- Our first event,
Weight-Lifting, is made possible by a think-tank of poets
who were able to make burdens unseen by others visible.
Our traditional categories are:
Guilt, Regret, Loss, and Responsibility -
extra points for taking on what was never yours to begin with -
and our Heavy-Weight category,
Depression.Next come the Jumping events.
That perennial favorite, Leaps of Faith,
has suffered from weaker and weaker performances of late.
This year's entries, from the teams of
Bob Dole, Bill Clinton, Ross Perot and Ralph Nader,
offer little hope of better.
But the housewife from Shadyville, Iowa,
enrolled under the banner of Elvis Presley,
looks promising.The second category is
Jumping to a Conclusion from a Standing Start,
in which contestants will once again try to break
the First, Second, and Third place records
set by Rush Limbaugh.A crowd-pleasing spectacle is the Emotional Luge:
contestants careen, completely out of control,
down a wildly twisting course,
slamming against icy walls,
attempting to hit bottom 1/10th of a second before
all other racers.In the evening, our contestants may relax at a variety of social events:
The Pity-Me Party, sponsored once again by our ever-faithful Tammy Lee Baker;
The Them Bastards All Night Bash, sponsored by the Slam Poets Society of America; or
The Party "Let's Say We're Having a Poetry Circle, and Practice Amateur Therapy", sponsored by Friends of Sylvia Plath.Gymnastic Events include:
How many twists can you make to avoid a confrontation?
and
How bent out of shape can you get, over how little?In Sporting Events, we have Heart Basketball:
the heart is dribbled over a hardwood floor,
swept through dizzying changes of direction,
lofted to giddy heights, then
slam-dunked into the basket. The objective, remember,
is to put your heart through the most agonies
without actually breaking it.In Shooting Events, we have the traditional
Sniping from Cover, and the Gender Wars Shoot-Out.
This year, with the growing popularity of the Internet,
we have a new event - the
Blind-Folded Flame War!Welcome to the Emotional Olympics!
Funding for this broadcast has been made possible by the Mass-Media of America, who want to assure you that you can continue to depend on them for all your emotional events -
We wouldn't want anyone going off and having their OWN, would we?
Monday, 23-Dec-2002 21:56:03 EST