downhill slump

What's up with the olympics? I know, we're supposed to be all excited about it, but the coverage just seems to get more lame every time. We get profiles of the Americans, then interviews with them, then we get to see their performances and maybe a Russian or Chinese person or two. Doesn't feel like an international event at all.

The new scoring system for skating is bugging my wife. But I never did get the old system. I can't stand events that are scored by starting off perfect and bitching and whining and criticizing and scrutinizing and deducting. Bleah. Give me a sport where you have to finish with the best time, or with a score based on discrete events, something tangible and less subjective. The coverage suggests that we should be eager to put other people under a microscope and tear them down.

Screw that.

I want to see athletes from all over the world getting together, having a community, doing their best, shaking hands when it's all over. Instead, I get to watch what's-his-name running one feature after another trying to pump up Apollo or poor Michelle Kwan as some breed of super hero, and I'm reminded every half hour that I can buy the damn jackets and buy other olympic logo crap at such-and-such a website.

Today we got to see some nasty skiing and luge accidents. If we can find the events in between the commercials, that is. There's a sense that if anyone hurts themselves trying to do this impossible stuff then "Oh well, on to the next hero."

We got a brief chuckle over a piece about curling. So it's an odd sport. It obviously takes some kind of skill. At least it's different. It's not like just changing the length of a sled to make a whole new sport. Let's have more eclectic, more alien events.

Here's an event I'd like to see: chase the announcers around with a pointy stick, and poke them until they sound like they care.