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Tuesday, August 12, 2008

going for the gold

I'm not an obsessive Olympic watcher - especially not when I live thirteen hours behind the events and you can check the scores long before you watch if you so desire. But still... I get sucked in anyway. And even if it's clear that some of the Chinese female gymnasts are closer to to playground age than sixteen. Or if because of the long delay between actual event and US evening broadcast they can follow up someone's win with a commercial featuring him. Or if I know I'm waiting fruitlessly for any real discussion of those pesky human rights violations...

It's great to watch Michael Phelps win. Okay, it's even greater to watch him in that half pulled down onesy thing they wear to swim in. (husband ruins my moment by referring to it as tight capri pants, but whatever) And it's great to watch the phenomenal Dara (sp?) Torres in her 41 year old totally ripped and absolutely awesome glory!

And it's great to have a couple of weeks where winning is the objective. Get out of our "well, as long as you tried" mentality that I have less and less patience for these days because the world seems to use it as an excuse as to why it's someone else's fault if things don't get done or work is shoddy or Johnny is failing. Doping and cheating birth certificates aside, either Johnny won the race or he didn't. There is no middle ground.

On another note - finally got myself to Dark Knight. Oh Heath Ledger. You died far too soon. Sometimes I had to cover my eyes because I really believed he might just cut someone's face to ribbons just for grins. And yeah, the movie was too long. And a few plot threads got ignored. But that performance was worth the ticket price.

Til next time...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I LOVE THE OLYMPICS. I'm not normally a big sports fan (duh), but its the freakin Olympics for God's sake!!!! There's Michael Phelps, there's the U.S. Men's Gymnastics team that everyone wrote off. I even watched synchronized diving!! Good grief!!! I LOVE IT!!!!

Anonymous said...

The whole sychronized diving thing is fun, but a little weird. Although it did spur us on last night to try eating our dinner in absolute unison. 1, 2, 3 - bite. Um - yeah. Very strange.
Joy