Canada just cannot get it up
After sitting through nearly nine hours of the opening ceremony for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, viewers were rewarded with an entertaining technical gaff. Instead of just lighting a cauldron with the magical Olympic flame, the Canadians chose to close out the opening ceremony with Canada’s four most famous athletes, Steve Nash, Wayne Gretzky, Catriona Le May Doan, and Rick Hanson, coming out to the stadium floor, each with their own special Olympic torch. The idea was that four giant phallic symbols would then spring out of the stadium floor, forming some type of special giant Olympic cauldron to house the magical Olympic flame.
The problem was that only three of the four phallic symbols sprang to life. The fourth stayed where it was.
Oops.
I love watching live TV when something goes wrong, especially when it involves a technical blunder. The look on Gretzky’s and Nash’s face was priceless.
2016 Summer Olympics wont be in Chicago
The International Olympic Committee voted today on what city would host the 2016 Summer Olympics and they eliminated Chicago from contention very quickly. In fact, the Windy City was eliminated in the very first round of voting. The IOC went on to award Rio de Janeiro with the privilege of hosting the 2016 Summer Games.
Though I’ve never been to Rio de Janeiro, I have been to Chicago. It’s because of this fact that I never really quite understood why Chicago was ever in the running to be a host city.
Who wants to go to Chicago?
It’s not a fun place to go. The traffic is terrible. Crime is high. The people there never seemed very interested in making strangers feel all that welcome. Back when I did a lot of traveling, Chicago ranked right up there with Detroit when it came to places I did not want to visit. Perhaps the voting members of the IOC agree with me.
I guess now President Obama can concentrate on his job and stop fooling around with which city will host the Olympics in 2016.
Michael Phelps is an idiot
I’m sure you seen (or at least heard about) the photo of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps smoking marijuana from the water pipe. The cool kids that hang out behind the bleachers refer to them as bongs.
What was he thinking?
I thought he was trying to make a career as a pitchman for various goods and services. I seem to remember watching this really stupid commercial for the Rosetta Stone language software featuring Phelps learning to speak Chinese.
Or maybe it was Klingon. I always get the two languages mixed up. Read the full article »
Chinese gymnast ages three years in only nine months
Chinese “woman” gymnast He Kexin was 13-years old only nine months ago. At least that is what the Chinese government’s news agency, Xinhua, reported back then. They reported that she was 13-years old.
Olympic rules state that you must turn 16 during the calendar year to compete.
He Kexin and her fellow teammates beat the United States and clinched China’s first women’s team Olympic gold in gymnastics. Some are complaining that the Chinese cheated. Did they?
Of course they cheated. That’s just what communists do. They cheat. The Soviets and the East Germans cheated in the 70’s and the 80’s and the Chinese are cheating now. If you ask me, it’s not really the Olympics unless you have godless communists cheating at something.
West coast viewers are spoiled
Yahoo’s Olympics blogger Chris Chase is ticked off that NBC is showing some of the Olympic events in Beijing on “tape delay”. Not that they still use magnetic tape to record sporting events or anything else for that matter. How old is Chris Chase? When he wants to make a phone call, does he “dial” the number? When he wants to listen to music, does he grab his Walkman? Does he write his blog on a manual typewriter? Is his car powered with steam?
Tonight’s swimming finals with Michael Phelps, Dara Torres and Katie Hoff were not shown live in the Mountain or Pacific time zones, nor will they be shown for the entirety of the competition. NBC will instead run the east coast feed three hours later; at 8:00 p.m. PT. So, at the moment (midnight on the east coast), viewers on the other side of the country still haven’t seen Phelps shatter his own world record in the 400-meter individual medley.
The day I feel sorry for sports fans on the left coast is the day alien lifeforms have taken over my body. The ones that look like worms and embed themselves in your brain stem and make you say and do kooky things.
I don’t get to watch many Big Time sporting events. The reason? Two reasons actually; I work for a living and I live on the east coast.
To make viewing optimal for people living out on the west coast, most major sporting events don’t start until after 9:00 p.m. on the right side of the country. They do this so the folks out on the west coast can watch the event on TV after they get home for work. They don’t care that people on the east coast — people like me — have to stay up past midnight to finish watching. If you’re unemployed, retired, or sell drugs for a living, it’s really no big deal. If you are none of the above, it sucks.
So people out of the west coast don’t get to watch it live when Michael Phelps sets a new record? I don’t get to watch the World Series, NBA Championships, Monday Night Football, or the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship final.
Consider us even.
Why don’t people care about swimming?
With the Olympics drawing near, MSNBC and NBC News have been dedicating a lot of coverage to the athletes that will be representing the United States in Beijing this summer. If I didn’t know any better, I would think they were allowing the fact that the “games” are being televised on NBC to motivate them into treating the Olympics as news.
I was watching MSNBC this morning and they were talking about the U.S. Olympic swimming trials currently taking place in Nebraska. The story was about the swimsuits the Olympians will be wearing and how they make the swimmers extremely fast. This was news to me since I was under the impression that Olympic swimming is done in the nude.
Evidently it’s not.
The “news” story got me thinking about competitive swimming and how the general public really doesn’t care too much about it. Sure, it gets some attention every four years at the Olympics, but not much attention is paid to swimming the rest of the time.
Why is that?
We live on a planet where 86% of it’s surface is covered with water. We live on a water planet. You would assume that people living on a world covered with so much water would live and breath swimming. You would think there would be professional swimming leagues enjoyed and followed by millions. Swimmers such as Katie Hoff and Michael Phelps would be household names.
Most people know how to swim. Most people have spent at least some time in the water. We should be able to identify with what these Olympic swimmers are doing and value the exceptional ability they have in the water. The way they are able to rocket themselves through the water is simply awe-inspiring.
We should care about swimming or we should move to Mars.
One more reason not to watch the Olympics
Evidently there is a WNBA point guard named Becky Hammon that plays for the San Antonia Stars. She’s raised quit the stink in some circles because she will be going to the 2008 summer Olympics to play basketball. Why is the causing people to complain? Because even though she is American, she will be playing for Russia.
Some are calling her a traitor.
Though I wouldn’t go so far as to say that someone playing for another county’s Olympic teams rises to the level of being a traitor, it does demonstrate just how jive the Olympics has become.
It used to be about representing your country. It used to be about standing on the podium as your national anthem was played. I’m old enough to remember when the U.S. Hockey team beat the Russians at the 1980 winter Olympics at Lake Placid. It actually meant something.
Becky Hammon isn’t the first athlete to represent a country other then her own and I doubt she wont be the last. It just goes to show what happens when people put their own desires above that of everyone else. She obviously wants an Olympic gold medal and she doesn’t care how she has to get it.
The Olympics used to be exciting because the players were representing their country. The Olympic athletes with the USA logo on their uniform were representing all of us. Now that is simply not the case. The players who now go to the Olympics are in it only for themselves. Players like Becky Hammon.
Is she a traitor? No, she’s just selfish.
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