Who Needs A Five-Ringed Circus When...

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...You've Got Someone Fighting Narcolepsy While Wearing The PJ's Of An Amphibian.

So.

I've learned something new lately based on the comment threads, Email conversations, and a recent perusal of the outclicks recorded by the hit-counter.

And that is that many of you stop by here not to read my stuff, but instead to checkout the moveable feast that is the Blog Crawl over there on the left side of the page.

Now.

Most of you who do that (and you know who are you are) are clearly like-minded Lotuslandian Poliwogaholics.

Which means you probably find it annoying when the music stuff pops up over there.

But.

Here's the thing.....

Crazy, mixed-up and fabulous takes how all matters audiophilic weave their way into one's life is the biggest reason that 'Barely Awake In Frog Pyjamas' is over there on the Crawl.

I mean, without Frog PJ's regular, detailed and multilayered missives how the heckfire would I know about stuff like this:

"...Now, as I’ve mentioned, the fisticuffs Bjork has engaged in in airports ’round the globe seem justified, but this lovely song also reveals her to be a mischief maker. She openly admits to tossing all kinds of items – “Car-parts, bottles and cutlery, or whatever I find lying around” – off the mountain top where she lives.

So, as delightful as she may seem, I suspect that it’s not always a picnic living in Bjork’s neighborhood..."

Bjork – Joga
Bjork – Bachelorette
from Homogenic (1997)

And then, a few days ago Frog PJ's had a really great piece up about the 3000m women's  race run round and round the LA Coliseum track at the then just post-MacintoshOrwellian 1984 Olympics of Peter Ueberroth.

Here's the meet (sic) of the thing:

"...I found Zola (Budd) fascinating as she wasn’t much older than I was and, at an age when five years was forever, this gangly, curly-haired sprite was apparently smoking the adult runners against whom she competed.

And she ran barefoot.

I was a sixteen year-old kid in a small town in the American midwest and on the high school track team and this was exotic stuff.

In the days before constant media, Zola was a mystery to most of the world, and – in this pre-internet, pre-ESPN world – I don’t think I’d even seen footage of her running.

But she was in the sports news a lot in the time leading up to the 1984 Olympics, for record-setting performances and for being granted UK citizen to be able to compete in the games.

(South Africa athletes being banned from international competition because of their country’s apartheid system)

I was watching the night of the 3000 meter finals which had been hyped as a showdown between Zola and American Mary Decker.

Decker had been Zola a decade earlier, a teen-aged running prodigy in pigtails, who had missed chances for Olympic glory due to injuries and the 1980 US boycott of the Soviet games.

And I was watching when, halfway through the event, with Zola leading a pack including Decker, the two became entangled as Decker clipped Zola’s bare heel, sending the American tumbling in a heap into the infield.

As Decker writhed in pain at the side of the track, the race continued as the massive crowd of 85,000 spectators viciously booed.

It was brutal to watch.

Zola had been the target of ongoing protests because of being South African, but this was different. She had described Decker as her heroine and had posters of the older runner on her bedroom walls.

She led for another lap or two but faded to seventh, later explaining that she couldn’t quit, but that she couldn’t face receiving a medal in front of the hostile crowd....

And here's the race itself (with British announcers; the Al Michaels version is out there too but, personally, I can't quite stomach that)....The tragedy of the trip happens at ~5:10...

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