What’s that?  You’re ready to step up and design a soiree of fun for your friends?  OK, here’s the difficult part:  You’ll be spending half the night fielding texts and firing off messages of logistics to everyone.  You need to be firm and decisive!  You make a meeting time and you stick to it!  You have the addresses of all the places you’ll be going to and the times you expect to be there!  People will forget where they’re going, they’ll come late, they’ll want to know if they’re on the guest list.  Make sure your phone is charged.  If it dies, the evening is lost.

Your friends are awesome, but when you’re the Point Man, they’re like a bunch of preschool children.  Tell them what to do and where to go and they’ll love you for it.

First of all, eating dinner before going out is just wasted time.  Cool people are so busy doing cool things and making the world a cooler place that taking time out for a meal is rarely an option.

Secondly, everyting you need is already at the party.  Most spreads will include the five essential food groups:  vegetables, cheese, pastries, crab cakes and chocolate desserts.

Finally, it’s impolite not to graze on the food your host has laid out.  If they’ve gone to all the trouble to microwave those little sausage rolls from Costco, the most gracious thing you can do is to jam a bunch of them in your mouth.  It’s common courtesy.

In two years you will be getting the Olympics.  If you choose to embrace them, you have no idea how sweet they are going to be!

During the games, you will feel like you are hemorrhaging money.  You will be shocked at how much you spend but you won’t care because you will feel like you’re on vacation in your own city.  Not just “you”, but everyone, on the same vacation, in the same place, and you’re all best friends.

Every night you will have 20 different places to go and you’ll have friends at all of them.  You’ll feel like you need to seize each moment, see everything, do everything, be everywhere.  It’s exhausting.  You won’t sleep.  You’ll love it.

Vancouver prides itself on being a multi-cultural and diverse city (sound familiar?) but sometimes, that hurts it.  There are so many different groups of people that have little in common with one another and often that keeps them distant and separate.  For 2 weeks, all of that suddenly changed.  Everyone felt as if they were of the same tribe.  We all felt as one.  I cannot count how many sincere hugs and high-5′s I have exchanged with complete strangers.  Every human being should feel what that’s like.  It’s empowering.  People will talk about an “Olympic Legacy”, something that remains with the city after the games are gone.  It’s not a speed-skating oval or a new rapid transit line.  It’s the incredible sense of unity that a populace feels when they know that they are all a part of something genuinely great, together.

You will witness moments of greatness that will go down in national history.  I ran into a guy outside the stadium yesterday who had just bought a single scalped ticket to the game for $1800.  He said he had put aside two thousand since the summer with the intention of spending it on this one gold-medal hockey game.  Considering the outcome, he got the bargain of the century.

You will witness moments of ridiculousness: The mayor of Vancouver came onstage just before the free Damien Marley concert and proclaimed February 24th “Canadian National Snowboarding Day”.  What!!??  That’s Olympic fever for you.

You will witness moments of cool gone wrong: My brother got busted for ginching a micky and kicked out of the free Girltalk concert 2 days later.

You will find yourself caring about obscure sports like the Skeleton or the Biathelon and discussing the finer strategy of these events with your friends.

You will fall in love with the athletes because they are real people.  They are not prima-donna millionaires who play for massive sports clubs (for the most part), they are regular folk, many of whom have regular jobs, who have trained for years doing some little-known solo sport and are sincerely trying their absolute best to make their country proud.  You will relate to these people.  You’ll feel their pain and their joy.  It’s catharsis.

Foreign medias may criticize your Olympics, saying the venues are poorly prepared, infrastructure is ill-organized, the competitions lack drama or style.  What they fail to realize is that the Olympics are not about sports.  They are about spilling out into the streets and cheering as one, feeling something as one.  The sports themselves are just an excuse to cheer.  They are merely a vehicle to unite the masses into one common and singular passion.  You cannot possibly realize that unless you step out onto the streets and feel it for yourself.

People will denounce your Olympics by telling you that $6 billion dollars (estimate of what ours cost) for a 2 week long party isn’t worth it…..but…..what if it is?   My city has never felt better.

Sincerely,

A big part of being cool is being the envy of your friends, and having the meal with the most flavorful facade earns a huge amount of envy.  This is why the ordering process can take so long, “What are you getting?  Oh really, the Cajun Chicken Wrap, is that good here?”   Nobody wants the waitress to hand them a plate that looks like floor-sweepings and then spend the rest of the meal staring longingly at everyone else’s repast.

So, how do you know what to order?  Unless you’ve eaten there before, you’ll need to look for the little clues.  Here’s one: pay attention to the free candies they give at the register.  If they are mints, order pasta.  If they are licorice/ouzo flavored, order the souvlaki.  If there are Asian characters on the packaging, feel confident in ordering the rice bowl.  If it’s a mish-mash of different candies, your best bet is the burger.  And finally, if there are no candies at all, well, that’s the restaurant’s way of telling you their food needs no confectionary support and you can safely go ahead and order the steak, the Cadillac of Restaurant Meals.

You see, we are a culture that likes to get behind the underdog.  We love stories of the downtrodden succeeding against all odds, overcoming scandals, finding redemption and generally rising from the ashes.

So, whether you’re the Boston Redsox, the World Economy, or a single guy trying to” pick up” at the bar, there’s nothing that feels quite as good or carries quite as much relief as breaking out of a long slump.

OLYMPIC HOCKEY SIDE NOTE:

The Canadian Men’s team squeaked by the Swiss in a shootout and then lost to the Americans on Sunday night.  This constitutes a major slump.  C’mon Canada, get back in there!  Rub some ice on it and walk it off!

In every great sports story the good guys have to spend a little time with their backs against the wall. We really wouldn’t want this to play out any other way.  Breaking this slump is going to be an awesome task, but when they do, it’s going to be all the sweeter.  There’s a whole lotta’cool on the line and all the Canadian team needs to do now is simply reach out and grab it!  It was always theirs in the first place.

Granted, the only reason I’m in this thing is because I look like a clown, but still, getting in a newspaper is pretty awesome and clearly, from what I’m wearing, I know how to pick a winner.

Here’s a question: What the hell am I doing with my hands?  It’s like I’m the Kool-Aid man and I’ve just busted through the brick wall in behind.  Ohhhh yeahhh!!!

This marks the second time I’ve made it into this particular publication.  The first time, I was on the cover, somewhat blurred out, in the background, playing Dodge-ball when they were doing a feature on my team.  Like I said, free daily paper.

Once we got into the stadium, some random dude came up to my brothers and I and asked if he could get his picture taken with us.

Turns out this guy was Canadian Olympic snowboarding gold medal winner and lover of the chronic, Ross Rebagliati.  When semi-celebrities are asking you for photos, that’s when you know you’re doing something right.

My conclusion:  I’m getting a lot of mileage out of my hat.

Then another group arrives, and another.  Maybe you have some friends amidst this second wave, maybe you don’t, but before you realize it it’s three hours later and you’re far drunker then you had planned on getting tonight.

Conclusion:  Best party you’ve been to in months and, of course, the success of the party is reflected upon it’s host.  The only problem now is that your hoarse throat and slurred words make it difficult to communicate with the taxi driver.

Here’s one clue that never fails:  Look at their jeans.  Sometimes they’ll look way better, sometimes they’ll look way worse, but they’ll always look slightly out of place.  Notice how the waistband sags differently, how the leg tappers in a dissimilar way, how the flare, wash and rise somehow feels unlike anything you’ve ever seen on your friends.

Keep a running score with your friends for the night.  To verify, ask your subject a question about wine or bicycles and listen for the accent.

P.S.:  When played in Europe the game is called “Guess Who’s from North America”.  Exact same rules and clues apply.  The verifying question should be about UFC or action movies, however.

Do not feel guilty about this.  After the $20 cover charge and the stupid $5 coat check, you deserve a discount on something.

Ginching a mickey is awesome because the risk / reward ratio is completely in your favor.  The reward for smuggling in free booze is far greater than the risk of the bouncer discovering it when he frisks you at the door.  Really the only way he’s going to find your baby bottle is if he grabs your crotch and if he’s prepared to do that, he deserves to win anyway.

P.S.: Don’t throw the empty bottle on the floor of the club.  Take it to the bathroom and hide it in the garbage.  The less attention you draw to what you’re doing the easier it will be to get away with it again and again.

There are a couple of key things to remember, here:  #1. You have to have cool people in your crew and #2. Within the crew, you need to be the coolest person.  Following these simple rules will increase your own cool exponentially

When it comes right down to it, traveling with a posse is not so much about intimidation as it’s about having a bunch of people with you to laugh at your jokes.

And remember, your crew shouldn’t to be any larger then 4 or 5 people, otherwise you won’t all be able to fit into 1 cab.