So is everyone else watching the Olympics, too? I just turn them on when I get home at night and watch or half-watch them for hours while I do my homework and check email. Can I just say that the funniest thing that has happened so far was when Steven Colbert was pointing out that the fireplace on the NBC interview set was fake, and he crawled inside it (with “flames” roaring) to prove it? I admit I was fooled by the fire before that — it looked real to me right up until there was a human on top of it not being burned alive.
As for the Games themselves, this will totally mark me as a softie but I don’t like to see anyone fall at the Olympics, regardless of what country they’re from. It’s so heartbreaking! You just know how many hours of seriously hard work they must have put into their sport, and if that jump or trick or whatever is included in their performance you know they must’ve landed it a thousand times in practice. Oof, it just gets me in the gut. My mother-in-law cannot stand any sports competitions that are close, she only likes blowouts one way or the other (she of course prefers her children or her favorite teams to win, but if they can’t win, she just wants them to lose in a landslide so it’s not nerve-wracking). She has four kids, all of whom are athletes, so she’s sat through plenty of games, but from what I hear she just couldn’t bear to watch if it was a neck-and-neck game. I always thought that was funny, since most people really want to see a good game (as long as their team wins), but I think the way I feel when one of those poor skaters takes a tumble or when a snowboarder hits the ledge of the halfpipe is how she must feel the entire game when it’s close.
I do like all the trivia I’m learning from Olympic watching. First, did you know that the ice skating jump that sounds like “sow cow” is spelled Salchow? Second, I didn’t know that slalom skiers are actually punching down those poles with their fists as they go through each gate — I never noticed that until I saw them show it in slow motion. Third, amidst all their tricks, halfpipe snowboarders have to include one straight line jump with no spinning, to prove to the judges they have control. Fourth, there is such a thing as the double luge. I already think it’s strange enough that the luge exists as a sport, and when someone announced the double luge coming up next after these commercials, I thought they were kidding. Ooh, but the one I REALLY don’t understand is the skeleton. Maybe this is because I have a very strange fear of knocking my front teeth out, but even disregarding that, if you plan to speed down an icy mountain on a curvy track at more than 80 miles per hour, why would you lead with your face? Watching people fall may be heartbreaking, but at least that’s metaphorical. I don’t really want to watch the skeleton, just in case heartbreaking turns into facebreaking. Ouch.
– Erin
