Saturday, August 09, 2008

Obligatory Olympics Post - 1

Well, if you read Jamie's blog, you're going to know we watched the Olympic opening ceremonies, as well as an hour of Animal Planet's Puppy Games.

So we're in neck deep now. Woke up this morning to Dressage (or horsey dancing, as we call it). Then watched the Americans slightly beat Japan in 3 of four sets in Women's Volleyball. Japan was really good, and I don't understand how the US managed to pull it out in the three sets. Plus, seeing really tall Japanese women is sort of interesting.

The American women swept Sabre. Which is awesome (yes, I got a little misty when they showed the three medal winners together). We also watched a Chinese girl (I'd say woman, but she was really young) lift 250+ pounds clean over her head for a world record. That was... insane. Kudos to her.

Anyway, we're now onto Canada v. China in women's soccer. Not sure when the US women play, so I need to look that up.

The only men's sport I've seen has been badminton, which a Polish gentleman was winning.

Walsh & May-Treanor play this afternoon, so I need to stick by the TV. Keep your eyes peeled for volleyball.

Anyhow, the games are on multiple networks, so I'm considering trying using the Picture-in-Picture feature on my cable.

One of the funny things about watching sports is how you automatically, randomly pick a side. Well, probably not randomly. But when you don't have a dog in the fight, and you're watching, say, Poland play Uganda in Tiddlywinks, I'll still decide to cheer someone on. Usually whomever is losing on the off chance that if they come back from behind, I'll feel like I knew how to pick a winner.

Also, I frequently cheer for someone based on the cut of their jib.

I did wonder exactly what the conversation was with Putin and W sitting a few seats apart at the opening ceremonies. "So, Vlad. Couldn't wait to stir up some military action until the end of the Olympics, huh?" "Da."

By and large, I thought the opening ceremonies were some of the best ceremonies/ least embarrassing/ keeping the cheese to a minimum in a few years. And I'm including Atlanta in that, although we had Ali at Atlanta. But, yeah, it was all very well done and imaginative.

So, viva los Olympicos.

6 comments:

J.S. said...

I'm not going to be able to peel you guys off of the sofa for the next two weeks, am I? Oh well, at least it's not Jerry Springer or 90210 reruns.

Anonymous said...

Well Yao Ming is infinitely more entertaining than say, Jennie Garth and Luke Perry. And you have to admit, their opening ceremonies kicked some serious butt. I mean it was amazing.....that LCD screen on the floor alone would blow anyone away. But when Bob Costas mentioned that the rest of the world would be a little intimidated watching the Chinese all lined up with that sort of precision during some of the choreography, he was not kidding. Little scary. And the smiles were pretty fake too. You can tell they told them to smile.....too obvious. Like we don't know they are run by robots.

J.S. said...

I know, all of those intimidating dance moves and fake smiles worn by robots... I had flashbacks to my high school dance team during the pep rallies. ;-)

Anonymous said...

Thank goodness you aren't posting to a site read by many KO Strutters...they may take offense to that comment :) I, however, was not one. I was more preoccupied with rehearsals in the theater with your brother and a cast of other nuts like us. Definitely nothing robotic about that theater department back in the day.

mcsteans said...

It pains me to admit this, but I was Captain on my drill team in high school. If we had been more robotic, perhaps we would have been a better squad.
.
Olympics:
We were watching rowing this morning and I was thinking how awesome it would be if they had viking ship rowing as a sport.

The League said...

The Sundancers were far creepier than the Strutters. I can confirm that, having been both places.

I still have a hard time reconciling Jamie as I know her now with a kick-line Jamie in a spangled outfit.