With less than four years to go, Los Angeles is starting
preparations for the 2028 Olympics. The XXXIV games, or 'LA28' to locals, is
set to take place across the city, and there’s already a buzz in the air. This
is partly due to thousands of buzzsaws cutting through wood, rebar and concrete
at construction sites in every borough. From preparing arenas for the future
athletes, to getting down to the nuts and bolts of how L.A. worked as a
metropolitan area, the Mayor's Office has opened up a special Olympics
Department just for the event. As I enter the offices there's a certain kind of excitement at what lay in store for the billion dollar sporting explosion, whilst also managing the extreme poverty in the city by ensuring it was displaced and hidden from the prying eyes of sport tourists.
Donny Glacky is no ordinary five year old. Not only can he run really fast, he's also the Head of Transport and Logistics at the Olympics Department. He shows me a 3D printed scale model of the city, with his ideas demonstrated in transparent green plastic that curve across the cityscape like a mix between Hot Wheels and Megalopolis. Donny talks excitedly about his plans, pointing out how he needed to make the city car free whilst simultaneously also having space for millions of vehicles. He takes out a toy car from an empty icecream tub filled with other toys, and begins to push it through the miniature city streets, making engine noises or quietly screeching as it turned a corner. I pick out a car from the tub and join in, tucking in my bottom lip and emanating the rising tone of an engine. His car drives over to me.
"Excuse me uh, do you know the way to the Olympic stadium?" He says in a high-pitched voice.
"Oh, I don’t know maybe it’s that way." I say in a low voice.
"Okay, let's go together." He croaks. Our cars then join an onramp to one of Donny's speed roads, driving smoothly over the city on the clear green plastic, before our cars begin to float in the air and begin to fly.
I hit the city streets to find out more. I interview people with my phone on a selfie stick, wearing a large wig beneath a baseball cap, my microphone decorated with the LA28 logo.
"WhatdoyouthinkabouttheOlympics?" I'd say quietly
behind people, making them turn around and jump. I interviewed my reflection in
a shop window and from the darkness behind the glass there appeared a pale,
bald head and it shouted at me to go away. As I walked through the city I saw
try outs for the opening ceremony, public auditions for cheerleaders, acrobats,
dancers and clowns. I watched a street magician cut his ear off, place it on a velvet pillow and present it to a Captain Jack Sparrow impersonator.
The idea was the whole city would be the opening ceremony, with the Olympic torch carried through its famous streets before the whole city would have a party. Just as Danny Boyle orchestrated the 2012 opening ceremony, California had chosen a director from LA who could handle the highbrow cultural bullshit as well as celebrating the city he was from: Paul Thomas Anderson. And with him come a whole host of ghouls that Hollywood has given birth to: Leonardo DiCaprio and Shia LaBeouf to name but two of the ceaseless discharge of actors that flooded the city for over a century. Beverley Hills, Compton, Long Beach, Santa Monica and many other cities part of the greater Los Angeles County would also represent themselves with special guest stars.
Snoop Dogg would use the Olympic torch to light a giant bong. Stoners will gather round waiting to light joints from the smouldering bucket of weed in the hopes they could keep their own part of the ancient Olympic flame alive, lighting the next joint just as the other would begin to die. In essence this meant they will stop breathing air but smoke for the rest of their lives (or until it went out).
There was an exciting section planned where Arnold Schwarzenegger was going to drive down the LA aqueduct in an open top 18-wheeler, flying the Stars and Stripes and wearing his famous leather jacket from the film Total Recall. The previous governor would then pass the torch to Gavin Newsom, who’ll be running for President by the time the Olympics happen, and will wear a t-shirt that says ‘Do Epic Shit’. If Donald Trump is still alive he'll fire a flamethrower into the sky, painting the air with flames. You may be wondering to yourself, aren’t celebrities some of the most principled people on Earth, and would boycott any opening ceremony where Donald Trump is also taking part? Here’s the thing bozo, the Olympic Games aren’t political at all, and so if Tom Cruise wants to jump off the Hollywood sign in a wingsuit whilst people shoot fireworks at him, you better damn well like it!
Competitive sport has a way of bringing people together. Does this mean that the inverse statement is true – that uncompetitive anti-sport drove people apart? But what is anti-sport? Well, like many college essayists, I shall open with a dictionary definition (as the most important book at college is the dictionary) – a sport is an activity with rules, often physical, sometimes with other people. Look. We all know what a sport is, okay? So, the inverted concept – a non-activity with no rules, sometimes mental, often done alone – is an anti-sport. The inverted idea of football would be holding a block in place with your arms. The inverted idea of golf would be firing a cube from a hole with the aim of missing a golf club. The inverted idea of a hundred metre sprint would be to walk backwards for a hundred metres as slowly as possible. And so on. But how did you win at an anti-sport? If the most skilled or most athletic or most strategic tended to win other sports, the person who played at each anti-game the worst would win. However, to win would be seen as undesirable in an anti-sport, to lose the most would be deemed the best outcome. This is where we enter a strange environment, where people would competitively try to be the worst at each anti-game, whilst the objective of each of these games was also to lose (for example, coming last in a race or missing a golf club) – therefore to truly lose, you would have to win. And as each anti-game was also comprised of anti-rules, the objective wouldn’t be to slowly walk backwards for a hundred metres, but to run as fast as you could in the other direction. Now we have arrived at a state where anti-sports appear exactly the same as normal sports – so what has been the purpose of all of this? The concept of an anti-sport also inspires the notion of anti-athletes. And these anti-athletes wouldn’t attend a Non-Olympics, held every minus four years at the opposite side of the world as the regular Olympics. This meant the non-Olympics had been held somewhere in the ocean between Madagascar and Australia, not attended by millions of people. Had these Non-Olympics done the opposite of bring the world together? If you read the news it sure looks like it. Therefore to prevent the next Non-Olympics happening in 2028 somewhere East of the Canary Islands (corresponding to the 2032 Olympics in Australia), millions of visitors should flock to see anti-athletes winning at anti-sports on the open seas. This is the only way we can break the cycle of doom and despair that follows every sport like a homicidal shadow.
