You might think I’m joking, but no, I’m not.  I actually went to the Hedgehog Olympics. Oh it exists.  I’m not making it up.  There’s a link to it on the Fluffington Post and everything.

It was the year 2000, and I went to the Hedgehog Olympics for my job no less.  How cool is that?  Not my current job.  Not for the beagle.  I went for and with the Pets.com Sock Puppet when I worked briefly in San Francisco during the dot com boom.  The Pets.com Sock Puppet was hilarious.  I had such a good time working with that puppet. (The only down side is that the puppet is the reason why I met Fucker the Psychopath – who was at the time working at CNN — and I was the puppet’s publicist.)  But I digress.  The Pets.com Sock Puppet was funny — and we got to do a lot of amusing things — like go to Olympics of Hedgehogs.  

Did you know that there are Olympics of lots of animals?  Animal owners of all sorts meet in places all over the world to   “Olympicize” their fuzzies in various sporting like events.  In the case of hedgehogs, who aren’t actually fuzzy, they are prickly, the owners meet in a hotel near Chicago O’Hare airport to hold their national games.  A few weeks prior to the commencement of the hedgehog games of 2000, I had contacted the organizers to see if Pets.com could sponsor the event — and also asked if the Pets.com Sock Puppet could JUDGE them.  The organizers said sure.  So off we went.  Me and the puppet.  And the actor who was the puppet — the hilarious Michael Ian Black. 

That morning, we got to the Olympic hotel, only to be shocked by how many hedgehogs were there.  Hedgehog owners are intense.  And they take their hedgehog ownership seriously.  Some people actually owned five or six hedgehogs!!!  Michael and I were intrigued — and totally blown away.  I was also completely thrilled by the spectacle of it all and could not wait to see how this thing went down.  And it did.  Those hedgehogs did everything from hurdles to regular old racing, to relay, you name it.  It’s more like a summer Olympics than a winter one.  But it’s real.  And they give medals out at the end.

We had some extra fun too.  We had a camera crew and took someone’s pet hedgehog to the hotel gym.  We threw that hedgehog up on the treadmill and watched it go while the puppet made funny commentary  There was no torture.  Don’t worry.  I am a total pet lover.  The owner of the running hedgehog said that he put him on the treadmill to train him for the games. That’s how he got into shape.  

At any rate, I really recommend that everyone go to a pet Olympics sometime.   Hedgehogs Olympics was a highlight.  I had completely forgotten that I went until the other day. People were annoying me with all the Sochi talk.  I hate the real Olympics.  I hate fake patriotism.  All that go USA crap seems so fake and stupid coming from everyone.  I refuse to watch the Olympics simply because everyone else in the world insists on watching them.  It’s just a thing for me.  Sort of like how I refused to watch that TV show Party of Five for the very same reason.  I couldn’t stand how much everyone liked that show.  So I hated it.  Even though I really didn’t.  I’m mad that I can’t watch the Olympics. I’m sure some of the sports are pretty cool to watch. But I can’t.  

The last thing I’ll say about hedgehogs is there is a funny monologue in a Woody Allen film about them.   After going to their Olympics I really wanted to own a hedgehog.  But at the time, I owned the asshole cat Lou Rawls and knew he would not play nicely with one — so I decided against it.

I have a VHS tape of us at the Hedgehog Olympics.  I wish I had a VHS player so I could watch it right now.  That was so much damn fun.

Happy Sunday!!!!