I was wandering downtown amongst the Olympics shenanigans when the Underground theme from Super Mario Brothers 2 grabbed my ear. I didn’t really get into video games past the 32-bit generation, and Super Mario 2 was always one of my favorites, and I love the music. It feels old-timey. Older-timey than the 20 years ago when the game was current.

I was so impressed by how complete the rendition was – I’m pretty sure they went through the entire game! That takes love. Or dedication, at least. It takes something that not everybody has. I hardly ever give anything to anybody, but I chucked a few bucks their way.

Despite some lame attempt at making plans, we had our friends over to watch the Men’s Gold Medal Hockey game together at our place. While it would have been fun to stand in line to make friends with a massive group of strangers to watch this little bit of history unfold, I’m glad we went for the option that assured cheap beer (does it get cheaper than prepaid?), fantastic company, an unbeatable bathroom-to-attendant ratio, and an uninterrupted view of the game in Glorious HD. Added bonus: we let people smoke on the patio!

We watched the entire game in near-silence, and had I known how it would turn out 60 minutes in, I probably would have saved some tension for the end.

I couldn’t possibly describe the game any further. It was a blur. The last minute of the third made the last minute of the Canada-Slovakia game look like an episode of Antiques Roadshow. I might have cried. And then Sidney Crosby gave us the fairytale ending and a chance to breathe, and the city erupted in unison. We considered going downtown, but opted for the less populous but equally enthusiastic scene on Commercial Drive. The street was filled with waving flags and car horns and high-fives. I love my neighbourhood, and I can’t wait for the impending madness of the World Cup, which is an especially big deal.

The closing ceremonies didn’t do much for me; while I loved that they brought back Catriona Le May Doan and a working fourth pillar, it bothered me that cash-grabs like Nickelback and Avril Lavigne were picked to represent my country. It’s naive of me to think that they’d go for musicians other than the big sellers, but after featuring KD Lang and Shane Koyczan in the opening ceremonies, I felt like they ran out of entertainment I would care about and did a last-minute run to Wal-Mart for the closing ceremonies. But when Neil Young took the stage, everything previous became a blur to me. The song is still stuck in my head.

And when the flame went out, I felt like somebody took my lollipop.

I’ll waste most of the morning sipping chai and staring jealously at the cat who likes to hang out in our living room. It’s too easy to envy big fluffy sleepy kitties. There’s too much to be jealous of.

I’ll get to work, which will fly by. It’s hard to complain about working Saturdays when you’re surrounded by people who are working on Saturday, because once you’ve managed to get to work the only real challenge is to remain there, which is really easy to do what with inertia and all that.

In a few short hours, my weekend will finally belong to me, and this morning will flee my memory for another week, and I’ll feel as though my day has barely begun.

But for now, I’m stuck counting hours. So far, there are eight of them. With a rainy commute and the arduous task of getting dressed ahead of me, that sounds like too many hours. I get up too early on Saturdays.

Wow, this post itself was yet another excuse to avoid getting on with my day. Congratulations, self.

But that’s different. As a filming location, Vancouver is usually dressed up to look like some other location, like outer space, or the town Superman’s from, or even the Bronx (beware of rumbles). Right now, every majestic skyline and sparkling aerial view is clearly and accurately labelled with both location and year. Vancouver 2010! That’s right! That’s exactly where and when I am!
For me, the most exciting source of these fantastic homescapes is The Colbert Report’s Vancouverage. Those aerial flyovers? I’m in them! Somewhere. But it doesn’t matter where, because I remember waving to the airplane so I must have been there. Why else would I wave at an airplane? My highlight of the entire Olympics so far has been last Thursday’s taping of the Colbert Report, and I’ve watched every night this week to see which bits made it on and which didn’t.

I won’t recount the entire experience. It’s all a blur, lost in my memory, never to be recaptured. Sorry. What I do remember is Stephen Colbert riding the moose at the very end of the taping. It’s a shaky moose; if you’ve been watching The Colbert Report this week, you saw Bob Costas doing his best while Stephen himself tried to steady it. There were at least three people holding it up for Colbert, while the massive crowd chanted “Ride the moose!”, which turned into “Don’t get hurt!”, which was really nice of us. In the end, he safely mounted the moose (tee hee), waved a big Canadian flag, and recorded the outro that I thought for sure I’d see again on network television.

But no. At first I was disappointed, but I’ve come to regard it as a special gift, the kind of special gift that’s probably hit YouTube many times over by now. I have shaky footage of it too, but I think I’ll keep it for myself.

Will downtown ever be as much fun as it’s been this month? I regret every night that I haven’t made it down there; there’s this nagging feeling that if I don’t check it out that I’ll miss out on a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I haven’t been to an event, and I haven’t stood in a single lineup for anything, but the positive energy of the blocked-off streets downtown is such a draw. It’s that same urgency that I felt at South By Southwest last year.

I look forward to Canada Day this year, not to mention the World Cup. I hope the enthusiasm lingers, and July 1st will unleash an ocean of flags as capes. The World Cup is always a huge deal in my neighbourhood (Commercial Drive), and I hope it’s even bigger.

I know I’m feeling especially starry-eyed about the whole experience right now, but I see no reason to squeeze those stars away quite yet.