Swim Like a Woman, Man

The Olympic opening ceremonies were pretty much of a joke to me this past Friday night.
They started with a short movie for an introduction which was just poorly done.
That aside, part of this piece of crap's introduction had graphics with notable British historical figures such as Shakespeare, Charles Darwin, Jane Austin, and Isaac Newton. The last two figures mentioned were Paul McCartney and John Lennon from the Beatles.
While I am sure that there was plenty of more room available for British icons, the fact that the last two mentioned in their long history made their mark across the globe over 40 years ago says something very powerful.
What is that, you might ask? Well, its that not too much great has come from Great Britain in four decades where some remarkable strides in technology and the arts have been concerned. Because if there had been that thought certainly would have been fresh on someone's mind and then included in the video package.
To what then DID Danny Boyle, the creator of this mess, pay tribute? To Britain’s National Health Service, something that has crippled the country with massive debt; a Socialist/Communist idea that has failed everywhere it has tried to fulfill the promises that it made – to lower health costs and improve health care.

Our President must have just loved that tribute though, but this is not my political blog under an anonymous name so let’s just leave that there.

This show had no chance of being able to rival the one from Beijing and I seriously doubt that anyone thought it would. Boyle, apparently real comfortable with mediocrity and/or failure, even said something to the effect that he was relieved to know that there was no way he could top that so that took the pressure off of him while preparing this. Huh? It shouldn't surprise me though. He honors failure so he had no pressure to do anything successful...or even remotely good.

You had to know this was bad because the NBC hosts, unwitting propagandists (or perhaps not) had to read scripts describing what was taking place on the stadium floor. They had to because no one would have had a clue as to what the hell was happening there. The hosts, Matt Lauer and Meredith Viera, who are supposedly TV “journalists” just went along with reading whatever crap they were paid to read and didn’t offer one critical opinion during the show.
I can understand that to a point. I mean NBC paid a billion dollars for the rights to broadcast the Games and I would imagine that there was some clause in the agreements which mandated such kiss-assery. But it made me want to scream…and I did.

It was so bad that I eventually fell asleep before the lighting of the torch. I’m still not sure how that happened because I saw the torch enter the stadium and get passed around a few times.

The Torch

I was a bit disturbed about the part of the torch ceremony that I did manage to see while in the stadium. First, I think we just need to see one person running with the torch at a time. This crap with 10 people running in one group and passing it to each other within the group is far too politically correct for me. It makes me want to vomit. When we see relay races the whole team doesn’t run with it; one person at a time does it. I know there are no written rules about how it should be done, but maybe there should be some rules jotted down somewhere so we can avoid this pap.
Muhammad Ali was a sports icon in this country and around the world. But no longer can he be an icon if we continue to cart out his disturbing old shaky body any more. At some point this just becomes cruel to his legend and legacy to do this. I only felt sorry for him and I should have felt pride at that moment.

The best of the ceremony that wasn’t the parade of athletes (which IS the most important and best part of any of them) was a performance of Chariots of Fire by some orchestra that featured a skit centered on Rowan Atkinson, who is Mr. Bean. That ought to let you know how bad this whole thing was.



Mr. Bean even knew the ceremony was horrible



The Queen, herself, could have saved the whole thing by doing the actual parachuting into the stadium. But Doyle opted for a stunt double instead. At least they could have asked her to make her appearance in her booth wearing a helmet or the parachute on her back.
Daniel Craig is not James Bond, I should add. SEAN CONNERY should have played that part in that skit with the queen, not Craig.

What should have been done here was to have a ceremony that entertained with some of the most incredible, trail-blazing, iconic music that there has ever been which originated right there in England. I'm talking about The Beatles, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Led Zepplelin, Eric Clapton....need I say more? I could, for sure, and that approach would have literally rocked the world...again.

The parade of athletes is interesting to watch because of all of the costumes and outfits that the athletes from 204 countries wear in the parade. Of course, our athletes wore outfits MADE IN CHINA which was as insulting as anything any communist sympathizing clothing designer chosen to outfit our team could have done to those who are proud of what we do in our own country.

I learned that country of Tuvalu used to have the internet domain suffix of .TV (you know, like .com, .net, etc.) The country actually sold the rights to that suffix to a California businessman for 50 million dollars. I don’t know why that was noteworthy to me, but I jotted it down while I was watching so here it now appears.

The roster of American athletes this year includes 268 women and 261 men and that is the first year that there are more women than men.
Of course, as noted the last time I wrote, our men’s soccer program, after billions and billions of dollars wasted on an Olympic development program, didn’t qualify a team for inclusion this year. So that is one reason why.
There are plenty of athletes from America who participate in other countries though. I took notice of a Facebook post, for example, that George Mason University has four athletes competing in the Olympics but only one of them is competing for America.

I think this is important to note because I can see a scenario where more outstanding athletes end up competing for other countries so that they can reach their dreams of participating in the Olympics.
There are rules for how many athletes can compete on a team. (To be honest I would have to research which of these rules are IOC rules and which are USOC rules.) So we, for example, can only now send our top two swimmers in each event to the Games. But that does sometimes mean that we could have the top 3 or 4 swimmers in the world in a certain event and where that third person would normally be able to get a bronze medal they get nothing and don't even have a chance to compete. If I were that good, it might even make me consider a dual citizenship somewhere.
With women’s gymnastics, as we have found out this year, only two team members can advance to the all-around finals competition.
Even though the current world champion, Jordyn Wieber from the US, scored the third highest point total in the preliminary competition yesterday, she was third on the American team, so she cannot compete for ANY medal in the all-around. 21 other girls from other countries, who scored lower than her, will have that chance that she actually earned.
These are rules that HAVE to be changed. There, at the very least, needs to be THREE competitors for any event so that there is a chance to sweep a category. I would even go so far as to say FIVE, but I’m willing to reasonably compromise with something that only makes sense, which is to have three.
Some events only have one for each individual event such as boxing, wrestling and judo. There is no reason that we can’t send three each there either. Sure, it would take longer to contest the event but I don’t have any problem with that.

Jordyn Wieber

At this writing Michael Phelps has competed in two events and has one silver medal to show for it. That came in the 4x100 relay which we lost to France, which is just embarrassing. Yes, France was the team that the US nudged out at the last split second in 2008 so it wasn’t really an upset but it upset me nonetheless. What was disturbing about it though was that the swimmer who anchored the team in 2008 helped the 2012 team qualify for the finals (Jason Lezak) but wasn’t in the pool for the finals. Ryan Lochte, who said that “these games are mine,” blew a full-body length lead in the final 100-meter leg. Just to give you an idea to compare how bad it was, a girl from China who just won the 200-meter IM gold medal swam her freestyle, and final, leg in a faster time than Lochte did. So if Lochte swam better than a girl the US would have won gold.

Speaking of swimming women, Dana Vollmer won gold for the US in the pool.

Dana Vollmer

At this writing China is kicking our asses in gold medals 9-3. They also have two more total medals, 15-13 than we do. Italy is a surprise third place country in the medal count.

Our other gold medalist was Kim Rhode, a skeet shooter who has won medals in five straight Olympics now. I find it hard to believe that I am so negligent that I did not know her name. Rhode became the first-ever athlete to win individual medals in five straight Olympics. She won her first, a gold, at 17 years of age.

Kim Rhode



There are a lot of empty seats in these Games and now, apparently, hotel rooms can be found for $70 a night. It is so bad in some venues that military personnel have been given seats for free to make them look fuller.

That said, I was watching equestrian events this morning and heard that some 50,000 people were in attendance.

One thing about equestrian that I don’t like is that they call the riders “athletes” when all they do is yell at the horsies who do the real work.
The camera coverage at the equestrian venue is spectacular. I can not recall being able to see an entire cross-country portion of the equestrian events in any Olympic event before this year. Now the coverage is digital and I think most is in HD also.

The US won silver in Men’s Team Archery. Jake Kaminski, Brady Ellison and Jacob Wukie were the three teammates who came in just ahead of the team from South Korea, which has a blind dude on the team.
What’s more notable about that paragraph; that we barely beat a team with a blind dude on it or that we sent a Star Wars character to compete for us?

Wookie

Whenever I watch the Olympics I am reminded that I want to go to Sweden to live, or at least should have moved there when I was younger and still blond. I caught some of the women’s soccer team from Sweden and it was just a blond fest. I would have felt right at home there.

Soccer is ok...in Sweden

…except for their lack of real freedom there. I don’t know; it’s a toss up for me. Freedom, or lots of hot blond girls running around all over the place?

Done