Brighten These Games

The Sochi Winter Olympics will change my behaviors for the next couple of weeks. 

I am a geek for the Olympics, both the Summer and Winter versions. I am one of those who was very grateful that a decision was made in the late 90’s to alternate them every two years.

NBC has the broadcasting rights again. The technological advances in the field of television makes a sports fan like me very happy. High Definition, super slow motion, views of every angle and of every single play are exactly what I need.

What I don’t need is this douche bag Bob Costas in the anchor room, or anywhere near a microphone any more. 

Within the first minute of the prime-time broadcast last night he launches into a political commentary about Vladimir Putin, Russian politics and the “human rights” issues raised because Russia is pretty anti-gay. 

Costas is only knowledgeable about sports because he somehow managed to land a job in the field. But his knowledge isn’t all that great in it anyway. But to hear him opine about anything else during a sports contest, which was created to bring people from all countries together, is offensive and I really don’t care what side he takes.

Midway through to show he literally had to scrape around finish lines to find evidence that there were athletes protesting in some way. At the end of a snowboard run a Russian competitor pointed to a picture painted on the bottom of his snowboard. This painting is supposedly associated with a Russian band called the Pussy Bandits…or Pussy Runners…or Pussy Riot or something like that, a group which is in jail for singing about political issues. (Seriously, don’t hold me to the facts; I’m not researching it.)

Even though Sochi is 9 hours ahead of EDT, he does the segment like it’s a special breaking news announcement to proclaim that, “The first athlete protest of the games may have taken place already!”

Here is the actual "protest."

There is potential good news on the Costas front though. He has a real bad case of what looks like pink eye and I noticed it right away and just seconds before he addressed it. 

Perhaps, oh just perhaps (and if we pray hard) he’ll get quarantined in a Siberian hospice care center for the next ten years and we can get a new anchor for the 2016, 18, 20, 22 and 24 Olympic Games.

Maybe he just took "a shot" in the eye prior to airtime trying to prove he was open-minded and not anti-gay.

Prior to turning on coverage last night, I watched some previews on my Comcast On Demand system. Finally, for the $150 per month I pay for cable TV, I can say that my bill is worth it. I’ll get to see just about everything I want on it. I decided to take a look at the US Trials for curling.

I watched the first game between the two women’s finalists and it was even more boring than I thought. But then one of the play-by-play guys woke me up when he said, “There is going to be a little danger in this shot!” I sat on the edge of my chair to see if maybe a new rule about sweeper tackling, or mine fields, or even a rock throw at over 1.5 miles per hour was now in play.

The Dangers of Curling

But, no such luck. I got to complete my nap a little irritated about the blatant hyperbole.

We did get to see a great deal of action though and very few personal profiles which, it seems, may have finally gotten pushed to the back burners of programming for these shows. We saw Women’s Moguls, Slopestyle, a new event, for men and women and, of course, figure skating. 

Now we have to deal with TEAM figure skating this year, which doesn’t really please me so much, but since there are other ways to catch what I really want to see, I’m not going to complain about it except to say one particular thing. Out of 360,000,000 Americans we sent a total of 230 athletes (minus however many curlers there are because they aren’t athletes) and only a handful of figure skaters. The very first guy we sent out there fell on his ass trying to land a quadruple (which I certainly would have done but everyone else on the ice seemed to do it easily enough) and then did a single (which I could learn to do in 2 days) when he was supposed to do a triple. Out of the ten teams that there seem to be in the team competition we are 7^th after the first day.

USA's Jeremy Abbott going for Gold

This performance was about as bad as any we have ever seen on the ice in this sport. I was left with my mouth open in shock. 

Ok, maybe it was open because I was in and out of sleep and drooling while watching men dance on ice in tights, but the performance was still bad.

I couldn’t help but wonder what a potential over/under bet might be for arrests by Russian authorities for acts of gayness on the ice rink during these games. 

I am going with 6 and there had to be at least one last night. (And if there were arrests for horrible skating our team would be down one man.)

So far there are plenty of great reasons to watch the games just for physical female hotness too and its just day one. I won’t even mention the ice skaters yet (since I wasn’t paying close attention when it was airing) but will later.

Over to Women’s Moguls and Slopestyle (spell check does not like that word) competition and I’ll work from Bronze medal to Gold medal for day one.

In third place for the evening are the Dufour-LaPointe sister, Maxime, Chloe and Justine from Canada.

Well played, northern friends, well played.

The Silver medal for Day One hotness goes to Norway’s Silje Norendal.

Oh yeah!

The Gold goes to…good grief, is it too late to start snowboarding…(Besides the fact that at 52 years of age and with a diminished bank account its too late to date a 27-year-old…) Australia’s Torah Bright.

Wow, just…wow. 

Brighten the Games!

That will do it for today. I am about to go suffer through watching Savannah Guthrie make a fool of her family and the NBC network with her “amazing background pieces” of Russian culture. 

She is cringe worthy at worst, fodder for witty banter at best.

Notebook is in hand.

Done