St. Patrick’s Day Live-Blog (and Eurotrip)!
Hello everyone-
I had hoped to get in another post or two before I departed, but alas – I had to slay a magical Irish History essay dragon. ‘Twas an epic and brutal fight that isn’t yet over.
Apologies for this post about nothing – I try to avoid these at all costs, but I have a important announcement:
I will be live-blogging St. Patrick’s Day in Dublin, Ireland.
Yep. All of the debauchery and destruction… live. The countless pints of Guinness, poured delicately from the tap… live. Forgetting my name by about 3PM, Marathon Monday style… live.
I’m a not a huge fan of Twitter – but in this case it’s an incredibly useful tool for accomplishing what I’d like to do. The link for is: http://twitter.com/mayh3m_blog or if you actually have twitter you can follow me: @mayh3m_blog. The live blog will start March 17, 2010 at around 10:00AM GMT (that’s about 5AM for all of you East Coast folks). If I can figure out how, I’ll put Twitter module on the sidebar so the tweets will show up here too.
Alright – now that I have that out of the way, expect a several new posts in the middle and the end of the month about my spring break trip to:
Barcelona –> Madrid –> Paris –> Amsterdam –> St. Pats in Dublin –> Geneva –> Grenoble
Well, I suppose I need to go catch a flight… Cheers!
NBC: 1, Olympic Spirit: 0
The Vancouver Olympics have officially ended, closing out with an unfortunate defeat of team USA in men’s hockey. This isn’t all too entertaining in its own right, but I was inspired to write about the Olympics after reading a pretty belligerent post I wrote four years ago about Bode Miller.
Living in Dublin during the Games has completely changed my perspective on the affair. I say this not because I watched them and was disappointed, but rather because I could not watch them and was disappointed.
During the entirety of the 2010 Winter Games, I think I watched less than one hour. I caught about five to ten minutes of slalom skiing at a bar one night by accident and I watched period two of the USA vs. Canada game in between doing homework. The only reason I was able to watch the hockey is because my friend’s parents (he/she will remain nameless for fear of intellectual property infringement by NBC/IOC) provided a live feed of their living room TV via Skype.
I can safely say that the degree to which NBC locked down the footage was despicable. Probably the only event I really wanted to watch was Snowboarding Half-Pipe, if only because the US/Australian girls are awesome and Shaun White is a legend. In fact, Shaun White became even more of a legend when he became the first athlete to complete a double mctwist 1260 on his gold medal victory run. Or so I hear. I haven’t seen the run yet – or any of the 2010 Vancouver snowboarding because NBC/IOC are being a copyright-Nazis on every possible video website on the Internet.
Shaun White and his tomato-colored mane getting some serious air off of the pipe.
I get it. NBC is in this for a big contract. They paid a lot of money to get exclusive rights. I’m a business student, not an idiot. But that’s just it – it’s all about the networks and has been for the last 10 years. Events are scheduled during American prime-time TV, not because we have more Olympic pride, but because it’s about advertising. It’s not “Olympic pride”, it’s manufactured pride. And if it isn’t, tell me why I can’t even watch one of my favorite athletes’ gold medal winning run just because I’m not in the USA.
I’ve been living for two months among friends from all over Europe. During the Winter Olympics, I think I heard them mentioned three times, and only one of those was by a non-American. There are Austrian, German, and French people here – none of whom mentioned the games once (all countries among the top 10 in the medal count).
Hating on the Olympics is not my intent here. I love having them on constantly for two weeks straight, watching the snowboarding, skiing, bobsledding, hockey… but the oversaturation of advertising and blatant commercialism has all but ruined this legendary affair. It’s no longer about the “Miracle on Ice”, it’s about whether Shaun White will endorse Campbell’s soup (his former nickname was “the flying tomato”).
In this age of information, NBC should not be putting up content walls and forbidding people in countries outside the US from watching clips of final events. They either need to make it open, or put it on YouTube under an official NBC Olympics banner. It’s unacceptable and frankly unfair to do anything less.
A hooligans’ game played by gentlemen
Picture yourself in a pub just miles outside Dublin. Rowdy Irish Rugby fans of all ages (literally children to adult) dot the bar stools and tables filling the entire place. England is up 16-13 after a 3-pt goal (field goal) and an edgy yet somber mood fills the air. There are 9 minutes left on the clock and England has possession. Ireland’s captain, Brian O’Driscoll took a knee to the head less than 10 minutes before and his game is over. The Irish regain possession and an Irish player takes the ball off of a line out. He’s running down the field. Shouts of “COME ON IRE’LAND!” echo throughout the pub. The ball is passed as the player meets the English line. Passed again, AND THE IRISH SCORE! The pub explodes in accented cheers! After a quick post-try goal, they’re up 20-16.
There are few things quite like watching a Six Nations rugby game in Dublin. Rugby has all the intensity and hard hitting of football without the pads. It’s a brutal game – all of the guys look like they could break me in half over their knee cap with one hand and yet they’re obscenely fast on the pitch.
Six Nations Rugby is particularly intense because it would be like taking the six best NFL teams, placing them in their own league, and the entire season is playoffs. You only get to play each team once, you don’t get another shot. Ireland, England, Wales, Scotland, Italy, and France make up the union and the UK/Ireland teams compete for the “Triple Crown” awarded to a team who can successfully beat each of the other three in one season. (Ireland won both last season.)
Another peculiar yet hilarious thing is Guinness Area 22, the official fan zone for the Ireland rugby team. It’s not so much that beer isn’t associated with football in the US, it’s just that I’ve never seen it so closely tied to the fan aspect of a sport. Literally every week, I get notifications for Guinness Area 22 sponsored events. As much as you’d see Gatorade or Powerade at a football game, you see Area 22 plastered everywhere. I suppose it demonstrates how deeply it’s rooted in the Irish beer drinking culture.
I’d obviously heard of rugby (and seen a bit of it) before I came to Ireland, as a couple of my high school teachers played the game at UIllinois and enjoyed regaling their college memories to the class. As well, I watched a ripped-off copy of “Invictus” in the first few weeks after being here, which got me into the sport. Despite this, I think had I not been exposed to the Irish rugby culture, I’d never have gotten into it at all, or not nearly as much as I am after seeing a few of the Six Nations games.
Irelands tries (touch down equivalent) in the RBS Six Nations Grand Slam 2009.