GREASE

We are an adolescent culture.

It is commonplace to see a 60 year old woman in a classically cut business suit and heels, her briefcase on the floor next to her, having a cafe or a small glass of white wine at 10 in the morning in a bar in Italy.

Here men and women schlepp about in public in fleece warm-up pants with rude messages emblazoned on their bums.

You could say we are laid back.

Or maybe we are just klutzes.

We certainly are careless and childish in our drinking habits and behaviours.

I have visited Venice, Italy 18 or 19 times since 1995, each stay for two weeks to a month. I have been out late many times. In all those visits, I have seen two men drunk and neither was a threat to anyone.

I have never heard hollering - except, of course, when I made the mistake of walking past the soccer stadium one afternoon, when VANCOUVER almost broke out.

Today's headlines are a pathetic joke.

SIGNS OF HEALING

To quote McEnroe, "You cannot be serious."

It is nice that a handful of decent citizens have shown up with their brooms and masking tape. They are good folk and we thank them.

But this Neanderthal madness cannot be dismissed that easily.

POLICE CHIEF PROMISES AN INTERNAL REVIEW

How about a competence test?

No one faults the stand-up performance of the officers who were put in harm's way the other night by the complete lack of foresight on the part of their superiors.

Whatever numbers of police had been deployed at the outset is half what the situation deserved. whatever barriers and corridors had been created in advance are a third of what was reasonably called for.

This was SOOOOOOOO PREDICTABLE.

We are a blue-jean wearing, stomping, goof-ball adolescent culture.

There is nothing even mildly amusing about how rude and crude we are.

What was learned from '94?

Nothing.

MAYOR SAYS BLAH, BLAH, BLAH

Go ahead. Invite 100,000 valueless children to congregate downtown. Why would anything untoward occur?

The man one commenter calls Mayor Moonbeam lives in a dopey dream.

And so do so many fellow Canadians.

There are no mortar shells whistling overhead.

Or bombs exploding on buses.

Or interrogation cells. Or extermination camps.

We are blessed by this peaceful beautiful country.

And cursed by its bounty.

We live in Fantasy Land.

Nothing bad can happen here. Until it does.

People are good. They always behave well. We are nice.

Excuse me while I wretch.

"This isn't the real Vancouver," rings the chorus of the permanently deluded.

OK.

You're right.

None of this happened.

We are nice.

We will investigate this rare moment of NOT NICENESS and chronicle it and bag it and put it on the shelf.

That was a two per cent decaf WITH the cinnamon sprinkles! GOD!