No, Boner Rower Does Not Have A Boner: A Gay Man's Remedial Guide To Penises For Straight Guys [Olympic Dong]

Fact: the average straight person has sex about once every four years. (Except for 43-year-old divorced dads in New York City, who are having sex with every 26-year-old lady, all the time.) Fact: the average straight man has seen about 3.2 penises in his life.

What's more, most straight people have sex with the lights out and are afraid to look at all the freaky unique junk that people have. This is why, when suddenly there are a bunch of dudes parading around in tight rowing shorts that show off their business to any extent, straight people who blog for a living and have barely seen any dicks in their lives are all like: "Haha, everyone point and laugh at the dude with an Olympic medal and a boner!"

Yeah, that is not a "boner." Cock—most of you poor people haven't had a chance to learn, so let a gay dude tell you—comes in all shapes and sizes, and when I say all, I mean ALL. (As anyone who's watched Roger Federer closely can attest.) And all the various penis sizes are good and OK. It's one of the great mysteries of life why dicks (and labia too, lest we forget!) are so unlike one another and special. The jury is still out on what this all means, but the long and short of it is that different dicks present themselves differently. And dicks are so different.

Thankfully we have lived recently in an age of baggy pants where it doesn't matter if we "dress to the left" or not—but with fashion's tightening and shortening of inseams over the last 20 years, we are being exposed more and more to male uniqueness every day on the street and in our workplaces. We are about three decades out from fashion making us wear, like, transparent codpieces to the office. That'll be weird. At first.

For now, there's athletic gear, which is the next best thing. When you are in a freaky synthetic-material athletic singlet with basically zero-inseam, created by the fine people at Boathouse Sports out of polypropylene, there are not a lot of places for your dick to go. It's up or over—or it's really uncomfortable. If you sit down in one of these outfits, guess what happens? Yup, it's the opposite of the auto-tuck. Particularly when you are stuffed in a scull.

I trained in rowing where the Dartmouth and U.S. Naval Academy and some Olympians do their winter training. As a crappy amateur, I learned that even rest position in rowing is one of the most uncomfortable positions in the world. The one thing that is not happening when you row—as you move from the beginning of the drive, with bent knees at your chest with your arms straight forward, to the reclined position of release—is that, with your legs doing all this work, you are not thinking about where your junk goes. If you do have time to think about it, this is only because it is getting mangled somewhere. If you're a pro rower, you're used to your dick just being wherever it's not in the way; you don't think twice about that. You're BUSY.

Couple that with the facts that the whole "grower/shower" dichotomy is not a myth, and statistical diversity is a strange and magical thing. In short, there is a whole lot of huge flaccid dick out there, as our pal on the podium can attest. If our Harvard buddy Henrik Rummel had indeed had a "boner," as you kids call it, you'd have seen a somewhat more rectangular shape anyway: while the corpora cavernosa are somewhat rounded "cylinders" on their own, together their overall erect impression is more squared off. This is clearly rounded. This is not the shape of a penis that's pumped full of blood.

And let's all raise a toast to Henrik: who among us would have been able to resist an adjustment? Which would have made for the most embarrassing photo and video ever. ("SCANDAL: HARVARD MAN FONDLES JUNK AT MEDAL CEREMONY.")

Besides, the whole big flaccid package makes sense, because he obviously has huge balls too.

Choire Sicha is Deadspin's super homo water volleyball correspondent and the co-proprietor of The Awl.

Photo via Flickr user The Kozy Shack.

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Olympics Field Guide: Kerri Walsh Jennings And Misty May-Treanor, Veteran Bikini Models (And The Best Beach Volleyball Team Ever By Far) [Olympics Field Guide]

Names: Kerri Walsh Jennings and Misty May-Treanor

Sport: Beach Volleyball

Hometown: Santa Clara, Calif. (Walsh Jennings); Los Angeles, Calif. (May-Treanor)

Ages: Walsh Jennings is 33, May-Treanor turned 35 on Monday.

Why you should care about them: Why should you care about a usually mostly naked, always practically unbeatable beach volleyball team gearing up to win its third gold in as many Olympics? A team trying to overcome injuries to achieve one last dramatic triumph for the good guys, in bikinis*, on sand, at a point when you're likely to be watching anyway? Do I need to paint you a fucking picture?

*Should London's weather cooperate. It's been temperamental so far, forcing some teams to don those shirts you see above.

Well, I'm going to regardless: May-Treanor and Walsh Jennings are among the most dominant athletes of their generation. They went 33-0 in 2003, and 112-0 in 2007 and 2008 alone, and were pretty darn good in between. That second streak included a gold medal at the Beijing Olympics; the first preceded a gold in Athens. They ran the table in tournaments large and small for nearly a decade, and in the process became the faces of a sport that only joined the Olympics in 1996.

Coming off that run of dominance, they lost two matches in a row just after the 2008 Olympics—an emotional letdown after winning gold in Beijing, perhaps—and then came disaster: May-Treanor ruptured her Achilles tendon while rehearsing for Dancing with the Stars. Said Misty of the injury, "I just took a step back in the jive, and I heard a pop, I thought, you know—it felt like somebody hit me with a baseball bat."

That's why you never take a step back in the jive.

May-Treanor made a vow, probably to herself, but also to the camera in this poorly lit YouTube video: "This doesn't mean that I'm out of it. I'm going to get surgery, rehab, and come back even stronger."

Did she make good on that promise? It's been frustratingly hard to say so far. The injury rehab meant missing a full year of competition. Kerri Walsh Jennings—conveniently—used that down time to give birth. Then Walsh Jennings—inconveniently—got pregnant again right when May-Treanor was fully rehabbed and ready to return. May-Treanor teamed up with a different partner (Nicole Branagh) for a little, but then dropped out of competition altogether, informally retiring and turning her attention to other pursuits. Then, when Walsh Jennings was back from giving birth and ready to go, she teamed up with a different partner (also Nicole Branagh) and they started training together on the assumption that May-Treanor was out of the game. Then May-Treanor came out of retirement and asked Walsh Jennings to reunite. She agreed, and subsequently dropped Nicole Branagh, who presumably hates Walsh Jennings and May-Treanor more than anything right now.

Since then, May-Treanor and Walsh Jennings have had precious little time to compete as a unit and reestablish their chemistry. (They've been seeing a sports psychologist—"marriage counseling," they call it—to speed up the process.) Going into London, the Greatest Beach Volleyball Team Of All Time was seeded third—third—behind Brazil and China, a position they aren't used to. It's an open question whether they can get all the way back to the top of the heap. The preliminary rounds finished up Thursday, with May-Treanor and Walsh Jennings having bested Great Britain, the Czech Republic, and Austria to move into the round of 16, which began on Friday. Losing this year—they play against a Dutch pair tonight (2 p.m. Eastern)—won't diminish Misty and Kerri's past accomplishments, but winning would mean some extra validation for the only public faces beach volleyball has ever really had.

Olympic/world championship experience: Walsh Jennings (then just Walsh) played indoor, boring volleyball in 2000 at the Sydney games, where the team did not medal. May-Treanor also briefly played on the US national indoor volleyball team but quit, more or less because it was boring. May-Treanor (then just May) formed a beach volleyball team with Holly McPeak before the 2000 Sydney Olympics, but they finished fifth. The year after Sydney, May and Walsh finally found each other (and the beach): in 2001, the pair competed together on the FIVB tour for the first time, and in 2002 they won a FIVB tour championship. That win would mark the beginning of a reign of terror on the AVP and FIVB tours that may well never be matched. They won gold medals in both Athens and Beijing.

Sexy pose threat level:

Situations such as this almost (almost) undermine the utility of the Sexy Pose Threat Level Advisory System.

Previous sexy poses:

Olympic archetypes: Maverick and Goose.

Scouting reports from home country:
Eleanor Barkhorn, The Atlantic:

The sport's clearest appeal is in the fact that the American women's beach volleyball team is excellent. Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor won gold at the last two Olympics, and they've never lost a set (let alone a match) at the Games. The streak has continued at the Olympics this year: They've won their first two preliminary matches, against Australia and the Czech Republic, pretty easily. Watching them play, it's easy to see why. Walsh and May-Treanor are in fantastic shape, of course, but the sport is about more than athleticism. It involves strategy and teamwork, which Walsh and May-Treanor have mastered.

Scouting report from some guy on the internet:
YouTube commenter rdcvgr88:

OMG! Misty FUCKING May, I swear I've never wanted a woman's ass this bad. I would so eat that sweaty, hot ass right after she's done playing a full game of volleyball, my mouth would all up in that ass crack! Are you fuckin' shittin'? me? At age 22, you think i'll be able to control myself? fuck outta here LOL Hormones won't let me! She'd get tossed all day everyday! UGHHHHHHHH (sigh of relief)

Did you know? Its own paragraph in the "Personal" section of Keri Walsh Jennings' Wikipedia page:

"She is close friends with Misty May-Treanor."

Odd. Also, May-Treanor is married to Dodgers backup backstop Matt Treanor, who is 36 years old and hitting .203/.286/.342 but is somehow on a major league roster.

Forecast for 2012: The round of 16 ends today. They play the quarterfinals on Sunday, and the semifinals and gold medal match on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week, respectively. This event seems genuinely up in the air, with a shake-up at the top a possibility for the first time since 2000. Viewers will be divided between rooting for the American team and just rooting for good weather.

Relevant Bob Costas facial expression:

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Olympics Field Guide: Dong Dong, The Master Of Philosophy And Psychological Warfare [Olympics Field Guide]

Name: Dong Dong. Yes. Ha-ha, very funny.

Sport: Trampoline

Hometown: Henan, China

Age: 23

Why you should care about him: Dong Dong is actually very good at trampolining. He's one of the best in the world, in fact, and yet it is very difficult to find anything that has been written about him that doesn't boil down to, "Ha-ha! Dong Dong! This guy's name is Dong Dong!" or "This is Dong Dong and he's in the Olympics and that is all." In English, that is.

So I fired up Google Translate and dropped in some articles from Chinese news sources (they are written in characters and everything!), and I did my best to find you some real insight into who Dong Dong is as a man and a competitor. Perhaps some things get lost in translation, but the essence of the man does not.

Dong started his career as a gymnast but began training for the trampoline in 2002, and he quickly excelled. By 2005, at 16, he was a member of the Chinese national team, the world's best at trampoline. So he can jump with the best of them.

But Dong can do other things. He has been described as a "psychological warfare expert." Based on what I can gather from various rough translations, Dong has a penchant for psyching the shit out of his opponents before competitions. While everyone else is casually warming up and stretching before a meet, Dong can be found going through a rigorous, deliberate set of motions that make him resemble a murderous robot. Then, while the competition is going on, Dong refuses to watch his opponents compete or take note of their scores, choosing instead to stay sequestered in the locker room with headphones in his ears.

We imagine that, in every competition, Dong emerges from a tunnel only when it's time to compete, with a blank look on his face. He walks towards the trampoline, hops around a bit, and then crushes his opponents. Dong Dong is now our favorite Olympic athlete ever.

Dong has been nicknamed "Dong Lord" by his teammates. That's not a dick joke, though! Here, let this translation explain:

Dong Dong is not only good to play psychological warfare, very good at talking about the life and philosophy, and often full flight, it is said the team of his victims, and even psychological counseling teacher. Preparing for the Olympic Games period, the team worried that the athletes' psychological pressure is too large, specially invited psychological counseling class teacher as the Trampoline Team athletes, but did not expect the successive class on to become Dong Dong philosophy course in the psychology teacher a. To this end, the team returned to Dong Dong from the nickname - "Dong Ye."

So basically, it looks like the trampoline team invited a psychologist to talk to them and calm them down before the Olympics, but then Dong Dong was like, "Fuck that noise, I don't need your psychology because I am a heart-eating, trampolining marauder who has no fears. Now, let's talk about philosophy. I am Dong Lord." Or something like that.

Olympic/world championships experience: Dong won the bronze medal at the 2008 games in Beijing, and has won two individual world titles (2009, '10), two synchronized world titles (2010, '11), and two team world titles (2007, 2009).

Sexy-pose threat level:

Olympic archetype: Vince Hancock, Team USA's gold medalist in, yes, skeet shooting.

Scouting report from some guy on the internet: From Outside's Ryan O'Hanlon:

This is pretty much the badminton of gymnastics-type sports. China is the best, and they should win both golds and multiple medals in both the men's and women's competitions. Dong Dong and Lu Chunlong will each be disappointed not to take home gold in the men's competition for China. On the women's side, He Wanna of China is the favorite, and her fellow countrywoman Huang Shanshan should also challenge for gold. Canadians Karen Cockburn and Rosannagh MacLennan could also win gold, but they probably won't because [hockey joke].

Scouting report from home country: From HunanTV.com:

Dong Dong said that the affinity of themselves and trampoline. He is like a trampoline on the pillars of the weeping growth. Dong Dong action is characterized by stability, and elegant. Height of less than Ye Shuai, but stable in the last year a series of international competitions to play, leaving a higher impression to foreign referees.

Did you know? Haven't you gotten enough Dong Dong factoids yet?

Forecast for 2012: Dong Dong won't have any serious competition from anyone outside of China, as the country is the dominant force in Olympic trampoline. His main rival and the only one who can stop him from getting gold is countryman Lu Chunlong. The two have gone back and forth as their team's best competitors, winning golds and silvers at various international competitions. They will almost assuredly finish in the top two spots at the London games. The only question is in what order.

Relevant Bob Costas facial expression:

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A Very Obsessive Guide To Sight & Sound's Greatest Films Poll [Grierson & Leitch]

Yesterday was heaven for film lovers and list fanatics as Sight & Sound unveiled its once-a-decade poll of the greatest films of all time. There are actually two separate lists—one for critics, one for directors—and the big news was that, after topping the poll since 1962, Citizen Kane had been replaced by a new No. 1 in the critics' list, Vertigo. (The directors' list, which has only been going since 1992, also had a new No. 1: Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story.) What else has changed in the past 10 years?

1. The polls were less exclusive this time around.

In 2002, 145 critics voted, and 108 directors participated. This time around, 846 critics contributed, including me, and 358 directors voted. This is important to point out from the beginning because it suggests that a bunch of new voices entered the conversation that hadn't been part of the poll before. Also, more voters means fewer ties than in past years.

2. Orson Welles took it on the chin.

If Sight & Sound was a presidential debate, with CNN and FOX News discussing all the "winners" and "losers," all the commentators would pick Orson Welles as one of the poll's losers. It wasn't simply that Citizen Kane fell from No. 1. (It's at No. 2.) But in the critics' Top 50, what's striking is how poorly Welles' other films did in comparison to 2002. Back then, Touch of Evil was tied for No. 15, and The Magnificent Ambersons was tied for No. 35. Neither of them made the Top 50 this time. Even movies that simply starred Welles suffered: The Third Man (previously tied for No. 35) was nowhere in the Top 50.

3. Restored/re-released films polled well.

There are always going to be complaints by some that Sight & Sound is too "stodgy," that the poll only honors "old" films. But while it's true that the critics' Top 50 favors films from before 1980 (more on that in a second), some older films got a boost thanks to being rediscovered. Two examples that immediately spring to mind are Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, which was brought back in a new print (and a new Criterion release) a few years ago, and Late Spring, which hit Criterion in 2006. Neither film was in the Top 50 (which, because of ties, was actually the Top 60) in 2002; this time around, they were No. 35 and No. 15 respectively. The same rediscovery process could have helped Touch of Evil 10 years ago: Welles' noir was re-released in 1998 in a re-edited form. For all the whining that "new" movies aren't being shown enough love in the poll, older films are being embraced and reevaluated when they return in new prints or DVDs.

4. The last 30 years of cinema aren't having much of an impact—or are they?

In the Top 50, there are only six films released since 1980: Shoah, Close-Up (I guessed the wrong Abbas Kiarostami when I put together my '90s predictions), Sátántangó, Histoire(s) du cinéma, In the Mood for Love and Mulholland Dr. If you take a look back at the 2002 poll, there were nine films from 1970-2000 that made the Top 60. That would suggest that critics aren't as interested in newer films for the new poll. But in 2002, a movie needed all of five votes to crack the Top 60. In 2012, to hit the Top 50 (or 52, thanks to ties) required 29 votes. In other words, it takes a lot more agreement to make an impact in the poll, so the presence of six post-'80 films doesn't seem too stodgy.

5. Coppola's "greatest film" is up for debate.

In 2002, Sight & Sound allowed multiple films to count together as one film, which is why The Godfather and The Godfather Part II collectively came in at No. 4. This time, though, the publication asked that every film be counted separately, and The Godfather tied for No. 21 and The Godfather Part II tied for No. 31. Consequently, neither of those is Francis Ford Coppola's most popular film among polled critics: Apocalypse Now (which wasn't in the Top 60 in 2002) landed at No. 14. Did the release of Apocalypse Now Redux in 2001 sway voters to its greatness? (That definitely seemed to be the case for Roger Ebert, who put the film on his ballot after its re-release.) As Matt Singer points out, if the two Godfather films had remained together, they would have ended up at No. 7. The bottom line is that among major directors, Coppola is the one guy whose "best film" is in dispute. Everybody else—Hitchcock, Welles, Kubrick, Fellini, Ford—has always polled strongest with one particular film. Which leads me to...

6. Having only one masterpiece helps your Sight & Sound chances.

Four directors have more than two movies in the Top 50: Coppola (3); Andrei Tarkovsky (3);  Carl Dreyer (3); and Jean-Luc Godard (4). With the exception of Dreyer (The Passion of Joan of Arc), none of them has a film in the Top 10. Every director with a movie in the Top 10 is well-respected, beloved, a titan, etc., but also benefits from having one singular film that critics point to as the film. A consensus around a particular masterpiece allows voters to pick both a film and a director they admire in one fell swoop.

7. Comedy is in short supply.

Every once in a while, someone will write a piece arguing that the Academy Awards overwhelmingly prefer dramas to comedies and that a Best Comedy prize should be awarded. (Everyone reads that piece, shrugs, and then moves on with their life.) But it's true in the critics' poll as well that dramas perform much, much better than lighter fare. By my count there are only five films outright comedies: Singin' in the Rain, The General, Some Like It Hot, Play Time, and City Lights, which tied for No. 50. Singin' was No. 10 in 2002; now it's at No. 20, the highest comedy on the list.

8. The list is mostly inclusive...with a few exceptions.

It would be a mistake for Sight & Sound voters to feel that they "have" to include films from directors of all races, genders, creeds, nationalities, and sexual preferences on their ballot. (Great movies should be great movies, period.) But only one female director, Chantal Akerman, made the Top 50. There are no African-American directors in the Top 50. Other than that, you do have a healthy mix of Asian, European, and American filmmakers.

9. Certain "beloved favorites" didn't make the cut.

Lawrence of Arabia, Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind, and It's a Wonderful Life are the sort of film-library staples that everybody owns and everybody loves. But they don't make the critics' Top 50, opening the door to criticism that the voters willfully turn their nose up at popular favorites. Be that as it may, none of these movies cracked the Top 60 in 2002, either—with the exception of Lawrence of Arabia, which tied with a bunch of other films with five votes at the bottom of the Top 60.

10. The directors' list is pretty fun.

The directors' poll is enjoyably unpredictable from decade to decade. This is only the third time Sight & Sound has conducted a directors' poll, and their new No. 1, Tokyo Story, was nowhere to be found in the Top 10 in 2002 or 1992. (Ten years ago, it was tied at No. 16.) There's simply no rhyme or reason from one decade to the next, which makes this list constantly surprising. (Unlike the critics, the directors have decided to change which film from a certain beloved director is his masterpiece: substituting Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey for Dr. Strangelove, and now preferring Scorsese's Taxi Driver to Raging Bull.) It's entirely possible several of their Top 10 slots will change again in 2022. For those who wish the critics' list wasn't so similar each 10 years, the directors list will be more your speed.

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Olympic Field Guide: Missy Franklin, America's Teenage Swimming Sensation [Video]

Name: Melissa "Missy" "The Missile" Franklin

Sport: Swimming

Hometown: Aurora, Colo., although she has dual citizenship in Canada.

Age: 17

Why you should care about her: Well, she's only 17, and she's got two Olympic medals, with more likely on the way. No, young Olympic swimmers aren't terribly rare—Michael Phelps made his Olympic debut in Athens Sydney at the age of 15, and 15-year-old Ruta Meilutyte won gold yesterday—but Franklin was no phenom as of a year ago. Then she showed up at the world championships in Shanghai, and the world was stunned. Said Bob Bowman, Michael Phelps's coach, after Franklin led the U.S. to a relay gold, "I think we'll remember tonight as when it all started. It reminds me of somebody I know."

What's unique about Franklin is the way she trains. From the Wall Street Journal:

Franklin swims about 5,000 yards a day in practice, which is about half as much as several other stars in her sport.
[...]
As she progressed in the sport, Franklin's parents rejected advice from other parents to move the family to a swimming Mecca like Florida, Texas or California. Instead, she wound up doing her training at the place where she first wandered in for lessons as a seven-year-old: The Colorado Stars, a swim club that doesn't even have its own pool (it rents swimming lanes at five area facilities).

Franklin has also stuck with her original coach, Todd Schmitz, who was starting his first day of full-time coaching when she walked in the door. Schmitz grew up in North Dakota where skating on frozen water is more popular than swimming, and swam at a Division 2 Metropolitan State College in Denver, which folded its swim program shortly after he graduated. He owned a lawn-mowing business and was a junior corporate executive before becoming a swim coach.

Also worth noting: Franklin is an amateur. She has repeatedly turned down sponsorship offers in excess of $100,000, all to preserve her NCAA eligibility. She'll be a high-school senior this fall—her school (and Broncos wide receiver Eric Decker!) sent her off to Europe with a big party in May—and whichever college program she chooses will hit the jackpot.

And Franklin's success means a lot for the people in her hometown of Aurora. We haven't yet seen the inevitable Jimmy Roberts soft-focus tearjerker on Missy, but this is one case where it would actually be worth it. Franklin tweeted this after the recent movie theatre shooting there:

Praying for everyone hurt and affected by the theater shooting in Aurora. I'm in total disbelief and shock. Things happen so quickly. #pray

— Missy Franklin (@FranklinMissy) July 20, 2012

When Franklin earned her first medal on Saturday, it came with a bit of controversy. She didn't swim in the preliminaries for the American 4x100m freestyle relay team, being passed over for the veteran Natalie Coughlin. But when it came time for the final, Coughlin was out, Franklin was in. With Coughlin, the US team finished first; with Franklin they finished third. But it wasn't Missy's fault—she swam the first leg and left the pool with a lead. Now there's less controversy about her Olympic career: She won an individual gold on Tuesday.

Olympic/world championships experience: Franklin earned five medals (two individual, three relays) at the 2011 world championships. These are her first Olympic Games, and she's already won gold in the 100m backstroke and bronze in the 4x100m freestyle relay. She finished fourth, narrowly missing bronze, in the 200 free earlier today. But with three more events left, Franklin could still leave London with a whole bunch of medals.

Sexy-pose threat level:

Previous sexy pose:

Olympic archetype: Michael Phelps, the impressive youngster capable of dominating in any stroke.

Scouting report from some guy on the internet: Twitter user "Huey" (@HEUgh_hefnr)

Missy Franklin is a babe

— Huey(@HEUgh_hefnER) July 30, 2012

Scouting report from home country: From NBColympics.com:

2011 was a magical year for Franklin. Competing at the first long-course Worlds of her career, she scooped up five medals—including three gold. The breakdown: 200m backstroke, gold; 400m medley relay, gold; 800m freestyle relay, gold; 400m freestyle relay, silver; 50m backstroke, bronze. Her success at the meet caught the attention of the entire swimming world—including Michael Phelps, who said, "She's never tired, she's always swimming fast. She's really been able to come on the scene strong. I've said this all along, she's a stud." Shortly after Worlds, Franklin won the 100m freestyle and 100m backstroke titles at Nationals.

Did you know?: Franklin played a starring role in that "Call Me Maybe" lip dub that Ryan Seacrest probably told you about.

Forecast for 2012: Franklin has already proved that can compete with the best swimmers in the world; there's no reason why she can't win a few more races.

Relevant Bob Costas facial expression:

For a handy master schedule of every Olympic event, click here.

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Your Complete Guide To London's Creepy Brand Protection Policies [London Olympics]

With the Olympics underway, so many nice folks—tourists, ticket scalpers, chemically enhanced athletes—will grace London. But so will unpleasant people, like the so-called Olympic brand police. Hundreds of "trading standards officers" are now stalking the streets, looking for anyone who might be engaging in ambush marketing. It has been reported that this brand gestapo is made up of 300 officers operating under the Olympics Delivery Authority (ODA) with, thanks to the 2006 London Olympic Act, the power to do the following:

(a) enter land or premises on which they reasonably believe a contravention of regulations ... is occurring ...
(b) remove, destroy, conceal or erase any infringing article ...
(d) use, or authorise the use of, reasonable force for the purpose of taking action under this subsection

As of this moment, there are only 42 companies who are allowed to associate themselves with the London 2012© brand. Even specific words that are at risk of sounding anything like the Olympics are "protected," including "summer," "games," "gold," and "medal." According to lawyer and brand protection specialist Paul Jordan, this bars all companies advertising in London from even suggesting that they are at all associated with the 2012 Olympics.

So as long as you don't use any of the protected words, you're golden fine. Sound impossible? The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG) has published a nice illustrated rule book for those hoping to advertise during the games. Here is everything you need to know.

Will I get sued if I advertise my product "Gold Medal Summer 2012 Olympic Clothing" during the games?

Probably, unless you've been using that name since before 1995. (Gold Medal Flour is safe.)

I want to wear my "I'm a pepper" Dr. Pepper t-shirt to the Olympics. What will happen to me?

The brand police will likely hunt you down and force you to wear a Coca-Cola shirt, or something.

I am a self-identified ambush marketer. How can I associate my brand with the Olympics without getting sued?

Ask Nike.

I want to have an Olympics themed party at my place of business...

Good for you. Don't invite other people. Or call it a "sports gathering."

Will I be able to eat anything besides McDonald's in or around the Olympic arenas?

Cadbury Chocolate.

Can I use "athletic imagery" to sell my product?

Probably don't.

How can I let people know that I am showing the Olympics in my pub/bar?

Try using ambiguous language. We suggest "Come on in and watch people from all over the world do sports!"

Can I show support for the Olympics by hanging a flag with the Olympic torch outside my store?

Not unless you wouldn't mind it being forcibly removed by the brand police.

Can I make mugs with the Olympic rings on them to give to my friends?

Nope.

Can I use the colors red, green, black, yellow, and blue in the same advertisement without getting sued?

Unlikely.

Should I even bother advertising at all?

Nah, but can you really compete with companies like P&G or Coca-Cola anyway?

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[Guide] How to Choose Between a dSLR and a Point and Shoot DigiCam ?

Hi People , this is Kuntal Gupta , again with something about Photography to share with you , this time Presenting a “Doubt-clearing” Guide (Well Sort Of). From a few months as my Friends Circle have...



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Guide to create account in Facebook in right manner

Creating a new Facebook Account is easy but there certain precautions and details which you need to give correctly. In this post I have talked about all those details including Creating Pages,...



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