Bode Miller, a TRUE American Hero

I saw a commercial on TV the other day, it was sort of a public service announcement. The curious part? Bode Miller was on it. (Yeah, that same jackass from the US Olympic alpine ski team who is currently blowing every medal opportunity he has in the games.) Anyways, I sat earnestly watching this PSA, wondering what this guy had to say about life, reading, eating your vegetables, or whatever.

The specific message I don't remember, so I'll extrapolate it; "Nowadays, when kids are playing sports and they realize that they can't win, they just quit. They don't want to participate because they feel they aren't good enough. The grown-ups of this society have created this 'must be a winner' mentality, and it needs to be stopped. I'm Bode Miller, and I want to put an end to this." and then "joinbode.com" flashes on the screen.

Hmmm.. Let's think about this. What kind of role model is Bode? Well... he's being a laissez-faire dick about the Olympics, clearly not taking one of the greatest honors of athleticism and skiing seriously at all. He's super out of shape (yeah, watch the Super-G Slalom and tell me he's not, the poor bastard almost had a heart attack after his run down the hill - which eventually led him to sucky like 5th or 6th place).

The guy is living in an RV at the Olympics, not Olympics Village - a freaking RV. Oh, and in case you hadn't heard - he has drank before a race -- probably more than once. I have a public service announcement for you Bode - Skiing downhill at 90 mph after drinking can be dangerous to your health. Oh yeah, and don't say to the 60 Minutes interviewer "if you ever try to ski when you're wasted, it's not easy" if your intent is NOT to get caught up in media hype.

Yeah, and there's that tidbit about him being a total jackass. Case in point? He said, in regard to not winning (yes, 4/5 races run, and he's yet to podium, despite his pre-Olympics predictions and #2 World Cup ranking), "well, at least I don't have to drive my RV 25 miles down to the medal ceremony..." What kind of role models do we have for our children nowadays, really?

So, that being said, prior to writing this, I was intrigued by how this loser proposed to change the world, and the problems athat plague society, so I took a magical journey to his www.joinbode.com website. Boy, was it enlightening! First of all, the description on Google was the following:

Do you want to join Bode Miller? Do you want to join the brazen, the
unintimidated? ... Join Bode, but first, joining Bode Miller and experiencing the ...

Wow, that's not arrogant at all! What a totally awesome guy, I wish I could be as amazing as him. I fatefully clicked the link in Google and was greeted by a sexy black and white picture of Bode, looking profoundly up at the sky, as if to greet God's gaze down upon humanity, or maybe he's just a little hungover from last night and he's doing a poor job of hiding it.

I did a little searching around the website and I found two movies that constituted his “MANIFESTO.” Upon watching these-

- Sorry, I had to break for a bit to clean the chunks of vomit off my keyboard that resulted from me puking all over the computer during the process of watching these Bode videos. Yes, they are that bad.

Among the videos, one he talks about the topic of “Validation” and how it affects him. He comments that, “Yeah I have a lot of friends who are professional athletes or top level athletes who despite how great they are on the field- they still look for confirmation from other people – they still, after a successful performance, they need that feedback, they need it from other people. And I think that one of my strengths the thing that sets me apart, is that I don’t need that. When I believe I’ve done great by my own standards, I believe I’ve done great and I don’t care what anyone else thinks.”

My personal favorite from his Manifesto was the one about training. He starts it off in a skintight suit leaning on a large barbell, probably to show his cut and bulging muscles. “The way that I approach my training is I exercise my right to decide my life for myself. It’s really a microcosm for the rest of my life. I address the issues I feel are important to me and I customize what I feel is the best way to address those issues, and then I do it. And then I allow myself to push myself 100%. I don’t want to rely on anyone else because I feed off the pride that I get from doing it myself and doing it right.”

I also clicked on the random barn on the flash page, upon which a snowmobile rides up behind it, you hear a crash, and then the rider-less snowmobile comes out the front of the barn. I can only assume that this is a representation of Bode when he tries to snowmobile after having a few (dozen) cold ones.

Inside the barn I found a motley of solid advice, such as “I think it’s ironic that in society these days, it’s accepted to be who you are sexually, or your occupation, or whatever. Nobody wants to judge anyone else too harshly. And in sports, it’s still all about winning – it’s not about participation. No one wants to let anyone define what makes them happy or how they do things in athletics. It’s all about winning, and uh.. Zero flexibility. I think it’s ironic and depressing and I’m determined to change it.”

Pretty much, you could have a Bodeism a day, because there are enough tidbits of bullshit on that website to last you for a lifetime. I’m fairly convinced that all Bode does all day is drink and think of new things to provide insights on for his crappy website. Must be why he sucks so badly at the Olympics.

You know, as badly as it sounds and as much as it goes against my Olympics-driven nationalistic fervor, I would prefer other countries to win (even Russia or something) in Alpine Skiing than I would Bode Miller. In fact, maybe for everyone’s sake he can just fade off the face of humanity, as opposed to creating bad media-hype and drawing the press away from the real athletes who actually perform well – like the entire US snowboarding team. (Hey, that kind of sounds like what Michelle Kwan did – took attention away from the men’s half pipe gold/silver win because she decided to quit, but that’s another story for another time. Or if you’re lucky, maybe never.)