Is it over yet?
I’m sort of ashamed to admit it but I’ve been sucked into the vortex that is the Olympics. Normally, I skip it because the coverage is too much blatant thought control for this girl. And while I’ve enjoyed much of what I watched this past week and am now officially in training to become Dara Torres, NBC has gone to great lengths to live up to the schmaltz. In fact, this past Friday, I couldn’t take one more transparently pandering political add and finally threw in the towel before Phelps swam. I switched over to “What Not To Wear” and confirmed that black and brown can—and should—be worn together. (They’re both neutrals.)
Here’s the thing: NBC has totally gypped the West Coast. Sure, the television says “Live!” up in the right hand corner but then, I open my laptop to Google “how tall is Shawn Johnson” and my homepage tells me that Phelps won the race for which Bob Costas has been offering teasers for more than an hour.
Speaking of Bob Costas, the dude is a twerp. Was it really necessary for him to rip a page from Michael Phelps’ book in order to tell his viewing audience exactly what the swimmer eats for breakfast? Interesting information, sure. But could he have not had one of his starry-eyed interns run the book through a copy machine? There’s plenty of drama happening without Costas resorting to theatrics. And I don’t even want to talk about his interview with Dubya. My laptop will freeze if I go there and I just had a new motherboard installed.
And somebody, please, tell me, what’s with the announcers?
The guys covering the women’s beach volleyball couldn’t stop talking about Carrie Walsh’s wedding band. Did you hear about her wedding band? You know, the wedding band that she got at her wedding, that she wears on her finger? It’s a wedding band and it means a lot to her. And her wedding band got knocked off her finger during a play and the wedding band went missing in the sand, and she worried about her wedding band but kept playing because she’s a machine, a competitor, an elite athlete! And after, a troupe of people sifted that sand for the wedding band and then one guy found the wedding band and then gave back the wedding band and she was so happy that he found her wedding band that she gave him some olympic pins, an autograph and a slap on the ass. All this because she lost her wedding band. Wondering what happened next? Not to worry! She then taped the wedding band in place and in case we, the viewing public, didn’t believe that she was wearing her wedding band, the camera people zoomed in on the finger in question and there it was, the lump of a wedding band beneath the kind of wrinkly tape they put on your arm after a blood draw. Then Wedding Bandgate seguéd seamlessly into the wedding picture and a discussion—including close-up images of—the inscription on the inside of the wedding band.
I have a suggestion for the announcers: Shut the fuck up and let the women play.
Then there are the announcers for the gymnastics competition, who are a whole entire breed. They’re harbingers of doom who bring nothing but badness down on the athletes. “Here’s Alicia Sacramone on the uneven parallel bars and this routine is amazing! She’s the best on the team and we’re about to see something fantastic here! You’ve never seen anything like it before! She’s been practicing this all week and hasn’t made one error! Not one slip up! She’s been perfect! The whole team is counting on her! Now watch this next move right here, she’s known for this move! This move should be named after her she so owns it! Hold onto your labia now, viewers, because this is something to beholOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH! She just missed that bar! Her body was too far out over the bar! Oh what a disappointment! I can’t believe it! I’ve never seen her like this…” And so on, and so on.
And then.
Bela. Karolyi. The King of Konspiracy. Every time he’s on the couch with Costas, you know he’s going to talk about how the Americans were cheated, how the scoring is unfair, how he’s never seen judging this bad. How outrageous it is that (fill-in-the-blank) wasn’t standing on the podioum. We’re watching blatant favoritism of the Chinese, he tells us with characteristic passion and flying spittle. I half expected him to jump up and down on Costas’ couch at one point.
Dude, Puh-leeese. This is competition and the other athletes are—I know it’s hard to take—better. Get over it. There’s no crying in gymnastics. But wait! Last night, Karolyi started to cry. His chin quivered. He welled. And I knew, as unhinged as he is, that he wouldn’t dare say what he really felt inside: They hate us for our freedom.
You know, the freedom to change the channel and learn how to coordinate your gym clothes.
6 Comments