High life
Field Day
Taki
Athens T am getting out of town the moment I finish writing this and staying out until I fly to Chicago next week. (A man called Donoghue, who supposedly has the largest daytime television audience in the world which proves to me that there are more idiots in America than anywhere else — has challenged me to a debate after I wrote an article in the American Spectator saying that American women are lousy lovers.) Athens is the most polluted city in the world as well as the noisiest. Since last Monday it also has the greatest traffic jams since the French army jammed the roads in its haste to avoid contact with Guderian's armour in the spring of 1940. The European Games of Track and Field are taking place here and once again I am at a loss as to why Euro- pean sports federations choose to compete against each other in a Middle Eastern country. The new stadium that was finished the very morning of the Games is one more proof that the neo-Hellenes really do belong to the Third World, as our wonder- ful prime minister seems to be trying to con- vince the hero of Beirut. (Papandreou told Arafat in Athens last week that the Greeks and his PLO bully boys are brothers. Well, perhaps I am in the minority but I plan to sue Papandreou for slander.)
The stadium was planned by the democrats who succeeded those horrible Colonels in 1974. It is situated three miles north of Athens, just 100 yards off the two- lane motorway that is the only road that connects the city with its northern suburbs. Needless to say, the road is always jammed and, since last Monday, impenetrable. But the idiots who run this country don't seem to mind. Every time a minor official wants to move he summons three police outriders, makes every taxpayer pull over, and gets to his destination in style. During the opening ceremony of the Games one such official referred to the last time the Games were held in Athens as 'a dark time of our history'. It was 1969 and the Colonels had momentarily suspended the right of politi- cians to have outriders etc. What the silly man forgot, however, was that Christos Papanicolaou, a friend of mine, had broken the world record in the pole vault that year. Because Papanicolaou broke the record under the Colonels he was and is considered a fascist pig. No one mentions
him, especially the ridiculous Minister o. f Sport. But the neo-Hellenes do have certain good, if rare, qualities. When Christos walked into the stadium (he had paid for his ticket) they began to boo the minister and cheer him. Although art seems to take a nosedive under 'socialist' regimes, sport flourishes. During the first two days that I watched the games I learned the Russian and East Ger- man national anthems by heart: i.e., a 1°; of communists have been beating the he" out of a lot of democrats from Greece, Spain, France, Italy and the United King- dom. By watching the commies triune, however, I have become convinced that Playboy is never going to do a 'Girls from Warsaw Pact Countries' issue. Never in mY life have I seen uglier women. Some ° them make Martina Navratilova look like Audrey Hepburn. One Yugoslav lady CO petitor is particularly popular with the Greek crowd every time she puts the shot because she is the spitting image of TO' only much hairier and without the glasses, and I heard Greeks speculate that the pro' fusion of hair under her arms was an es" pression of solidarity with the Soviet bloc' One Greek wit even went as far as asking the rhetorical question 'Whom does she sleep with?' Answer: 'Anyone she wants. An even wittier Greek, one I suspect or being on my side of the political spectrum' put up the funniest sign of all. It was in the lobby of the Caravel Hotel, where most °; the commie athletes were staying. It read; `Visit the Soviet Union before it visits You.'
Previous page
