BlitzBlog

Okay, I admit it. I love the Olympics. Not that blind
everything-about-them love, but, yes I admit that I do love watching
the Olympics. I don't know why, all of a sudden, it seems to be
fashionable to disparage the Olympics, especially the winter version,
but to all you fashionable folks, I say, “Feh!”

Okay, the
Olympics are not perfect- far from it. And that's some it's charm. To
start, there's always the opening ceremonies, for which, the host city
scours its closets for every choreographer and 10-year-old dance
prodigy, so that they can fill the stage with 300 or so of the little
buggers, undoubtedly dressed in some acid-trip version of a
representation of local history. There are little kid dancers dressed
with lights or balloons. There are strangely costumed acrobats with
lightning shooting out of their asses. There are coolly spot-lit
acrobats hanging on invisible wires as they slowly rotate above the
stage.

There's usually some local pop singer, and of course, the march of the athletes.

It
always fun to see what country has what outfits. Who's wearing cowboy
hats, or muumus or sometimes in the case of the Brazilian team, thongs.
(I love those Brazilians! Except maybe the weight lifters, not so much)

As
for the games, and the network coverage, I make a minor attempt to
avoid finding out the results during the day- increasingly more
difficult in this age of the internet– so that the tape-delayed
programming that evening retains its excitement.

Most
recently, I was running on the treadmill at my health club, and on one
of the TVs was ladies' curling. Canada versus China. While the facile
thing to write is that curling is a ridiculous thing to have at the
Olympics, personally, I thought it fascinating to watch. Not exciting,
but it helped me get through the 15-minute sweat, after which, I felt
more like an Olympic athlete than the curlers I'd just been watching.

Bode
Miller. Freakin' a-hole Bode Miller. If there's anything I hate, it's
wasted talent. Or talent spent wasted. Bode Miller gives athletes a bad
name, and worse, he gives partiers a bad name. There's absolutely
nothing wrong with going to the Olympics and spending your evenings
carousing in the local pubs 'til all hours- if you're a spectator. If,
however, you have a wake up call after which you'll be traveling down a
mountain on sticks at 90mph, then I think you owe it to yourself, and
those who've generously donated to your Olympic training, to get a
decent night's sleep. You know, so you don't go oh-for-everything in
all your freakin' events! Jeeez what an asshole.

So there are
those sports we all like to make fun of. Curling of course. Yeah, it's
the bowling of Canada, and so hey, maybe bowling should be an Olympic
sport too. Are these folks athletes? No less so than the dingy sailors
at the summer games.

Ice dancing (as a sport and concept) is
something I've always made fun of, and yet, every time the Olympics
roll around, I wind up watching, transfixed by the sheer beauty and
grace of the event. And this year had an added bonus! There was high
drama on a scale only the Italians could create. You see, during the
preliminary short program, the Italian couple, Barbara Fusar-Poli and
Maurizio Margaglio, the 2001 world champions had come out of retirement
to participate in the Games in their home country. After the
compulsories, they were in first place. Now, about 5 seconds from the
dramatic end of a well-skated short program, on the last lift of the
routine, he dropped her. They quickly got up, skated the last few
steps, and when the music ended with their final dramatic poses, she
was giving him the thousand-yard Death Stare. The
“You-Idiot!-You-Freaking-Idiot!-How-Could You- Drop-Me?!-I-Want-to
KILL-You!” Death Stare. (Every married person who's reading this knows
what I'm talking about). She continued this look as they skated off and
sat in the kiss-and-cry booth and waited for their scores. He wouldn't
even look at her. Probably a wise move anyway. Their scores put them in
6th place, and as the story goes, they took separate cars back to the
athletes' village. They practiced separately the next day, and took
separate cars to the arena the next night for the finals.

The
TV showed them walking around back stage, not getting within 10 feet of
each other, making no eye contact at all. Dick Button mentioned that
“The ice wasn't the only thing that was frozen in this arena tonight.”
When warm up time came, the other couples went out and skated together,
doing their routine bits, while these two skated circles at opposite
ends of the rink. Finally, the Italian couple's turn came, and they
skated out to center ice. They struck their beginning poses, and their
eyes met. He gave just the slightest hint of a smile, and the music
commenced.

For the next 4 minutes, they skated flawlessly,
doing a beautiful routine. No drops or bobbles. As the music ended,
they struck their final poses, looking into each other's eyes. When the
last note's ring subsided, you could see her just… melt, and tears
began streaming from her eyes. They hugged and kissed and the hometown
crowd went nuts, roaring in approval. It was, in no other terms, as
emotional as it gets.

No wonder opera is an Italian art.

BTW, they wound up in 6th.

Now,
as for the seeming waning interest in the Olympics, I've heard that
“Dancing with the Stars” and “American Idol” got higher TV ratings than
those evenings' Olympic broadcasts. Yes, it is a sad fact in America
that we'd rather watch someone with little talent do something poorly,
than someone with unimaginable talent display it expertly. I cannot
explain this fascination, nor be surprised at it. I can only cringe at
the “freak show” mentality that passes for entertainment in this day
and age. Oh well.

On the lighter side, I think that we could
ramp up interest in the Olympics in a few ways. My first suggestion is
to have all the figure skaters perform their routines simultaneously,
like those old ballroom dance contests. Just as people say they only
watch NASCAR for the crashes, well, let's see Irina Slutskaya and Emily
Hughes “trade some paint” while landing a triple Lutz.

I think
the cross country skiing would also be more exciting if the course was
a figure eight, with a nice busy intersection like in the demolition
derby. Even better, have part of the course intersect with the downhill
or go down the middle of the half-pipe.

And the ski jumping? Hmmm….

Let's try pairs.

Maybe naked too.

The Scene: A middle-aged man walks into his home. His wife is standing in the living room.

“Hi Honey!” he says cheerfully, glad to see her.

“Men!” she replies.

Now
in most cases in the Animal Kingdom, when a Thompson's Gazelle hears
the lioness's low hunting growl, the gazelle instinctively knows to
hightail it out of the area.

Idiot Man does not.

” 'Men' ……what?” Idiot Man replies.

From
here, the text of the conversation is totally inconsequential, as much
as whether the gazelle was brought down in 50 or 100 yards, the result
is much the same. They're both Dead Meat.

There are two theories to arguing with a woman. Neither one works.

The
fact is that women can remember conversations (known as “possible
evidence”) for decades, and the content of any one of those
conversations can be retrieved faster than a Google search at any
convenient moment. Men, on the other hand, can't remember shit.

I
cannot tell you how many times I've had my own (alleged) words thrown
in my face. I say “alleged,” since, as I said, I am a man and cannot
remember shit. I take it on faith that when SWMBO* says to me, “Well,
last (week/month/1968) you told me blankity-blank-blank,” then I just
think, “I did?”

And after that, I just fold up shop and say “Yes Dear.”

That
all being said, I do have some vague memory of winning an occasional
argument with my lovely missus. Of course, since I can't remember shit,
I have no idea what these victorious arguments were about.

My
guess is that the subject of these male-victories were infinitesimally
inane and meaningless, and that when, at the time I walked away all
puffy-chested and self-congratulatory-like, my wife was snickering over
her shoulder, thinking, “Idiot.” This gifted victory was no doubt part
of the Grand Female Plan to keep me coming back. In essence, she throws
me a bone once in a while so as to keep me from realizing that my
record for arguing is, undoubtedly zero-for-839.

So, honey, like I asked, ” 'Men' ……what?”

*SWMBO- She Who Must Be Obeyed

I have recently fielded a complaint from a nameless reader from
Baltimore who complained that I have been reminiscing too much, and not
writing miscellaneous ruminations and ramblings. You know, funny shit.

He suggested I write about toilet bowls.

Then,
another friend told me she thinks I need to write more often. I
explained to her that the reason this blog is decent reading is that I
only write when I feel like it, not because I have to.

All that being said, let's call this my On Demand Flushfest column.

Why
is American Standard called that? Isn't “standard” pretty much regular?
Why would one name a company regular? Shouldn't it be American
Outstanding? The World's Best Crapper Company? No wonder Kohler has
taken over half the toilet market. The Bold Look sure beats American
Okay in marketing tests, I'm sure.

And who decided how big a
toilet should be? Or how high? Talk about yer one-size-fits-all. I
never heard of anyone with some skinny little Gilligan butt falling
into the toilet. Nor have I heard of any wide-load cheese butt that
hangs over the sides of the pot like ricotta drapes, having too big an
anus to hit the target.

And speaking of the target, who decided
just how much water should be the target anyway? Some bowls have a nice
pie-plate sized pond to aim for, and some have an itty bitty lil' sink
hole of liquid that leaves an acre of porcelain- the perfect place for
more skid marks than Talladega. I mean, I guess there is some sort of
happy medium. I guess if the water is too high, or to wide, it sets up
some sort of reverse wave scenario, where someone could launch a
post-Mexican meal gygundo Bismarck that could wind up causing some
massive ass-splashback, and I suppose, then that that would be called
American Sub-Standard (pun intended).

And speaking of Bismarcks,….um, no I don't think so.

Well,
I hope I've satisfied at least two of the millions who visit this
space. I'm going to go Lysol my eyeballs and keyboard now.