Thursday, February 18, 2010

Musings on the Olympics

* Damn, the conditions have been bad for a lot of events. Ice for the speedskaters, snow for the downhill skiiers. Even the snowboard halfpipe looked pretty treacherous. I understand wanting American athletes to do well, but I hate seeing anyone spend years or decades of their lives training for one chance to compete and it's all lost on a fall that happened because the conditions were bad.

* Interesting sartorial choices, from Ireland's neon Opening Ceremonies pants to the Team USA snowboarding uniform of an ugly plaid shirt and faux jeans to the Norwegian Curling team's pants. Fancy!

* And speaking of the Opening Ceremonies, how awesome was that! I was totally blown away by most of it, not only the spectacle of it (which was amazing) but also little things. For example, the flag bearer for the Iran team was a WOMAN.

* I'm not at all pleased with the coverage on NBC and am very frustrated by the tape delay, frustrated by the cuts between events, and uber-frustrated that there is still Bob Costas. Seriously, who likes that guy? So much of the coverage is skating-based and American athlete-centric, even when the front-runners for other events are not Americans. I don't care about the American guy who placed 12th or his heartwarming story. Show me the good stuff!

* I am officially old. TWO of the olympics-themed/related commercials have made me teary over the past week, this one (discussed here by my pal Jive Turkey) and this one. WAH.

3 comments:

Hillary said...

Warmest winter Olympics in history. I was out taking pictures of cherry blossoms on my lunch break!

Yank In Texas said...

Even more old- I remember watching the Dan Jansen stuff.
I love me some Olympics but I too wish we could see some more stuff.

Anonymous said...

Dude, what about the French skier lady who fell down, like, TWO SECONDS after she started down the hill?!? That KILLED me. I would never get over disappointment like that.