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.