The Practical Olympics

      After all the drama that went on with the 2014 Olympics held in Sochi, Russia there is no lack of things to talk about.  The oppression of LGBT people, the poverty many Russians live in, the uprooting of Sochi citizens to make way for an expensive sports complex that would be abandoned within weeks, and the hotel conditions that foreigners and athletes stayed in have all given way to heated debate.  However, with everyone else in the blogosphere already heatedly sharing their opinions, I have decided that I will share my "New and Improved Olympics: Designed for Practicality and Entertainment."

      I'm not saying that we replace the Summer Olympics, everybody loves those things.  There's horses and gymnastics and well-muscled men without shirts on every sports channel for two full weeks.  However the Winter Olympics might as well be called "thirty different ways to get down a hill" and other than the opening and closing ceremonies are only watched for the Figure Skating, which could be added to the summer because that takes place inside anyways.  So without further ado: the New and Improved Olympics.

Category One: Practical Skills

Event One: Multimedia Minding

In this sport it is every man for himself, with only the help of a computer, a smartphone, and a telephone with a headset.  This harrowing event requires the competitors to answer basic IT calls coming in from all over the world on their headset, while also answering emails from their boss, and texting their "spouse" and "kids."   The event continues for three minutes and as the time goes on the questions get harder, the emails become more complex, and the kids become more whiny.  The athletes are judged by a panel on grace, composure, legibility, and poise, and hilarity ensues.

Event Two: Kid Whisperer

The dangers of leaving a child unattended

The sport of Queens requires patience, focus, luck, training, dedication, and God's Good Graces to do well.  The Kid Whispering Event requires each competitor to take three young children, aged 3 months, 2 years, and 6 years and complete menial tasks while also keeping them happy.  In an event similar to a single person relay race each athlete much get each child up, dressed, and entertained so that the athlete can complete a random chore they will be assigned at the start of the event.  Anytime that the children become upset, the baby begins to cry, or the work is interrupted for more than 30 seconds the competitor must start over.  There is no way that this sport would not prove who is the best parent/babysitter and would not prove to be the best television the world would have for two weeks every four years.

Event Three: Everyday Driving
This event may seem like a breeze but it takes a true look at what driving through a downtown area is like.  Each competitor must answer a phone call and keep up with the conversation, while swerving through angry Christmas shoppers, over-assertive bikers, pedestrians, rapidly changing lights and randomly appearing stop signs.  This challenge is not for the faint of heart, and provides for the best entertainment that people are actually training for.  No worries though, for safety reasons, all pedestrians and bikers will be artificial.

Category Two: Humor

Event One: Pun Battles

This sport challenges not the physical body but the mind, testing the endurance of the brain and it's capability to process quickly and respond even quicker.  Competitors are paired off in groups of two randomly selected and the starter is chosen by a coin-flip done by an Pun-Official.  The starting athlete makes a pun, which their competitor has fifteen seconds to responds to with a corresponding pun.  The first person to not respond within the allotted time, to respond with a pun that does not make sense, or to respond without a pun is disqualified.  All of the winners advance to the next round, until a champion reigns.  To add extra fun for viewers this can be turned into a kind of March Madness with brackets and predicting who will be the overall winner.

Event Two:  Quote Conversations

This is the perfect event for the athletes who are Netflix addicts like so much of the world.  This event requires two people to hold a conversation entirely in quotes from television and movies.  The conversation must make sense, must have a logical progression, must not lapse into silence, and no quote may be used twice.  There will be two panels of judges: IMDB moderators to check the quality of movie quotes and teenage girls from Tumblr to scan gifs for TV show quote correctness.  What makes this event special is that every once in a while the entire cast of a movie shows up in full costume to film a scene and the competitors must remain calm and may not use any of the things said by the professionals.

Event Three: Debating a Southern Politician.

As someone who has roots in the south I am qualified to say that a lot of them are lacking in the smarts department, and are a bit delusional when it comes to major issues such as rape, gay marriage, abortion, and just about every other pertinent issue that is currently a major topic of debate in the country.  For this athletes are made into teams and each take one fifteen minute chunk of debate time so as not to become too angry and break any rules which restrict violence, swearing, degradation of the opponent, or general name-calling. To possibly add tension the winning team could then be made to debate against other except this debate would also be a cage match.
The debates will be judged by Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, who will be as objective as possible, knowing that the Russians and Conservatives are also working and those people really do love their guns.