Last night I sat around the house staring blankly into space. Why you ask? Because I was at a loss for what to do now that the Olympics are over. I love the Olympics. I'm definitely more of a summer games kind of girl, but I'll put up with the winter games as a way to pass the time until my true love comes back in 2 more years.
The 2010 games just seemed odd to me. They started out with the Georgian luger dying before we even got started. It was AFTER he crashed at 90mph into a steel pole that they decided "Hey, maybe we should cover these beams of death." But beyond that, there just seemed to be a lot of wonky things. Like the weather. So if you were first on the ski jump, you did well. If you were in the middle of the pack, the wind picked up and you maybe reached half the distance of the previous person. On downhill competitions, the snow would be great at the top of the hill but mush at the bottom. The Sliding Center battled keeping the ice hard enough for all the sleds. I know that the Olympic folks can't control the weather but damn, it just seemed so sloppy. Shouldn't we have winter games in places where it's guaranteed to be freezing cold all winter long? Like, say, Siberia?
And then there were the competitors themselves. A lot of them wow'ed us as predicted. Apolo Ohno, Kim Yu-Na, Shaun White, etc. But was it just me or was there some sort of fuck up or accident every single time you turned on the tv? I don't know how many bobsled crashes I witnessed. Including one by a German team where the brake person was ejected only to have the sled flip over and have the pilot slide down the track on his head with a sled on top of him. How many figure skaters fell during their jumps? Or mogul racers who crashed? I'm not sure if the competitors were pushing themselves harder, whether they were ill prepared, or perhaps it was the conditions. Who knows, but it seemed like a very amateur version of the games.
What are some things that I will not miss about the Olympics this year? For one, the cowbells. What the fuck is with the cowbells? Do they hand them out to people as they enter the event? Where does one even find a cowbell to purchase? And why on God's green earth do you need to scream and shake a cowbell when a skier, bobsledder or luger comes flying by? Is cheering not enough anymore?
I will not miss NBC's coverage or commentating. I will not miss Mary Carillo (lesbian!) and her stories about Canada. I'm here to watch top athletes perform, not to learn about Canadian logging. It's bad enough that the premier events were on at 11pm EST or later. I don't need my evening eaten up by the promise of events after the break only to have to listen to some story about polar bears.
Kim Yu-Na DID skate a beautiful performance, but really, is saying "The coronation is complete! The queen has arrived!" really necessary, Tom Hammond? Can you please hold back your emotions when speaking about a performance? It's fucking figure skating. Not your child pooping on the potty for the first time.
So while it may seem like I DIDN'T enjoy the Olympics, I really did. I always enjoy watching people at the top of their game. I enjoy rooting for the US to kick Russia's ass. What I don't enjoy is the endless blather by commentators or the shitty programming schedule. Hopefully NBC will bring their A game to London in 2012.
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