Second City? Not Today!

Listen. Can you hear it? That's the sound of an entire city, no, an entire region patting itself on the back. Saturday afternoon, the United States Olympic Committee announced that Chicago had won the chance to be the official bid city for the 2016 Olympics. The competition, which began last year came down to a choice between Chicago, Los Angleles or the dreaded "none of the above". Suck it "none of the above" and while you're at it, send a little raspberry LA's way too.

The USOC wouldn't go into a lot of details about why Chicago beat LA to win the bid. They claimed it had a lot to do with a great presentation and great enthusiasm from the people of Chicago and the Midwest. I think it may have had something to do with the fact that our high profile citizens wear underwear when they go out and are rarely the subject of bootlegged sex tapes. Do you really want the athletes of the world exposed to Britney's razor bumped nether regions or a Governor that sounds like he may have tried to keep Jesse Owens out of an earlier Olympics? Hell no. Let's show the world how we roll in the corn belt.

Chicago is a great city, and the team that put together our proposal must have done a first rate job showing it off. A lot of the ceremonies and events will take place along or near the lake front which is beautiful. I hope the city wins the right to host the Olympics. It might mean that Chicago would finally be known for something besides Al Capone, Michael Jordan and Oprah. There's nothing wrong with those three being identified with Chicago, but when you throw in the annoying "Super Fans" and their love of all things sausage, it paints us in a bad light. If we do win, I think the powers that be should make sure George Wendt and his Ditka sweater are banned from Cook County for the duration. Maybe we can lure him into a cave with the promise of a polish sausage and a new mustache.

The USOC did say that the citizens of Chicago should start learning new languages so that we can communicate with the visitors from over 200 countries. Spanish should be easy. There will be a ton of construction going on. We all need to hang out at the building sites and learn a foreign tongue. After that, I don't know where to start. I'll probably lean toward Japanese since it would make my sushi experiences more fun. Then I'd try to pick up a little German. The language, not an actual German dwarf. I would like to wrestle a German shot put chick however. Aahh, global relations. That's what the Olympics are all about. Later...Brian