beth, that link was fabulous! i'm now watching all his other vids.

It also led me to Olga Korbut's high bar routine from 1972, which, damn.

The CBC has had some athletes and journalists keep blogs of their Olympic experience. The swimming commentator, who competed for Canada in the '72 Olympics, has a great post about a near miss with the hostage-takers in Munich.

[link]

The movie “Munich” by Stephen Spielberg opens with the terrorists readying to hop the Athletes Village fence at 4 a.m. There are also four American athletes in the movie version who, after some jovial chatter, all jump the fence.

This is not accurate. They were not American athletes; it was me and three other Canadians. And there was most certainly no camaraderie among the two groups, who stayed 50 metres apart from one another.

I've just never heard people chant an area code as a sign of city loyalty,

Really? I've heard it a lot. Mostly in rap songs.

Ah -- see, no wonder I wasn't familiar with it. I'm not really down with the rap music and the bling and The Nati, dig?

And yeah, I think of area codes as being A Thing. Like, you know, hoes in different area codes.

Area Codes in which Ludacris Claims to Have Hoes

Really? I've heard it a lot. Mostly in rap songs.

French rap does this too, with a lot of references to the "93" (93 being the department code for Seine-Saint-Denis, a rough neighborhood just north of Paris).

“Ludacris has hoes in the Midway and Wake Islands. Only scientists are allowed to inhabit the Midway Islands, and only military personnel may inhabit the Wake Islands. Draw your own conclusion.”

Heh.

There is a whole set of social markers that go with each LA area code. In general, I find it pretty eyerolly but that may be because I'm from the "rich and snobby" area code and yet live in a solidly middle class, boringly residential neighborhood and can't really identify with either rich or snobby.

Remember 'go outside and play?'

For younger readers, I'll explain this archaic concept. It worked like this: The child or children in the house -- as long as they were over age 4 or so -- went to the door, opened it, and ... went outside. They braved the neighborhood pedophile just waiting to pounce, the rusty nails just waiting to be stepped on, the trees just waiting to be fallen out of, and they "played."

"Play," incidentally, is a mysterious activity children engage in when not compelled to spend every hour under adult supervision, taking soccer or piano lessons or practicing vocabulary words with computerized flashcards.

...

Thirty years ago, the "going out to play" culture coexisted with other culturally sanctioned forms of independence for even very young children: Kids as young as 6 used to walk to school on their own, for instance, or take public buses or -- gulp -- subways. And if they lived on a school bus route, their mommies did not consider it necessary to escort them to the bus stop every morning and wait there with them.

But today, for most middle-class American children, "going out to play" has gone the way of the dodo, the typewriter and the eight-track tape. From 1981 to 1997, for instance, University of Michigan time-use studies show that 3- to 5-year-olds lost an average of 501 minutes of unstructured playtime each week; 6- to 8-year-olds lost an average of 228 minutes. (On the other hand, kids now do more organized activities and have more homework, the lucky devils!) And forget about walking to school alone. Today's kids don't walk much at all (adding to the childhood obesity problem).

Never having heard of a nickname for St. Louis being "the Lou".

Nelly! He's from the Lou and he's proud!

Nelly! He's from the Lou and he's proud!

Yeah, I knew he was from St. Louis but I didn't know it was called The Lou!!

I know now!

I still think "Princess of The Lou" when heard out loud makes me think "Princess of the Loo" and the bathroom...