4 ~ Sunday, October 2, 1988 - North Shore News I'M IN a foul, foul mood. Have been for days. Everyone around the house is in a foul mood. The kids are unusually badly-behaved. My wife, normally a saint, has been can- tankerous and less than 100 per cent patient. Even with me, if you can imagine! In fact, everyone I've run into for the last couple of days has been grumpy, prickly, bitchy, irritable, unreasonable, cranky. Out on the road, I have heard more people honking and seen more people giving The Finger than I can remember. Let us be honest: I, myself, have been leaning on the horn and have offered The Finger to more than one fellow driver. It is as though a dark cloud passed overhead. And, of course, it did. I refer to the Ben Johnson trag- ly. Normally, { could care less about jock stuff. As for the Olympics, who in their right mind could really give a damn? It’s all chauvinistic, jingoistic crap as far as I’m concerned. The fact that car dealers spend fortunes paying athletes — suc- cessful athletes — to endorse their products is all the proof I need about just how shallow the whole operation is. How commercial. How exploitive. How phoney. It brings out the worst in human nature, rather than the best. Just because somebody lifts more weights, runs faster, skates faster, jumps higher, dives deeper, what has that got to do with the quality of existence or, for that matter, anybody’s worthiness? The hype levels surrounding an Olympic event are appalling. The egomania involved is disgusting. The nationalistic bailyhoo is enough to make a thinking person weep. Yet the sheer weight of media overkill lured even me into wat- ching one event —— Ben Johnson’s big run for the gold. And when he made it, to my astonishment, I found myself let- ting out an involuntary hoot of delight, along with a couple of billion other people. it was such a classic Horatio Algiers scenario I just couldn’t control myself. Here was the im- migrant kid from Jamaica who took on a loud-mouthed Yankee monomaniac and whupped him. See? The chauvinism of it all is irresistible. [t pits people against people, nationality against nation- ality. Anyway, I got caught up in it all, just like the rest of the suckers. I felt silly but elated. What the hell? Maybe there was some value to it, after all, if it made us feel good for a moment. In any event, we all know what happened. Ben got the gold, set a new world record, and then got hit with a steroids rap, stripped of everything, and kicked pitilessly by the media while he was down. BEGIN Lose, m Undoubtably the lowest blow was the one delivered by that little Tory weasel name Jean Charest, Canada's sports minister. Some sport! Here was a professional politi- cian — a man for whom hypocrisy is a day-to-day experience — sanc- [ f it turns out that Johnson, is in fact, innocent, the first person to be fired should be Charest.’”’ timoniously putting down a guy whose big crime, if, indeed, he committed one, was that he tried too hard. Ifit turns out that Johnson is, in fact, innocent, the first person to be fired should be Charest. It was a good thing Brian ‘DUE TO POPULAR DEMAND WE ARE RE-INTRODUCING aby os * limited time offer * RON ZALKO HEALTH CLUB INTERNATIONAL PLAZA COMPLEX 1979 Marine Dr., North Shore 986-3487 pe * Babysitting Available * 2660 West 4th Ave - Kitsilano T%-O4l RON ZALKO MUSCLE CONNECTION 2660 West 4th Ave. — Kitsilano iS SHAPE-UP PROGRAM tone, firm & strengthen with PERSONALIZED INSTRUCTION Mulroney came out a few days later in favor of a fair hearing for Johnson, otherwise the Tories would have found themselves ab- sorbing the distemper that this whole episode has created. Mulroney, after all, had been the first on the phone to the runner when he was on top. It was nauseating. As for Johnson being stripped of his right to participate in sports in Canada for life, my God, give mea break! We let murderers out for good behavior after a handful of years, Rapists frequently get out in months. The media, I think, was the worst of all. The spectacle of the poor bastard being hounded by packs of media sharks when hte got back home, was an ugly thing to watch. | am not proud to be part of this business at the moment, let me say. In a culture as drug-saturated as ours, let him who has not smoked any nicotine or chugalugged any booze or taken any sleeping pills or diet pills throw the first stone, I say. As for the ‘‘purity’’ of the Olympics, after those Korean box- ing coaches stormed the ring and beat up a referee, don't make me laugh! As for Ben Johnson, the media should get the hell off his back! Nobody was seriously trying to in- terview him. They were trying to crucify him @ Fitness for na igs mature adults . / ‘Booze who’ on the W. Shere RECENT CONVICTIONS in North Shore courts have resulted in the following fines and penalties for drinking and driving related offences. WEST VANCOUVER: Susan Dell Moore, 40, 2495 West 2nd Ave., Vancouver (impaired, $375 fine); Stephen William Bickerstaffe, 25, C-2112 West 8th Street, Vancouver (impaired, $600 fine); Randall Sheldon Birss, 40, 466 East Kings Road, North Vancouver (over .08, $375 fine); Pansy Irene Marsden, 31, 2893 Bellevue Ave., West Van- couver (breathalyser refusal, $400 fine). NORTH VANCOUVER: Mary Juvik, 64, 805 Grand Boulevard, North Vancouver (impaired, $300 fine); Gary Walter McHugh, 34, 114-310 East 2nd Street, North Vancouver (impaired, $500 fine); Kenneth Scott Smith, 19, 2040 Ridgeway Ave., North. Vancouver (over .08, $500 fine); Keith Gregory Petersou, 23, North Road Gibsons (over .08, $500 fine). EXPECT EXCELLENCE MARYLIN TOWARD |. offer experience, en- thusiasm, and ability proven ‘ by aconsistently successful sales record.