The 12 biggest rip offs in America.

Ladies, really?

A trailer for every Academy Award winning movie ever.

Walmart weddings

How to get youtube to film you?

Translating ladies’ excuses for being single.

Parenting fails

Breaking down online dating.

I think I’ll be eating my pancakes plain from now on.

Elephant vs croc

Cat breaking the sound barrier.

“Hmm, I knew I should’ve taken that left turn at Albuquerque.”

“It’s good to be the king.”

“1-2-3-4 let’s have a t-shirt war.”

June 11: Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Jessica Biel, Rampage Jackson, and the dude from District 9.

At first I was like…

A wet blanket on my pity parties.

5 reasons you should be scared of apple.

Ninja deer.

Extra helpings of fail.

Hold up, Brittany just sent a new tweet.

The truth about poo.

Old school rules. And rules.

10 reasons to avoid talking on the phone.

Too soon?

6 insane coincidences

If men wrote women’s mags.

So it’s the day after and I’m suffering from an Olympics hang over. The countdown to London 2012 has begun. While it’s still fresh, here are some of my winners and losers from Vancouver 2010:

Winner: Canada
Own the Podium turned into Blown the Podium which ended in a furious golden finish for the host country. While weather was a huge story, winning an absolute spectacular hockey final vs USA was the gold cherry on a successful Olympics for America Jr. That touching piece by Tom Brokaw on how the tiny hamlet of Gander coming to the aid of displaced travelers following 911 has solidified Canada as the best people in the world. Finishing 2nd to last are the French, one beignet above al qaeda.

Winner: Stephen Colbert
Jay Leno was supposed to act as the hype machine for our athletes leading up to the games. But the late night fiasco crippled much of any momentum. Colbert stepped in with a hilarious week of coverage as an official assistant speed skating sports psychologist, where he was allowed to surprisingly take shots at NBC. NBC later tried to take a comedy cue from him, but their anemic attempts at humor was like watching my dad  try to do stand up.

Winner: Bumping and Grinding events
Short track, snowboard cross and ski cross are basically roller derby events and they were completely riveting.

Winner: Shaun White
Winning when you are supposed to is one of the hardest things to do in competitions. Shaun White stomped the field and he made it look effortless. His cool factor is so off the charts right now, he totally got away with looking into the camera during a studio interview and said, “Hey Obama, invite me to the White House.” And he’s going to get that invite.

Loser: Over-saturation of key stars
It’s annoying how NBC pre-games already determined who would be the sweethearts and stars before a single event was held. But I understand how they want to go with sure things. Lindsey Vonn getting the Michael Phelps treatment was just plain aggravating. And I’ve had so much Apolo Ohno force fed into me that I swear I crapped out a soul patch last night.

Loser: Curling
I watched 10 matches before giving up. The men’s and women’s teams were both talking medals. Both finished in the cellar often getting mercy-ruled. The most unbearable thing about the coverage was the smarmy announcing. The main analyst went on sanctimonious rants about the teams getting criticism on the internet. Well if you want to call glorified team shuffleboard the greatest sport in the world and make comparisons to football, baseball and basketball, then you are fair game to be criticized when the skip chokes four straight games away and then gets pulled. If you want curling to get more exposure then you need a winning product, and more of those Russian babes (incidentally on the ending montage of the great Olympic moments they included an unnecessary awesome shot of the tasty Anna Sidorova).

Loser: Day time coverage
All you could pick from was curling or any of the 10 (!) cross country events where Americans were no where to be seen. At least show qualifying rounds of more exciting events like speed skating. Watching a bunch of Scandinavians shuffle around for miles is as dramatic as an infomerical. And then there is listening to Al Troutwig drop beauties like, “Emil Hegle Svedsen is his name, biathlon is his game.”

Loser: Me and NBC
84 hours of coverage with 50 being commercials. NBC you suck for coming out of 6 minute commercial breaks, cutting back for a 15 tease then tossing to another 6 minute break ad nauseum. I’m the loser for tolerating it. Thank God for DVRs.

“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.