An actual contestant from an actual international pole-dance competition, Miss Pole Dance Europe (Photo by EPA/Koen Van Weel)

You know how the rest of the country hears an odd story out of Southern California and rolls its collective peepers and says, ''Only in LA''?

For once, this one comes from our friends behind the Orange Curtain.

Over the weekend, I got an e-mail asking me to sign an online petition to add another event to the 2012 Olympic Summer Games.

Pole dancing.

The owner of an Orange County ''pole fitness'' studio argued that it's really a kind of ''vertical ballet,'' that it's popular in more than 50 countries, and as such deserves recognition and competition, just like the horizontal bars, figure skating and ''rhythmic gymnastics.'' 

I know an older woman who is a great pole-dancing enthusiast; she is indeed fit and graceful. Whether she would consider this an Olympic-level sport, I do not know.

But the e-mailer assured all of us that ``pole dance/pole fitness is acrobatic, technical and takes disciplined physical skill and strength to master.''

She added that it's time we ''challenge our preconceived notions.''

And then she signed herself ''yours unapologetically sexy,''

Let the games begin.