XXIX Olympics Wrap-up

With the Olympic closing ceremony taking place right now -- or having already taken place many hours ago, if you're going by reality, rather than NBC's TV schedule -- it seems as though these Games might be remembered as much for scandal and poor sportsmanship as much as Michael Phelps or the beautiful opening ceremony.

--Of course, the whole Olympics began under a cloud with the fatal stabbing of a former Olympic volleyballer's father. Way to put your best foot forward, China.

--Jamaican Usain Bolt caused a stir by showboating across the finish line in his record-breaking performance in the 100 meter dash. Closing in on the tape, Bolt looked around at the other sprinters, and actually slowed down to gesture at the crowd and thump his chest. Some would defend it as playful athletic enthusiasm, and I am certainly not against an athlete enjoying himself while becoming the fastest man alive. But you celebrate after the race. To slow down during the race: to me that's taunting, plain and simple, and that's being a poor sport.

--Swedish wrestler Ara Abrahamian discarded his bronze medal on the mat during the medal ceremony. He was then disqualified and stripped of his medal. He was protesting a disputed call in an earlier match, which lost him a chance at the gold, and more specifically he was protesting being denied a review of the call. Judges later ruled that his objections were correct, and he should have been allowed to challenge the ruling. But by that point, after having to be restrained from going after the officials in that match, and dropping the medal, he had so thoroughly violated the spirit of the Olympics that there was no question he deserved to be DQ'd.

--Another athlete succeeded in going after the officials: Cuban taekwando competitor Angel Matos and his coach were banned for life after Matos pushed a judge, then pushed and kicked a referee in the face. The ref had disqualified Matos for exceeding the injury time limit. His coach, Leudis Gonzalez, rather than offering any kind of apology afterward, instead charged that the match was fixed, and that the Kazakh team had tried to bribe him. All this accompanied controversial calls in at least two other matches. Taekwando is a borderline sport at the Olympics; after Beijing, I wouldn't expect to see the sport return in 2012.

--Gymnastics were rife with controversy, with questions about both the judging and certain athletes' ages. The rules and point values seem to have been followed accurately, but that still didn't stop a huge uproar being raised when American Alicia Sacramone finished fourth in the vault behind Chinese competitor Cheng Fei, who landed on her knees rather than her feet. Similar rule-following generated similar protests when Chinese He Kexin and American Nastia Liukin received tie scores on the uneven parallel bars, but only He won the gold after an obscure tie-breaking rule was invoked. And China denied that at least three members of their team were too young to compete, in spite of overwhelming evidence that He Kexin is only 14, two years under the age limit of 16.

--And of course there were the usual doping violations, including North Korean shooter Kim Jong Su, Spanish cyclist Maria Isabel Moreno, Ukrainian heptathlete Lyudmila Blonska and Vietnamese gymnast Thi Ngan Thuong Do.

--I've read and heard a lot of complaints, almost entirely from Americans, about the judged competitions being unfairly biased in favor of the Chinese. No real evidence that I've seen has been offered to justify these claims, other than the bitterness Americans feel when other countries best us in the Olympics. It's not enough that America has more medals than any other country; we need to have more gold medals than any other country to be satisfied. And if I'm not mistaken, the final count will be China with 51 golds, the U.S. with merely 36, 13 ahead of next-closest Russia. Bizarre, misguided claims that America would win the "real" gold medal count (or at least have been much closer) if sports requiring judging were discounted seem to be popping up everywhere, which I think demean both China and America, as well as the Olympics as a whole. There's enough weirdness out of these Beijing games without Americans spoiling things more by being poor winners.

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And still, these was plenty to cheer and be touched by in these Olympics, from countries like Mongolia and India winning their first ever gold (or individual gold, respectively) medals, to U.S. gymnast Shawn Johnson being gracious and respectful about winning silver while American journalists and fans carped about the judging and expressed disappointment in Johnson for failing to achieve gold (even though she eventually did get a gold), to German weightlifter Matthias Steiner holding up a picture of his wife, killed in a car accident last year, during the medal ceremony, to, yes, Michael goddam Phelps.

I didn't get to see nearly as much of the Games this year as I would have liked, but even with my limited viewing, and NBC's best efforts to make that limited viewing experience awkward, confusing, untimely and unsatisfying, I enjoyed it, as I always do. See you in Vancouver in 2010!

Olympics 2008

I haven't been watching nearly as much of the Olympics this year as I usually like to. For example, I missed USA's come-from-behind gold medal win in the 4 x 100 swimming relay, which apparently was the greatest thing ever. Dang it.

Here's just a few stray thoughts on the few events I've witnessed:

--Shooting competitions are taking place every day of this week, nine days of events all told, but the TV coverage was limited entirely to this past weekend. I managed to catch some coverage Sunday, but some friends of mine here did not. And Texans love their shooting. This seems like poor scheduling to me; I have to imagine the entire middle section of the U.S. would love to see more of this stuff.

--Very nifty story regarding the shooting today: India took their first ever individual gold in the 10m air rifle competition. Sweet! And then various Indian agencies rewarded the winner, Abhinav Bindra, with nearly $400,000. Super sweet! If you want to be an Olympic ringer for hire, my suggestion is apply to India.

--NBC and Michael Phelps himself are trying really, really hard to convince me that Phelps, the soon-to-be gold medal-winningest Olympian ever, is not a complete tool, but I'm not buying it. That dude bugs me.

--Why does men's beach volleyball even exist? If there is no possibility of seeing Misty May's ass, what is the point? (Trying to keep my Google hits up there. I've fallen all the way to 7th place in overall searches for that phrase. Which is a disgrace: I used to be #1.)

--Favorite minor event I've caught so far: badminton. Those guys are frickin' savage! I would not want to be in the way of that shuttlecock. (Hee hee! I said "shuttle.")

--I've watched synchronized diving two nights in a row. The general consensus around Austin (and perhaps around the world) seems to be that this event is a total waste of time, but I love it. It is entirely random, I don't deny, but there's something about the athletic discipline combined with the fantastic photography -- that camera that drops straight down with the divers, all the way underwater, is brilliant -- that fascinates me.

--I'm watching the women's synchronized diving competition right now, and I'm sorry, but one of the Chinese competitors totally has a penis. Seriously. I call foul.

--Haven't seen any basketball or tennis yet. I barely care about the NBA, and seeing the "Redeem Team" romp all over their competition in the Olympics doesn't hold any additional interest for me. But if Federer plays Nadal in the men's tennis finals, in a rematch of the Wimbledon finals, I'll skip work if I have to to watch it. (Or I could TiVo it, but it sounds more dramatic that way.) Those guys are awesome.

More coverage later. Go Team USA!

XXIX Olympics

I was otherwise occupied yesterday, what with the birthday celebrations and all, but I want to acknowledge the opening of the Beijing Olympics. I'm watching the Opening Ceremonies on TiVo right now.

I'm very excited, as I always am for the Olympics. There may be a lot of controversy over the choice of China to host these games, but for one thing, I think the Olympics are a moment to set aside political barriers and treasure the spectacle of international athletic achievement and camaraderie. And for another thing, as I listened to Tom Brokaw detail China's political failures -- "It is a country where the few rule the many; where protest is not welcome..." -- it becomes very obvious how difficult it is for America to claim any kind of moral superiority to any other nation at this point, even China. Wow, protest is not welcome? What's that like? I wonder if they tap their citizens' phones without permission, or detain people for years on end with no charges and no hope for a public trial? Wouldn't that be awful?

Anyhoo, my point is I love the Olympics, and will be watching a boatload of coverage over the next couple weeks. And in honor of the commencement of these Olympics, I'm bringing back an old favorite of this blog. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Misty May's ass.


You're welcome.

TV: The bowdlerization of Cheap Seats

I've recently become a fan of Cheap Seats, but I am most definitely not a fan of ESPN Classic's censorship policy.

Hosts Randy and Jason Sklar aren't potty mouths, exactly, but they do use mild expletives which have become all but ubiquitous on any programming other than perhaps Saturday morning Disney cartoons. Like, "ass." Did your face melt and brain explode when you read the word "ass"? My guess is no. But that appears to be what ESPN Classic fears will happen should that word travel unbleeped over their airwaves.

Same with "bitch." In fact, in a repeat I caught this week, "Superdogs, Superjocks" (a competition involving unremembered Olympic athletes and, well, dogs), the word "bitch" was bleeped when it was specifically applied to an actual female dog. That's the word, for crying out loud! That's the proper term! There's nothing even vaguely dirty about it when you use it in its intended meaning! Idiots.

But wait, there's more! ESPN Classic likes to bleep words that aren't dirty in any context, too. In the same show, one of the hosts used the term "crotch-sniffing." Oh no you don't! Not on ESPN Classic's dime! "Bleep-sniffing" is what aired. Wow, that is some cowardly bleep, right there. Later, one of them said of the show, "We've hardly begun to sniff the butt of this thing," and they bleeped "butt." Man alive. Maybe in context, sniffing coupled with butt made the censors jumpy. But come on! This ain't Sesame Street, people! I don't think you need to be that fearful of an FCC fine. You're not showing Janet Jackson's titty, you're saying the word "butt." Have we really come to this, as a country? Has the fear really possessed us to this extreme a degree?

But the capper is when one of the brothers said something sucked, and that got the bleep treatment, too. Dude, that's a word that even those Saturday morning Disney cartoons will say. But not ESPN Classic. "He and the dog basically bleeped." How can you possibly pretend to be a real network* when you're afraid to say the word "sucked," even after midnight?

Grow a set of bleeps, ESPN Classic.

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*I'm being generous by presuming someone, somewhere, actually does think of ESPN Classic as a real network.

You Know What I Like? Me.

Sorry I haven't updated for a while. In the past few days, I've broken my foot, and my car has died. 2005 is not winning me over just yet.

Today I present my last Top Ten of 2004 list. And I thought, since all Top Ten lists are inherently egocentric and self-promotional, for my final list I would give you the ultimate masturbatory indulgence:

Tom the Dog's Top Ten Posts of 2004!

HA! I rule! Yes, here are the ten entries since TTDYKWIL? opened in June of last year that I thought were the most significant, the funniest, the best written, the most unfairly overlooked, or in some other way struck my fancy. It is a paean to the wonder of me! My name is Tom the Dog, King of Kings! Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

In chronological order:

1. MOVIES: I'm a good walker, bro. June 28, 2004
   
   My third entry (way back when I was still watching my language; by the way: fuck), my first proper review, and the first and last time I actually used the term "You know what I like?" in one of my posts. I had originally planned on that being a recurring phrase. Guess not.
   
   It's a review of The Station Agent, a wonderful but little seen film that I hope I can get more people to see with this new link. Back when it originally posted, my daily hits were in the high single digits. Now they're in the low triple digits. Yeah, I know, whoopity-doo, but maybe some of you folks who weren't around at the start will now rent the DVD because of this, and that would make me very happy.



2. TV: What about Grape Ape? July 20, 2004
   
   This post, which only kind of almost references Grape Ape in the final paragraph, was the first one which got me some attention via unexpected linkage. It's a pretty funny (if I say so myself, and clearly, I have no problem doing just that) rant about various video music channels, and their infuriating failure to show videos:
   
   

   And, if you've only seen music videos on TRL, here's the kicker -- actual music videos last the ENTIRE LENGTH of a song, and are NOT OBSCURED by fawning text messages from sub-literate dipshits with computer access in their detention facilities, and are ENTIRELY FREE of screaming idiots in Times Square superimposed over the screen!

   as well as a rave for the so, so beautiful VH1 Classic.



3. COMMERCIALS: At least they didn't drag the Pope into it July 24, 2004
   
   Fred Hembeck just posted about classic cartoons being used in TV ads, and wondered if we would soon see "Yogi Bear scampering off into the woods with a roll of Charmin". Well, it wasn't Yogi, but Charmin actually did produce a truly repellent commercial which featured an animated bear shitting in the woods. I rip on said commercial in this post:
   
   

   ...not only will I never buy Charmin, but I think I now actually hate my body and its natural functions a little bit. Thanks, Charmin! Thank you and your defecating cartoon bear!



4. COMICS: Hulk is coolest one there is! August 4, 2004
   
   Ha! I lied to you! I used the phrase "You know what I like?" in this post, too. (My mistake.) In this post I profess my love for ol' Jade Jaws:
   
   

   The Hulk just wanted to kick back in the forest, away from all the puny humans, feed grass to an innocent deer who didn't know to be afraid of the green monster, compose some haikus, I don't know -- and then some dumbass supervillain would always come along and drop a building on the Hulk's head. And so the Hulk would have no choice but to GRRRAAAARRRRRR HULK SMASH!! and whale the holy living shit out of the bad guy.



5. My Herculean Olympics coverage: Part 1 August 18, 2004; Part 2 and Part 3 August 19, 2004; Part 4 August 20, 2004; Part 5 August 23, 2004; Part 6 August 29, 2004
   
   I'm extremely happy with my writing on the Olympics, #1) because it's the most I've written about any one subject, and I think it's pretty well-rounded and entertaining, #2) because I didn't see any other blog doing anything like it, and #3) this is where the running gag about Misty May's ass began. To this day I still get near-daily hits from search engine requests for "Misty May's ass".
   
   Did I mention Misty May's ass?



6. My titanic Emmys coverage: Part 1 and Part 2 September 19, 2004
   
   My first minute-by-minute recapping for this blog; an insanely detailed look at the 2004 Emmys, from the red carpet to the final award. I really love doing this kind of thing, even if very few of you people seem to share my enjoyment. You can expect the same for the Oscars this year. I'd do it for the Grammys and the Tonys too, if my threshold for pain were much much higher.



7. MUSIC: I Get A Kick Out Of... October 12, 2004; MUSIC: Somebody better put you back into your place October 13, 2004
   
   A couple lists of various little things I enjoy about a number of different songs, from John Lennon's singing "Don't you know that you can count me out... in" on "Revolution" and Freddie Mercury's odd pronunciation of "Marie Antoinette" on "Killer Queen".
   
   
8. Nerd Heaven November 29, 2004
   
   My account of the Las Vegas Hilton's Star Trek Experience, the nerdiest place on Earth. And of getting really, really drunk.
   
   

   When the door closed on the shuttle pod, Scoot began poking all the fake buttons on the wall next to him, prompting one of the employees spying on us to announce over the intercom that we shouldn't bother touching the console controls, because they were DNA-encoded to respond only to Enterprise crewmembers. We loved that. Neeerrrrrrd Heaven.

   
   
9. MUSIC: Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs December 2, 2004
   
   One of the highest comment-counts ever for one of my posts. Clearly, I like ripping on "Best of" lists as much as I like making them, and so do you folks.



10. I don't get it December 8, 2004
    
    And finally, the post which I believe has garnered the most comments ever in the short history of my site. It's a list of overwhelmingly popular things, like Radiohead, or My Big Fat Greek Wedding, that I'm not a fan of myself. In fact, I think they stink. So there.

Thank you to all of you who visited my little blog in 2004. And here's to much more pop culture goodness in 2005!

TV: Olympics Wrap-Up

The Olympics are hardly over and I already miss them.

I regret missing so much of the coverage this last week, due to the fact that, unlike most of the first week, I wasn't on vacation. I didn't see any of the Decathlon, for example. And yes, I actually wanted to. And I entirely missed the Archery competitions, dammit!

But I caught enough wonderful moments to keep me satisfied. For example, the U.S. Men's Basketball team having to settle for the Bronze, like the overhyped, underpracticed, non-team oriented chumps they were. There was the crazy disturbance in the Men's Marathon today, when some lunatic defrocked priest actually ran out of the crowd and attacked Vanderlei de Lima of Brazil, who was in the lead at the time, and who still went on to win the Bronze. There was popular U.S. Men's Wrestler Rulon Gardner, who, after winning the Bronze, removed his boots and left them in the wrestling ring to signify his retirement. I honestly could not care less about wrestling, be it Greco-Roman style or WWE, and even I got choked up at this beautifully simple statement. That's what the Olympics can do to you.

But enough about the Bronze. What about the Gold? Look no further than the U.S. Women, who seemed to win the Gold in every team sport. The softball team eradicated their competition on the way to their third straight Gold, winning all nine of their games by a combined score of 51-1. That's lopsided, folks. The Women's Basketball won their third straight Gold using the exact fundamentals and unselfish team spirit the Men's team was so sorely lacking. The Women's Soccer team captured their third medal, and second Gold, of the last three Games, and, with the retirement of Mia Hamm, Julie Foudy, and Joy Fawcett, ended the incredibly dominating dynasty begun with their World Cup win way back in 1991. And then there's Women's Beach Volleyball:



Admit it, you scrolled down to this picture without reading any of the junk I wrote up there first.

See you in Beijing in 2008! But first, Torino, Italy, in Winter 2006, and you know what that means: curling, baby, curling!!

TV: The Fastest Men Alive

There's a new fastest man alive: on Sunday, Ben Gatlin won the gold in the 100-meter dash, in an incredible 9.85 seconds. Even more incredible, the silver went to a time of 9.86 seconds, the bronze to 9.87 seconds. Fourth was 9.89, fifth was 9.94, sixth was 10 even. That's inconceivable to me. How can you even register 1/100th of a second difference? Is one guy's nose longer than the other's? You can't help but think of that Seinfeld joke about the minute differences between Olympic heroes and nobodies. "First place, [moves head back two inches] dead last. [Moves head forward two inches] Greatest guy in the world, [moves head back two inches] never heard of him."

(I promise I won't write any more about the Olympics today, except to note that I've been enjoying the women's diving competitions for all the wrong reasons.)

Meanwhile, the fastest man alive is missing in action on Justice League Unlimited. Where the hell is the Flash?? We're four episodes in, and he hasn't even had one line yet. I can't even recall if he made an appearance in the first episode. Not to say I haven't been enjoying the show. Last week's episode with the Justice League Babies was hilarious, especially young Wonder Woman's crush on young Batman, but it was a light, inconsequential episode that probably should have come later in the season, after the new rotating cast premise had been better established (apparently, this was originally supposed to air as the fifth show of the season, rather than the third). And this week's Hawk and Dove episode was decent, if not overwhelming. The voice-casting of Hawk and Dove was inspired (Wonder Years brothers Jason Hervey and Fred Savage, with Hervey here switching roles as the younger, kinder brother, Savage playing the older, tougher one -- come on, you couldn't have had a guy named "Savage" play the Dove, could you?); in addition, Michael York was a great villain's voice, and Ed Asner as Hephaestus had some cute, borderline naughty wordplay with Wonder Woman (involving the tightness of her costume).

But dammit, where's the Flash? Is Michael Rosenbaum too busy on Smallville to make the trip to the voice sessions? Hell, he's practically out of the opening credits as it is; the new opening animation suggests Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman are the Justice League, and Flash, Green Lantern, and Martian Manhunter are now merely part of the giant supporting cast -- featured supporting players, yes, but not the headliners.

Maybe it's just as well; the writers have never really known how to portray Flash's powers accurately. When they've used him to the best effect (as in the brilliant "A Better World" two-parter), he's nearly a match for Superman; more often, though, he's a clown. Comic relief, that's one thing, but he's just a clown, in and out of battle. He's been taken down by the lamest villains, and his speed, which should be supersonic at the very least, near light speed at best, is often reduced to barely that of a speeding car.

Over on Teen Titans, the same can be said of Beast Boy. His powers are phenomenal, but he rarely uses them to their true potential; hell, most of the time, he forgets he can turn into something that can fly. This week, while in wolf-form, he got his foot trapped under a rock. Rather than turning into any of a hundred animals that could've escaped (from an elephant to an earthworm), he turned back into his human form (still trapped) and tried to reason with his attacker, Terra. More emotionally affecting, perhaps, making heartfelt pleas to his erstwhile friend, but stupid from any practical point of view.

When the writers have used him well, Beast Boy has been more than a match even for the Titans' arch-nemesis, Slade (though, having defeated Slade a couple episodes ago, BB reverted to his usual clown-like self and allowed him to walk away with Terra in tow). I don't mind comic relief in my superhero teams; I just wish more often they'd live up to their superheroic capabilities, rather than taking all the pratfalls.

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: Or maybe she's like Vin Diesel in Pitch Black

Hey, when I was talking about Amanda Beard earlier, did I forget to mention she's a killer robot? I did, didn't I?

Oh yeah, she's a replicant, no question. Check out her cold, silver, death-dealing eyes:





If the massive teeth engineered specifically for the rending of human flesh don't convince you, the liquid mercury eyes should remove all doubt. In the pool, they really show off their metallic quality, possibly because they are designed to target her prey underwater as well as on dry land. Am I the only one who sees she clearly is a steely death machine, bent on world domination by way of winning Olympic swimming medals? (Somehow.) It's quite frightening, in a sexy kind of way.

TV: More Olympics 2004

-- It's funny how games I wouldn't normally watch on a dare become fascinating in the Olympics. I couldn't get enough of badminton! Did you know that the shuttlecock reaches speeds of up to 200 MPH? (Heh, I said "shuttlecock.") And ping pong -- excuse me, table tennis -- is also weirdly compelling. But I keep wondering: where do they put their beers while they're playing? Shouldn't their red plastic keg cups be on the corner of the table? That's how I always played.

-- My favorite part of the women's gymnastics is the goofy little dance moves they're required to make in between doing the really cool stuff. And by favorite, I mean, "easiest to mock." Like, Carly Patterson does an amazing triple back flip on the balance beam -- and then she has to do a little hokey-pokey step while moving her arms like she's backing up Madonna in the "Vogue" video. I guess the men have to do some of that, too, but for some reason it's really blatant and distracting in the women's routines.

-- My favorite gymnast? Svetlana Khorkina. And no, not because of not-safe-for-work pictures like these (well, not entirely because of that). I just love how unapologetically arrogant she is. All the other gymnasts, before every routine, salute the crowd with two hands high in the air, arched back, posing with big, toothy, forced smile. In contrast, Svetlana merely raises one hand, brief, humorless, indifferent to the crowd, regally gracing them with the merest suggestion of acknowledgment of their presence. That rocks. She's such a delightfully cranky presence among all the other relentlessly cheerful Stepford gymnasts. Plus, she's 25, which qualifies you for an AARP card in the gymnastics world.

-- American swimmers Amanda Beard and Natalie Coughlin both have disturbingly, almost predatorially large, prominent, unnaturally white teeth. Check out Amanda's smile in this shot:



That's some set of choppers. And damn, she's got more gum than Bazooka Joe.

Just an observation. I still think they're both lovely as the day is long. Check out Natalie in my alma mater's gear:



Go Cal! And Amanda in a picture from Men's Fitness magazine:



I have no idea what that has to do with men's fitness. And it's entirely possible photos like that in men's magazines cheapen and diminish the great accomplishments of the female athletes in the Athens games. And, as it turns out, I'm all right with that. Grrrrrrowwwl.

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That's all for now. I'll try to get to soccer and basketball before the Olympics are actually over.

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.