What If Chicago Had Won?
The Mandarin and the Czar wonder what would happen if the City of Chicago had won the 2016 Olympics?
One week before the opening ceremonies, the CTA would announce a funding crisis and cut all bus and train routes to and from the events. The day of the opening ceremonies, the mayor would fire the head of the CTA and immediately announce his replacement, who would be hired for $2.4 million a year.
Tickets for most events would be sold for $20. Immediately, ticket brokerages would buy them up, and sell them for $80. The Chicago City Council would tack on a maintenance fee, litter clean up fees, traffic control fees, a 911-center fee, a surcharge to cover additional medical staff, and a street repair charge that would result in your paying $160 a pop.
Kanye West will be asked to sing at the opening ceremonies. He will stagger out, blink at the lights, and mumble halfway through a song before accusing the diving judges of hating black people. Jesse Jackson will promptly hold a press conference, announcing that he is organizing a boycott of the Olympics that will, within days, put over one hundred minority-owned concession owners out of business.
Oops. Sweat drips onto the basketball court. A Chicago union employee races out with the mop and stands there with his hand out: there is a $50 charge to mop the floor. Sorry that wasn’t explained at the outset.
Visitors waiting to enter the pavilion will be delighted to see a homeless man urinate into a wine bottle, and then dash the wine bottle into the sidewalk. Police will arrive and, sensitive to the crowd’s fear of handguns, will discharge a massive amount of pepper spray into the homeless guy’s face, which will then cause the crowd to begin fleeing and vomiting. A cell phone camera will catch the police tazing him violently to the ground.
The homeless man will turn out to be a relative of a city councilman, who will then sue the city for millions, force the police to make an apology, and require the IOC to acknowledge that they are racists.
Partway during Usain Bolt’s run for a new world record, an entire tier of seating will collapse, killing two and injuring 50. First responders will discover that critical stress-relief bolts under the risers were missing, and the city inspector responsible for approving this as safe will prove to be a 21-year-old college dropout with no actual work experience, who is a nephew of a union representative; the union rep will also be related to an alderman, and whose brother owned the steel framing company that omitted the bolts in a cost-cutting move ordered by the general contractor under the direction of the Mayor.
The overall cost to the City will be $1.2 billion over the original budget; this despite the fact that we actually leased the games to a third party “Olympics vendor” out of Liechtenstein. Estimates put the final date of completion of the stadium site in early February, 2021.
Bizarre performance drug test results will be traced back to the discovery that a Chicago street gang inexplicably wound up in charge of transporting test samples from the site in car trunks. Eventually, thousands of competitors’ urine samples will be found in a state senator’s basement.
In an effort to impress our European visitors, Mayor Daley starts another green initiative to use rougher toilet paper throughout all the venues. However, the toilet paper is unable to break down in Chicago’s centuries-old plumbing system resulting in an explosive and violent blend of feces and fetid water. Daley blames the press, saying that many people would welcome the growth of grass and moss that is sure to follow the, you know, follow the fertilizer or whatever you call it, and you people know best of all that lawns are good. There will be a $1.2 million clean up effort, which will result in dog licenses now being set at $1200 per pet.
Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.