View from Eraser

Photo: Adam Arrowood (Casio)

This gets the Stupidest Plan Award for the games: the Eraser crew decided to give out a free Eraser T-shirt to every person that attended. Do-able if you have enough shirts (and they did); but here's where they messed up: they gave them out after the show and only in one place, in a small, enclosed corner outside the stadium. Free stuff is free stuff and the drive for it seems to be international. What seemed to be a nice gesture turned out to be another Madis Gras, with athletes and volunteers pressing into one big mass. It's lucky that someone didn't get seriously hurt.

And on an even lower note, Mike witnessed an altercation between security guards and a foreign athlete that didn't speak much English. Mike didn't see any blows exchanged, but the athlete was pinned harshley up against a metal fence. We really didn't understand why the police were brutal with someone who obviously was having cultural trouble understanding the situation and communicating with the officers. Unfortunately, Mike didn't have one of the cameras on him at the time.