Hello from Hooterville. Eb says howdy too.
You wouldn’t recognize the place. They’re giving directions in German on the subway. Imagine that. A subway.
I am welcome here. The whole world is welcome. It says so on every other corner. Welcome Y’All, it says, which means even folks named Sherman, though Pepsi drinkers are unauthorized. If you don’t drink Coca-Cola here, they take away your children.
Everything has a sponsor. Shaquille O’Neal has a sponsor.
“I’m doing my press conference at the Reebok place,” O’Neal said during a Dream Team press conference at the Main Press Center.
More Top Picks Best Walking Shoes For High Arches
I am sponsored by Kodak. On the back of my official badge of accreditation is the Kodak symbol along with some words in French, which, loosely translated mean, “If found, do not laugh at the photo on the front.”
I am writing my column at the Kodak place.
They really have gone all-out making strangers feel at home. They’re putting things in French on restaurant menus. Imagine that. Menus.
“Pour accomoder notre clientele 15% ajoute a votre note. Merci.”
In other words, tip included.
“That is very thoughtful of you,” I told my waitress.
“Can’t take chances with them foreigners,” she said.
Heretofore, foreigners would be folks from Alabama. Now they are from the former Yugoslavia and from Zimbabwe and Peru, from Denmark, where a curious Dane wanted to know from Karl Malone why he gets two points for making a basket.
“Because that’s the way we do it in America, son,” Malone said.
No argument here. This whole thing is being done the way we do it in America. Big, loud and tacky. Profit above all.
Young people roam the overheated streets with huge Coca-Cola coolers on their backs. Parched pedestrians are greeted with the question, “Wanna drink?”
“Sure do.”
“That’ll be $2.50.” And it is still cheaper than water.
They’re talking Arabic in elevators. Imagine that. Elevators.
Whether this place is ready for the Olympics, I will answer as my waitress did when I asked if the orange juice was fresh: “Mostly.”
Some streets still are being paved and pavilions still are being raised, and they had to bring in some more bunk beds for the athletes’ village, but they’ll make it.
The minute-by-minute report of the journey of the Olympic flame–they act worried the thing might not actually get here for Friday’s Opening Ceremony–came with the reassuring news that it had spent the night at Stone Mountain.
There seemed to be more concern that the flame was not homeless than where folks displaced from the downtown streets were spending the night.
I have to report that not everyone is happy the Olympics are here. The homeless faction, the gay coalition, the anti-flag bunch all demonstrate their unhappiness and send out press releases.
Georgia’s own Ralph Abernathy III, son of the civil-rights leader, calls the Stars and Bars in the state flag a “racist Confederate swastika.”
Security is oppressive, and transportation is mostly immobile. And, sad to say, even the athletes are under suspicion.
It has not yet been decided what to do with a Brazilian hermaphrodite named Edinanci (I’m not making this up) Silva, who wants to compete in women’s judo, but performance-enhancing drug users aren’t getting away with anything this time.
Already dismissed is a male Russian weightlifter named Yuri Myshkovets and a female Italian high-jumper named Antonella Bevilacqua.
More Top Picks Best Bookshelves
Yes, sir. Right here in Hooterville, they have the most sophisticated drug-detecting equipment yet: gas chromatograph high resolution mass spectrometers.
Imagine that. Gas.