Olympic Soup - A Garnish

Silly me for posting my Olympic themed blog prior to the games even being over! Last night I saw something that made me laugh out loud.

So, it's 11:30 at night and I crawl into bed and decide what to fall asleep to. Yes, I fall asleep to TV. It's pathetic and I admit it. Anyway, I start scanning what's on using my handy dandy "guide" feature, which, by the way, I LOVE! Thank you, Comcast for not making me have to (A) look at EACH channel and then try to remember which ones looked interesting, and (B) keep track of some ridiculous paper guide that changes every week (although I do admit that, when we only had 5 channels, that was one of my favorite pieces of literature in the house. It was like my own personal organizer for the coming week).

Digression aside, I'm going through the guide and get to MSNBC and see that the games are still on. Now, honestly, MSNBC and CNBC really air mostly the strange and weird of the Olympics. The fairly normal, mainstream coverage goes to NBC and these two offshoots seem to be treated as the ugly, redhaired stepchildren. This is, of course, where I watched the aforementioned presentation of Dancing With the Horses and the grisly accident scene called Men's Speed Walking, so it really should have been no huge surprise to find some other Olympic anomoly. Anyway, I tune in just as the announcer (some woman that I have never seen or heard of before...of course) states that they will be joining the Men's Open Swim competition in progress. "Great!" I muse, "Never seen this before; it can't be all that strange since it's just guys swimming, right?" Wrong.

OK, the guys swimming is not so weird but the first shot is an aerial one that shows the pod of thrashing bodies in the water. It kind of looked like a school of flying fish buzzing along. Arms coming up here and there only to dive back down to the depths without so much as a wave or OK sign. "Not so bad," I'm thinking. Then we go to a more water level shot. Apparently the camera is on a boat or something that is stationed a bit ahead of the swimmers. In the foreground, though, are a bunch of Chinese men standing on a dock with metal poles out over the water. What the hell? As the swimmers get closer to the dock, these little men begin wildly waving their poles over the water (that didn't sound right). Just very weird. It looks like they're fishing. Everyone jockeying for position because the flying fish are spawning and, if you're going to fish for flying fish, of course your pole must be above the water in the air so that they can grab at the bait as they glide by, right? At this point I begin wondering about what kind of bait one uses for flying fish. Worm? Corn? Fly??? aahh hahahahaha I crack myself up; spent too much time working in the fishing industry, I guess.

Anyhoo...the swimmers approach, the poles begin waving, the Chinese men begin yelling and then it happens... FISH ON!! A flying fish arm comes leaping from the water and grabs at the pole! Again, what the hell? Is it like tag team open water swimming? One after another, the ends of the poles are grabbed at and I begin to notice that something is being removed from those poles. Just when I'm fully confused, the commentator announces that it's really important to keep one's calorie count up during long races like this, so the swimmers are snagging some food. ????? Yes, they're paper cups filled with some kind of foodstuff. So, they were fishing and they did have bait!! The best part is that they even call the little dock that they were standing on to fish a feeding station!!! How weird is THAT?? Now I'm all curious about what they're eating, though, and just how does one hack down some granola or something whilst swimming at breakneck speed? And, where do they throw the cup when they're done? Is there a designated river skimmer that goes out and nets them all after the school has passed? So many questions...

So, one more Olympic event that I don't really understand. I won't even get into the fact that swimming in a river in China sounds icky to me. Didn't these boys ever read The Yellow River by I.P. Freely? Eeeww...

PS. It has been suggested that I be a correspondent during the next Olympic games. To that, I say, Bring It ON!! That would be so cool! Maybe Colbert needs someone to fill that position. That would be fun.

Olympic Soup

Olympic Soup

Oh, it's been so long since I've blogged! How have any of you survived? ; )

So, the title of today's blog is Olympic Soup because, like soup, it contains a little bit of everything regarding my thoughts on the Olympics. I confess that I am an Olympics junkie. I'll watch almost any competition at least for a little while. I was so excited when they went to an every-two-years format so that I only have to wait 2 years between getting to spend 2 weeks out of my year plastered to the TV. OK, realistically, that happens other times but it usually involves some reality show marathon that I'm too embarrassed to share with you that I watch. Have I mentioned that Bret Michaels is still hot to look at? ahem... as always, I digress...

So, the first ingredient in Olympic Soup is, of course, fashion! What was up with those outfits the US wore in the opening ceremonies? It's like 90 degrees outside with 97% humidity and they dress them in suits and those ridiculous hats? The chick on Project Runway that won the Olympic wear challenge did a better job in my opinion. I KNOW someone threatened those athletes with bodily harm in order to (A) get them to wear the hats and (B) wear them the right way. I didn't see a single hat cocked to the side or worn backward, either of which would have been an enormous improvement. I'd like to thank, though, whoever designed the men's swimming outfits. A departure from Speedo's is always welcome. Might we find something with a little more cool factor for the indoor women cyclists to wear on their heads, though, than the alien looking helmets they currently don? Seriously, it looks like the alien head from all the Alien movies. I expect a disgruntled cyclist to have a secondary mouth come out of her face and eat an opponent.

You be the judge.

Ingredient number two for a good Olympic Soup is multiple flavors (countries). Now, here's where I get a little cranky. I love the fact that so many countries are represented and that there appears to be such an international flavor to the games. For the most part, everyone seems to be pretty chummy, too, and showing loads of good sportsmanship. However, what's the deal with all these people competing for other countries that otherwise live and train in the US? Uh...if you were born, yes born, in the US, live in the US and train in the US, why would you compete for another country? Oh, there's the fact that your parents were born there, but YOU weren't. You don't live there; you don't train there, so why represent them? I don't get that. I can trace my family tree back to Sweden but I wouldn't compete for them in the Olympics. Seriously, if you live, train and otherwise compete here why not represent the place you have already said by your actions is your destination of choice? Maybe the reason you don't train in your "home" country is because anyone worth their salt doesn't train there because the country's training sucks. If the training there sucks so bad, stick around and improve it since you're such a stellar athlete. There's one chick from Australia that went to college in the US, was a roommate and teammate of US athletes, and has now lived in the US and trained at a US facility for the last eight years. EIGHT YEARS!!! I just don't get that. Either be Australian or not. Talk about wishy washy. So, yeah, that kind of irks me. Maybe the reason everyone has been so nice to each other is that they really are used to hanging out together on a regular basis anyway.

The third and final ingredient is multiple events. I've seen some this year that I didn't even know existed. I watched some of the equestrian competition, which I expected to be some kind of riding thing like you see snobby English people do - you know, jumping over bars and moats and stuff - but was surprised to find that it's about the horse more than it is about the rider. Basically, it's the floor exercise for horses. They prance around and do all kinds of little steps that, honestly, I've never seen a horse do before but that's beside the point. I found it to be an elevated version of Stupid Pet Tricks. Yeah, yeah, the horse will only do this if the rider gives them the proper cues but so do racing pigs, right? When will that be an Olympic sport. Or maybe the dog competitions with those border collies that run through the obstacle course as fast as lightening. They're just following cues, right? So, how is the horse thing any different? I found it ridiculous.

Another sport that I tuned into by accident that was a little disturbing to watch? Men's 20k speed walking. It's bad enough to watch one person do that hitchy speed walking thing but to watch a whole herd of them is weird. Kind of like a freak show that you know you shouldn't watch because it would be disrespectful but you're nonetheless transfixed. I find it all so odd. I swear I'm going to see one of them dislocate a hip someday.

And, that brings me to sports I'd like to see at the Olympics. How about competitive TP'ing? My own home was hit for the first time shortly before the opening ceremonies. It was a fine job and now I know why I was awoken to a thumping on the roof somewhere around 3am.

My thought is that the judging can be somewhat like the gymnastics judging. First you get a score based on difficulty. This particular job I would give a 5.8. Then you start out with a perfect 10 for execution and receive deductions from there. So, with a potential overall score of 15.8, I would give this project a final score of 14.95. The picture doesn't do it justice but there were beautiful tails dancing in the breeze from the tree branches. Truth be told, there's still some there today. However, there were two rolls that were not completely used and the empty tubes that were there were not used as creatively as they could of been. Really, I think this would be a great Olympic sport. There could be an individual competition, team, relays, etc. It involves creative skill, athletic ability and the ever important stealth.

I think there should be a rifle competition that involves a potato gun, too. A homemade potato gun. Not only must you be skilled in the construction but you must overcome any shortcomings your gun may have such as sighting a bit to the left for instance. Make the stakes even higher and require that the athletes grow and harvest their own potatoes! Multiple skills represented, engineering ability required...it all seems quite plausible.

There should be ice blocking. Of course, that would be in the winter games, though. Again, lots of room for different competitions with this. Individual, team, relay... There could be competitions based on speed as well as creative/artistic presentation. It's a no brainer. If you've ever been ice blocking before, you know that there is a fair amount of athletic ability that factors in. You have to be able to balance on something rather small, you have to be able to keep your legs up in the air for the duration of the run, you have to choose the best course, etc. Injuries do occur, too, so that makes it officially athletic in nature.

So, now you have Olympic Soup. All you need now is an appropriate label. Thank you, NBC for providing one for me so I didn't have to spend time creating one in Microsoft Paint! Honestly, the first time I saw this on the TV screen, I thought it was a Campbell's Soup label. Look away and then just glance at it again. Campbell's Soup all the way. Replace the 2008 with the word "soup", change the "Beijing" to "Olympic", lose the peacock and it's done!

Olympic Soup...it's mmm, mmm good!