Fear and Loathing at the Olympic Trials

Seyta wrote:

I'll just provide a short summary of what this blog has to say so nobody else has to waste 10 minutes of their lives reading it.

10% - whining about how he misses Pre and wishes more runners can be like him

10% - bashing Galen Rupp

10% - bashing Alberto Salazar and the Nike-Oregon Project

40% - complaining over and over about Nike

10% - complaining repeatedly about the USATF

5% - complimenting Evan Jager

5% - whining about Eugene

10% - venting frustrations about the USATF and blindly screaming about how T&F is a dirty sport

Anyways, this was most certainly written by a Letsrun poster, so if you go skimming these message boards once in a while, you'll basically see the exact same things.

Seyta, I'm glad you can add properly to 100%, because literary analysis isn't your strong suit. The post, if it can really be considered "bashing" at all, does its bashing in a clearly tongue-in-cheek fashion. If you've read anything by the late Hunter S. Thompson, you'd know his style is chock-full of scathing rhetoric and humorous cynicism. This parody, in my opinion, captures much of that.

Take, for example, a famous Thompson criticism of Nixon from a 1968 article: "Richard Nixon has never been one of my favorite people anyway. For years I've regarded his existence as a monument to all the rancid genes and broken chromosomes that corrupt the possibilities of the American Dream; he was a foul caricature of himself, a man with no soul, no inner convictions, with the integrity of a hyena and the style of a poison toad. The Nixon I remembered was absolutely humorless; I couldn't imagine him laughing at anything except maybe a paraplegic who wanted to vote Democratic but couldn't quite reach the lever on the voting machine."

If the post's author nears that level of bitterness in his post, I don't see it, unless it's directed at the USATF--but let's face it, we can all agree they're a bunch of functional retards[see Tarmoh vs. Felix, coin toss]. Rather, the author errs on the side of hyperbole when elevating distance runners above reality: "A real Athletics event, as anyone with an SAT score higher than their 5k time knows, consists of 800m up to 10k and only deals with the gazelle-like specimens who breed like rabbits in the post-race bars." The post also ends with a tip-of-the hat to the almost-anonymous caretaker of Pre's Rock, considered anonymous by many (see recent SI article:

)

If anything, I'd call this post good, clean fun. Neither Rupp's nor Salazar's feelings should be hurt, because they're both BAs regardless of their scientific approach to race day--and we all know Nike doesn't have feelings, so it's all good there.

Thus, to summarize (so you don't waste another 10 minutes that could be spent masturbating into your Under Armor c*ck sleeve):

100% - You're a snooty, whiny tool.

Seyta wrote:

OldFatDude wrote:

Just an awesome blog post:

http://thelogicoflongdistance.blogspot.com/2012/07/fear-and-loathing-at-olympic-trials.html

I'll just provide a short summary of what this blog has to say so nobody else has to waste 10 minutes of their lives reading it.

10% - whining about how he misses Pre and wishes more runners can be like him

10% - bashing Galen Rupp

10% - bashing Alberto Salazar and the Nike-Oregon Project

40% - complaining over and over about Nike

10% - complaining repeatedly about the USATF

5% - complimenting Evan Jager

5% - whining about Eugene

10% - venting frustrations about the USATF and blindly screaming about how T&F is a dirty sport

Anyways, this was most certainly written by a Letsrun poster, so if you go skimming these message boards once in a while, you'll basically see the exact same things.

Ha ha- excellent. I was thinking he was just one of those negative losers. A jealous hater. Thanks for the summary.

This writer is your quintessential whiny hipster... nothing original, probably would tell you he liked the olympics before you did, before it was cool to like the olympics

Is Nike paying shills to attack this piece? Of course it's not high art, but it's freaking hilarious.

If you put something on the interwebs, you are asking to be criticized... dude is a tool

Joe Mama wrote:

This writer is your quintessential whiny hipster... nothing original, probably would tell you he liked the olympics before you did, before it was cool to like the olympics

Dude, the Olympics have been popular for like 3000 years.

That was an awesome piece of writing!

________________________________________

No, it wasn't!

I thought it was hilarious. HST was an awesome dude

The guy rips off the writing style of Hunter Thompson and that's brilliant? That speaks volumes for the quality of education you guys have had and what kind of recreational reading you do.

Danno wrote:

The guy rips off the writing style of Hunter Thompson and that's brilliant? That speaks volumes for the quality of education you guys have had and what kind of recreational reading you do.

Yes, successfully imitating the style of another writer is something of an accomplishment. It means that you are attuned enough to the style of the original to be able to reproduce it.

writing (like this) that tries to sensationalize the mundane is very, very boring. it's not prophetic, and it's certainly not intellectual, what it is, is hipster... it is a dude with a 50 year old camera, in woman's jeans, living in Portland

One could easily argue that the writer was unsuccessful in imitating the style of the good Dr.

This piece was awful.

I had to down two fingers of Wild Turkey just to erase the memory of this failure from my mind.

The Brown Buffalo wrote:

One could easily argue that the writer was unsuccessful in imitating the style of the good Dr.

This piece was awful.

I had to down two fingers of Wild Turkey just to erase the memory of this failure from my mind.

I agree. I was just pointing out that a good parody is an accomplishment. See, e.g., the "Oxen of the Sun" chapter in "Ulysses."

For the record, LetsRun had nothing to do with this piece and it wasn't written by an employee of ours.

As gullible as some people are on here, I just thought I should clarify as I just read it myself and saw that it's also on our homepage so people might think it's actually our employee.

It's a moderately decent parody of Thompson in that its both terribly self-conscious and look-at-me precious. Also, it tries desparately hard to be funny (its not).

Most of all, its grossly sexist. You'd never even know women were involved at the trials other than being things to hang on men and to stereotype a la 1972. So yeah. It was a decent Thompson parody. *zzzzzzzzzzz*

Congratu-f'ing-lations. You hate everything on the planet except for Pre. You also have blatantly repressed homosexual urges being expressed in your description of Evan Jager. For his sake, I hope he has a restraining order.

You know you've made it big when you're getting ripped on letsrun. I am not the author of the piece, but I run the blog and was happy to be able to "publish" it.

I want to re-iterate that everything that was written there (as the style hopefully indicates) is fictionalized.

I've been in communication with RVT about your views of his writing, his sexuality, his attitude towards women, etc., etc. He takes these views quite seriously, and when he gets back from his trip (if you know what I mean) he is hoping to craft a response.

Until then, he wanted me to let you know that, as always, he is impressed with the high level of discourse on the letsrun message board.

the only thing awesome about this blog is the author got at least close to pinning down the hipster/douche college-, or more likely ex-, runner-type that, regardless of attending the trials, a letsrunMB reader will be and simultaneously despise.

read the thread before going to the blog, decided not to read the blog