They’re going to have the Olympics this year, right?

Maybe I’m in my own zone. Or maybe I’m out of touch with the rest of the world. But I feel like I should be overwhelmed by something. And I barely know that something exists.


The 2012 Olympics start in just over a month and I feel like I’ve barely heard anything about it. 

Sure, there have been a couple stories in the sports pages here and there about teams qualifying, but hardly the bombardment I would expect.

It seems to me that prior to the last summer Olympics NBC was promoting the upcoming games the previous summer. In fact, I recall getting sick of the Olympics prior to them even beginning.

I’ll be honest, I’m not a huge fan of the summer Olympics. I much prefer the winter ones. There’s just cooler events in the winter: skiing, skating, hockey, bobsleigh, the luge and ski jumping. I’m even a fan of curling for some reason. In the summer the offerings are running, jumping, wrestling and gymnastics. Oh, and badminton. Yawn.

It’s not like I’ve been waiting for the Olympics and disappointed about the missing ads, but after a lifetime of conditioning, their absence is noted.

It makes me wonder. Is NBC not looking forward to this year’s Olympics? Did they get hate mail last time around and decide to hold off on the bombardment? Is the overwhelming crush of ads coming soon? Should I steer clear of watching NBC? 

Maybe I have been steering clear and just didn’t realize it. Truth be told, I don’t watch too much TV and most of what I do watch, I skip over the commercials, but nonetheless, I still feel like the Olympics should be everywhere and they’re not.

Instead, the presidential election is everywhere. All the time. News. Polls. Scandals. You name it, we’re inundated with the stuff.

Now, anyone who knows me knows that I love politics. It’s what I went to school for. It’s my most-often talked about thing in this column. But I feel lately that I could use a respite from politics. By lately, I mean since the Reagan administration. 

Frankly, I’ll be happy to replace the humdrum of politics with the humdrum of fencing and handball for two weeks. 

My favorite part of the Olympics, actually, is usually the opening ceremonies. The events themselves rarely live up to my expectations. The lighting of the cauldron, however, always seems magical to me. 

The best cauldron lighting I’ve ever seen was in Barcelona in 1992. It was the one where the archer shot the arrow over the cauldron and it caught fire. I have that image embedded deep in my psyche. It’s a good image. Beats the heck out of John Kerry looking like a deranged muppet in the crazy space suit. I have that image burned into my skull, too. 

I’m sure that come late July, we’ll find more iconic Olympic images to remember forever. I’m equally sure that some time between now and November, we’ll get goofy photos of politicians looking stupid.

Personally, I’d prefer more Olympics and less politics — at least for a while — starting now.

Some people just aren’t happy unless they're complaining

Personally, I rooted for Nik Wallenda on his high wire over Niagara Falls Friday night. I wanted to see him perform well. I wanted the world to be mystified by the feat. And I wanted Western New York to rally around his accomplishment.

I got most of what I wanted.

Yes, there were things about the historic wire walk that didn’t go as people would have liked. There were aspects which disappointed me. I would have liked to have seen him do it without the safety harness, but I didn’t make an issue of it because I knew he would have liked to have done it without the safety harness. In fact, he said he felt like a “jackass” for wearing it. But given he didn’t “use” it, it was sort of a moot point. He proved he could have done it without it.

I thought his pandering for extra donations sullied the event somewhat. But I understand that things end up costing more money than you had planned sometimes and just because it was his dream, I didn’t think he should have to go poor to accomplish it. Besides, it’s not like he held anyone for ransom and said he wouldn't perform without those donations. So I didn’t let it bother me too much.

Aside from those two minor disappointments, I was thoroughly impressed with Wallenda himself. He held himself to a very high standard and proved that with perseverance and faith, we can accomplish our dreams.

Some people thought his open faith while on the wire was a bit over the top. I thought it was awesome to see someone profess their love of God on national television. It seemed like that faith helped keep him on the straight and narrow while crossing the wire.

The one thing that truly bothered me about the Wallenda event, though, had nothing to do with Wallenda himself. Not directly, at least. The thing that bothered me the most was the number of people who took a negative tone about the occasion.

Even before Nik stepped onto that wire to traverse over the falls and slowly make his way into Canada, I was astonished by the amount of people who seemed angry at him. For what, I don’t know, but they wanted him to fail miserably. Some even proclaimed that they wanted him to fall into the abyss.

I lost track of the number of people on Facebook and Twitter who said after the event that they “could have done it,” too. Suddenly everyone was a high wire artist. In earnest, I don’t think those people truly believed they could have done it. They just wanted to let the world know that they didn’t think it was that big of a deal.

There were a lot of people that didn’t think it was that big of a deal. People said it would be a blip and it wouldn’t matter in the long run. The numbers seem to disagree.

Final numbers aren’t out yet, but ABC won that time slot for the first time in six years, I read over the weekend. There were 120,000 people watching live on location, according to estimates. There were said to be hundreds of vendors — on the American side of the falls. Something that hasn’t happened in decades.

I believe that there will be a generation of people who come to Niagara Falls because of what they saw on TV Friday night. And while they’re in Niagara Falls, they’ll venture out into the rest of Western New York and eat dinner, stay at hotels, buy trinkets, etc. The economic influx granted to us by Nik Wallenda will be immeasurable.

I can’t prove that, but I believe it. I have faith, if you will. Just like Nik Wallenda has faith. And with faith, we can accomplish a lot.

I can clearly see the errors I make

For some reason, God — in his infinite wisdom — made me just shy of perfect. Yes, it’s true. I have faults, but being humble isn’t one of them.

While there are scores of people who would likely disagree, in my opinion, my less-than-20/20 vision ranks right up there amongst my biggest flaws.

This particular imperfection is somewhat cruel, given that I read and write for a living. Making it even crueler is the fact that I tend to do a considerable amount of reading and writing in my spare time.

Imperfections tend to get more pronounced the more you are forced to reckon with them. Spending a minimum of eight hours a day, five days a week “focusing” on mine meant that dealing with it (sooner or later) was inevitable. I had gotten to the point where at the end of my shift or after any length of time spent reading, my eyes had trouble focusing and they — along with the rest of me — got tired.

So a couple weeks ago, I went and got my vision checked. And just as I expected, I needed glasses.

Truth be told, my vision wasn’t as bad as I thought it was. I have 20/25 vision in my left eye and 20/40 vision in my right eye. I half expected the optometrist to wonder aloud how I was able to find my way to his office. Mind you, my vision isn’t always blurry. But when it is, it’s bad. Add in the fact that I wore glasses 20 years ago before swearing them off, and I would have thought my vision would have degraded considerably.

Actually when I wore glasses before — in high school, college and shortly thereafter — my eyesight miraculously improved somehow. So at some point, I could see well again. I imagine it’s because I wasn’t reading Machiavelli and writing term papers any more. Apparently, reading is bad for you.

My optometrist told me to wear the glasses as much as I wanted to and to not worry about wearing them whenever I didn’t feel like it. I was glad to hear that. I don’t like to be told that I have to do things, as anyone who’s read this column before is well aware.

Nonetheless, I now have an extra thing to carry around with me — and lose. It wasn’t bad enough that I constantly lose my “wallet” (I don’t have a wallet, I just keep my money, drivers’ license and debit card together at all times) and my keys.

It’s funny, I have about half a dozen places I lose things in. The place I most frequently lose my keys? The hook that they “belong on.” They’re there so infrequently that it’s the last place I look. Second most frequent hiding place? My hands. My “wallet,” meanwhile is most often lost the front pocket of a pair of jeans. I launder my money frequently. I’ve only lost my glasses once in the near-week that I’ve had them. They were on top of the fridge, a clearinghouse for “things” and “stuff.”

I once lost a check stuck to the front of my fridge with a magnet. I must have looked at it half a dozen times before I found it. I even called places I had been asking if a check had been turned in. Three days later, I found it — right where I had put it “so I wouldn’t lose it.”

Just as I’m sure to continue to lose things, I’m equally certain that there are many future instances of me saying, “Hey, have you seen my glasses?” I figure as long as I don’t say it while wearing them, I’ll be okay.

I like being able to see better. It makes reading and writing much easier but it doesn’t help with arithmetic. It also doesn’t seem to help with my losing things. But at least now I clearly see that flaw.

These are weird and scary times

Florida always has some of the strangest news. I’m not sure if it’s that we pay more attention to Florida news because it’s strange or if all the weirdos moved to Florida or that their media is better at digging up odd stories, but for peculiar news stories, Florida is where it’s at.

A little over a week ago, a news item out of Miami caught my eye. It was about a naked man eating the face off a homeless man on a bridge and being shot to death by Miami police when he refused to stop.

In that story alone, there are three oddities:

• Naked guy on a bridge
• Guy eating someone’s face
• Police having to shoot an unarmed man multiple times to get him to go down

If you add them all up, some people would have you believe that the Zombie Apocalypse is upon us.

Maybe it’s because I’m twisted. Or maybe it’s because I’ve watched all the Walking Dead episodes, along with Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead, Slither, Zombieland and even Mutant Vampire Zombies from the ‘Hood, but I have a strange affinity for Zombies. Okay, maybe it’s not so strange. A study recently showed that as much as $5 billion was spent on Zombies in 2011 — between movies and TV shows and t-shirts, &c.

But Zombies aren’t real. They’re just something made up in movies. Right?

I thought the same thing until a few days ago when Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokesman David Daigle told The Huffington Post that "CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would reanimate the dead (or one that would present zombie-like symptoms)."

In short, the government is denying the existence of Zombies. This news factoid is simultaneously humorous and unnerving.

On one hand, the CDC probably added fuel to the fire year ago when it released a “Zombie Preparedness” campaign. The campaign is, to date, the single best government-sponsored public service announcement that I’ve ever seen, taking a meme that people have shown interest in and making it relevant to real-life situations. Basically, if you’re prepared for the Zombie Apocalypse, you’re prepared for other types of disasters which actually happen, such as hurricanes, floods, blizzards, &c.

On the other hand, I’m of the mind that the government doesn’t take time to refute things which aren’t true. They simply ignore those things. Denying a rumor usually only helps to spread it faster. Remember high school? Maybe, the CDC is just trying to get more milage out of that campaign. Really, it’s brilliant. Check it out at http://tinyurl.com/6xbtvuk.

Whether the Zombie Apocalypse is real or not, I’m glad to see it in the news. It’s much more interesting to read about the Undead in Florida (and many other places) than about the brain dead in Washington. And, hey! I got to write a column about Zombies! Didn’t think that would ever happen.

For more Zombie news, check out my twitter feed at twitter.com/scottleffler … or just search for Zombies on Google.