Some early Olympic thoughts
Like many Americans, I spent a good deal of time this weekend watching the Olympics on TV. The Olympics don’t seem as magical as when I was a kid, but I still enjoy watching them.
Here’s some random thoughts after a good 2.5 days of watching the 2008 edition:
- Wow. The opening ceremonies were certainly impressive. I generally find myself getting bored with anything involving “artistic interpretation”, but this one kept me entertained right up until the end. The guy running around the top of the stadium was cool.
- All of the facilities I’ve seen so far are also very impressive. I wonder what kind of long-term impacts, if any, hosting the games will have on Beijing and the rest of China.
Ah, the entrance of the athletes during the opening ceremonies – also known as the Parade of America’s Geographic Ignorance. It’s painful to hear the commentators have to assure millions of Americans that all these funny sounding places really are countries.- I understand that they were playing a medley of world music randomly throughout the athletes’ entrances, but it was kind of weird to be hearing bagpipes playing while countries like South Korea and Lesotho marched in.
- Why does the IOC allow territories and insular areas like Puerto Rico and Hong Kong to have their own Olympic teams? Last time I checked those two spots were, respectively, parts of the United States and China. I would like for Texas to have its own Olympic team. We would enter the stadium wearing ten gallon hats and boots while firing six-shooters into the air.
- Apparently you don’t even need to have a defined physical territory to compete. Palestine has a team.
- Kudos to NBC (particularly Bob Costas) for not shying away from talking about some of the political realities involving China and some of the participating countries. They’re certainly not doing any hard-hitting exposés, but they’re not turning a blind eye either.
- Blah for me for using the word “kudos” in the previous bullet point.
- I have such a innate distaste for pre-ordained heroes that I’m finding myself rooting against some of the folks NBC keeps shoving in my face (like Michael Phelps and Shawn Johnson). Can’t we just watch the stupid events and then idolize whoever wins? I hate sitting through hours of promotion for people who haven’t actually achieved any Herculean feats yet.
- I enjoy how Americans (myself included) suddenly become obsessed for two weeks with sports that they’ve totally ignored for the previous four years. Like gymnastics. Or synchronized diving. Or volleyball. Or swimming. Sure, you may think you like swimming now, but if I had asked you in 2006 who the reigning 100m freestyle world record holder was, would you have known? Or even what I was talking about? No, and you won’t two years from now either.
- Please, please, PLEASE stop calling the U.S. men’s basketball squad “The Redeem Team”.
- Speaking of them, I care about Olympic basketball as much as I do about any other kind of basketball – not at all.
- For swimming events, I am in favor of NBC replacing their green line denoting the world record pace with a computer animated panda bear swimming in the top lane. I could see this working for the track events next week too. The bear doesn’t need a name. In fact, the lack of a name would only add to the bear’s mystique.
- I know it’s kind of necessary for scheduling, but it still seems wrong that Olympic soccer games started 48 hours before the opening ceremonies.
- The Wife and I think it’s odd that countries like Japan and Russia have their countries’ names written in English on their team clothing.
- Is our president ever going to return to work or he is just going to keep showing up at beach volleyball games and swimming events for the next two weeks?
To be fair, Michael Phelps has performed such “Herculean feats” before. He walked away from the last Olympics with several gold medals, doesn’t that count?
I agree about Shawn Johnson, though. They’re just setting that poor girl up for failure.
Way to take the other side there.
I don’t care if he won every gold medal and saved the Easter Bunny from a burning building, I still don’t need to be reminded of his “historic quest” every freaking 30 seconds.
There’s 11,000 athletes at the Olympics, but you wouldn’t know it from watching the coverage.
Hee.
Last night we went out to dinner. Where they were showing the sychronized diving on TV. Clint was all “wait, that’s 2 people? I thought it was a mirror and how weird they’re having them dive next to a mirror like that.”
He’s not big on the olympics…I haven’t seen much this time, but they don’t have the same awe factor they did when I as a kid I got all excited to watch Mary Lou Retton.
I’m enjoying watching them, and have to laugh as they explain the events (and the countries)to us. I am sad to say I need geography lessons and am reminded of it every time! I was sad to read today that the girl was lip-singing because the girl who actually sings “isn’t cute enough”, nice message to send to little girls China. I saw a picture of her and think she looks fine.
You are right, I’ll watch swimming and all and then not care about them for 4 more years…..
is it a surprise a guy from Katy won for shooting?