THAT'S a Sport?

Well our #1 men’s beach volleyball team just got ousted in the round of 16 in the Olympics. So much for that attempt at a repeat and our women’s #1 team had a scare in their last match losing their first ever set in an Olympic competition.

The real reason I mention this is because beach volleyball was pioneered here in the US and, naturally, we dominated it for quite some time. But other countries catch up on the training and strategy so at some point one of them breaks through and starts to win.

But when it comes to baseball and softball, both sports created here, rather than continue to grow and improve the quality of the competition around the world, they were both eliminated from the Olympics this year. I don’t know the exact reason and nor do I care what that reason is because whatever the reason is it was wrong.

I see that trampoline is in the Olympics. You know, that sport of champions. And rhythmic gymnastics and synchronized swimming are also hot sports all around the world so I guess that is why they are in and baseball and softball are out.

Olympic Sport

I wonder why rugby isn’t in the Olympics. Certainly there are enough countries that play rugby, aren’t there?

Did you know that Great Britain, the host country, has not had a soccer team in the Olympics, until this year, since 1960? I have a feeling that maybe they didn’t know soccer was in the Olympics and didn’t bother to enter a team because they call it “football.” Wow those people are dumb!

As someone who is 50 years old I root for the older athletes. The US women’s volleyball team has Danielle Scott-Arruna who is 39 on the team. I saw her play in the win against China the other day.

She is not the oldest competitor of course. That honor goes to an equestrian competitor from Japan who is 72. But he just doesn't count. If he did the actual jumping over the hurdles himself then it would count. He just sits on the horsie who does all of the work.

I can’t help but feel sorry for the Chinese and North Korean athletes when I watch them. I can’t keep from thinking that they are competing so that they and their families will be allowed to eat when they get home. The Chinese have an amazing sports program but its recruitment and training regimen is similar in concept to the Soviet Union and East Germany back in the good ole’ communist days that we are slowly trying to emulate here in the United States economy as well. They take kids who show athletic aptitude and basically capture them from their families and put them in sports boot camps.
One of the Chinese divers who won a gold medal got news after the event that her mother was suffering from cancer and that her grandparents died a year ago. So sequestration is a winning tactic in that country. I would rather lose, wouldn’t you?

Win or Else!

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that people are really tortured in China when it comes to sports. Ok, maybe I don’t know for sure. I do think that the lack of freedom of choice in those matters is what is taken from them though. I am certain that the propaganda ministers do a great job of selling country pride and promising rewards to those who succeed. And it is good to know that Jay Carney will have a great job opportunity there next January. (Sorry couldn’t resist.)

Great Britain has a legitimate new sports hero in cyclist Bradley Wiggins. He won the time trial gold medal this year after also winning the Tour de France just last month.
He said in an interview that “it will never get better than that,” when it comes to a cycling career. He is certainly right about that. He clearly reached the pinnacle, knew it, and acknowledged it.

Adrian Nathan won the men’s 100-meter freestyle gold medal for the US. It was the first gold medal for the US in that event since Matt Biondi did it in the 70’s.

Allison Schmidt was part of a gold medal US swimming relay team and while on the podium singing along with the national anthem messed up the words near the end of the song. Instead of singing “o’er the land of the free” she sung FOR the land of the free.

At least she didn’t grab her crotch when she was singing it.

Roseanne Barr Sings National Anthem

So much attention went to Gabby Douglas for winning the women’s all-around gymnastics medal that people were creating all sorts of picture art with sayings on it to post on Facebook and other places to honor her. But Kayla Harrison won the first-ever gold medal for an American woman in Judo. Where are her pictures?

Of course Gabby did have a first of her own which too many people just had to mention. Since they did I won’t. It is all getting very old to me.

Ok, yes, she was the first American to win gold in the team competition and the all-around individual gold medal.

While watching Jordyn Wieber watch her teammates compete for the all-around medal and watching Aly Raisner blow her chance at a bronze medal, I couldn’t help but try to figure out what was going through her mind. Here is the reigning world champion sitting in the stands instead of being where she should have been because of that ridiculous rule that only two team members can advance to the overall.
Raisner was given a bronze opportunity because of a horrid balance beam performance by the eventual bronze medalist from Russia, Aliya Mustafina. She had scored a 13.633 after falling off the beam in mid routine opening the door for Raisman. But Raisman also had a mishap on the beam, although she didn’t fall off, and it made her floor routine score one that was just enough to tie for the bronze. Mustafina won the medal on the tie breaker.  But what got me about Mustafina’s beam score was that it was as high as 13. SHE FELL OFF THE BEAM and that’s only a full-point deduction. Seems to me that the score should have been ZERO, not 13 and medal to our team.

Hearing the over dramatization at the gymnastics competition is old also. Every year we have to hear the analyst say, “it all comes down to the final routine…the floor exercise.” Yeah, no kidding, Sherlock. There aren’t 17 events; there are only 4. Of COURSE it will come down to the final event. Do the math some time. No one could ever clinch the gold medal before the final event unless there were 17 events. I’m not going to do that work you; you have to do it yourself to understand.

Another question that interviewers ask that makes me sick is, “what does this mean to you?” It’s in the same category as, “how do you feel?” The girl who has been doing the swimming interviews (whose name escapes me) keeps asking that question as does Matt Lauer from the Today Show. Both of them should be fired and replaced with…me….or a pet parrot which could ask better questions also.

Michael Phelps redeemed himself in the pool finally winning his third straight gold medal in one event, the 200 IM. He had failed at three-peating in two other events. So after a slow start he has put his Games back together. Now he sits with 20 total medals an Olympic record. Whatever I, or anyone else, think about an overall performance this year that pales in comparison to Beijing, he still goes down as one of the greatest athletes of all time. This is not debatable so don’t try me.

The men’s basketball team beat Nigeria by 83 points scoring 29 3-pointers in the match. That amount of 3-point conversions is just sick. It means that they really weren’t pouring it on since those shots are high risk.

We hear a lot about the struggles of our athletes here in the US and all of the sacrifices that they have to make in their lives to be able to compete in the Olympics. None of them, and I mean NONE of them have it tough at all.
Take the Somali Olympic team, all two of them, who are competing in Track and Field this year. They have to train while literally dodging bullets and bombs in that war torn, Al-Qaeda filled Hell hole of a country. Think about that when you see some highly produced NBC segment about how one of our athletes has to get up early to train every day.

Training for the 100 Meter Dash and Duck

Or take some of the women from Arab countries who have just had their first-ever chance to compete in the Olympics. Noor Al-Malki, a 17-year old from Qatar, is such an athlete. This morning she had her first shot at competing in the 100-meter dash in track and field. The announcer commented about how little girls back in her country would now look up to her and she would be the role model for a future generation of female runners across the Arabian Peninsula.

Then she pulled her hamstring coming out of the blocks and ended her attempt 25 meters into the race.

But that’s a few small steps for Arabian women kind. I just hope she doesn’t get stoned to death for failing when she gets back home.

One of our Delaware athletes, swimmer Andrew Gemmell, finished 9^th in the 1600 meter swim in the semifinals and, sadly, will not advance for a chance to win a medal for the US and for Delaware.

Kobe Bryant, from the basketball team, was seen in the stand watching a tennis match this morning. He did pick a good one to watch as he witnessed Switzerland’s Roger Federer win an epic 3-6, 7-6, 19-17 match against Argentina’s Del Potro which took 4 hours and twenty minutes (that’s 4:20 everyone!) to complete. Juan Martin del Potro then had to go directly to the next court to compete in the mixed double’s competition which was delayed because of his absence.

Federer, a winner of 17 grand-slam titles, advanced to the gold-medal match. He has never won an Olympic gold medal, but they just don’t pay as much as grand slam titles do so it’s just a matter of pride more than anything else. Or maybe not, since this is his 4^th Olympics.

That’s all I have for now. Peace out.

Done

Gratitude

The tough thing about trying to watch all of the coverage of the Olympic Games is trying to watch all of the coverage of the Olympic Games.
There is so much to try to absorb that I have resorted to taking notes and still recognize that I miss so much along the way.
Here are some things I have seen and noted.

First, do you know who is in this following picture? We have already seen 1000 interviews with the women's gymnastic team but do you recognize this person who won gold in 2008 in Beijing and just repeated in London? What event?

Trying to get information and video on the NBC Olympics site is difficult even with the fiber optic internet connection that I have. Everything still loads slowly and I think the most annoying thing that website developers do these days is add the applications from social media sites so that their users can “like” or “follow” the sites on those sites like Facebook and Twitter. Each of these applications has to take the time to add up how many users from those sites are fans of the one that you are trying to watch and it bogs down everything. Combined with all of the flash media ads and other types of animated ads on the sites it is an exercise in frustration to access the site properly.
I tried to get an idea about what else has been happening in boxing and just gave up the effort since my computer processor is whizzing at 100% capacity and I think its going to blow up soon.
The reason I was looking at boxing is because I saw one of our matches with the captain of the US team and he lost in the first round. He was apparently the second to do so.
This is telling me that boxing is dying out here in this country. With the rise in popularity in Mixed Martial Arts and the overregulation in boxing the choice for those who want to compete in a fiercely physical event is becoming clearer all of the time and boxing is second trombone now.

Michael Phelps picked up his 18^th and 19^th Olympic medals yesterday; one was silver in the 200 Fly (his specialty) and one was gold in the 4x200 relay.
He was out touched at the wall by Chad Le Clos from South Africa. He admitted that he had been getting lazy touching the wall in practices and, don’t you know, what he does in practice he does in the game. For those who have had coaches in the sports you have played perhaps have heard that little cliché at some point.

Phelps is a guy who has all the attention because of his success. Because of all of the interviews he has done over the years he is savvy in front of the camera and never seems nervous or even interested. Because of all the success he has had I imagine that it could even get old to him after a while. In one that I saw after the 200-Fly defeat he mentioned that he was having more fun during these Olympics and pretty much by design. It has been clear that he simply hasn’t put as much effort into winning this time around as he had in the past. In fact, he was originally scheduled to compete in as many as ten events but pared it down to, I think, seven. He apparently didn’t even train for the 400 IM, in which he finished fourth and was the defending champion. Nice to know that he doesn’t even have to train and can still get 4^th place but it is disappointing to see that talent wasted especially when so many others work so hard just to get there.



I was supposed to train??



Not that Phelps doesn’t deserve to be in that race even though he didn’t train for it, of course, but I find it lacking in gratitude a bit. Take, for instance, Caitlin Leverenz, who won a bronze medal in the pool in her only event. Her tears at the finish line were because she simply had ONE medal and it was for third place. I find that emotion much more endearing to me. Sure, Phelps has had that same look on his face in previous Olympics but the lack of it this year bothers me a little.

The grateful face of Caitlin Leverenz,
swimming bronze medalist

I have long been tired of all of the attention that Gymnastics receives in the Olympics. I get why there is so much, but I still think its way overproduced. After every commercial we have to watch another specially designed bumper, teaser and introduction of our little gymnasts that just don’t get done for other athletes who have had much more success and most of the time have much better stories than five 15-17 year-old girls who just haven’t had the life experience that is worth chronicling like so many others.

That said, I still want them to do well and bring home the gold. It is tense and nerve-wracking and what they do athletically is amazing. (I just want the same attention paid to other athletes, that’s all.)
The team competition was last night, as we all certainly well know by now and they indeed win gold and were the first American team to do so since 1996 in Atlanta. Now, winning in 96 was a big deal, but I think the feat is more significant doing it in another country.
There are four elements on which three girls from each team compete just one time; the vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor exercise. Stunts done on this equipment is pretty amazing even on the flat surface on the floor exercise.
The US jumped out early taking on the vault. McKayla Maroney only competed in the vault. The team put her on the team strictly for that and since the number of team members has been cut from 7 to 5 this said two things; first that the rest of the team had to be very, very strong across the board in the other events and that Maroney was one hell of a vaulter.

Gabby Douglas, Aly Raisman, McKayla Maroney, Jordyn Wieber, Kyla Ross

The Russians began to creep back up on the US and the race was tight after the uneven bars, which is America’s weakest of the four. But the Russians fell apart on the balance beam and the US held it together on an element which is the most difficult of them all. These kids do back flips and land on a 4-inch wide board three feet in the air. Jordyn Wieber, the current world champion, had some balance issues in the preliminary rounds on the beam which, in part, led to her not qualifying for the all-around medal still to be contested. So it’s brutal. All three of the Russian girls had difficulty on the beam and then the Americans had to deal with the floor exercise with a handy lead.
The US had to simply average a score of 13 between the three girls to clinch gold. In the preliminaries they averaged over 14 so there wasn’t as much pressure as there really could have been had the Russians been able to pull off a better performance on the beam.
In the warm-ups, Aly Raisman, from the US, nearly landed straight on her head on a tumbling run. Tim Daggett, the NBC analyst prophetically said that she should cut that part out of her routine, which she later did.
Up first on the floor was Gabby Douglas, who has a smile which many people claim is gold-medal worthy itself. I disagree with that assessment and think, rather, that her smile shows that she needs a lot of work in there, but I digress.
Gabby is very athletic but definitely robotic in motions with her arms and head that should be much more graceful. She scores a 15 in the routine which means that Jordyn Wieber has less pressure on her during her routine.
Wieber is clearly much more graceful in her turn. Plus, like Douglas, nails all of her tumbling runs and scores another 15.
Raisman now just need a score of 10.234 to clinch gold for America. This basically means that she could go out on the floor and do a basic headstand and she is on a box of Wheaties in a month’s time. Since she nearly landed on her head earlier in warm-ups we all knew she could pull that off. She did, and it was Gold for the US and the beginning of 1000 interviews on NBC was about to begin.

When we win the gold in any of these gymnastics events it makes suffering through all of the over-blown coverage of it worth while. There is still much more to come of that too, of course.

What it took to clinch the gold for the US in the last element

Did you know that Vince Hancock, skeet shooter, won his second straight Olympic gold medal? If you didn’t, you do now.
It’s not that NBC doesn’t cover this and get the news out about it, its just that it so token that it’s insulting.

Vince Hancock

Did you know that Kristen Armstrong won her second straight gold medal in the Cycling Time Trials? Her story is so much better than the gymnasts’ stories and should be a highly covered event. Yet we see it at 9am in the morning instead of 9pm.
Armstrong became the oldest female gold medalist in women’s cycling at the age of 38.
But what is more amazing than that is that she suffers from arthritis in her hips and just this past MAY she broke her collarbone and had surgery to repair it. This was just two years after taking time off from the sport to have a child. THIS is the type of story that should be produced for a prime-time airing. Now, it still may show up later so I could be premature in my criticism.

The first picture in this blog entry is Kristen Armstrong.

I mentioned the other day about athletes from America competing for other countries. Well, there are certainly times when the opposite is true. Take, for one example, Khatuna Lorig, an archer. I was watching some of her competition this morning as she won her first two matches to become the first American archer to advance to the round of 16 so far this year. Lorig is originally from Georgia in the former USSR who came to the US and became a US citizen. I have a great deal of admiration for that type of dedication and personal sacrifice to become free to do the things that we are free to do here in America. It makes me seethe with disgust to hear anyone who is a natural born citizen in our country take our country for granted ever.

At this moment the US is ahead in the total medal count with 25. China is second with 23 but they lead us in gold 13-9.
Swimmer Allison Schmidt has won one of each color to tie with Phelps and fellow swimmer Ryan Lochte with three total medals.

The first official scandal of the games goes to Badminton as four teams have been disqualified for throwing matches. This was done, apparently, to secure better draws in the event. Who would do that in the Olympics? This is, to me, perhaps a more egregious crime than blood doping is. Because at least those who are doping, while cheating, are going all out to win, not going half way out to win. Am I wrong about that? Which is actually worse?

Badminton Crooks

Regular Crooks

But the most horrible errors have been on display by the NBC crew on the Today Show trying to cover sporting events and athletes.
First, Ryan Seacrest, of American Idol fame, is there trying to do athlete interviews. He is clearly clueless about sports so its embarrassing to watch his try to do it.

Seacrest out!....PLEASE!

Fortunately for Ryan, he was outdone this morning by one of the women hosts on the show. While interviewing the top seeded American beach volleyball team, her question to Phil Dalhausser was, “So which team would you like to see in the finals, the undefeated Brazilians?” To which Dalhausser replied, “We’d like to see our compatriots in the finals with us.”
That was the best answer of the day to the worst question of the day (of the month) and it’s obvious – Dalhausser wants America to go 1-2 in that event. He wants the other team to be number two, of course, but certainly he doesn’t want any other team to take that spot.

I know these Today Show people aren’t knowledgeable about sports. They really only know how to talk about food and read a teleprompter, but there really should have been some thought to having someone who has a clue about sports at least jot down some questions that would make them look a lot better than they do there.

Done

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

Ban Soccer Now

The Olympic Games Opening Ceremony is tonight, 7:30 EDT. I’ll be there in front of the TV to see how London manages to follow up the Beijing ceremony of 2008. I imagine that’s going to be a difficult act to follow since Britain just can’t starve its citizens into performing such a huge precision event with the promise that IF it goes well they’ll be able to eat after its over.

The US Women’s soccer team opened with a 4-2 victory over France on Wednesday. They were actually behind 2-0 but roared back to the win. I think that’s an ominous beginning for the team that placed second in the recent women’s world cup to Japan. But, a win is a win and having the fire power to score 4 goals after trailing is certainly positive.

Soccer was not the only event to start before the opening ceremonies. A men’s archery competition was contested already this morning with a legally blind archer from S. Korea setting records in the ranking round. He also teamed with a countryman to break a world record in the team competition ranking round. The women are scheduled to begin their quest for archery gold before the ceremonies also.

Men’s soccer started yesterday as well. But I seemed to have missed something because I don’t see the US men’s team anywhere on the schedule. Did they not qualify for the Olympics this year? I see 16 teams listed and have gone through the schedule. Unless there is a glitch on the website we don’t have a team there to play what is supposed to be our most popular sport now, according to those in the soccer community who don’t know what a real sport is even to this day.

I've had enough of this sport here in America.

It appears that sport powerhouse countries such as Morroco, Senegal, United Arab Emirates and Gabon all qualified teams for entry. But not the US of A where we have spent billions of dollars on all sorts of programs designed specifically to develop Olympic teams.

Hopefully I have just missed something here and the site where I am getting my information is incorrect (nbcolympics.com.) It has a good shot at being wrong since it gets it political information wrong about half the time also, it seems.

Egypt, with all of its political turmoil in the last year managed to qualify their team.

Gabon? Seriously? Our team couldn’t out-qualify Gabon? We couldn’t beat a country with a name that sounds like a sound effect from an old Warner Brothers cartoon?

Nope…I just double checked. NO American team in Men’s Soccer. So what we ought to do now is just allow women to play the game and get our men and our boys back to playing real sports like Football, if that doesn’t get banned in the next few years, Baseball, Basketball, Hockey and even Tiddlywinks or Golf.

Let’s tear down half of the soccer nets around the country and replace them with Lacrosse goals, or Football uprights, or Ping Pong tables and let’s end that terrible experiment with the worst sport ever imported to this country for men.
It truly is a horrible sport to watch, for me anyway, because of the horrific lack of offense and one of the worst rules (offsides) in all of sport the way that it is written.

I say that male soccer players, who are usually smaller in stature, should all take up Lacrosse starting today. Here is a sport native to OUR country and it has what American’s actually like; scoring, strategy, physicality and it is flush with agility and skill. It is a superior sport BY FAR to “soccer” and it is OURS. Well, I know some of you will argue that we stole it from the Indians who originated it here on this soil, but Indians are now considered Americans anyway so it’s just the same. Ok…Native Americans…whatever.

Much to my dismay I got one of the semifinal entrants wrong in the last quarterfinal round on America’s Got Talent. While I ended up 15 for 16 the one I got wrong was Eric Dittelman, the “mind reader.”
This one annoyed me because of the three routines that he performed to get to the semifinal, I knew how to do each one, have done two of them in my own show AND I do them better.
His quarterfinal performance was smartly done but simple, from my point of view. Because I thought as much I figured surely he wasn’t good enough to move forward. It really kicks me in the ass and I am sure it does the same with a bunch of other mentalists as well. I have stayed away from trying to perform on that show because I think my mentalism routine needs more polish. Now, I figure that a bunch of these acts will show up on next year’s show. Heck, maybe even mine.

Anyway, I was 15 for 16 judging those quarterfinals and who would move on from the field of 48. That’s pretty decent.

My guilty pleasure of a summer TV show is ABC’s Bachelor Pad. Contestants who participated in both the Bachelor and the Bachelorette compete against each to try to win $250,000. It is absolutely pointless but it has hot girls on it (and I suppose the men are nice to watch for the women) and I do enjoy the strategizing that takes place. In that sense it is better than the Bachelor (I refuse to watch the Bachelorette to keep my “man” card secure in life) because the latter doesn’t have any strategy. It only has 24 desperate women trying to find “the real thing” on a national TV show, which makes it an awesome comedy show.

But now that the Olympics are on I’ll probably have to just catch up with that, and maybe even AGT, On Demand later. Because I am just a geek for the Olympics and am off now to go watch some archery!

One more...can't resist.

Done

Close Dog Days

America’s Got Talent fans were able to see one of their better nights of live talent last night, as predicted here last week.

Because it was such a tough lineup a few acts of the twelve that might have made it through in other weeks are going to have to rely on a wild-card berth.
I don’t know how many wild-card acts are selected but I think they are chosen in a couple of weeks. I think next week is the one where acts were submitted on the internet and selected to come in to perform live. That is where they found Jackie Evancho two years ago.

Three of the acts from last night had been pushed through immediately to this, the quarterfinal round. David “The Bullet” Smith did his human cannonball shot and got fired 40 yards through a set of football uprights. While that is pretty amazing, I really don’t think he’ll go through to the semifinal round unless chosen as a wild card.

William Close, who turns the theater into a giant stringed instrument, should go through easily. Howard Stern and Howie Mandel said that the contest was over after he performed. The act is truly amazing. When they were praising Close after the routine you could see his lip quivering with emotion and it was cool to see. I could tell that gratitude and happiness was flowing through him having been recognized and complimented for what has most likely been a very long road for him to reach this type of audience and shine the way that he did.

William Close and his "Earth Harp"

Closing out the show was the other act that had the automatic berth to the quarters and that routine was Olate Dogs. Six dogs were part of the act and one of them does back flips. Now, a solo dog act just won Britain’s Got Talent and there are six here with one of them doing back flips so this is one of the other favorites to go to the finals (with Close.)

Olate Dogs in Conga Line

All That, the clogging group, doesn’t have a shot in this group now. Talented for sure but this lineup of twelve was strong.

The weakest link was Ulysses, the TV show theme song singer. I actually like this guy and I can picture him having all sorts of future work with his roster of songs that he sings very well. But he did manage to get buzzed off the stage so he’ll be gone for sure.

Eric Dittelman, the mind reader, did get a standing ovation for coming up with a routine that used Howie’s “Deal or No Deal” theme. But, again, I was screaming at my TV because the routine was so easy that I was kicking myself in the ass yet again thinking that because what I do I think is so easy that I wouldn’t dare try to pull it off on National TV.
Because the judges love him though I can see him coming back as a wild card, if he doesn’t make it to the next round on America’s votes.

I think the two other routines that go through on votes are Joe Castillo, the artist who makes pictures with sand and tells a story with that art to music. It’s absolutely amazing, totally original, and should get a spot.

The other act I think that goes through is ten-year old mariachi singer Sebastian “El Charro” De Oro. Ok, sure, its mariachi, but with De Oro you have a super charming boy with incredible stage presence who has an amazing voice. His ability to emote in his singing is well beyond his years and while I think I am sticking my neck out a little saying he is one of the four, I’m sticking it out anyway since I’m 12 for 12 so far and if I get one or two wrong now its no big deal. If he isn’t voted in, he’ll get a wild card.

Unity in Motion is a young female dance/acrobatic act. I think they are pushed out because of the lineup this evening also but they do deserve a spot in the semifinal round with a wild card.

Eric & Olivia, the musical duo, is not going through although this girl is a potential commercial singing success. I think Eric, who plays guitar and does the arrangements, actually pulls her down.

Solo dancer Lindsey Norton would compete well against TURF in a dance off but unfortunately even though she is charming and cute its going to be tough for her to breakthrough to the next round on votes.

Horse, who has balls of steel…literally it seems, has perhaps one of the funniest acts you can see if you are into slapstick humor, which I am. His whole routine revolves around getting kicked in the stones. That’s right…right in the family jewels. It makes me cringe when I watch it but then I laugh hysterically. I think he’ll get more votes than one might think and could be a surprise semifinalist.

But I’m sticking with William Close, Olate Dogs, Sebastian “El Charro” De Oro, and Joe Castillo.

We’ll see how I do this week.


Olympic action actually starts today as soccer matches begin in London. I think that the US women’s team is in action around 1130. Opening ceremonies are Friday, though.
I think NBC is prepared to do a great job covering this event and, although I don’t know if or how much it will cost, Comcast (or Xfinity) is offering every event live online.
In the On Demand section at Comcast (I don’t know about your local cable provider) there are highlights from the 2008 Beijing Games on there now. I was going through a bunch of them last night which feature gold medal winning performances in a stack of sports. There are also some previews of American athletes and teams available. As an Olympic junkie I am going to have my monkey fed for the next couple of weeks watching all of this stuff.

In baseball the Washington Nationals are still in first place in the NL East. I can actually root for them even though they are in the process of sweeping the Mets again right now. Their manager, Davey Johnson, who managed the Mets to the 1986 World Series, can do no wrong in my eyes. So since they are also closer to me than NY is in miles I am ok with having them win.
Yes, the Phillies are closer to me than both of them, but I hate them. I usually even hate the Phillies that leave the team and play for other teams. That originally meant that I couldn’t ever root for the Nationals because of Jayson Werth, but when Werth got injured a couple of months ago and Phillie fans were ridiculing him, he swore a personal oath that he would make sure that the Phillies would never parade down Broad Street again. Because he did that, he is no longer one of the bad guys.

Done

Scum

Without reading the Louis Freeh report regarding the Penn State scandal I can’t report on the facts that were in front of him.
But the NCAA read the report and they slapped Penn State with a series of penalties this morning to include:

* A fine of $60 million on the University (equivalent to proceeds of one year) — An endowment will be established to be used around the nation to serve victims of child abuse

* Penn State Football will be banned from bowl games and post season play for 4 years

* Initial scholarship reduced from 25 to 15 per year for four years

* Entering and returning athletes are able to transfer and immediately complete

* NCAA to vacate all wins of the football team from 1998 to 2011 and record will reflect change

* Football program on 5-year probationary period

* NCAA reserve right to initiate an investigation and impose sanctions on individuals

The NCAA said other corrective actions will be put into place to ensure the changes occur so there are even more problems coming.

The fine of $60 million, I think, is small, but it goes to the NCAA so with that in mind it’s appropriate. Besides, Penn State is subject to a whole stack of civil lawsuits that will rock their bank accounts and the residents of the state as well.

So here is the lesson – Football just isn’t that important. Need anyone say more?

And I will say this…ANYONE and EVERYONE who was involved in the scandal and/or cover-up of the scandal is/was a scumbag.

Batman isn’t that important either, ok? People really need to pull their heads out of their asses and stop living in fantasy land all day long.

We have all heard about the mass shooting in Aurora, CO a few days ago now perpetrated by some freak who was obsessed by Batman.

I’d hate to suggest that people who walk around at any time of the year besides Halloween in costume should be placed on a watch list but…ok, forget that…I DO suggest that now.

I already hate going to the movies because of the use of cellphones by people who think that they are so important that they need to text back and forth with other people during the movie. I hate all of the talking and extra noise as well. But now I have to think in the back of my mind that a copy-cat freak possibly wearing a Penguin costume is going to jump out and start blowing people away with a machine gun disguised as a walking cane.

This is why I bought an HD projector and built a mini-theater in my basement. I just need a popcorn machine down there and I am all set.

What made me sick in the aftermath was the talk about “gun control” again. Let’s be perfectly clear here. If some of the movie-goers were packing heat this scumbag doesn’t kill and injure as many people as he did.
Because, and let’s face facts now, he got all of his weaponry despite efforts at control.
But law-abiding citizens don’t carry their guns (if they are legal owners) into places, like movie theaters, where they say that no guns are allowed. So the only people who then bring in their guns to places like that are those with criminal intent in mind. Law and rule abiding citizens are at a disadvantage at all times.
Ironically, the same people who are pro gun control are probably the same people who cry about having a “level playing field” or cry about “spreading the wealth around” in other areas. Well, morons, then let the playing field be level and allow us to take full advantage of our 2^nd amendment rights and allow us the CHANCE to protect ourselves AT ALL TIMES.

James Holmes = Scum

The London Olympics are fraught with all sorts of difficulties so far. Cold and rainy weather is expected, strikes by taxi drivers, border guards and others are expected, and terrorist threats have already been received.
But the athletes have access to 150,000 free condoms so I guess it won’t be all that bad for them!
London better not allow scumbags to mess up the Olympics.

They start Friday. I pray that those two weeks will restore some of my faith.

Done

Yer Outta Here!

Well, AGT fans, I nailed the four acts moving into the semifinal round once again making me 12 for 12 in the first 3 quarterfinal rounds.
This next round has the toughest competition including the three acts that didn’t have to perform a second time in the Las Vegas rounds because they were automatically placed into the quarterfinals. They include the human cannonball dude, the dog act and the dude who made the theater into a musical instrument.

One of things that I do like about watching this show at this point of the season is to see the little bios that are produced for each of the acts. Often they talk about what the performer does for a living while they are performing and trying to make their routine self-sustaining.
When the Olympics begin in less than two weeks we will see far too many of these types of bios and I really just want to watch the athletes compete. It just seems as if there are more biographies than actual competitions and they end up annoying me more than making me empathize with the athlete.

But since I am primarily an entertainer I can empathize with the people who try to make it on these shows.

I have been self employed since 1995 with my primary business being sports entertainment and management. Producing sports videos had been the main thrust of what I did and running sporting events. But over the past few years everyone has access to cheap, and good, video equipment and editing software so that business is basically non-existent these days.
This year I was screwed in two major business arrangements (major for me, anyway) that made it impossible to run any of my sporting events.
Since my entertainment career doesn’t cover everything that I need to have covered the beating that I took because of those business deals and the shitty economy made it necessary to take extra work where I could find it.

I teach hypnosis and also do hypnotherapy but it just seems as if everyone I run into has tightened their budgets so even that angle wasn’t working.

I have never shied away from doing anything and because of the described situation I decided to take on two more part-time jobs. I figured that between everything I could make up at least a little bit of what I lost.

The first job that I took was working as a dealer at a casino near where I live. The other was as a softball umpire. Umpiring was more up my alley since I’ve been involved in sports in one way or the other all of my life but the casino position seemed like one that could perhaps have opportunities for advancement and be a good back-up spot in case everything else tanked.

I can tell you that while I sort of liked the technical part of dealing table games dealing with these people was the worst thing I ever had to do in my life. Dealing with drunken degenerate scumbag gamblers is just awful. While there are plenty of decent and fun people who go to casinos to have fun and perhaps win some money from time to time, the casino where I worked was near Philadelphia and it was filled with dirt bags whose asses had to be kissed non stop.

I don’t mind being nice to customers. I’m self employed so every deal I make is with a customer and I’m nice to all of those with whom I do business. But that said I don’t do business with everyone. If I sense that I am going to have a tough time with someone or a situation I can pass on the job. There is no passing by some scumbag who sits at your table and starts calling you names because he just lost his car payment on red 18 at the roulette table.

Table games dealers have to stand there and take that shit from people. Once in a while it’s easy to understand that people are angry because they lost their money and it can be blown off. But occasionally they just get personal and blame all of their misery on the dealer and I’m simply not someone who takes very kindly to that type of talk.

Right away when that started to happen I realized how bizarre my working life was. One day I could do a show in front of a few hundred people and get a standing ovation. Then the next day at 2 o’clock in the morning I could stand at the roulette table and have some drunken piece of shit calling me names.

Last week, some worthless loser finally pushed me over the edge. He was trying to get me to bend the rules at my table and when I told him to stop he went on a rant that attracted the security department’s attention. Now, I’m no diplomat at all and neither were the idiot pit bosses on hand at that point who tried to intervene. While I didn’t say a word to this loser, my facial expressions (such as winking at him, blowing him a kiss and things like that) provoked him to the point where the casino said they no longer needed me.

The next day I felt a huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. I truly hated that place. No, I shouldn’t say that I hated that place; I hated their “clients” and how we were supposed to treat them despite how they were treating us.

Unfortunately the casino job kept me away from doing as much umpiring as I could have especially during weeknights. But with that job out of the way I’ve been able to do more umpiring. I’ll even start learning a new sport to referee next week – volleyball. Then it’s back to the drawing board with the sports tournament for next year and hopefully my performance schedule will pick up again.

The umpiring is pretty easy and its fun. There is some running around to do and it’s been hot lately but it pays the same as the casino even if there aren’t as many hours available.

I know what you might be thinking when reading about umpiring; that players yell at the umpires and get up in their faces and spit and kick dirt at you.
Well, that might be true, but at the casino you just had to stand there and take it. As an umpire I can say something back in that situation and usually it’s “Yer Outta Here!”

And now so am I.