Snowed In

It took a blizzard and a comeback for me to get into the Winter Olympics. Yesterday, with nothing to do but listen to my neighbor's woefully overworked snowblower, I finally watched some of NBC's excessively commercially interrupted coverage.

The first event, cross country skiing, almost caused me to switch right back to Shark Tale on HBO. (Note: HBO should be aware of the weather and in a given region and amend their lineup accordingly. If there had been a Godfather marathon on HBO-E yesterday I would not have changed the channel once.) The race began just as I tuned in, and lo and behold I caught come excitemnent. There was a huge crash just 1 meter into the race (it's Europe, metric system) and defending champ Frode Estil went down. Not only did he go down but he also broke a ski. 100 meters later he stopped again, this time to have his ski repaired. At this point he was in dead last and over a minute behind the leaders.

Olympic dream dead right?

Wrong.

His teammates, after seeing their boy drop like a stone from the fourth starting position to last jumped to the front of the pack and set a slow pace, hoping to give Estil a shot to come back. Slowly but surely he did. Just moments later (due to NBC's creative coverage of the hour-plus event) The Nowegian hero (oh yeah they love him there) had passed 70 rivals and was in the top 10.

As the competitors neared the finish line in "Mile High Stadium" (I kid you not) the crowd roared as two Italians led the pack. Then in an improbable finish a virtually unknown Russian Eugeni Dementiev shot ahead to the gold while Estil followed taking a miraculous silver. Dementiev had not led for a single second before the last 300 yards.

I thought, maybe there is something to these Olympics.

For the rest of the day I watched as alleged medal contendors Bode Miller and Daron Rahlves stunk out the joint in the men's downhill competition, finishing 5th and 10th. They both planned to race on brand new skis, but after Miller failed to challenge the leaders Rahlves switched at the last second (literally) back to his old ones, and then finished 1.5 seconds (the equivalent of a week and a half in skiing) behind the eventual winner Antoine Deneriaz.

Then I watched as Shaun White (a red head, albeit a very ugly one) took gold in an American cream puff event, the halfpipe. White, the unanimous favorite before the games nearly missed the final, requiring a second run to qualify in the top 12. In the final however he exerted his dominance, winning by almost 5 points over fellow American Danny Kass. Quite possibly the highlight of the day was listening to the NBC field reporter interview White, who talks exactly like a stoned out snowboarding high schooler at Wachusett. He essentially says the same things as everyone else but his lilting stoner-tone makes for high comedy on national TV. I could hear republicans everywhere bemoaning the celebrity of someone so utterly unpolished.

What was the best part of the coverage you ask? It was NO FIGURE SKATING. Call me a chauvenist pig, call me an uneducated ape, call me a sexist bastard, I don't care. Dancing is not a sport, dancing on ice is not a sport, dancing on ice in a leotard and sparkles is defintely not a freaking sport. I am patently offended by the frequency with which Olympic coverage tries to force figure skating down our throats. Guess what NBC, not everyone is a 40 year old mom from the midwest.

And with that I declare I will not mention that Michelle Kwan is withdrawing from competition. I will however mention that maybe Karma had a little something to do with this one since she didn't earn her spot there to begin with.

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Aside from the Olympics I did catch 2 other interesting pieces of news yesterday, in my uninterrupted stay in apartment 7 (which is way too small to spend 17 straight concious sober hours in). This exchange actually took place between Joe Theisman and Paul McGuire during the Pro Bowl coverage on ESPN last night.

Joe: I asked Santana Moss yesterday, "Who is taller, you or Steve Smith?" And he told me that he is 5'10" while Smith is 5'9" and 3/4. He said that taking the measurement was the first thing they did when they arrived in Hawaii. So there you go, Moss has him by a 1/4 inch.

Paul: (after a long silence) That's fascinating information Joe. (sarcasm dripping from the screen of my television.)

I never had any respect for Paul McGuire until that moment. He will be missed on Monday nights...okay no he won't but it was still a great line. I think he was about one more scotch and soda away from telling Theisman what a moron he thinks he is.

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And finally Dick Cheney shot a guy.

Was it an Iraqi prisoner and some excessive torture gone wrong? Nope.

Was it W. after he refused to bomb Kansas City by 2008? Nope.

Was it some "flag waving sissy liberal" that got in the way of spreading democracy? Nope.

He shot a "friend" of his in a hunting accident. I blame the friend in this situation. It is common knowledge that you don't go anywhere near Dick Cheney when he has a gun, EVER. Come on, do we really need to explain the risks involved in accepting a hunting invitation from that wacko? I wonder what the accident was, that he shot him or that he left him alive to tell the tale. Maybe it was like one of those movies where a group of rich hunters rounds up a bunch of homeless guys and takes them out to the woods to hunt them. There are plenty of quial out there Dick, go to Afghanistan if you want to hunt people.