“It’s a brand new world.”

It’s no secret that Winter Games has an inferiority complex to it’s bigger sexier brother. Contrary to the Red Bull snowboarding youtube culture and painted on lyrca skinsuits (I have issues with how intimidating our star studded pajama outfits are), the Winter Olympics have the same edge as a spelling bee (Turino got squashed by Dancing with the Stars and over the weekend I went to a restaurant and they were televising bowling instead). NBC was so desperate to boost ratings, during one night of prime time coverage they teased an interview with Michael Phelps all night as well as a kiddie piece about snow dogs. The Peacock is estimated to go $250M in the red this year.

There are lots of problems with the format. From the over-priced venues, overdose of non-friendly American viewing events (10 cross country medal contests), the “other Olympics” are trending the wrong way.  What saddens me the most is the globalization of the Games, which is a great thing but ultimately debilitating (read: internet porn). Personally the Olympics have always been about scratching my nationalistic itch. That’s not a euphemism. Country pride always transcended the actual event and I would scream as passionately over womens ski cross than I would over a Rockets play off game.

But now the flags have just become logos. Athletes are fast tracked dual citizenships and national teams are now international collections of sports mercenaries. Our speed skating team is coached by a Korean Korean. Figure skating’s Queen Na trains in Toronto with a cadre of white coaches who have never soured on kimchee, and embarrassingly the Canadian homegrown top mogols skier represents Australia because they were more amiable to his multi-million dollar internet spam company. (The same goes for the Summer Games- in ping pong Brazil fielded a Japanese, Canada an Indian, and America a past medalist for China). This tells me that the Olympics have evolved more into professional sports and has lost the galvanizing “us vs the world” cache.

While I’m here I’ll do my part in taking pot shots in the media created Cold War on Ice…010!

The headline is Evgeny Pachinko’s sour grapes. Refusing to accept the outcome of men’s figure skating, he has now styled his silver medal as platinum. He cites that he was robbed by the new scoring system. The problem with this excuse, as brought up by Scott Hamilton, is that in 2002 he got silver on the old rules and gold in 2006 on the new rules. So the Russian Nose is just being an international dick.

The story that no one is covering is the Russian women’s curling team. The average competitors (I refuse to accept their self-given athlete label when one of them is 6 months pregnant) are mid-thirty housewives. Then there are the Russians. Most are 19 years old, all are tall, thin, attractive model quality talent. Two are legitimately smoking hot. In an event that emphasizes experience, their team captain is a sage 23. My theory is that they curlers with benefits handpicked by the Russian mob to shave points for gambling purposes. And if the Games are all about money then this is a trend that I can get behind. That was a euphemism.

The Winter Olympics- I hadn’t planned on watching any of it, but then I found myself clearing the DVR, and I haven’t missed a minute of it yet. I’ll probably soak up all 84 hrs of coverage over 4 channels. I’m fascinated by watching basically anything as long as it’s being done by the best people in the world. I also have a lot of admiration for all the participants. Michael Phelps and Apolo Ohno are the rare exceptions. Most olympians are from small towns, have regular jobs, and max out their credit cards for a chance to represent their countries. The moment I knew I was completely sucked in was when I found myself yelling at the tv in true disgust during a womens curling opening match.

While I’m here I’m going to go on a jag about the announcers. Apparently all you had to do was show up at an Olympics to have a mic put in front of you. I don’t get NBC’s need to have every moment over-talked with inane analysis. Heaven forbid allowing the viewers to just watch the events. During female cross country I heard these gems:

“So her lap time has increased. What does this mean?”
“That she is going slower.”

“She will be participating in four events. At best she can win 4 golds, and at worst none.”

“She is just heads and tails better.”

A couple more items:
- Stop using the word “redemption”. Besides Lindsey Jacobellis (2006 hotdogged the final jump in snowboard cross and face planted her gold away; she didn’t make it to finals this year), you shouldn’t be saying anyone here is looking for redemption. That word is as improperly overused as “ironic” and “courageous.” Which is ironic and brave of me to point out.

- I recently re-watched Total Recall on cable. Every instance of “ass” and “g**damnit” was edited, but graphic headshot close ups (4) and bulging eyeballs were in full HD glory. And then on NBC they showed the footage of the deceased luge athlete slamming to his death into a steel girder at 90mph over and over and over again. So we’d rather have kids desensitized to graphic violence than curse words that they hear at school and from their parents? These Christian watch groups have some pretty misplaced outrage.

- Dick Button is the new Captain Hyperbole (dethroned all of The Bachelor contestants who describe everything as “amazing”). In one conversation about figure skating he used: marvelous, elegant, magical, exquisite, majestic, glorious, quintessential, beautiful, spectacular, wonderful, amazing, powerful grace, understated chaos. I had to change channels before he climaxed in front of Bob Costas. Seriously, I felt like my mind was being raped with the heat of a thousand stars as I was listening to his bouquet of cancer blooming exaggerations.

This was made by one dude and is 100% CGI. Why can’t Lost hire this guy to do their MS Paint sfx?

A little dated, but here is Jimmy Kimmel crushing Jay Leno and then explaining himself after Leno went crying to Oprah.

How to suck at Facebook.

Crappy date?

Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself?

Free Ride Bird

Super sperm not constrained by the space time moron continuum.

Jesus’s cat

The girlfriend sex tax.

You know it’s time to change your underpants when…

Please please redeem the part of my childhood that Michael Bay shat on.