TV: Even More Olympics 2004

-- I caught some of the women's shot put competition earlier this week, and I got a kick out of how the distances were marked. Wherever the shot lands, some guy walks over and points to the spot with his toe. That's high tech, baby.

-- I'm disappointed Andy Roddick and Venus Williams both lost their chances to bring home the gold for the US. But Roddick, at least, was playing like a maniac. His second round against Tommy Haas was one of the most amazing tennis matches I've ever seen, with Roddick fighting off a double match point to stay alive, then surrendering a triple match point to give Haas a chance to get back in, before finally winning 9-7 in the third. But I've got a complaint about the television presentation of the match: where the hell was the score? It's pretty standard practice these days to keep the current game's score constantly displayed onscreen, in that little box on the upper left. Not only was the score not there, they didn't even flash the score in between points, which left me floundering during several games. Very frustrating.

-- Another game new to me that I instantly became addicted to: handball. I watched Croatia beat Slovenia, and I was riveted. It's so simple: it's like soccer.... with your hands. But the games are fast, the scoring is high, and the action is rough; more than one player was brutally knocked to the hardwood floor (it's played indoors), and I even saw one guy grappled by his opponent and wrestled to the ground -- and he still managed to score, hurling the ball past the goalie as he fell. Amazing.

-- I watched some judo last night, and I was struck by the strange, soporific movement of some of the competitors. I'm sure it's just my novice eye, and they're competing at a level far beyond my comprehension, but they mostly appeared to be making slow, infrequent, ineffectual lunges at one another, as though they were sleep-judoing. And when they did make contact, they would kind of rumple up the bathrobe-like costume of their opponent, then eventually let go for some reason or another, and back away for another attempt. I don't think I get this event at all.

-- I think it's funny that of the fifteen headlines Yahoo has so far compiled in its Olympic weightlifting section, six of them specifically mention failed drug tests. Wow, you mean there's a problem with weightlifters taking steroids?? Knock me over with a feather. Also, I don't care how mature you are, it's just plain funny that one of the weightlifting events is called "snatch".

-- The worst thing about the US men's basketball "Dream Team" isn't how spectacularly they've failed to live up to that name (falling 92-73 to Puerto Rico in the first round, winning less than convincingly in their subsequent games), it's that the arrogance surrounding them has permeated America to the point that TV Guide actually stated as fact that Tim Duncan and the Dream Team would be competing in the gold medal game on Aug. 28 -- in last week's issue, before the Olympics had even begun. What a bunch of dicks. Man, I love this country, but now even I hope the Dream Team loses.

-- And how about those fans, folks? By which I mean, where the hell are they? As King Kaufman of Salon.com has already joked, judging from the poor turnout, Greece appears to be the first host country to boycott the Olympics. Venus Williams, possibly the most popular tennis player in the world, played one of her center court matches in front of five hundred people. That's nothing. She gets a bigger crowd than that practicing in her backyard. And the Greeks have been stubborn sons of bitches about it. During early gymnastics rounds, most of the fans were stuck in the upper tier, while the lower level was sparsely populated with little more than family members and press. I don't care how greedy you are, if you can't sell those tickets, then at least let the people in the upper tier come down and fill them, so it doesn't look so bad on camera. Whether or not Greece is making back its financial investment (they claim they are), all those empty seats gives the appearance of a monumental failure. Just suck it up and start handing free tickets out on the streets, already.

TV: Olympics 2004

I'm back from vacation, and you will probably be unsurprised to hear I spent a great deal of it watching TV (due to the constraints of having to plan all outside activities around the fussiness quotient of the world's cutest niece). And the majority of that TV watching involved the Olympics, which, as always, I thought I wouldn't give a rat's ass about, but wound up being totally sucked into. I haven't yet found a sport I've never watched before and totally fallen in love with it, as I did with curling at the 2002 Utah Games, but I've found an awful lot to love, and of course hate. Some thoughts:

-- Michael Phelps is a great swimmer and all, but how pointless was it to build up such a gigantic wall of hype around him, one which was absolutely impossible for him to live up to? I don't care how much they talked him up, if you did even the laziest of research, you knew that he never, ever, ever had a chance to beat Thorpe or Hoogenband in the 200M freestyle. Still, he set a personal record, an American record, and won the bronze medal, which is pretty spectacular -- but instead of triumph, the inflated expectations made it feel like defeat.

-- I thought I would like fencing -- women hitting each other with swords, how medievally cool is that? -- but the women's saber competition turned out to be confusing and irritating. Both fencers have lights in their helmets which flash when they've been struck, which you'd think would make things easy to keep track of -- but no. On almost every point, both players would land a touch, and both helmets would flash, and you would only know who landed a touch first by the fencers' reactions (I quickly came to hate silver medalist Tan Xue of China for her banshee shriek after every single point she won). And sometimes, the fencers' reactions were wrong: both helmet lights would flash, and both would cheer in victory, until the judge would declare which of them actually won the point. The obvious question: if it's possible to rig the fencing helmets like this, is it not also possible to rig them so that only the fencer who is touched first lights up? We can put a man on the moon...

-- The women's beach volleyball is so great it almost hurts. Four immaculately chiseled women in skimpy bikinis jumping and diving in the sand, and patting each other on the butt after every point? Yeah, sign me up for that. But it doesn't hurt that the action is also impressive, with Kerri Walsh and Misty May especially showing amazing athletic ability in their matches. And, unlike the American women's softball team -- which has shut out every contender, including mercy rule annihilations of Italy and Australia, and is steamrolling its way to the gold -- May and Walsh, though clearly the best, have actually had to fight for their wins, which makes the matches all the more exciting.

-- The men's beach volleyball is okay too, I guess.

-- Synchronized diving is lame -- as King Kaufman at Salon noted: as opposed to synchronized swimmers, who may be silly, but at least are doing something unique, "synchronized divers are doing the same thing regular divers do, only they're doing it in pairs, and they're not doing it as well as the regular divers do it." And I hate that so much primetime TV was wasted on it. But I love the technology devoted to it. The dive-cam, which drops the full height of the platform, following the divers from their jumps all the way underwater. The time-lapse photography, showing each minute flaw of the divers all at the same time. Has there ever been so much money and footage invested in something so totally lacking in worth or interest? Aside from Paris Hilton?

-- But I did enjoy seeing the utter meltdown of every other team which let the Greeks win the gold, and then watching them race around the pool in celebration, especially when one of them wiped out on the slippery tile. My brother-in-law and I had a field day with that: "Did he forget to put on his flip-flops?" "There's a sign posted right there: 'No running in the pool area!'" "Right next to the 'Welcome to my ool' sign." "Only it's in Greek: 'Welcome to my oolakamakalakapakis. Notice there's no π in it. Please keep it that way.'"

-- Yes, I speak in Greek symbols.

-- I didn't care for what little of the women's field hockey I watched. I don't know what I was expecting, what with "hockey" right there in the name, but it really was just like hockey, with the ball almost always right on the ground. I kind of thought they'd be tossing the ball through the air with those sticks, like lacrosse or something. And those sticks they use are way too short, forcing the players to be all hunched over to reach the ball. The chiropractors must make a mint off field hockey players. They either need longer sticks or shorter players.

-- I apologize to synchronized swimming, which I had previously thought to be the most boring Olympic sport ever. Because now I've seen dressage.

I probably have far too many other observations to make about the Olympics so far, but that's plenty for now. There's a thing or two about tennis I'd like to get to, and I haven't even mentioned gymnastics yet. More later.

TV: CatchphraseCenter

I caught last night's SportsCenter -- the 90-minute special edition called SportsCenter Old School. These special editions, which will be running all week in celebration of ESPN's 25th anniversary, feature alumni of the show returning to once again take the anchor's chair and call the highlights. Last night, it was Craig Kilborn coming back to take a seat next to Dan Patrick. And as I watched, I realized: not only do I not miss the smug and smarmy Craig Kilborn, I don't even miss SportsCenter.

The last time I watched the show with any regularity was about four or five years ago, when I worked in an office with a big football pool, and felt like I had to do my homework. Nowadays, I'll watch football when it's on (NFL only, no college -- unless Cal is playing, and come on, how often does that get televised?), and I'll occasionally sit still for a Dodgers game called by Vin Scully, or the women's nine-ball tournaments, which for some reason I love, or the odd tennis match or three, or golf if it's Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson. But I certainly don't care about what's happening in all those other sports events I'm not watching, which makes SportsCenter kind of useless for me.

Especially since it's so goddam annoying. (Back me up here, King Kaufman.) The point of SportsCenter long ago ceased to be delivering sports highlights; the point is for the anchor to insert himself into the highlights with his "wry" "hip" "humor" and "clever" catchphrases. Old School illustrated this fact by showing highlight reels of Kilborn's catchphrases, having Patrick quiz Kilborn on his catchphrases, having Kilborn first coyly refuse to revive the catchphrases as he read the baseball highlights, which became redundant and annoying enough to be a catchphrase unto itself ("No catchphrases, that's simply a home run"), and finally having Kilborn use every one of his not-so-fondly-remembered catchphrases after all ("Jumanji!" "Krakatoa!"), even adding a few new ones ("You stay classy, San Diego," straight out of Anchorman).

All the current SportsCenter anchors are guilty of this catchphrase style of announcing to some degree or another, but it's Stuart "Booyah!" Scott who is currently the most egregious offender. He so desperately wants to be stolen away from ESPN by a major network, or to host his own talk show, that it almost hurts to watch him. But Chris Berman's nickname-game isn't far behind in terms of obnoxiousness.

The only two SportsCenter catchphrases I've ever enjoyed aren't even SportsCenter catchphrases. The first is "Sweet sassy molassey!" from the classic Saturday Night Live send-up of SportsCenter, as spoken by Ray Romano (which, of course, the ESPN people immediately appropriated for themselves). The second is of nebulous origin: I seem to recall that it was from a Rich Eisen-hosted ESPN game show, a very short-lived one (not 2-Minute Drill), and I believe Peter Gammons was actually the contestant (maybe this was some 20th anniversary special show that I'm not recalling correctly). Anyway, the question was, "Which of the following is not a catchphrase used to describe a home run on SportsCenter?" I forget the other three choices, but the correct answer, the one not used, was "a four-base hit," which was by far my favorite. Wouldn't you like to hear the sentence, "And Barry Bonds gets a four-base hit!" "That is an upper deck four-base hit for Sosa!"

I was kind of looking forward to watching all of the Old School specials this week, catching everyone's return appearances (except for Keith Olbermann, who is still hated at ESPN, and wasn't invited back). Now, I'm thinking I'll just watch whatever the heck I want to watch on TV tonight, but describe whomever I'm watching as being "en fuego," or shout out some random word, Tourette's-like, every few seconds: "Yahtzee!" "Roanoke!" "San Buenaventura!" That should be about the same.