This is part of our preview series where we'll be taking a look at some of the countries participating in the 2008 Beijing Olympics:

                                                          Trinidad & Tobago & Tyler Too

That black stripe is cool.

Stereotypes:  Hardworking, four or five job-holding, “what are ya, a lazy lima bean?” people. Probably stoned.

Truth:  You’re thinking of the Jamaicans, mon.  Trinis (and… Toboggans?) perfected the art of “liming”, which means “chilling on a street corner, doing nothing”. Probably stoned.

Recent Olympic History:  Hey, we are finally previewing a country that has had some history of success in the Olympics!  One gold medal for T&T, and 12 medals in total, which is 100,000 times as many medals as Tajikistan has ever won.  In the early history of the country, TT’s (hehhehheh) did well at weightlifting (stoned weightlifting? Impressive!), with Rodney Wilkes winning a silver in 1948, and then a bronze in the ’52 games. Lenny Kilgour also won a bronze in ’52 in weightlifting.

Later on, T&T -- like a few other West Indies islands -- found success in track.  Edwin Roberts won a bronze in the 200 meter dash in ’64; Wendell Mottely won a silver in the 400 meter, and the two of them anchored a 4x400 meter relay team that won bronze.  In 1976 Hasely Crawford brought T&T its only gold medal to date, in the 100 meter dash.  In 1996 Ato Boldon (who sounds like a Star Wars character but isn’t) won two bronze medals (100m and 200m), and another two medals in 2000 (silver in the 100m, bronze in the 200m).  George Bovell is the latest medalist for T&T, winning a bronze in the 200m swimming at the 2004 games.


2008 Olympic Potential:  The 2006 World Cup was the first that T&T qualified for.  The Soca Warriors will be in the Men’s Olympic Soccer Tournament at Beijing in 2008, where they will likely perform about as well as they did in the World Cup, which is to say: not so well.

This seems like a pretty good spot to put some video of Carnival:

Current Issues:

Not a Trinidadian...

What’s My Name? Trinidad is the larger of the two islands (there are 21 other smaller islands in this archipelago, and all of their names start with T’s! It’s like that weird Christian family you know!), housing 96% of the population.  Technically, “Trinidadian” means from that island, and Tobagonian (or, “Toby”) refers to people from “Tobago”; for our purposes, we’ll use “Trini” for anyone from the Caribbean, including Haitians, Guyanese, and Bahamamamas. Because we are horrible, horrible racists.

The island itself was named by Columbus, who on his third trip to the “New World” was determined to name some land “Trinity” (three) (3) (III) (Amen).  He saw three mountains on the island, and booyah… Trinidad was named. Columbus was clever like that.  It's a good thing he died not too much later, or we might be living in Cincoburgh.  Or New Land, Pt. 6

If We Took One Day:  The two largest ethnic groups are the Afro-Trinis, and the Indo-Trinis.  The Afro-Trinis are mostly the descendants of the African slaves brought to Trinidad by the British; the Indo-Trinis are mostly the descendants of East Indian indentured slaves.  Those two groups each account for about 40% of the population, with the Indians having a very slight advantage according to the last census.  The rest of the population includes Mixed Race (18.4%), plus a small number of Chinese, Lebanese/Syrians, and Europeans.

As you can imagine, though the islands are pretty laidback (i.e. stoned) and racial strife is minimal, race is still a factor in politics.  The government’s two parties are almost uniformly broken down by race, with one party being supported by, and representing, the Afro community, and the other being almost entirely Indian.  That 20% minority really makes the difference.  Not at all like the democracy of the U.S., where the entire population of Florida (or Ohio) makes the difference in who wins the elections, except when the Supreme Court decides that democracy is overrated and just draws a fucking name out of a hat. There should be a holiday called "Teddy Riley's Jam" Day.


The Indian population brought with them its religions, mainly Hinduism and Islam (but also the lesser known Hindislam, which is the “Mixed Race” of religions); the government recognizes their major holidays, like Phagwa and Divali, along with British ones, like Boxing Day and Marmite Jam Day making T&T “the country with the most holidays”, with at least 14 official ones. 

No Homo:  Homosexual acts are illegal in T&T, and by law, homosexuals are not allowed to enter the country (if they do, they have to go in the back door (ZING!))  This isn’t actively enforced, but it is a sign of the intolerance towards homosexuals that one encounters in parts of the Caribbean.  As well as in the Middle East, Asia, most of the former Soviet Bloc, East Africa, West Africa, the Rest of Africa, Oceania, any and all islands off the coast of major landmasses, significant portions of Europe, most of the United States, large sections of Brooklyn, the Polar regions, and the moon.  Also, be aware that T&T is one of the last countries in the world to still use the cat o’nine tails to flog prisoners, which, if you think about it, is sort of hot, right?

Mel Gibson Stars in Ransom 2:  Trinidad has a big problem with ransom kidnappings.  In fact, it recently hit #2 in the world kidnappings for ransom per 1,000 people, second in the world only to Colombia (but at least they’re trying!).  The Indian Playa (who, ironically, is traveling to Bogota in November) once told us a related story.  His GF at the time was Indo-Trini.  I don’t remember all the details, but basically she had a cousin or something in Trinidad who was kidnapped by a couple of thugs when they realized he had some “rich” American family ties.  They held him for about $5,000 ransom.  While the family and the kidnappers were negotiating his ransom, and figuring out how to make the exchange (a process that takes a couple of days), a second set of kidnappers robbed the original kidnappers, and stole her cousin from them, forcing her family to have to start the process all over again.  True story… I remember the Indian Playa even Google’d it for us and everything. 

Pop Culture:
Three Miss Universes, including 1998 winner Wendy Fitzwilliam, have been of Trinidadian heritage:

Think Big Wendy, and Kick Trump's Ass.

The star of Airplane!, Kareem Abdul-Jabber, had two Trini parents:

Speaking of parents... Matt Leinart!
TV and music stars Tatyana Ali and Alfonso Ribiera, both of “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air” fame, are of Trini heritage.  Will Smith, however, is of Phili heritage.  Hey, this is a great excuse to post my three favorite Carlton Banks videos:

1. Will Smith and Carlton Banks breaking to “Apache”:

2. Carlton Banks sings with Tom Jones:

3. Carlton Banks gets his tap dancing, then his Michael Jackson, on:

In case you are wondering where Alfonso Ribiera learned his moves... it might have been while shooting this Pepsi commercial with MJ.

Music:

Trinidadian music is famous for two styles of music they created: Soca and Calypso.  Here’s some soca, a ditty called “Dollar Wine” (so so fine) performed live by Colin Lucas, seen here wearing the Trini bicycle shorts that are, um, no, I swear I wasn’t looking at his package… no, don’t arrest me, please... :

Also Trini… 1980’s R&B legend Billy Ocean!  So many good songs to choose from – “Caribbean Queen (No More Loving On The Run)”; “Get Out Of My Dreams (And Into My Cars (And Then I Will Lock You In The Basement Until Your Family Pays The Ransom)”; “There Will Be Sad Songs (Something Something)”… but I chose “When The Going Gets Tough (The Tough Gets Going)”, from the Romancing the Stone soundtrack:

Can I touch ya? And do the things that lovers do? Sure, Billy, as long as you are talking to Kathleen Turner. Don’t be touching Michael Douglas here, okay? This ain’t San Francisco. And for the love of Christ, keep your hands off Devito. I wouldn’t touch him with Rhea Perlman’s dick.

Conclusion:
Say what you will about homosexuality being outlawed, but the Trinidadian soccer players did have really smoking bods, not that I… hold on there’s somebody at my door… yes? OH LORD NO NOT A BURLAP SACK SOMEONE ANYONE SEND MONEY PLEASE SEND MON


Thanks once again to DJM for his amazing contributions.  Here are the rest of the 2008 Olympic Previews:
Tajikistan
Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia
Belgium



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Also on the Network:

√ Hospitality [Loge 13]
√ Another Step Back [C70 At The Bat]
√ Leftovers: White Sox and Stuff [Tremendous Upside Potential]



5 Comments

Comments

[November 1, 2007 1:56 PM]  |  link  |  reply
IndianPlaya said

awesome post.

the ransom paid was more like 300k USD...

here's the original article... http://www.guardian.co.tt/archives/2005-09-24/news1.html

[November 1, 2007 2:00 PM]  |  link  |  reply
IndianPlaya said

btw, Venezuela recently took the #1 spot for kidnappings

[November 1, 2007 2:12 PM]  |  link  |  reply
stopmikelupica said

I wouldn’t touch him with Rhea Perlman’s dick

This is the greatest thing ever written in SML history. I'm really thinking of renaming the blog after that line.

[November 1, 2007 2:18 PM]  |  link  |  reply
Canadian DJM said

Anybody who Googles "Rhea Perlman's Dick" doesn't deserve to come to this site, man.

[November 1, 2007 3:13 PM]  |  link  |  reply
MC Welk said

Hey SML, thought you'd get a kick out of this: http://www.esquire.com/the-side/opinion/knicks-timeline
Spring Training 08
























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