Monday, August 25, 2008

The Olympics: In Retrospect

Okay, I never did muster up the effort to do an Olympics running diary, and to be honest, I'm kind of disappointed in myself. I kind of just blame Justin for not taking the initiative that would've, in turn, spurred me on. Regardless, like many others, I watched way more Olympic television than I had initially anticipated. Well, it's all over now, and I'm just going to spat out a few lingering thoughts.

It doesn't matter how much coverage it got or how much it was talked about - the Michael Phelps spectacle was fucking awesome. During many of his races, I was in Wyoming (see below), and my mom and I would wake up each day and immediately find out what time his races were. My mom gave a shit. This woman doesn't have one interested sports bone in her body, and she was sucked in. This is amazing to me. I saw the first relay when Lizak came back to win, and I saw the butterfly when I seriously thought that the Olympics were orchestrating a complex conspiracy to ensure Phelps the eight golds. I was convinced he didn't win that race, but thanks to Sports Illustrated photos, I have since been proven wrong. The naked eye can be deceiving. Regardless, the first week of the Olympics was goddamn captivating, particularly due to Phelps.

I really have no desire to play volleyball - sand or indoor. I just don't think it's that much fun, and it makes my fucking wrists/forearms burn and sting like nothing else. However, I get sucked into watching volleyball. I have no idea why. It probably has something to do with my propensity to watch anything that involves competition. I genuinely feel for the athletes and their plight/elation. Lame sounding? Yep...but the intense emotion each man/woman has to be feeling during the Olympics is beyond my realm of thought. Or at least I think it is.

On that note, I've been listening to sports commentators for two weeks bitch and make fun of seemingly "absurd" Olympic sports like handball, badminton, or trampoline. Fuck that. I say make up more outlandish competition. The fact that a pair of men have devoted their livelihoods to perfecting the sport of badminton is amazing to me. I eat that shit up. I mean, I used to play badminton in my backyard all hours of the day/evening when I was growing up (my family was big into it for some reason). And while I'm dicking around and playing on a late summer evening, some eleven year old kid in Poland is waking up at six in the morning and being berated into how to properly strike the shuttlecock (never thought I'd actually type that word in my life). I just find all that shit intriguing. Devoting your life to handball is fucking devotion. You have to bail on hanging out with your friends at the local swimming hole to go practice your skills at handball...awesome. Finger boarding, break dancing, thumb wrestling, and dodgeball should all become Olympic sports in 2012.

The female Chinese gymnasts creep me out. There's no way they're 16, and they're way too dolled up. It freaks me out for some reason. I immediately switch the channel whenever they pop up. Eesh.

The USA basketball team won the gold and no one really seemed to notice or care. The only thing that would've made news is if they lost, like in Athens. They're supposed to win, so they did, and no one gives a shit. Neat. There's no reason they should've lost and they didn't. Woo-hoo. I guess it is kind of cool to see a bunch of NBA superstars yakking it up and being friends though. That was kind of cool. I still dislike LeBron James, though, and I think Kobe Bryant is the second best basketball player I have ever seen in my life. The first? You guessed it...John Starks. Ha.

1 comment:

edwardallen said...

the olympics was something else. perhaps we can do a running diary/dialogue for the winter olympics in 2010. get ready. do your homework and take some notes.