to be told that, for security purposes, we had to stop everyone, even if we knew them:
"I'm not a security threat: I'm Canadian"

He had a point.

THE MIX
The Media Mix is the gauntlet that every skater must run after they race. Whether they fall or set records, they have to walk the 50 ft room lined with TV cameras and photographers, reporters and, yesterday, Conan O'Brien. The room is long and narrow and bisected with bike-rack barricades to keep the press back. It is further divided in to 5-foot stalls that each country must fit into. It's obvious when a skater reaches their home country, because that stall erupts with activity.

Yesterday was day two of the women's 500 meter. They combine the scores from two days of skating to determine the winner. On day one a Chinese woman fell on the ice and was out of the running entirely. She still had the courage to skate on day two, had a pretty good time, made it through the media mix with grace -- and only as she entered the locker room did she start to cry.

She's my favorite skater so far.

ITALY
I'm not welcome in Italy. I don't know exactly what he said, but based on the reaction of the Italians with him, I shouldn't let him find me in Italy.

12:43 AM