MY OLYMPIC LOVE AFFAIR

The Olympics ended last night in Turin, Italy and as I was watching the closing ceremonies, several thoughts went through my head. This is a lot of clowns. Wow, Avril Lavigne has gotten hot. Did they say Ricky Martin is up next? Ricky Martin? Seriously? And through all of it there was one I kept coming back to.

I love the Winter Olympics.

I love the events. I love the adrenaline rush of watching speed skaters run the short course for scant seconds. I love watching ski jumpers hang in the air for what seems like forever. Who wakes up one day and simply says, "hey, I think I'm going to strap some skis on and go flying through the air for the length of a football field or so." How do you train for that? Is there a ball pit you land in the first couple of times? I love the bobsled. The sprint, the entry and taking the curves as the clock ticks along. I love that clock and the fine people at Omega that bring it to us. I love how entire nations can be enthralled by a couple of people with brooms clearing the way for a big stone.

I love the biathlon. I mean I Love the biathlon. I love the beauty and the strength of pair’s figure skating. The women may only weigh 50 pounds carrying two bags of 20 pound cement, but the men are still holding them in the air, with One Hand, On Ice. If you can't be impressed by that, I feel sorry for you. I love the cross-country pursuit. I remember my dad not wanting to watch when it started and by the end sitting in the same room yelling, not cheering mind you but outright yelling, for Katerina Neumannova to push just a little bit harder as Kristina Smigun of Estonia crept past her to win by less than 2 seconds.

"I love that clock and the fine people at Omega that bring it to us."

I love that the entire nation of Japan is going to be celebrating Shizuka Arakawa and her gold medal in figure skating. She won Japan’s first skating gold and the only medal Japan saw all Olympics. They’re eating medal shaped donuts in Japan in honor of her. I love that Mongolia still sends athletes to the games though they've never won anything, ever. The first Mongolian winter Olympians just showed up in 1964 with their skis looking to compete without ever filling out an application. Just showed up in Innsbruck, Austria. You'd think if you were going to travel all the way across Asia you'd make sure you were invited. I love Mongolia even more than when I started this paragraph. I love that people from tiny towns in New England compete in the same games as the crown prince of Monaco. I love that the crown prince of anywhere competes in the Olympics.

I love seeing the potential for humanity. I love thinking that if the world came together more often than every four years and put as much effort into feeding the hungry and healing the sick as they do in ski jumping or speed skating and if they spent as much money on education and housing as they do on opening and closing ceremonies how amazing this world would be. How great this planet would be. I love thinking if the love and brotherhood of the Olympics were able to multiply after the games were gone how quickly peace would come to the world.

That's what I was thinking about last night.

But seriously, Ricky Martin? He's not even Italian!

WEDNESDAY'S WORD 2-22-06

Hello loyal readers. In an effort to keep you coming back more than just once a week, I promised to post occasionally outside of my Monday column. This is one of those occasionallies. I call it the Wednesday Word, even though it's not "a word" so much as a thought or idea or rant. Today's will be a short one, just to get your feet wet.

WORZALA'S WEDNESDAY'S WORD
If you work in an office and you know the main receptionist is going to be gone all week leaving just the second string receptionist at the position, and you know the second string receptionist already has a lot on his or her plate including mailing, faxing, answering 9 phone lines for 6 different stations, finding prizes, entering agriculture market numbers and stories and occasionally making sure stations are still on the air, AND you've known about an upcoming event for several months, please don't give that second string receptionist a time intensive project on Wednesday that you want done by Friday, Monday morning at the latest.
Why?
1) It's rude.
2) It makes him or her who has been handed the task feel unappreciated.
3) It makes it really, really difficult to put up a Wednesday's Word in a timely manner.
Remember, Be Excellent To Each Other.

And there you have it, the inaugural Wednesday's Word. We're just making memories left and right aren't we?

LAY OFF MY DICK

All right, all right. Enough is enough already, okay? Vice-President Dick Cheney shot Harry Wittington in the face last weekend when the two were out hunting. We know, everyone knows. Even people in Africa know. They probably don't care since much of the continent spends their free time trying to not, you know, get AIDS, but they know. And knowing is half the battle. That's something G.I. Joe taught me. G.I. Joe also taught me that every sailor has a parrot and an anchor tattoo, but that's beside the point.

The point is that some people out there, Commie sympathizers mostly, want to paint Vice-President Cheney as a gun-totting psycho whose careless and reckless behavior with a loaded firearm very nearly ended Harry Wittington’s life last weekend. To those people I say, move back to Russia, Ivan. Or, if you're already in Russia, stay there… I guess. Richard B. Cheney is many things: conservative, compassionate, idealistic, caring, and even a little dreamy in the right lighting, but one thing he is not is careless and reckless. ... Two things he is not. ... Are not. ... Moving on.

There are a lot of people on this Cheney Bashin' Bandwagon, and while that may be a great name for a band, I'd like to ask everyone on that wagon to remember the words of Jesus before jumping to judgment. "Let he who is without sin condemn a man for shooting someone else in the face while hunting in Texas." And that's from The Bible, which, I might point out, is the best selling book of all time, and unlike James Frey's lie fest, is absolutely true. But I bet that some of you still aren’t convinced that Cheney did nothing wrong in that Texas wilderness. Well then, what if I drop this additional nugget of wisdom on you? Harry Wittington is a were-quail.

"COO! COO!" You turn your head and bearing down on you is a quail the size of a 78-year old Austin attorney

That's right, a were-quail. Like the more famous werewolf, were-quails are ordinary people cursed to transform from human form into large and ferocious quails. Unlike werewolves, who suffer their transformations on nights of a full moon, were-quails are most likely to transform on weekends in February, July and November. This is especially true in Texas.

So put yourself in the Vice President's shoes, faithful reader. You're out with your good lawyer friend looking forward to a nice day of quail shooting. You're in a truck, maybe singing along to the new George Strait CD, not a care in the world. Economy is strong, the country is respected, the war is going well, and your Secret Service detail has finally started calling you "Vanilla Gorilla." You step out of the car and load your gun, behaving in both a safe and courteous manner when all of a sudden "COO! COO!" You turn your head and bearing down on you is a quail the size of a 78-year old Austin attorney, flapping like it means business, with a loaded gun in its’ talons. What would you do in that situation good reader? What Would You Do??

Well I'll tell you what Richard B. Cheney, Vice President of the U.S. of A did. To protect himself, his entourage and the little blind nun that had stumbled on the scene he gunned that were-quail down. So do not cry for Harry Wittington, only silver birdshot can kill a were-quail, and he will heal with time. Instead cry for Dick Cheney and his loss of innocence. If a sitting Vice President can't go hunting with a 78-year old Texas lawyer safely, whom can he go hunting with?

Seriously, who? Cheney's looking for volunteers.

RIDING THE STORM OUT

Really, I probably brought this on my self.

On Wednesday everyone was talking about the incoming snowstorm that was supposed to hit Wisconsin Thursday. We had headlines like "Storm of The Year!", "Hook Up The Dog Sleds!", and "How Will Snow Affect Brett Favre?!" Now everyone knows the media is controlled by crazy liberals, and its not uncommon for meteorologist to promise us the next Ice Age only to have everyone wake up to a light dusting the next day. Knowing this, I scoffed at the reports of 8 to 12 inches for Thursday and openly mocked the forecast to most of my friends. After all, I'm a hard-hitting journalist with a ton of awards, none of which are currently available to show to you. We'll be lucky to get an inch, I said.

We wound up getting 10. And that’s not counting drifts high enough to bury a six year old.

Everything was closing around us. Schools, colleges, businesses, factories, bridges, you name it and we were getting cancellation calls about it. Of course we didn't close. No, that would have made sense. So at 5 p.m. I ventured out into the snow and the wind to make my way home. No big deal, I thought. I've driven in snow before, all you need to do is be cautious, pump your brakes and give the car ahead of you some room. I'll be fine, I assured myself. Matt Worzala fears no weather!

9 P.M.- Attempt to leave Mike and Peggy's. That's right, Attempt.

Here's how the next 7 hours of my life went:
5 p.m.- Get my 2001 Chevy Malibu stuck in a plow drift driving out of work parking lot. Have to be dug out by co-worker with a shovel.
5:45 p.m.- Get stuck turning onto the street to my house. Dig myself out with a camp shovel I get from my house after I walk a block and a half to grab it.
6:00 p.m.- Drive to Mike and Peggy's house. Why? The lure of free spaghetti and Survivor. Now, I HAD spaghetti and could have watched Survivor from my own house. But, in my defense, I am an idiot.
6:10 p.m.- Get stuck in Mike and Peggy's driveway. Dug out by a neighbor clearing his sidewalk.
7:10 p.m.- Craig arrives at Mike and Peggy's, offers to switch the cars around in the driveway since he will be spending the night.
7:12 p.m.- Craig informs me he's gotten my car stuck in the street. It takes four men and a truck to free it.
9 p.m.- Attempt to leave Mike and Peggy's. That's right, Attempt. Car refuses to start. Try jumping the car, nothing. Call AAA for a tow truck.
10:45 p.m.- Tow truck arrives. Says battery is fine, I just need gas. Does not offer to get gas, just leaves. Car is still not starting. I started the day with 3/4 of a tank.
11:00 p.m.- Roommate arrives with spare gas tank. I empty the tank into car. Surprise, car still does not start.
11:30 p.m.- Call AAA again for a tow to a garage. They can't send a tow truck out till Friday morning. "Is the vehicle still where I left it?" No, I drove it home, I just wanted to talk.

So I was forced to leave the car at my friend's house with an early morning tow truck arrival scheduled. Minutes before the truck arrived Craig tried the car and it started. Since then I've had it refuse to start once and conk out on me twice.

I'm spending the rest of winter at home. In bed. With the lights on.

In The Big Inning

Isn't this exciting? I'm excited. You should be too.
Hi there, my name's Matt Worzala and you've stumbled upon my own little corner of the web universe. Or the "Weverse" as the kids call it. I don't know why they call it that, that name sucks, but that's kids for you. Darn kids.

I wrote a column for the University of Wisconsin for two years and now I'm taking the act on the road, so to speak. At least here I don't have to worry about people leaving the page laying on the floor after reading the comics and doing the crossword puzzle. At least... I don't THINK you can do that.

"Welcome to my little corner of the Weverse"

I'm going to make you this promise right now, you come back every Monday and you're going to find a new column to read. That's a guarantee*. And heck, if you come back on days other than Monday you might find something new as well. Maybe a skit, maybe a short story, maybe just some random thing that I thought was funny. I don't really know at this point.

That's why it's an adventure.

See you again real soon.
Matt Worzala

*not an actual guarantee