2012: The Year in Weird

So here we are in the year 2012 and that means it's an election year (you might have heard some commotion in Iowa and New Hampshire of late) and it's time for another Olympics.  This is the one for which Baltimore actually put in a rather strong bid a few years ago, and had we been awarded the Summer Games, you may be sure that I would have spent my Summer some other place.  Like I need tourists clogging up the roadway early in the morning, trying to get to the water polo venue when I need to get motorvatin' over the hill.  Plus, it would have been a financial pleasure to rent out the house to a family of Latvians, in town for the Games. 

That'll be $20,000 there, Ludvigs.  Thank you.  Enjoy the games. 

I've never been much for the Olympics anyway.  Track and field events leave me shaking my head.  I mean, if you dig the broad jump and the pole vault and the discus throw and that crazy stuff where you ride a bike 50 miles, swim 50 miles, and shoot a mechanical duck, go for it!  Just leave me to baseball and football, and I'm fine.

It goes without saying that you can't have an Olympics without a really weird mascot.  Baseball has the Oriole Bird, the San Diego Chicken, the Phillie Phanatic, and Yogi Berra - all wholesome and fun symbols of the great game.  The Olympics seem bent on causing nightmares in children and impressionable adults with Wenlock and Mandeville here:

 

I mean, you decide if these monocular puzzle pieces are anything you want your children to dress as this Halloween.

It's never too late to persuade them to go as the King!