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One more than 12

Lucky number 13? Or not?

As we slide into the 13 th installment of the World Ski and Snowboard Festival one wonders why enterprising party-throwers might not skip the ill-fated numeral altogether and simply follow the lead of so many buildings and airlines by expediently proclaiming this the 14 th World Ski and Snowboard Festival. After all, longevity enhances braggin’ rights and in the world of resort marketing, braggin’ is the coin of the realm.

That the Little Festival that Could has become a teenager is nothing short of a miracle, a cosmic confluence of cussed determination, good luck, tireless effort and our annual longing for a reason, any reason, to celebrate the end of another sliding season by consuming far too much alcohol, staying up way too late for too many nights in a row and generally disproving that old saw about not being able to burn the candle at both ends. Truth be told, it’s relatively easy to burn a candle at both ends. Messy but easy.

But 13? Might that not be, well, tweaking the nose of bad luck. After all, mankind has a long and glorious history of running like scared rabbits from associations with the number 13. Explanations for this range from absurd to absurder. Fueled by religion — the source of or salvation from superstition, depending on how you look at it — mythology and mathematics, you get a rich soup of fear and loathing surrounding what’s really just a way point between 12 and 14.

One of the most suspect explanations for our aversion to the number 13 has to do with humans’ almost universal fear of math. Thirteen, the reasoning goes, is the number at which humans begin to have trouble counting things. That’s because we have simple counting devices — hands — that keep track of things up to 10, assuming we haven’t lost a finger or thumb to some misadventure. Running out of highly-visible digits, we have two feet to further the count to 12. After that….

But that makes even less sense than the anti-drug industry’s explanations for why pot is bad for you. I mean, it completely discounts the fact that early man had ready access to 10 toes long before he invented shoes, providing a simple roadmap for all numbers up to 20. Why didn’t 21 become the boogie number; it already marked the passage to adulthood and therefore repressive responsibility. The 10 fingers-two feet explanation also overlooks two legs, two knees, two ears and eyes and, in the case of men, one obsessed-over additional appendage that, even stopping at hands and feet, should have given 13 a place of pride with at least half the counting population.

When mankind finally figured out a foolproof way of counting past 12, mythology took over to reinforce the black hole of luck represented by 13. The Vikings, so the story goes, threw a party at Valhalla. Having only 12 chairs in their dining set, they only invited 12 gods. It was pretty easy to choose which gods not to invite. First on any do-not-invite list was Loki, the god of mischief. Known affectionately as The Evil One — not to be confused with Dick Cheney who shares that nickname — Loki did what any god of mischief would do; he crashed the party and made mischief.

He started food fights, spilled wine and picked on the blind god, Hod. Hod was pretty sensitive about being blind and didn’t like it when the other gods picked on him. Loki spent the evening moving Hod’s plate around so instead of putting a tasty morsel of roasted reindeer in his mouth, he’d wind up chewing on pickled kumquat or something equally disgusting.

The final straw came when, half drunk, Loki kept poking Hod in the ribs and saying, “How many fingers am I holding up?” Pissed off and looking for a fight, Hod bellowed, “Who torments me so?” Loki, ever mischievous, replied, “Tis I, Balder the Good.”

Balder, god of hair loss, was, at that moment, approaching Hod to see if he might like some assistance getting to the little gods’ room, the wine having flowed freely all evening long. Sensing his moment for maximum mischief, Loki handed Hod a spear of mistletoe left over from Christmas and Hod gave it a mighty toss. For a blind guy, Hod was pretty good with a spear. He impaled Balder, killing him instantly. Forever after that, the Norse gods never, ever let 13 gods party together. They hired bouncers.

Of course, the Norse were pagans. Christianity’s knock against the number 13 has to do with the more sedate party that’s come to be known as the Last Supper. Giving credence to that two-hands, two-feet and therefore incapable of counting past 12, Jesus had 12 disciples. When he and the boys got together for dinner, well, 12 + 1… you do the math. In some versions of the story, Judas Iscariot, having arrived late since he stopped off to pick up some silver, was the 13 th person to have a seat at the table.

Anyway, since then, 13’s had a rough ride. I don’t think having another successful installment of WSSF is likely to change people’s aversion to the number but it’s probably a sufficient reason to party even harder than usual. After all, mess up 13 and there may be no 14 th , not that that’s very likely to happen. After all, we’ve got great snow for the athletic competitions, great photographers and filmmakers for those sold-out shows, 13 beautiful models and 10 beautiful costumes for the fashion show, enough libations to float a whole ship full of Norse gods and more parties than you can attend without destroying both your liver and higher brain functions.

And through no fault of my own, I’ll be once again arguing against some of Whistler’s best and brightest in the second installment of Icon Gone. Whistler being an all-icon-all-the-time kind of town, there is apparently no fear we’re going to run out of icons to argue about any time soon. So after last year’s humiliating defeat, when the whacky townsfolk decided gravity was more iconic than a photo of nekkid ski bums, I’ve been fooled into playing the fool again. I don’t know what, if anything is iconic about Whistler but I’m always up for a good argument.

Ironically, the fun starts on… Sunday, April 13 th . Go figure.