Friday, August 20, 2004
God help us
Live from Athens, Bret Begun writes about Olympic basketball on the MSNBC blog.But you're not just adjusting to Greek life here. You're adjusting to Greeks who are trying to adjust to you, and the international community at large. That's where life gets weird. Inside the Olympic venues—at least at the Helliniko Indoor Arena, where the preliminary basketball games are played—things are less a cultural land of confusion. There's a discernible effort on the part of organizers to Americanize things. Prior to the men's basketball game against Puerto Rico Sunday, the loudspeakers were blasting Usher's "Yeah!" At the first timeout, members of The Basketball Fan Squad, wearing backward visors, rode around the court on Razor scooters and launched T-shirts into the crowd. At halftime, the Crazy Dunkers set up trampolines and, uh, dunked crazily. Near the end of the third quarter, a bleache-blonde dance troupe did a routine to "I Will Survive."
