Creampuff Revolution

Creampuff! Cold! Colbert! Cauldron!

Item 1: I am getting a cold and am VERY UNHAPPY ABOUT IT. I just got over a cold right before my volunteer shifts started and am not eager for a repeat performance. I am taking a lot of pills and drinking a lot of liquids. Pray for me!

Item 2: No “getting a cold” was going to stop me from pulling on pants and dragging the dog across the street to see STEPHEN COLBERT LIVE!! Wooooo! He was very funny. Here are some photos I took before the dog got bitchy and we had to skeddaddle.

The crowd!

My building!

Colbert’s set

Colbert!!!

Okay. You saw him. Can we go?

Item 3: I guess there was some controversy around the cauldron downtown and how the chainlink fence around it prevented people from taking good photos and generally Olympic Spiriting the hell out of the cauldron. So VANOC organizers moved some of the fence much closer, opened up an eye-level hole in the fence and also opened a rooftop viewing area nearby for people to take pictures.

All they needed to make the spectator/cauldron interaction complete was a team of blue-jacketed volunteers to answer questions like “How long is the line for the rooftop view of cauldron?” Why can’t my three year old climb the cauldron?” and “Do you want to see the cauldron in my pants?” – and we have answered the call. So Friday night, I was the Team Leader of the Cauldron Smurfs.

Working outside with the public is a lot different than working inside at the Westin. Firstly, there are a lot more people. Like, 300,000 more. Secondly, the public has different questions than the Westin IOC guests – for example, no one at the Westin has ever asked me angrily “Where are the mascots??”, like they expected me to produce them from my magic Olympic rectum. Thirdly, at the Westin, I have never had to:

1) Call 911 and ask tourists not to take photos of a guy who was bleeding a lot

2) Locate a missing child using a megaphone and a lifeguard chair

3) Comfort a weeping tourist whose wallet had just been stolen

4) Wander through a shipping yard trying to find an elevator so that an elderly woman in a scooter who was stranded on the sea wall could avoid being carried up 8 flights of stairs

5) Have a police officer intervene when some drunk young men’s “questions” about the cauldron got weirdly aggressive

It was probably the fastest shift I ever worked – and since they’ve managed to pull together a permanent crew over there, I probably won’t need to work there again. But hey – at the end of my ten hour shift, I got a photo of the cauldron! Jealous??

Creampuff’s Lucky #7

So Friday was my 7th shift volunteering at one of the Olympic Family Hotels. The OFHs are where the IOC and various NOCs (National Olympic Committees) are staying, having meetings, trying to chic each other out, etc.  Our OFH is a “secure venue”, which means that before anyone can get in, they have to have the right accreditation and they have to go through security like at the airport (x-ray for the bags, metal detector for the people, wand for their private areas – woe betide any IOC member with a dick piercing – I’m looking at you, Belgium!).

My job is basically:

• Scanning people’s passes
• Guiding people to the accreditation centre
• Smiling like I’m on something
• Radio-ing the team leader when we don’t know what the hell to do
• Getting chewed out by this one Westin doorman for shit that is not actually my fault; and
• Laying my shitty French down on unsuspecting visitors.

While I was a little bummed to get this assignment at the beginning, I have to say it’s actually been really fun – but after being on my feet for eight hours, four days in a row, my dogs were barkin’ on Friday afternoon and I could not WAIT until we’d gotten the 2000+ people loaded on the buses to go to the Opening Ceremonies so that I could sit the fuck down.

So there I was, standing outside the hotel with my radio, getting ashed on by some lady from Brazil, peering into the lobby to see if we’d managed to finally get everyone on the coach, when my supervisor – we’ll call her “L” - beetled over to me with a covert look in her eye.

L: Guess what?

Me: It’s dinner time?

L: You’re going to the Opening Ceremonies!

Me: WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA????

Then she handed me this:

And suddenly, I was on a bus.With the IOC. And an $1100 ticket.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!

I was not the only volunteer accorded this honour – three of my fellow volunteers got on the bus soon after, with the same dazed look in their eye, tickets clutched in their hot little hands and we all hicked out and squealed with delight over our incredible good fortune.

An aside – I’d LIKE to tell you that my free ticket was the result of my exceptional work scanning passes and speaking in halting French but the truth is that I a) was at the right place at the right time and b) had somehow demonstrated that I am not a total dipshit. But hey – I’LL TAKE IT.

We got to BC Place about 5 minutes before the Ceremonies began and my fellow volunteer Bob barely had time to kick some interlopers out of our seats before everything kicked off. We sat down, wrestled our drums/ponchos/flashlights/ candles/Canadian flags from the seat stealers and I wedged my very large ass into a VERY small plastic chair just as the countdown began.

I proceeded to take some very shitty photos with my iPhone and you WILL LOOK AT THEM.

The Mounties carrying the flag through The Great Blueness.

Bob does not know I took this photo, or that I have a blog.

These looked less penis-y in person.

It’s the Spirit Bear, bitches!!

I think one of these tap dancers is my friend Lindsay. Lindsay?

Harvest Moon. I kind of wet myself here.

At this point, my photo taking was disturbed by an altercation over seating – the couple at the end of our row were apparently in the wrong seats and would not move. So I didn’t manage to take any photos again until this shitty one of the jacked-up cauldron.

I knew no one would believe I was there, so I made Bob take my photo. Not bad for his first iPhone picture!

Everyone had their favourite parts of the Opening Ceremonies, of course – personally, I lurved the whale part, the fiddling/tap dancing part, the kd lang part and the slam poet part the best – but overall, I have to say it was pretty amazing to be there with 60,000 people, screaming our heads off when the Canadian team walked in. Woooo!

Trying to get OUT of the stadium’s one exit with those same 60,000 people – LESS FUN. I have to hand it to the volunteers at BC Place for keeping their cool in a less than ideal situation…because only the fact that I was also wearing a volunteer uniform kept me from punching a few people in the nards.

Anyway – I went to the Opening Ceremonies for free!!! Wooooooooo! Go Canada!!!

Of course, it’s Day 3 and this is all old news – Silver for Jenn Heil! Bronze for Kristina Groves! Gold for Alex Bilodeau! Woooo! But you know…I did take the pictures.

Addendum – on my way to lucky shift #7, I ran into the lovely and increasingly famous Andrea of 2010VanFan, who gave me one of her awesome pins and also was the first to give me the awful news about the poor Georgian luger who died on Friday. Andrea is a HUGE Olympics fan and she is blogging the shit out of the Winter Games and if you’re a fan, you should definitely check out her blog. Thanks, Andrea!

Also, I keep meaning to mention that if you’d like your Olympic coverage a) a little more sporadic and b) with more dick jokes, you should check out Kimli’s blog, Delicious Juice. Because she is very funny.

Creampuff’s Pre-Volunteer Shift To-Do List

I’m leaving my house tomorrow at 5:30 a.m. to get to my first volunteer shift at 6:00 a.m.! Since there is no storage at the venue, I can’t bring my purse with me – I have to fit everything I need for my 6:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. shift into the various pockets of my uniform. Then I’ll leave my house…and be gone ALL DAY.

I’ve been working at home for so long that I’ve kind of forgotten that this, for most people, is pretty normal. Most people get up in the morning, groom, eat breakfast, put on grown-up clothes, commute to work, work all day, commute home and THEN play Wii.

This seems CRAZY to me. I mean, what if:

- I feel like calling my mom?

- I need to spend a ponderous twenty minutes reading Mr. Darcy Presents His Bride in the ladies’ shitter?

- I discover, halfway through the day, that I’m NOT wearing the comfy underwear but instead the horrible chafing underwear that I always mean to throw out and then just stick back in the laundry?

- I miss a funny Mukmuk video on YouTube because I’m away from the Twitter?

- I have a thought I can’t immediately share with Katr?

Packing the pockets of my voluminous coat and asking endless “what if” questions is not the only prep work I’m undertaking for tomorrow. There’s also:

- Teaching Katr how to make her own coffee Setting up the coffee every night before I go to bed so that all Katr has to do is press the start button in the morning. The start button, sweetie. The big button with the little red light. The red…there you go.

- Quit shouting “Feel my fury” or the short form, “feel it”, whenever I braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaap.

- Replacing my usual vulgar phrases with socially acceptable phrases. “Fucked if I know, fella” should be “Fucked if I know, Mr. President sir.”

- Not saying this keen phrase that Jasc left on my Facebook page: “Is that a pass in your pocket sir, or are you just excited to see my Mukmuk? ZING!” (thanks for THAT, Jackie. ‘Cause THAT’s not going to slip out in front of HRH The Princess Anne.)

- Deciding which lip gloss to bring. It’s down to Melting Marshmallow Cream (which is actually a lovely toasted coconut flavour but is also marshmallow coloured, so if I put it on too thick, it might look like I’ve been making time with Quatchi behind the Inukshuk) or Caramel Apple (nice hint of red and smells like apple cider, but if I’m acting erratically, people might think I’m drunk).

- Figuring out the lid on my fucking “sustainable drinking container”.

- Get a brazilian.

I’m HOPING that my first shift tomorrow will yield some hilarious stories to share with you all! But in reality, I’ll be standing outside, directing people where to go, or standing inside checking people’s passes and I will just be REALLY happy if I make it through the whole day of standing. Think upright thoughts! Unless it gives you a woody! Although who am I, really, to deny you a good boner? Carry on.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go spend a little quality time with Mr. Darcy and his bride.

Creampuff’s Favourite Mascot Has His Own Twitter Stream

While Quatchi may be more my size, I must confess that my favourite Vancouver 2010 Olympic Mascot is Vancouver Island marmot, Mukmuk.

Technically, Mukmuk is a mascot “sidekick” – all the other mascots are depicted participating in a variety of Olympic and Paralympic sports while Mukmuk:

• Cheers them on with his big foam finger; and
• Drives the ice resurfacer.

As an armchair Olympian, I really identify with Mukmuk, as I’m sure many of us do. Also, I feel that Mukmuk doesn’t get the love the other mascots get and that’s cold, wet and wrong.

So you can imagine my delight when I discovered that Mukmuk is tweeting. About what? EVERYTHING.

Gossip about the other mascots. His love of berries. Sexcapades. How cute he is.

A sampling:

Maybe you have to be drinking the Olympic Kool-aid to really feel FakeMukmuk’s tweets, but I find them so fucking hilarious. I might be a little hysterical now that I’m only a few days away from my first 6:15 a.m. shift at the Olympic Family Hotel. I don’t know if they’ll let me bring my personal Mukmuk with me.

I wish that was a metaphor but I actually have my own Mukmuk. Behold!
 

p.s. I’m not allowed to do finger guns during volunteer shifts. I asked my supervisor. Who didn’t think it was funny.

p.p.s. That rat behind me is totally going for my toque.

p.p.p. s. Did anyone else know about this below??