Now, I totally understand the cheering a few weeks ago at NRO and Fox News when they heard that the Chicago had lost the 2016 Olympics--if Barack Obama supports it, it must be bad (is that guy still President?) and anyway, who wants a bunch of goddamn foreigners descending on your country (just ask the Native Americans)--but I must tell you, the loss hit me pretty hard personally. For one thing, I had hoped during the summer of 2016 to rent out my daughters' rooms for US$100,000 a night (what? I'd have given the guests clean towels) (well, towels anyway), and for another, losing the Olympics has made my restaurant venture near the proposed Olympic Village ("Floyd's Middle Eastern Pork and Indian Beef") rather less likely to come to fruition; I mean, who's going to order authentic foreign crap if they're not authentic foreigners, you know?

            But I have no one to blame but myself. (And of course Barack Obama.) (Did you know he deliberately planned to be born black so he could play the race card? Two words:  Lo. Ser.) (Yes, I am doing that forehead-L thing. So?) And now the rest of Chicago can blame me too, because I am going public: I am personally responsible for Chicago's losing the Olympics.

            Now--and I say this with all the sincerity at my disposal (sorry; I only wish I could do better than that)--I did not set out to destroy Chicago's bid for the sixth most important sporting event of 2016. (Seventh, if you include the championship of my soon-to-be-unveiled new sport, Deathball!™) (You can't spell Deathball!™ without a !.) (Or a ™.) (Well, you can, but my lawyers will be on you like a Republican Senator on a lobbyist.) (Except they won't hump your leg.) It just kind of...happened. All...coincidentally and shit.

            First off, there was that thing at the airport. Listen, Olympic Committee members, I know you're from Third World countries like Norway and Canada, but goddamn it, when you're in my Midwest, if I see you trying to leave the bathroom without washing your hands, I am going to say something, and say it loudly. Specifically, I am going to say, "Hey! You didn't wash your goddamn hands!" Sure, it's a little obvious, but imagine how confused you'd be if I yelled, "Okra in the flapjacks!" or "You only need worry, bwana, when the drums stop!" at you. (Plus that latter one is a little bit racist, isn't it?) And okay, it's true, all you did in there was comb your hair. And I probably shouldn't have tackled you like that, Mr. Paralympics Representative from France (sorry about the wheelchair, seriously; I'll pay for that) (well, half anyway) (and of course I know your surname really isn't "Paralympics Representative From France," but it's not like I can pronounce your French name--I'm American, for god's sake--and it seemed as if you didn't like the nickname I gave you, Cuddles). But I will reiterate: I don't know what you French surrender monkeys do in your godless snail-eating country, but you do not leave the bathroom without washing your hands in these USs of America, Monsieur, or at least running the water and pretending to wash your hands, like a real American does.

            Then there was that fiasco at the Festival Of International Dance Festival. (I didn't name it.) (Except for how I just made it the fuck up, so I guess I did.) In my defense, the Chicago 2016 Committee should never have even considered renting from Floyd's Costumes For a Buck. (Indeed, no one should.) (All of our costumes are plain black  leotards.) (Our motto is, "What, you can't use your imagination, the way they did when they rented costumes back in the radio days?") In my further defense, I can tell you for a fact that I did not have the faintest clue that those leotards were not certified for temperatures over 75 degrees F, nor can you prove I did. (Any more than that FBI Special Task Force could.) And you know what? So what, right? The human body is a beautiful thing. Well, maybe not those polka dancers' human bodies--actually, there might have been a few orangutans who'd escaped from Lincoln Park Zoo in there; I can't be completely sure--but in general, you know? Oh, like the Vatican City committeewoman had never seen a penis before. And hey, if she hadn't, thanks to good old Midwestern beef and pork, and the big giant overhanging bellies that resulted from those polka dancers' habitual consumption of the same over many years, that shrieking old nun still hasn't.

            And finally, speaking both for myself and the Shedd Aquarium, of which I am no longer a trustee, I deeply apologize for Put A Shark In Someone's Pants Day, and for the fact that it coincided with the visit of the Olympic Committee to the Shedd. I further apologize for my gales of laughter--though I was joined in that laughter by hundreds of field-tripping schoolchildren (and who is so hardhearted that he cannot rejoice at peals of childish laughter?)--at the antics of the German committeeman as he writhed on the floor shouting "Gibt's einen Haifisch in meinen Hosen! Gibt's einen Haifisch in meinen Hosen!" (I apologize as well for his dreadful German. Perhaps he hasn't spoken it in 30 years or so.) I must state with all due respect, however, that it was a vast overreaction of that police officer to have Tased me on that occasion, especially after I had specifically requested, "Don't Tase me, bro." (To add insult to injury, the policeman in question actually is my brother.) (He claims Mom always liked me better than him. Which is true.) (Mom never did forgive him for Tasing her at Granny's funeral.) If I can forgive my own brother for subjecting me to a 30,000-volt version of Jay Leno's show (it completely stopped my laughing), the Olympic committee should have been able to forgive a few carnivorous fish in their drawers. I guess I'm just a bigger man than them. Especially that Pygmy delegate.

            And I believe that my fellow Chicagoans will someday have just that kind of expansive view of the coincidences that led to our loss of the Olympics. Well, maybe not Mayor Daley, but who knows? Perhaps I just imagined that the last time I parked on the street, in the time it took me to walk to the parking kiosk and pay my quarter, I got 41 tickets, and my car was booted and towed. (That? Was one fast tow-truck dude.) (And his companion was a blue ox.) (True story.) And sure, the fire department has been a bit slow to respond to my many small household blazes (I will not apologize for my love of scented candles) (nor do I believe it makes me any less of a man) (the silk underwear thing, yeah, sure, I gotta give you that one). But the good people of Chicago, all the little people (not as little as that Pygmy, though; I'm just sayin'), the hookers and hebephrenic homeless beggars, the neighbors' kids (okay, now they are littler than the Pygmy), that weird chick who likes to play Naughty Dogwalker with her overall-wearing boyfriend at 3 AM...I know in my heart--specifically in my left ventricle--that they will all forgive me for losing Chicago the Olympics.

            Bringing that goat to the Cubs game, though...that's going to be a little more difficult to paper over.