Loser?

I’ve been mulling over this topic for a couple of days now, trying to let emotion fade and let logic or some other sensibility take over. That’s probably not going to happen so I need to write while this is still somewhat timely.

I’m going to apologize in advance for this piece being all over the place because that’s where my thoughts are. I obviously don’t have a snazzy lede or witty way of bringing you in so I’m just going to get to it.

I’m sick and tired of this stupid philosophy about winning and losing and a “what if” attitude about athletic competition at the Olympic Games.

Let’s remember that all athletes at the Olympics are big fish. They are all the cream of the crop, the bee’s knees, the best of the best, the absolute pick of the litter. While there is definitely a list of favorites going into any competition — thanks to economy, technology, cultural preferences and traditions and, let’s face it, privilege — all Olympic athletes are the very best their nations have to offer. They have all risen to a level of accomplishment few of us ever experience in anything.

The Olympics are the athletic equivalent of 1,600 high school valedictorians coming together to form the freshman class at Harvard. One of those brainiacs will finish last in the graduating class.

While I am a nearly life-long opponent of participation awards, every single Olympic athlete deserves recognition for committing a lifetime to sport; to sacrificing many “normal” activities en route to mastering their chosen sport and to representing their countries with pride. Being named to a national Olympic team is a victory.

So this business about a silver medal winner being asked if she won a silver medal or lost a gold medal just makes me burn.

I was so proud of Eileen Gu (an American-born skier who chooses to compete for her mother’s home country of China) when she put a journalist in his place I could have hugged her.

After Gu won her second silver medal in freestyle skiing at the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics, John Weaver of Agence France-Presse asked her if she thought she gained two silvers or lost two golds.

Her immediate response was rather loud and incredulous laughter. And then she used her words.

“I am the most decorated female free skier in history,” she told Weaver. “I think that’s an answer in and of itself.”

“How do I say this,” she continued. “Winning a medal at the Olympics is a life-changing experience for every athlete. Doing it five times is exponentially harder because every medal is harder for me but everybody else’s expectations rise.”

And she had one final thought for the journalist: “And so the two medals lost situation, to be quite frank with you, I think is a kind of ridiculous perspective to have.”

Can you possibly imagine asking an Olympic athlete if they were sorry they had just won a silver medal (hockey players aside)? And before you answer, please refer to my above comments about these folks being the big fish, the cream of the crop.

Gu finished second in the WORLD at what is arguably the greatest, most prestigious, most coveted athletic gathering of them all, and a journalist asked her that stupid question. I was embarrassed for Weaver and so damn proud of Gu I could have cried.

This questioning reminded me of a billboard campaign Nike carried out in Atlanta during the 1996 Summer Olympics.

“You don’t win silver, you lose gold” was the Nike message, emblazoned on billboards strategically placed around Olympic Stadium, the athletes’ village and other high-traffic areas, that greeted athletes and spectators alike.

"Second place is the first loser," read another billboard.

I can remember being just as upset at those messages then as I am now.

Now, technically, anyone who doesn’t finish first in a race is a loser. Only first place wins any contest. I understand that. But there are three spots on the medal podium and every athlete wants to make that podium. Trust me that the silver medalist isn’t thinking, “what a big loser I am” as he or she watches their nation’s flag being lifted in the air, in front of millions of people across the globe. 

And if you want to bash the bronze medalist, or question the value of a third-place finish, just ask the fourth-place finisher what they think of that bronze medal.

While I’m going to compare apples and oranges here, this debate brought back some childhood memories. When I was a kid, there was a network of summer playgrounds sponsored by the Baltimore County Department of Recreation and Parks. Toward the end of each season, all the playgrounds gathered for a track and field meet held at Kenwood High School. 

Each playground held home site competitions to pick the kids who would compete at the meet. There were traditional events like footraces, broad jump, running long jump and baseball and softball throwing.

For several summers, I earned the spot in softball throw for my age group. My first time, I came in second, winning a red ribbon and valuable points for Country Ridge, my home playground (at the end of the day, trophies were awarded to the top three playgrounds based upon those accumulated points).

The girl who beat me was good. We got three attempts and every time I threw a little farther, so did she. She beat me three summers in a row. As we recognized each other each summer, we began to joke about already knowing we'd finish 1-2, with the only question being our final distances. I improved each year but so did she. If I threw 97 feet, she threw 99.

Around the fourth summer or so, she wasn’t there. She might have been sick, maybe she moved, maybe she lost interest and just gave it up. I never knew. I won the event that year and received a blue ribbon and even more points for Country Ridge. But I knew that, had she been there, I probably would have taken home another red ribbon. Because of that sense of competition, that series of red ribbons meant more to me than that blue one ever did.

Athletes cherish competition. They don’t want anything handed to them. They train, they dedicate themselves, they perfect their craft, they create new, bold and dangerous moves, they strive to reach heights never before reached and they give it their all. Some days, that results in a gold medal. On other days, it results in an eighth-place finish or worse, a career-ending injury.

At these recently concluded Winter Olympics, I saw joy and pride and excitement on all three levels of the medal podium, with the exception of both men’s and women’s ice hockey. 

Trust me that those second- and third-place finishers were thrilled to climb up on that podium, thrilled to bend down and have their necks draped with a coveted Olympic medal, thrilled to watch their flags hoisted high above the crowd and thrilled to spot their proud friends and family members in the stands.

Trust me that they were not lamenting losing a gold medal.

We need to do better.

All in good fun

I have a strange, quirky relationship with the accordion.

There. I said it.

My contemporary, humorous affair with the oft-maligned instrument began a bunch of years back, when I was editor of Columbia Patch. In August 2012, Howard County public safety officials issued a press release stating that a suspicious, unattended suitcase had been found near the Owen Brown Interfaith Center. A nearby day care center was evacuated and the appropriate first responders were dispatched to handle the situation.

It turns out that, after the bomb squad did its thing, it was determined the suitcase contained an accordion.

But as funny — and as relieving — as that final result was, the most humorous part of the ordeal was the series of press releases issued throughout the day. The initial statement disclosed the discovery of the case and encouraged citizens to avoid the area. A phone number for media members to call for more information was published as well.

A followup statement corrected the previously offered phone number. Subsequent statements updated the results as new info came available and media outlets covered the event ad nauseum. Toward the end of the day, I received a press release stating the suitcase was found to contain a musical instrument. A little while later the final release landed in my email box. Paraphrasing here, all these years later, the statement said something along the lines of, “In case anyone is interested, the musical instrument was an accordion.”

I immediately had some fun with that information, as did most outlets that had been covering the event.

Over the years, I have had fun remembering AccordionGate. These days, it pops up once a year in my Facebook memories. And I’m not alone in my HoCo accordion mocking. My friend Julia Jackson McCready, a prolific Columbia blogger who I met through Columbia Patch, has had her own fun with the abandoned instrument. We usually tag each other annually when the memory pops up.

But here’s what else happens when the memory pops up and gets shared back and forth. The omniscient Facebook God sees those posts and assumes I am an accordion fan and that I want to see all things accordion. For days, I will get videos of performances, ads for musical instrument stores, musical instrument repair and jokes and memes centered around the hinged instrument.

More recently, I discovered a delightful comedian named Bo Johnson. In one of his routines, he discusses the merits of public transportation, namely buses. He has a funny bit about how the vehicle’s exterior advertisements appeal to a completely different audience than the ads inside the bus. Look it up if you need a good laugh.

But in the same routine, he announces he has an idea that would improve the bus experience. He mentions the extra-long buses that have the accordion-like center piece that allows the vehicle to make tighter turns.

I’m paraphrasing here, but he says something along the lines of “Wouldn’t it be great if it made the sound of an accordion on those turns?”

I immediately sent this bit to Julia and it didn’t take her long to respond. She has this innate ability to find a meme, a GIF, a video, a cartoon or a quote to fit any scenario you could ever imagine. Within seconds, she sent me a photo of a guy on a street playing an accordion. Directly behind him is the accordion portion of a bus.

Julia-1, Marge-0.

I’ve experienced many chuckles and snorts at the expense of the accordion being humiliated. I roared when I came across a picture of shelves and shelves of accordions, ostensibly at a thrift shop, with a sign that stated “Limit 2 per family.”

For the sake of this column, I did an internet search for “accordion fun." Google assumed I made a mistake and was instead searching for accordion fans. Just for the record, the choices there are endless, in case you’re interested.

Who knew there was such a thing as the Maryland Accordion Club? The organization is headquartered in Catonsville (which probably means that’s where the founder or current president lives) and strives to share the delight in playing accordion, improve musicianship attract new students and showcase the versatility of the instrument, according to its online profile. The group meets the first Saturday of the month from September through June, at Catonsville United Methodist Church.

And to prove my point about Facebook spying, this popped up as I was writing this blog post:

I guess any essay about the accordion would be incomplete without a mention of Lawrence Welk. Welk, an accordionist and band leader, hosted the Lawrence Welk Show on television from 1955-1982. The program was a variety show and featured many well-known, popular acts of the time, including the Lennon Sisters, accordionist Myron Floren and dancers Bobby Burgess and Cissy King. His band's style came to be known as "champagne music" and viewers could often see bubbles in the background.

Should you be so motivated, the world of the accordion is surprisingly large and quite visible on the internet. If you search, choose carefully, knowing that your feeds will be clogged with accordion-related topics for a while.

"Wunnerful, wunnerful!"

A legacy reborn

A couple days before the Winter Olympics began, I was putzing around, tinkering with this and that, with the television providing background noise, when the melodic notes of a nostalgic tune yanked me back into full alert mode.

“See the USA in your Chevrolet,” a woman sang out, ushering in a 2026 revival of an iconic commercial that had its heyday in the 1950s and ‘60s — in the days when television was king. After getting over the initial but pleasant shock of hearing the jingle again, my mind was instantly transported to an afternoon shared with colleagues in the editorial cubicle of the East County Times office.

In a self-deprecating manner, editor Devin Crum was joking about how he was the slacker among his siblings. One brother is a mechanical aerospace engineer and the other is a civil engineer. A half-brother is a nuclear engineer. Devin was “just” a writer. But, he said, he thought he got his creative gifts from his grandfather, who worked for a big ad agency back in the day. Think “Mad Men.”

“My grandfather was on the team that created a pretty big ad campaign for Chevrolet,” Devin told me.

“Are you telling me your grandfather worked on the ‘See the USA in your Chevrolet’ campaign?” I asked after picking my chin up off the floor.

“Yeah,” he said. “You’ve heard of it?”

Heard of it? Heard of it??? Anyone who was alive and aware in the 1950s, ‘60s or ‘70s knew of that commercial! It was iconic. It was gold. It was on a par with “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz” and “Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce, special orders don’t upset us.”

It was genius, pure and simple.

Internet research shows that the original “See the USA” campaign was created by Campbell-Ewald, a Detroit-based ad agency. Leo Corday and Leon Carr, members of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, were credited with the music and lyrics, and the jingle first shot to stardom thanks to Dinah Shore singing it on her television show.

While Howard Crum’s name is nowhere to be found in online information, we all know how things like this work. Anyone who has worked in an office environment knows all too well that many people work on a project and one or two people get the credit.

After I first saw the new commercial, I immediately sent Devin a text and asked if he had seen it. He hadn’t, and was surprised that I had remembered his grandfather’s story.

Devin said he was “pretty excited” to learn of the updated version.

“Unfortunately, I only learned about my grandfather’s involvement with the original after he died (I was pretty young at the time),” Devin wrote in a message. “But it was gratifying to learn that we had that kind of family history, and then the revival made me feel a renewed connection to that history and my grandfather.”

Howard Crum died at age 84 around 1998, according to Devin. He would have been about 34 when the original campaign was created. Online records show that the Chevrolet Division of General Motors owns both the song’s 1948 unpublished and 1950 published copyrights.

In the new version, country singer Brooke Lee strums a guitar while singing the familiar tune from the bed of a Chevy pickup truck, which is perched atop Castle Rock in Colorado. Filming from that location is another Chevy tradition, with previous shoots done in 1964 and ’73.

If you’re interested, there’s a great YouTube video that shows the process of getting the truck up on top of Castleton Tower. A narrator brags that there’s no artificial intelligence or other digital sleight of hand involved; that a very complex and potentially dangerous process led by the “very best” people made it possible.

With performances from artists like Dinah Shore and Pat Boone to Brooke Lee (with many pop culture takes between, including a production by the cast of “Glee”) a simple yet brilliant jingle serves as a bridge from one generation of a family to another while providing a good story to boot.

 

Welcome to the Commoners Games

Eight days into the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics, we’ve seen longshots capture gold with the races of their lives and we’ve seen “sure things” crash and burn. We’ve learned of the personal stories behind the athletes, we’ve met their parents, we’ve appreciated their sacrifices, we’ve celebrated their joys and we’ve cried over their injuries and crushing defeats.

But as great as these Games have been so far, some of the best action, best laughs and the most amazing level of creativity and unexpected surprises have come from what I call the Olympics of the People. I truly had forgotten how many of us “commoners” and armchair athletes get involved in the Olympic movement.

Just a quick glance at social media shows that the Olympic movement serves as inspiration to schoolchildren, married couples, librarians, accountants, office workers, senior citizens and even cats and dogs.

Curling is proving to be as popular with the people as it is with Olympic athletes. Folks have posted videos showing kitchen floor curling being performed with tea kettles, pots and pans and bowls along with Swiffer mops, brooms and long-handled scrub brushes.

Schoolchildren hold mock opening ceremonies, complete with music, skits and torches that “light” the Olympic flame. Three-level podiums are built and ceremonies are held to award medals to event winners.

Photo courtesy of @thelittlegan Instagram page.

Facebook and Instagram in particular are treasure chests of videos that passionate, creative people (apparently with way too much free time) have published, showcasing their efforts to participate in the games. There’s hockey, skiing, snowboarding, speed skating, figure skating and curling in versions never quite imagined by serious athletes who have committed a lifetime to landing a spot on the Olympic team.

There's a Facebook page called Skeletons on Kerth Road, based In St. Louis, the owners of which create skeleton displays throughout the year, with a variety of themes. To say the Olympic displays are hysterical is an understatement. Nothing like skeletons skelleting (I might have made up that word)! One display was a two-fer, as it incorporated a Valentine's message with the Olympic rings. I encourage a visit!

Photo courtesy of Skeletons of Kerth Road Facebook page.

I’ve included a few examples for your viewing pleasure, but you can do a simple search and get pages and pages of similar efforts.

It’s great entertainment and all in good fun, and I’m  sure even Olympic athletes are enjoying our efforts. The vast majority of us will never achieve the level of excellence displayed by the “least” of the Olympic athletes gathered in Italy, and these fun, mocking efforts allow us all to feel a part of this global experience.

I for one sure enjoy the efforts of our every day athletes! I hope you do as well!