More Olympics
I'm probably doing overkill on the Olympics, but I've been pretty under the weather this week and watching a lot of games coverage.
Did you hear about this? Apparently during the opening ceremonies, China pulled a Singing in the Rain and had a little girl lip-synching over the singing of another little girl who was not deemed 'cute' enough for TV. Nice, China. They are seriously creeping me out, what with their militaristic opening ceremonies, child athlete factories, and 'women' gymnasts who now have passports that claim they are miraculously 2 years older than the last time their ages were posted.
Nevertheless, China is doing tremendously well at these games and I was kicking myself for not recording the men's team gymnastics final last night before I went to bed. China took the gold, as expected, after performing a number of flawless routines. Team USA actually pulled off a bronze (yay!). I did see recaps online this morning, including team leader Jonathan Horton frat boying his way through the post competition interview with "First off, I'd like to give it up for the Lord" and "...we got these sweet medals...". Also lots of 'wooooo'-ing and fist pumping I believe.
We're proud of you, Jon, but tone it down a notch
I've been enjoying watching swimming, but I'm a little disappointed at the lack of false starts. I used to like paying close attention to the starts of races, cruelly snickering when someone would tump off the starting block too early. Maybe at the Olympic level that just doesn't happen.
FAIL
Update: I'm really getting sick of the news sites spoiling the results for me. This is a problem every time there's this much of a time difference, but it seems like it's worse this year. I can't go to my preferred news site to get actual news without getting hit with "US wins gold in wheelbarrow*!!". Thanks, preferred news site, couldn't you just have a link that says "wheelbarrow results here" ?
*not an actual Olympic event, but should be
Did you hear about this? Apparently during the opening ceremonies, China pulled a Singing in the Rain and had a little girl lip-synching over the singing of another little girl who was not deemed 'cute' enough for TV. Nice, China. They are seriously creeping me out, what with their militaristic opening ceremonies, child athlete factories, and 'women' gymnasts who now have passports that claim they are miraculously 2 years older than the last time their ages were posted.
Nevertheless, China is doing tremendously well at these games and I was kicking myself for not recording the men's team gymnastics final last night before I went to bed. China took the gold, as expected, after performing a number of flawless routines. Team USA actually pulled off a bronze (yay!). I did see recaps online this morning, including team leader Jonathan Horton frat boying his way through the post competition interview with "First off, I'd like to give it up for the Lord" and "...we got these sweet medals...". Also lots of 'wooooo'-ing and fist pumping I believe.
We're proud of you, Jon, but tone it down a notch
I've been enjoying watching swimming, but I'm a little disappointed at the lack of false starts. I used to like paying close attention to the starts of races, cruelly snickering when someone would tump off the starting block too early. Maybe at the Olympic level that just doesn't happen.
FAIL
Update: I'm really getting sick of the news sites spoiling the results for me. This is a problem every time there's this much of a time difference, but it seems like it's worse this year. I can't go to my preferred news site to get actual news without getting hit with "US wins gold in wheelbarrow*!!". Thanks, preferred news site, couldn't you just have a link that says "wheelbarrow results here" ?
*not an actual Olympic event, but should be
Comments
reed
Bronze is a serious accomplishment in my mind, and, in its way, counts as something important for teams that weren't expected to medal at all. But when you're declaring "This is how we roll in the US!" with no hint of irony, you look like a dork, sir. A major, major dork.
Also... it is somewhat bewildering how the Chinese Olympic managers have managed to slip in girls who are, pretty clearly, not 16 into gymnastics and nobody is saying anything but Bela Karolyi. I know they're the host nation, but... come on.
I don't mind them swapping out small children for some singing and dancing show (I think we all would have liked the other little girl, just for the record. She looks like a regular kid.), but if they're sneaking in underage kids to gymnastics, it sort of puts the whole Chinese Olympic squad under suspicion.
Every post-event interview with the Canadians seemed to start with the equivalent of "What do you think happened out there?" followed by "Some say you have plateaued, how do you respond to that?"
At first we were cheering for the Canadians as the underdogs, but partly because of the TV overage we eventually just started making fun of it all with our own interview questions, etc. "So, explain your failure out there." "Wow, that really wasn't very good." "What event were *you* doing?" "Did you know the judges were watching?"