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Show The Park Record FriSatSun, February 8-10, 2002 ORE DOGS ON MAIN ST. ! The Park City Performing Arts Foundation Presents: . .-T".' - f By Tom Clyde The Olympic omelet L A-14 mm u V SALT LAKE 200r OQp The Cultural Olympiad in Park City y f Photo Coiutfsy of AAADT Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater February 12 & 13 HERE. ..NOW. features one of America's most acclaimed dance companies in an Olympic-commissioned piece honoring sports icon, Florence Griffith. Joyner. Tickets: $50, $75 & $95 '- I 1- ,f ... 1 Phot,, bv Mi. Iw.-l ()'N,.i)l Pilobolus Dance Theatre February 19 Innovative and spectacular, Pilobolus combines dance and acrobatics in this remarkable world-premiere performance. Tickets: $40, $55 & $70 Please Call 435-655-3114 for tickets & Information. Performances start at 8 p.m. Parking is available after 5 p.m. The Eccles Center is located at 175 Kearns Blvd.., Park City visit our website for information: www.ecclescenter.org The Gmfa 8. A Dolores Dor Eccles center for tba Performing Arta If you're going to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs. We're about to serve up the biggest omelet ever seen in these parts, and there's no question that there are a lot of eggshells around town. It's been years of preparations, and the last few months have been pretty intense. Despite regular and thorough briefings from the city on what to expect, each day presents pre-sents new surprises. It doesn't matter how many times you hear that Snow Park is closed, you don't believe it until you get turned back by the guy in fatigues with the M-16. Both Park City Mountain Resort and Deer Valley are continuing to stress how little of the mountain moun-tain is affected by the Olympics. They're right, in the sense that once you are on the hill, you have the place to yourself. But getting there is an increasingly difficult proposition. When I moved to Park City, the landlord didn't have a key to the door of the house I rented. It had never been locked. Through the years that has changed, but mostly because I come and go through the automatic garage door than make a deliberate decision to throw the dead bolt when running to the grocery store. Now there are men in battle uniforms, toting automatic rifles around town and snipers in the woods. As I'm skiing along an eerily Consistent with life in the occupied terri tories, there is a growing black market for those things that can't be obtained through normal channels. Parking passes are a hot commodity" Tom Clyde vacant run. a black helicopter rises almost silently from below the ridge, at eye level, with missiles mis-siles ready to fire. I expect to see Arnold at the controls and Jamie Lee Curtis dangling from the i""""" runner. There are new radar stations on every mountaintop, and metal detectors all over the place. The fillings in my teeth are hot to the touch. There are busloads of soldiers looking like they are on their way to the front. I've been skiing a lot lately. Conditions are perfect, and the hill is vacant. You can stand at the top of a run and not see another skier on the entire mountain. It's fast, fun skiing. I rode up the lift the other day with a journalist from London. He didn't have sunglasses or goggles on. I suggested there were places at the bottom where he could probably find some cheap sunglasses to avoid going snow blind. He said he had never seen a sky as blue as ours. He just couldn't get over it. He will be spending most of the (lames at the Salt Palace press center and was trying to get a look at the venues before things got busy. "This is a simply glorious place." he said, over and over again. The next ride up was with three guys who "work for the government. " It was pretty clear they were not with the Library of Congress. They were getting a day of skiing ski-ing in before their jobs became 24?7. Even the skiing was partly work, getting a feel for the place and the lay of the land. If we are depending on their skiing ability for our safety, we're toast, but they were having fun. And aside from a strange habit of talking to the cuffs of !heir jackets, they seemed pretty norntfil''A group of fighter jets flew overhead1.'' Leaving the 'garage'' at : PCMR, I had to wait for the troop movements as a group of soldiers walked across the driveway. They were happy and friendly. I bet they would have let me borrow their night-vision goggles to put my ski boots on in the depths of the dark garage. I wish I could say that I felt more secure as a result of all the preparations. I don't In a town where you V leave the keys in the car, this show of military force feels all wrong. It's creepy. Where are we? This isn't Park City anymore. It feels like we've been transported transport-ed to some third-world country, or some Orwellian nightmare from "1984." It's "Brave New World" on snow. And our security is relatively low-profile compared com-pared to downtown Salt Lake. Consistent with life in the occupied territories; there is a growing black market for those things that can't be obtained through normal channels. Parking passes are a hot commodity. I saw a car parked the other day with an array of parking passes on the: dashboard. There must have been a dozen from different dif-ferent businesses, the ski areas, condominiums and. for good measure, cards indicating that he had donated donat-ed generously to the Tow Truck Drivers' Retiremenf Home. I've got a glove box full of parking passes myself.' I'm not sure that any of them will really accomplish-anything, accomplish-anything, as you still have to get to the parking space to-use to-use the pass. The school parking lots are now the high-rent high-rent district, with fees of $30 a day. In most of Utah that will still buy a motel room. The city has been selling-permits selling-permits at even higher prices for select spots in Main Street area garages." A fleet of brand-' new tow trucks has; been assembled,' and the impound yard will hold more cars than SLOC's parking lots at the ski jump. Despite my royal flush of hhhi parking passes, the bus is probably still' the best option. But there you have it. We've sliced and diced and; ripple-cut carrots. Every plan has been run through the Veg-a-matic several times, tested and tweaked and. tweaked again. The town is looking great. The graphic, designers from SLOC and the city have done a wonderful won-derful job of creating a consistent Olympic Look. It's at the freeway ramps and Main Street and at the resorts,-and resorts,-and the uniforms of the various platoons of volunteers. Heber City's Main Street looks beautiful, and the huge, posters on the buildings in downtown Salt Lake are magnificent The excitement is palpable. I feel like a-kid a-kid on Christmas Eve. The snipers are in place on the rooftops, and I heard on national TV last night that we have both smallpox and anthrax medications available at area hospitals. We're as ready as we're going to get I'm anxious to get past the preparations and on with the show. The torch made its beautiful and dignified entry into, the state at Delicate Arch. The run through the Navajo Reservation at Monument Valley was beautiful. It was the perfect symbol of reaching out to the most forgotten forgot-ten corners of the globe. A Navajo teenager ran with the Olympic Torch through land his people have held sacred for millennia. Powerful stuff. With the arrival; of the torch in Park City on Thursday, the burners' afe fit 'and the giant Olympic omelet is on the stove, sizzling. Let's serve it up hot, and hope it's as good as we thought it would be when this started out all those years ago, in a world that was so very different. Tom Clyde is a former city attorney and author of "More Dogs on Main Street. " He has been a columnist for The Park Record for more titan a decade. V ON'T get me started By Gary Weiss The Home Team The American philosopher and mythologist, Joseph Campbell was once asked by a priest if he considered himself a man of faith? 'No, Father" he said. "I'm a man of experience." After thinking about it later though, he said that while he might live a more rational life, he'd never experience the passionate rapture rap-ture of a saint. Which seems to me, akin to how many of us look at these athletes especially those who dont often win. We wonder at the cost but. those of us who've never been there, will never know the rapture. And so. at last, it's begun; they're finally here. Most of them aren't rich or famous. In fact, most of them we'll never even know their names. But they train with a single-minded devotion, with a dedication and power few of us will ever understand. Removing themselves from most of the fun parts of being young. But they come - mostly from high places, like this one. From mountain valleys and small, rural towns. From resorts, like this one. From cold places, like this one. They do all this the denial, the endless training - for the right to come and partake in one of the endurina glories of the human spirit. The Winter b"" Olympics. " always turn to tlie sports pages first, which record people's accomplishments. Tlie front page has nothing but nuin's failures." That, from America's greatest Chief Justice, Earl Warren. You know, being 50. I've found that one of the more peculiar aspects of getting older is that I cant remember remem-ber things like needed groceries. So. I make a list, and then I can't remember where the list is. But things from 20 years ago, and more, seem absolutely current. Like the last time the United States was the Winter Olympic home team: The 1980 Games in Lake Placid. An Olympics, made particularly meaningfuL'when the American hockey team - essentially a bunch of college col-lege players - beat the vaunted Soviets and wou the gold medal. Then considered the best in the world, the U.S. game was supposed to be just a tune-up for the Russians. Not much more than a televised practice, really, on their way to the Gold. At least on paper. But, as sports commentators like to say, tliat's why they play the games. At the time, America was perceived as a nation in decline. We still hadn't recovered from Vietnam. The country was going through the worst recession in modern mod-ern history, with widespread unemployment and interest inter-est rates near 20 percent. Most crushing of all. was the Iranian hostage nightmare. Under a new Islamic government. Iranians had seized the U.S. embassy in November 1979, taking 52 . mm i - " V I 1 But they come -- mostly from high places, like this one. From mountain valleys val-leys and small, rural towns. From resorts, like this one. From cold places, like this one" '.. ' Gary Weiss hostages. Suffering a terrible 444-day captivity, the Americans had finally been released a few weeks ' before the Olympics. It was one of the worst times for '. this country since World War II. ;' But almost magically, that against-all-odds gold ; medal in hockey, seemed to galvanize this nation - out of all proportion. Somehow that team seemed to sym- ' bolize America itself, communicating all that's best '. about this country and the Olympic movement It was ; fantastic, and I remember it as if it were last week. And then there was Eric Heiden. A competitor in the barely cared about sport of speed-skating, he won ! five individual gold medals, shattering records all over ', the place. When it was over, he insisted the five gold's were no big thing. "They'll probably sit where the rest of them ' are - on my mom's dresser..." he said. "Gold, silver ! and bronze isn't special. It's giving 100 percent, and ; knowing you've done the best you can. " Overcoming . an ! epidemic of cynicism. ! we believed him. ' And those were just j two examples of a miraculous Olympics. ! Those athletes, even J those who didn't win", medals, truly touched. the American heart; when we needed it so very desperately. ; So here we are again - the home team. It's a different differ-ent America now. but these Games, in this place,, couldnt have come at a better time. Since Lake Placid,-this Placid,-this country has enjoyed an amazing renaissance. More than ever, America's a place much of the world looks to for all the best things. But like Lake Placid,, this nation, ias also come X through a terrible ordeal. Unlike 1980, however, this ; time we didn't sit by passively. As a nation united, J we've stood up - as if to say: We've taken your best shot and we're still here. And now. as the competition begins I think we all J look at these athletes just a little differently. More as an' American TEAM, and less as individual competitors.:' Of course, we want our guys to win; I cant deny a fair measure of host nation pride. But I'm not sure that's all J there is. Symbols only represent those things in which we believe. Things like the flag, may only serve as a sym- 4 bolic representation - a kind of shorthand for the American ethos. But they also act as emotional trig- J gers. And I'm sure that this time around, when our flag is raised - gold medals or not - it will have important J added meaning. Gary Weiss is the former owner of Dolly 's Bookstore and has served on the Summit County Planning Commission. OOR C |