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rmOne of my favourite things in the whole world is the Olympics. Part of it is my general sort of fascination with living life obsessively and beyond limits, and part of it is that whole seeing Chariots of Fire as a kid when it was still something utterly new. But part of it has nothing to do with the romance.
Part of it is the stupid sports.
There is the luge, which is almost not absurd. But then there is the two man luge, which is definitely absurd and some awful combination of neither porny nor pointless enough. Then there's skeleton, which is just luge with a death wish, or an extra death wish I suppose. But both sports are sort of cool because the athletes are actually older than me in many cases. Then we added all this X-games crap, and there's nothing more fun than the announcers trying to sound dignified while explaining what a backwards 570 (or whatever the fuck) is before they go on to mention that the course is gnarly. Snowboardcross is a particular favourite of mine, since it involves strategy and pushing, which sort of devolves into -- if you're in front that's good, if you in back that's good, because people in 2 and 3 will fight it out, push each other off the course and then you get the silver. I mean, what the fuck sort of sport is that?
And then there's ice dancing. It amazes me that the Australians with their ballroom dancing obsession don't do well in this unspeakably tacky sport. The thing about icedancing is, that while I'm sure it's difficult, other than a few lifts, it doesn't really involve stuff you tend to think atheletes should fall down doing. Tonight everyone fell down (and one of the incidents was admittedly horrifying, and I feel very bad for the athletes involved), all while wearing tacky clothes and shaking their asses to a really egregious piece of salsa music I could die happy never hearing again, but I live on 106th street, so I better find other ways to achieve joy. But hey, it's everyone's favourite sport this year because the American ice-dancing team has a girl who looks like Reese Witherspoon and was a Canadian until two months ago, but now she's ours. In sert maniacal laughter here.
The Olympics get better the later you stay up watching. You get weird cultural moments, like the reporter who goes out for a Philly cheesesteak in Torino, the newscaster who notes that you all probably didin't know Turino used to be called Turin (hello, Shroud of?) and randomly tries to provide Davinci trivia that sort of comes out like "artist, scientist, really important, maybe gay, everyone said he was charming though, and there's this hit book.... blah blah blah."
I fucking love the Olympics and this years wacky donut shaped medals besides.
*hums theme music*
Part of it is the stupid sports.
There is the luge, which is almost not absurd. But then there is the two man luge, which is definitely absurd and some awful combination of neither porny nor pointless enough. Then there's skeleton, which is just luge with a death wish, or an extra death wish I suppose. But both sports are sort of cool because the athletes are actually older than me in many cases. Then we added all this X-games crap, and there's nothing more fun than the announcers trying to sound dignified while explaining what a backwards 570 (or whatever the fuck) is before they go on to mention that the course is gnarly. Snowboardcross is a particular favourite of mine, since it involves strategy and pushing, which sort of devolves into -- if you're in front that's good, if you in back that's good, because people in 2 and 3 will fight it out, push each other off the course and then you get the silver. I mean, what the fuck sort of sport is that?
And then there's ice dancing. It amazes me that the Australians with their ballroom dancing obsession don't do well in this unspeakably tacky sport. The thing about icedancing is, that while I'm sure it's difficult, other than a few lifts, it doesn't really involve stuff you tend to think atheletes should fall down doing. Tonight everyone fell down (and one of the incidents was admittedly horrifying, and I feel very bad for the athletes involved), all while wearing tacky clothes and shaking their asses to a really egregious piece of salsa music I could die happy never hearing again, but I live on 106th street, so I better find other ways to achieve joy. But hey, it's everyone's favourite sport this year because the American ice-dancing team has a girl who looks like Reese Witherspoon and was a Canadian until two months ago, but now she's ours. In sert maniacal laughter here.
The Olympics get better the later you stay up watching. You get weird cultural moments, like the reporter who goes out for a Philly cheesesteak in Torino, the newscaster who notes that you all probably didin't know Turino used to be called Turin (hello, Shroud of?) and randomly tries to provide Davinci trivia that sort of comes out like "artist, scientist, really important, maybe gay, everyone said he was charming though, and there's this hit book.... blah blah blah."
I fucking love the Olympics and this years wacky donut shaped medals besides.
*hums theme music*
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no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 05:25 am (UTC)Torino is apparently home to some of the most fabulous chocolate/hazelnut concoctions on earth. How bad do I wish I was there?
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Date: 2006-02-20 01:27 pm (UTC)i love the winter olympics. it makes me glad to live somewhere cold and snowy and gives me hope that i could make a living going sledding.
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Date: 2006-02-20 01:50 pm (UTC)The USA wasn't too bad though.
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Date: 2006-02-20 02:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-21 09:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-21 04:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-21 07:03 pm (UTC)