MarkB wrote:In the real interest of the Olympic ideal and honouring the 2000 years of that ideal, I think that all participants this year in Athens should perform naked as they did in ancient Athens. That would surely increase spectator interest.
MarkB
I do not want to see a Russian female shot putter naked.
It's not for the faint of heart, to be sure. But extreme ironing - the marriage of activities like cliff jumping and kayaking treacherous rapids with what participants call "the satisfaction of a well-pressed shirt" - has been catching on.
The sport was born seven years ago when a young man named Phil Shaw came home from his job at a knitwear factory in Leicester, England, and found himself face to face with a mountain of creased laundry. Thinking that he would rather be rock climbing, Mr. Shaw took his ironing board out to his garden, attached his iron to a long extension cord and pressed his pants.
After that, he and his roommate, Paul Cartwright, did "a spot of ironing whilst rock climbing," Mr. Shaw said, while skiing the French Alps and after scrambling to the tops of tall trees in the Black Forest of Germany.
Now, countless handkerchiefs and pillow cases later, and after stretching to the corners of South Africa, Japan, Croatia and Chile, extreme ironing is coming to the United States, hoping to appeal to the spin-cycle superhero, the wash-and-wear wonder woman in all of us.
This week, Mr. Shaw and two fellow "ironists" made their first stateside stop, in Massachusetts. They ironed while kayaking in the Atlantic Ocean, while climbing in a Rockport rock quarry, and, in Boston, while hanging off the side of a World War II amphibious vehicle known as a duck boat.
Some of the "sports" border on child abuse, as someone alluded to earlier. I like the Inuit Olympics in Canada. Most events involve entire families. You hold hands with your wife and kids and head for the finish line. Sounds like a lot more fun to me. No steroids.
Tell us something.: I used to be a regular then I took up the bassoon. Bassoons don't have a lot of chiff. Not really, I have always been a drummer, and my C&F years were when I was a little tired of the drums. Now I'm back playing drums. I mist the C&F years, though.
Tell us something.: I used to be a regular then I took up the bassoon. Bassoons don't have a lot of chiff. Not really, I have always been a drummer, and my C&F years were when I was a little tired of the drums. Now I'm back playing drums. I mist the C&F years, though.
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"It might be a bit better to tune to one of my fiddle's open strings, like A, rather than asking me for an F#." - Martin Milner
(How come there isn't a gurning emoticon?)
