A Non-V-Day-Related Post
Instead of commenting on today's holiday of choice, I'm going to jabber about last night's Olympic programme.
Now, those of you who know me know that I'm not exactly the biggest sports fan in the history of sporting events. The fact that I know any of the rules to baseball and football is cause for surprise even to me. You may apply to me whichever school stereotype you feel fits the bill- picked last at kickball, small and nerdy, liked computers more than soccer, picked on by jocks- whatever. I think I was all of the above. Maybe even more.
Despite my less-than-stellar record in the sporting arena, I nonetheless love the Olympics. The great contest of world-class athletes competing against each other in mortal kombat is pleasing in my sight. Be it winter or summer, the Olympics are fun to watch.
In theory.
In actuality, it hurts to watch the Olympics. Not because the Olympics are bad, but because NBC broadcasts all sorts of crazy Olympic shenanigans. Let's use an example...
"Let's meet Athlete Smith, competing in the Olympics after a lifetime of personal tragedy and hardship. Smith was raised in a town where snow had not yet been invented, and yet wanted to fulfill a dream of being an Olympic speed skater. Then tragedy struck, as all four of Smith's legs were amputated in a freak harvester-combine accident. Now, equipped with the latest in cyborg limbs, Smith vows to storm Torino and take the gold in the name of everybody with bionic limbs and no snow. Go Smith!"
Every single person has to have one of these stories. And they have to spend at least ten minutes recounting these tales to us. And then they keep reminding us of the fact. In the time and energy it took them to recite these epic poems, they could have fit entire divisions of events. So much time wasted! So much inefficiency! This is not the way of the future.
Let's review last night's programme. NBC switched between three events: men's speed skating, women's snowboarding, and pairs figure skating long programme.
No, wait. Let me go back a few. I have to make a confession. I like the Winter Olympics better than the Summer Olympics. This has more to do with the potential for disaster and destruction than anything else. Ice and snow equals slipping and falling. High speed motion plus ice equals unstoppable collisions galore. Everything in the Winter Olympics (except maybe curling) has a pretty high potential for disaster. And let's face it- disaster is good. What do they show on nightly news for NASCAR highlights? Crashes and 'splosions. What do they show on baseball and football highlights? Either big scores or impressive impacts and injuries. It's a given- we wanna see some violence.
That being said, let's go back to the programme. Keep my mindset in mind. Hmm, I said mind twice.
Now yesterday, in addition to those three events, there were a few other events- lots of curling, some biathlon, hockey, and luge. None of those events even received a mention during NBC's 210-minute broadcast. Not even a sidenote. Now, I can agree to an extent that curling and biathlon are a bit low-energy and intensity events. Biathlon is especially crazy- what drug-fuelled rampage led someone to say "Hey, you know what would kick ass? Having a bunch of guys go skiing, and then shoot stuff! That would fucking rule!"
(On the other hand, those drugs are nothing compared to the inventor of Curling. "I... I have it. I have a vision of the greatest sport ever. We take a handle, see? Like a curved umbrella handle. And... And we stick it into the top of a big cheese wheel. Yeah, swiss cheese. Has to be swiss. And then... we whip it down the ice and aim for shit. OH YEAH!"
)
I would have liked to see a bit of curling, personally. Maybe instead of telling me about how Shen had his hamstring eaten by wild pandas in the ghettos of Shanghai, we could have had a few rounds of curling.
Ice hockey and luge, on the other hand... now that's excitement. Granted, ice hockey might not be the same as the glory days when the USSR juggernaut was defeated by the USA underdogs (now in major motion picture format, starring Kurt Russell, the only man tougher than Lo Pan), but it's still a pretty adrenaline-pounding sport, complete with collisions, personal fouls, and people getting sliced open by skates and sticks. And luge... everyone likes sledding. Luge takes everyone's childhood sledding fantasy and hops it up on speed. Everyone always wanted to go faster; luge is the epitome of that desire. And when lugers (not Lugers; that's a gun) foul up, it's spectacular. A few rounds of that- even highlights, really- would have spiced up the evening's programme and been better than ten sob stories.
Instead, we get... snowboarding.
We saw five different people compete on these snowboards. Multiple times. Never mind the fact that there were 29 other competitors in the event. I bet some of those 29 must have had a good tumble down the tube and fallen on their butt. People want to see that! A little humor adds to the excitement. Oh, wait, this isn't excitement, it's snowboarding. And while the competitors acted like teenage girls ("Like omigod I totally won a gold medal it's so awesome and wow neat and stuff omigod!"), the announcers were, in fact, worse. "That was a HUGE move. Just... wow. Her techniques are huge in this run. It is an awesome showing." No, I'm actually not making that line up. Hell, instant replays from the Winter Olympics four years ago would have been better than Snowboarding.
And then, figure skating.
I suppose I'm in the minority on planet Earth on this one- I'm just not a big fan of figure skating. In this case, I'll accept the fact that I'm an objectivist rules nazi. I like sports that are absolutes. For instance, how does one win a race of skiing, running, swimming, or skating? Fastest time. How does one win a javelin toss or ski jump? Longest distance. These are absolute uncontested victories. How does one win a soccer match, or a football game, or a hockey game? Most points scored. These are mostly uncontested, allowing for the always possible "bad call" from referees. But "ice dancing" and "figure skating"... while they get points for moves done in their routine, there is a lot of subjectivity involved in the scoring. However, this is only my opinion, and most other people like the figure skating events, so we'll let my opinion slide.
That aside, though, this event was chock full of the aforementioned trauma stories, like Yao, the coach who invented ice, skating, rinks, skaters, skintight uniforms, hydrogen and oxygen just so that China could compete in the Winter Olympic theatre, or the Russian who dropped his partner on the ice hard in 2004 and concussed her and then was sad and guilty and emo for months and months, and so on. At least a half hour wasted on mindless jabber. ACK! Call the efficiency police, pronto! NBC is guilty of capital crimes!
The highlight, of course, was watching Zhang attempt a quad salchow and instead sprawl hard and bust up her knees on the ice. Seeing the coach icing her knee afterwards was delicious irony. That's right- I do like figure skating just to watch people fall on the ice. I'm mean that way. And, in the end, the unsmiling Russians did not reconcuss themselves and took gold. One has to ask, though: What would Brian Boitano do?
Finally, speed skating. Ah, here's an event that gets the heart racing. It's fast and furious. It's easy to mess up. And, as someone pointed out, "Wow, you can see quite a lot on that tight uniform of his."
Three cheers for Joey Cheek for doing well and beating Spider-Canadian and looking completely surprised while winning. Congratulations also for not having your sob story about North Carolina's lack of snow hindering your desire to speed skate broadcast every five minutes on the dot.
And finally, some simple mathematics on the subject of efficiency. In 3.5 hours, NBC showed 15 snowboard runs (about 1 minute a piece), 10 figure skating pairs (probably 4-7 minutes a piece), and at least 6 speed skating runs at about 90 seconds each. I missed the first few minutes of the night, so maybe something else happened there. This adds up to a whopping 94 minutes of action tops. Add 10% for scoring and you have about 103 minutes clocked. 103/210 minutes is less than 50%. SO MUCH MINDLESS JABBER!
Anyway, that's it. Happy V-day, go play ljdq, and may the Force be with you. Unless you're in Pod Six. Jerks.
Now, those of you who know me know that I'm not exactly the biggest sports fan in the history of sporting events. The fact that I know any of the rules to baseball and football is cause for surprise even to me. You may apply to me whichever school stereotype you feel fits the bill- picked last at kickball, small and nerdy, liked computers more than soccer, picked on by jocks- whatever. I think I was all of the above. Maybe even more.
Despite my less-than-stellar record in the sporting arena, I nonetheless love the Olympics. The great contest of world-class athletes competing against each other in mortal kombat is pleasing in my sight. Be it winter or summer, the Olympics are fun to watch.
In theory.
In actuality, it hurts to watch the Olympics. Not because the Olympics are bad, but because NBC broadcasts all sorts of crazy Olympic shenanigans. Let's use an example...
"Let's meet Athlete Smith, competing in the Olympics after a lifetime of personal tragedy and hardship. Smith was raised in a town where snow had not yet been invented, and yet wanted to fulfill a dream of being an Olympic speed skater. Then tragedy struck, as all four of Smith's legs were amputated in a freak harvester-combine accident. Now, equipped with the latest in cyborg limbs, Smith vows to storm Torino and take the gold in the name of everybody with bionic limbs and no snow. Go Smith!"
Every single person has to have one of these stories. And they have to spend at least ten minutes recounting these tales to us. And then they keep reminding us of the fact. In the time and energy it took them to recite these epic poems, they could have fit entire divisions of events. So much time wasted! So much inefficiency! This is not the way of the future.
Let's review last night's programme. NBC switched between three events: men's speed skating, women's snowboarding, and pairs figure skating long programme.
No, wait. Let me go back a few. I have to make a confession. I like the Winter Olympics better than the Summer Olympics. This has more to do with the potential for disaster and destruction than anything else. Ice and snow equals slipping and falling. High speed motion plus ice equals unstoppable collisions galore. Everything in the Winter Olympics (except maybe curling) has a pretty high potential for disaster. And let's face it- disaster is good. What do they show on nightly news for NASCAR highlights? Crashes and 'splosions. What do they show on baseball and football highlights? Either big scores or impressive impacts and injuries. It's a given- we wanna see some violence.
That being said, let's go back to the programme. Keep my mindset in mind. Hmm, I said mind twice.
Now yesterday, in addition to those three events, there were a few other events- lots of curling, some biathlon, hockey, and luge. None of those events even received a mention during NBC's 210-minute broadcast. Not even a sidenote. Now, I can agree to an extent that curling and biathlon are a bit low-energy and intensity events. Biathlon is especially crazy- what drug-fuelled rampage led someone to say "Hey, you know what would kick ass? Having a bunch of guys go skiing, and then shoot stuff! That would fucking rule!"
(On the other hand, those drugs are nothing compared to the inventor of Curling. "I... I have it. I have a vision of the greatest sport ever. We take a handle, see? Like a curved umbrella handle. And... And we stick it into the top of a big cheese wheel. Yeah, swiss cheese. Has to be swiss. And then... we whip it down the ice and aim for shit. OH YEAH!"
)
I would have liked to see a bit of curling, personally. Maybe instead of telling me about how Shen had his hamstring eaten by wild pandas in the ghettos of Shanghai, we could have had a few rounds of curling.
Ice hockey and luge, on the other hand... now that's excitement. Granted, ice hockey might not be the same as the glory days when the USSR juggernaut was defeated by the USA underdogs (now in major motion picture format, starring Kurt Russell, the only man tougher than Lo Pan), but it's still a pretty adrenaline-pounding sport, complete with collisions, personal fouls, and people getting sliced open by skates and sticks. And luge... everyone likes sledding. Luge takes everyone's childhood sledding fantasy and hops it up on speed. Everyone always wanted to go faster; luge is the epitome of that desire. And when lugers (not Lugers; that's a gun) foul up, it's spectacular. A few rounds of that- even highlights, really- would have spiced up the evening's programme and been better than ten sob stories.
Instead, we get... snowboarding.
We saw five different people compete on these snowboards. Multiple times. Never mind the fact that there were 29 other competitors in the event. I bet some of those 29 must have had a good tumble down the tube and fallen on their butt. People want to see that! A little humor adds to the excitement. Oh, wait, this isn't excitement, it's snowboarding. And while the competitors acted like teenage girls ("Like omigod I totally won a gold medal it's so awesome and wow neat and stuff omigod!"), the announcers were, in fact, worse. "That was a HUGE move. Just... wow. Her techniques are huge in this run. It is an awesome showing." No, I'm actually not making that line up. Hell, instant replays from the Winter Olympics four years ago would have been better than Snowboarding.
And then, figure skating.
I suppose I'm in the minority on planet Earth on this one- I'm just not a big fan of figure skating. In this case, I'll accept the fact that I'm an objectivist rules nazi. I like sports that are absolutes. For instance, how does one win a race of skiing, running, swimming, or skating? Fastest time. How does one win a javelin toss or ski jump? Longest distance. These are absolute uncontested victories. How does one win a soccer match, or a football game, or a hockey game? Most points scored. These are mostly uncontested, allowing for the always possible "bad call" from referees. But "ice dancing" and "figure skating"... while they get points for moves done in their routine, there is a lot of subjectivity involved in the scoring. However, this is only my opinion, and most other people like the figure skating events, so we'll let my opinion slide.
That aside, though, this event was chock full of the aforementioned trauma stories, like Yao, the coach who invented ice, skating, rinks, skaters, skintight uniforms, hydrogen and oxygen just so that China could compete in the Winter Olympic theatre, or the Russian who dropped his partner on the ice hard in 2004 and concussed her and then was sad and guilty and emo for months and months, and so on. At least a half hour wasted on mindless jabber. ACK! Call the efficiency police, pronto! NBC is guilty of capital crimes!
The highlight, of course, was watching Zhang attempt a quad salchow and instead sprawl hard and bust up her knees on the ice. Seeing the coach icing her knee afterwards was delicious irony. That's right- I do like figure skating just to watch people fall on the ice. I'm mean that way. And, in the end, the unsmiling Russians did not reconcuss themselves and took gold. One has to ask, though: What would Brian Boitano do?
Finally, speed skating. Ah, here's an event that gets the heart racing. It's fast and furious. It's easy to mess up. And, as someone pointed out, "Wow, you can see quite a lot on that tight uniform of his."
Three cheers for Joey Cheek for doing well and beating Spider-Canadian and looking completely surprised while winning. Congratulations also for not having your sob story about North Carolina's lack of snow hindering your desire to speed skate broadcast every five minutes on the dot.
And finally, some simple mathematics on the subject of efficiency. In 3.5 hours, NBC showed 15 snowboard runs (about 1 minute a piece), 10 figure skating pairs (probably 4-7 minutes a piece), and at least 6 speed skating runs at about 90 seconds each. I missed the first few minutes of the night, so maybe something else happened there. This adds up to a whopping 94 minutes of action tops. Add 10% for scoring and you have about 103 minutes clocked. 103/210 minutes is less than 50%. SO MUCH MINDLESS JABBER!
Anyway, that's it. Happy V-day, go play ljdq, and may the Force be with you. Unless you're in Pod Six. Jerks.