Hey, at least with a rock band’s rider, they have an excuse. The normal excuse they give is, “If you can’t bring me a bowl of M&M’s with no brown M&M’s in it, I can’t trust that you’ll be competent to do everything else needed to make this event safe and successful.”
The folks in Pueblo, Colorado, at the university, took the contract rather kinda casual. They had one of these new rubberized bouncy basketball floorings in their arena. They hadn’t read the contract, and weren’t sure, really, about the weight of this production; this thing weighed like the business end of a 747.
I came backstage. I found some brown M&M’s, I went into full Shakespearean “What is this before me?” . . . you know, with the skull in one hand . . . and promptly trashed the dressing room. Dumped the buffet, kicked a hole in the door, twelve thousand dollars’ worth of fun.
The staging sank through their floor. They didn’t bother to look at the weight requirements or anything, and this sank through their new flooring and did eighty thousand dollars’ worth of damage to the arena floor. The whole thing had to be replaced. It came out in the press that I discovered brown M&M’s and did eighty-five thousand dollars’ worth of damage to the backstage area.
Well, who am I to get in the way of a good rumor?
So, yeah, I’ll give the rock bands the benefit of the doubt; these guys are just a-holes.
None of that is surprising. It is also a huge expense to host them, when they were here in Vancouver 2010 the cost was something like $9 billion. I think it is still debatable whether it was worth it, sure it brought a lot of people with tourist money etc, but we are still paying and will be for decades (Richmond just outside of Vancouver) for a $100 million olympic skating oval just to name one. Although the promise was a boost for business whatever little bit of Olympic work came into my business it was more than offset by a huge increase in property taxes to pay for it.
There were all sorts of demands too, non-olympic advertising billboards had to be covered over -because while here the Olympics owned all the advertising space I guess. Plus the Sea to Sky highway to Whistler was only open to Olympic traffic.
I hate to be “that guy”, but I’ve fixed the ‘douchebags’ in the article. While they are a bunch of douchebags, that sort of language isn’t appropriate for Wikipedia. I was tempted to instead add in a ‘citation needed’, but that would get a bit too meta.
I was in Atlanta during the Olympics and I 100% believe this. It was so disgusting to see how the whole city as treated as the IOC’s fiefdom to rape and pillage as they wished, and the big wigs of Atlanta really believed they would somehow gain financially from this all, and damn the hoi poloi. I stopped watching Olympics after that. Though 4 blimps over the city was cool.
There’s another error that I spotted on that Wiki page. Spain’s Juan Antonio Samaranch is no longer a member of the IOC, as he’s been dead for some time.
This makes me doubt the entire entry, even though I agree that the IOC members are generally made up of corrupt douchebags.
When I saw the initial plans for the Boston Olympics, I was genuinely excited! All privately funded, a huge overhaul to the public transportation system, rehabs to existing stadiums instead of huge white elephant structures, very well thought out. This seemed like an Olympics that would be do-able.
Fast forward to a year later when the stadiums were all crappy temporary structures or, well, big white elephants, the public transport options had been scrapped, and the IOC decided to put the regatta facility atop the city’s bus parking lot. They were told “find a new place to park your buses”.
I don’t know where in the history of the company they said it, but Coca-Cola has always taken the position that “Our competition is not Pepsi. Our competition is water.”
In my mind, the two most important things the IOC is in charge of - record keeping and regulating fair play (like countering doping) - their track record is far from perfect.
Yes, their mission statement includes all the obvious lines; to promote sport (obviously); ensure the regular celebration of the Olympic Games (duh - repeat every 4 years - I think we get it); cooperate with the competent (translation: cash rich) public or private organisations and authorities in the endeavour to place sport at the service of humanity and thereby to promote peace (ok, when has this actually happened, when the Olympic Games so obviously promoted peace, it made a difference? Like stopped a war. Because I forget); to act against any form of discrimination… (OBVIOUSLY) …affecting the Olympic Movement (oh wait, it’s now only about YOU?! So Coke vs Pepsi was not a question of discrimination - it refers back to the point about cooperation with competent sponsors); and finally, to encourage and support the promotion of women in sport at all levels …(and by now, I assume there is a 50/50 split between men and women in the organization, right?)
Here, let me rewrite your mission statement a moment:
To promote sport, regulate fair play, and ensure the games are free of discrimination.
To appeal to all participating nations, sponsors, and stakeholders to fund the games - this equals the budget.
To ensure the IOC is composed of 50% men and 50% women. All salaries shall be indexed to match the world average for a non-profit NGO.
To remain the official record keeper of the games, and hand out the medals.
And I’m perfectly ok with Greece having the Summer Games indefinitely. As long as everyone else pays for it. It’s the least we could do for Greece, and the spirit of the Olympics, right?
I’m dubious about the “truth” of this post facto claim. It could well be true, or it could just be a very plausible excuse invented to make them look good now that they are grown ups for why they had a dickish demand in their rider.
