Sunday, August 17, 2008

I think I'm officially over the olympics

for the following reasons:

• They are seriously messing up my tv viewing schedule (me: "Yay, it's 9 o'clock, time for "Burn Notice!" the other two people in my house: "OMG, NOOOOOOO! Michael Phelps is swimming in 13 minutes!!!!" Damn, guys, let me give you a spoiler, he's going to win a gold medal)
• The announcers are such assholes ("Wow, the Russians have really disappointed me in this event this year, they're only coming in with silver" - You know what, silver still means 2nd best in the world, okay? And that doesn't exactly suck)
• The people who interview the athletes after they've just suffered a crushing defeat are such idiots. ("So how does it feel to lose by 1/100th of a second?"... gosh, Tammy, it feels GREAT! "how does it feel to have fallen in the middle of your routine?" it's AMAZING, I love to have the worst moment of my life transmitted around the world in hi-def. "What was it like to HELP Michael Phelps get another medal?" Um... I was out there swimming, too, I got a medal, too, thanks for noticing)
• Some of these sports are dull - cycling? rowing? archery? the marathon*? ping pong table tennis? Yawn.
• I'm kind of disconcerted by the fact that 95% of the Chinese athletes, male and female have the same fuzzy monchichi haircut
• These sports are sort of sexist - guys' beach volleyball uniform? long shorts and sleeveless shirts. women's beach volleyball uniform? a bikini the size of a bandaid. And every "inspirational story" about a female athlete has to include a mention of her boyfriend/fiance/adorable child, but every "inspirational story" about a make athlete focuses on how well that person does the sport.

For me, the best part of the Olympics is when they stop talking about Michael Phelps and those beach volleyball-chicks for five minutes and interview people from these teeny countries that sent 10 athletes. It's kind of nice to know that not every athlete in the world leads some privileged, pampered life and some of them are doing it because they love the sport and they want to give something back to their nation.





*actually, I got stuck watching bits of the women's marathon and the 38-year-old who won and then just kept running and waving and blowing kisses? Was kind of awesome.