Summer Medal Moments

It’s official: I’ve gone into Olympics withdrawals. Granted, I’m probably not as down as the London cleanup crews or vendors stuck with shelves of historically unpopular official souvenirs, but now that the 2012 Summer Olympics have come and gone, I’ll have to wait two whole years until the Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.

With the bizarrely boring spectacle of the 2012 closing ceremonies still on my mind, some closing thoughts of my own:

Baseball and Softball were both eliminated from this year’s summer games. Did you miss them? Me either. And how cool was it to watch South Africa’s Oscar Pistorius running on carbon blade legs alongside other world-class athletes? I don’t understand, however, why all the commentators kept comparing him to his “able bodied” competitors. Mr. Pistorius seems mightily abled to me.

All total, there were10,500 athletes from 204 countries in these Summer Olympics. Watching the opening ceremony, I wanted an atlas nearby to see where some of these countries are on the map. I mean, Benin? Burkina Faso? Kiribat? They made those up, right?

On the other hand, I had no trouble recognizing where a whopping 128 members of Team USA came from – right here in California. In fact, I read somewhere that if California had entered its own Olympic team, the Golden State would have had a larger presence at the London Games than Mexico, Turkey, Switzerland and many other countries. Maybe next Olympics we could have a smaller “California” flag for in the opening ceremony? Probably not.  

Speaking of that weird opening ceremony, the producers could have saluted the British National Health Service without the thousands of dancing nurses, patients and hospital beds and simply wheeled out a humongous set of British teeth. Ta da!!: the nation’s health system in one image. And the closing ceremonies were, well, unique. At first I thought they were a big flop, until NBC cut them short for a preview of their new show, Animal Practice, which made the closing ceremonies look stunning by comparison.

You won’t be surprised, but I did have a few questions while watching the Games these past two weeks. Like, can swimmers sweat in the pool? And, if the women beach volleyball players have to wear barely-there-bikinis as official outfits, why don’t the men have to wear Speedos? (On second thought, never mind. Men’s diving was already difficult enough to watch for reasons I won’t go into here. Then again, NBC’s “splashometer” was kinda cool.)

But back to beach volleyball; being held outdoors and all, the popular competition saw its share of classically bad British weather. From pouring rain and soggy sand, to sand that was so cold one of our Team USA women needed a medical time-out due to loss of feeling in her toes. So here’s a thought: why not hold events that can be affected by bad weather indoors and move things like swimming outdoors? I mean, what swimmer is going to be upset if it rains? Just wondering.

Watching both the men’s and women’s runners as they stood waiting to start their respective races reminded me of the way frighteningly powerful dragsters vibrate with pent up speed as they wait in the staging area for the green light. The sprinters seem to quiver with the same barely restrained energy just waiting to be unleashed. Impressive.

Not necessarily impressive but kinda funny were the slow-motion replays of the runners’ faces as they ran towards the camera. You don’t realize how elastic the human face is until you see it in super-slo-mo under great exertion.

The phenomenal Usain Bolt may be the fastest man alive, but certainly not the most humble. Wow, if he wore red, white and blue I wonder if the press would be as enamored of his antics. Not likely.

I’ll admit to being baffled by the number of athletes from other countries who – lo and behold – are coached and train right here in the USA. If I ran the games, the rule would be you compete for the country where you live and train. Period. Otherwise, let’s just turn these things into the genetic games. It’s wonderful that 400-meter hurdles gold medal winner Felix Sanchez won at the ripe old age of 34. Well done, sir. Except – here’s a guy who was born in New York City, raised in California, attended high school here, ran for and graduated from USC and yet he represented the Dominican Republic in the 2012 Summer Games. Um, okay. Or how about Kirani James, Grenada’s home-grown sprinting hero, who, in order to compete at world class levels trains at the University of Alabama. The British are understandably proud of Team GB’s 10,000-meter gold medalist, Mo Farah who trains in … wait for it … Portland, Oregon. And on, and on, and on. Here’s a suggestion: why not hold all the Summer Games in the U.S. since it seems like the great majority of competitors spend most of their time here anyway?

And then there’s the Olympic flame itself. Did you seen that massive cauldron? No? Neither did most of the people attending the Summer Games in London. That’s because the good folks in charge of the flaming cauldron installed it deep down inside the main stadium where only those with the money and fortitude to get a ticket inside are able to see the thing. Every other Olympic flame has burned high and bright on top of the stadium or some other elevated position so all within the geographic area could see it, be inspired by it. I heard that if the wind is right and it’s not raining, you could almost see a heat shimmer rising above the stadium walls. Not too inspirational. In its low-lying position off to the side of the track and field events, even on TV it looked like an oversized campfire that someone left burning.

As far as NBC’s coverage of the games, I would have preferred that they spend less airtime showing us the hobbies and friends and favorite foods and pets of the American athletes and a lot more time showing more actual competition. I could also have done with fewer preliminary events vs. seeing more final events of different sports that aren’t normally broadcast in primetime – events like archery, trap shooting, weight lifting, table tennis, kayaking, even that controversy-rich, scandal-plagued sport of badminton! I’d rather see world-class competitors in those sports than to learn what Ryan Lochte likes to eat for breakfast before a race. And cutting away from the closing ceremonies to air a preview of their ultra-lame new “comedy,” Animal Practice? The biggest boneheaded blunder yet. Even if the show was in any way funny, the network numbnuts responsible for that move probably doomed the show at the outset.

One last Olympic thought; I’m certainly glad that us mere mortals don’t have that bright yellow line constantly moving out in front of us to show how close or far away we are to breaking records with our performance. That dang line would always be several Zip codes away from me.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Game(s) On

If medals were awarded for watching Olympics coverage, I’d win gold. Guaranteed. I’m an Olympics junkie. People who know me know I’ve never followed professional basketball or football (although I do like to watch the Super Bowl every year strictly for the commercials), and most baseball games can put me out faster than a Thanksgiving turkey stuffed with Ambien. But the Olympics? I’ll watch as much as I possibly can from every media source available.

The Winter Games are my favorite, but the Summer Games are a silver second in my personal rankings. Lest you think that watching the games is all about world harmony and appreciation of athletic prowess, however, for me it’s much more than that. Sure, I watch in awe at those teeny tiny gymnasts who are all focus and ferocity, flipping themselves over, under and above the mats, uneven bars and balance beams. And the runners and swimmers, divers and rowers are all just as thrilling and inspiring to watch.

But it’s also great fun to see a somewhat obscure sport (at least for the West Coast) like skeet/trap shooting capture brief worldwide attention. I cheered loudly for Southern California’s own Kimberly Rhode as she became the first American to medal in five consecutive Olympics by blasting past her competition to take the gold in Women’s Skeet. My shoulder hurt watching her score a near perfect 99 out of 100 hits on the clay targets, turning them into clouds of orange dust with each pull of her over-under shotgun’s trigger. And archery? Please. I was a huge fan of archery long before the Hunger Games made it a fad.

Athletic skills aside, I also get a kick out of watching moments like when one of those painfully young gymnasts says to an interviewer with the utmost of sincerity, “This is something I’ve been dreaming of all my life!”  Really? All 15 years of it? That’s so cute.

I’m fascinated by the names of the athletes from around the world. For example, the Chinese trampoline champion (and gold medal winner) this year is named Dong Dong. No kidding. Now, how fun would it be if his sport was ping pong. I’d love to hear Al Michaels say, “And the gold medal winner in ping pong is Dong Dong.” Okay, so I’m also easily entertained.

There are some Olympic sports I couldn’t care less about, like basketball, soccer or tennis. We see more than enough of those sports throughout any given year. Did you really miss softball and baseball this year? Exactly. Unfortunately, in the next Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, golf will be a medal sport. Yawn. I’d much rather see competition in more obscure sports like skateboarding or even disc golf. Or why not ballroom dancing for that matter? They already do essentially the same thing on ice skates during the Winter Games. 

On the other hand, if there were an Olympic event for hair dying, NBC commentator Bob Costas would win the gold hands down. High definition TV cameras have not been kind to Mr. Costas.  

As long as I’m handing out fantasy medals, I’d like to award the entire United States a gold for diversity. I honestly haven’t seen another country whose citizenry is represented by so many beautifully different faces. Case in point: the effervescent, ridiculously gifted Gabby Douglas and her coach. Pretty cool.

As with most Olympics, there was controversy before these summer games even started. But so what if Team USA’s uniforms were made in China? Ironically, many of China’s own athletes have been training right here in the U.S. (along with many other country’s too – but more on that next week). And according to the Wall Street Journal, the Chinese athletes all wear U.S.-designed and engineered footwear and arrived at the London games on American-made airplanes. So, boo-yah. It’s a small world after all.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Primetime or Slime Time?

It might surprise some readers, but I’m actually not old enough to have watched original broadcasts during the infamous “golden days” of television. You know, those days when Lucy and Ricky Ricardo’s bedroom had two twin beds in it lest viewers get the idea that they actually slept together as husband and wife – or when Gone with the Wind couldn’t be shown on network television without censoring Rhett Butler’s shocking “Frankly, my dear …” rebuke to Scarlet.

I did watch every saccharin-sweet episode of Flipper and Lassie, but also grew up watching Roadrunner/Wiley Coyote and Bugs Bunny cartoons with more violence (albeit of the animated type) every five minutes than an entire hour-long episode of CSI today. I would plant my wide-eyed self in front of our family’s black and white TV so I wouldn’t miss a single episode of Sea Hunt or the Rifleman (I can even tell you how many shots Lucas McCain fired from his modified lever-action Winchester in the opening of the show each week*).

I developed a deep appreciation for fantasy and horror shows with a regular diet of Fright Night, Creature Features, Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, the Twilight Zone, the Outer Limits, the Night Stalker and other deliciously scary shows. Good times, indeed.

I’ve been thinking about TV and how it’s changed over the years because the U.S. Supreme Court this week began considering whether the Federal Communications Commission’s efforts to police the national airwaves for “dirty words and images” violate the broadcast-television industry’s right to free speech. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, if the Supremes side with broadcasters, industry experts say that networks are poised to begin showing racier content and/or language like that now found on cable-channels, Internet video domains and other forms of entertainment that aren’t subject to the FCC’s indecency standards.

As if network TV isn’t already “racy” enough. If you watch any network lineup, you know there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of censorship or standards of any kind being imposed on broadcasters.

NBC’s Wednesday night lineup makes my point. For example, a week ago on the network’s new hit show, Whitney, the entire “plot” involved Whitney catching her live-in boyfriend in the act of, well, let’s just say he was taking matters into his own hand. Next up, the pilot episode of Are You There Chelsea? dealt with that endlessly hilarious subject of a DUI conviction. Too funny. After that, the season premier of Suburgatory  was about the lead character, Tessa – a high school student – trying to convince a new student to admit he was gay. By the end of the episode it was actually the school’s guidance counselor who came bursting out of the closet. And yes, Suburgatory is a comedy. LOL.

Of course, if you’ve ever seen Fox’s mega-hit show Glee, you know that when the students at McKinley High are boning up on their studies, it has nothing to do with cracking the books.

And there’s the wholesome (hole-some?) family entertainment flushed into living rooms each week courtesy of CBS and its highest rated show, Two-and-a-half Men. To be fair, the show is brilliantly written and acted and I’ve laughed my head off whenever I’ve watched. But I could never watch with anyone below the age of 18 in the room, and even then I would feel awkward. It’s raunchy stuff. In fact, about the only thing it – and the majority of other primetime shows on the networks don’t have – are the actual swear words and full frontal nudity still banned by the FCC. But it looks like that may soon be changing, as well.

I’ll have more thoughts on this subject next week. So, as they say in TV land, stay [bleep]in’ tuned.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

(* For the record, the Rifleman fires 13 shots from an 11-round capacity rifle. Nice trick.)

Note: This is a post of my column first published yesterday, 1.19.12, in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2012 WordChaser, Inc. 

Wondering All Over the Map

I often wonder if other people wonder about so many different things like I do on any given day. How bad is it? Well, here are just a few musings from my personal wonderland of late:

I wonder …  how much money AT&T and Charter waste on my mailing address alone each month? A week hasn’t gone by for as long as I can remember that I don’t receive two or three solicitations in the mail for this U-verse bundle or that Charter package. Here’s an idea; why not bundle up the cost of wasted paper and postage and have these relentless marketers subtract it from my monthly bill?

I wonder …  why the price of gas jumps up by three or four cents a gallon overnight, but when it goes down, it’s more like seven-tenths of one cent over a week or longer. The least the oil refiners could do is buy us dinner first.

I wonder … why left-leaning pundits and professors are quick to say that all cultures and faiths are equally important and have something to offer. And yet, these same counter-culture educators, protestors, peaceniks, alternative lifestylers and other aggressively anti-conservative activists would be the first ones on a long list of people and groups to be silenced and locked up (or worse) if those same supposedly egalitarian cultures and/or religions ever establish a majority foothold in America. As for me and my house, I fervently pray that we as a country wake up and not only appreciate, but promote and teach our Western values and traditional American liberties before they’re taken from us either by force, fiat, foreign zealots, activist judges or power-drunk fundamentally transforming socialist politicians. One and done, folks. One and done.

I wonder …  who, if anyone, bought the 6.20 carat diamond solitaire ring I saw available at Costco.com recently for $1 million? What do you think that conversation would go like? “Sweetcakes, I love you so much, I got you a little something. Now, don’t worry, it was only a million bucks at Costco. Oh, and I picked up some more toilet paper, dish soap and a big honkin’ bottle of fish oil capsules, too.” Brings a tear to your eye, doesn’t it? Then again, I’m an incurable romantic.

I wonder …  if I’ll ever be at an economic place that I don’t start laughing hysterically when I get an unsolicited email blast about special jet discounts now available for all my private aviation needs. If these people knew that the only “flying” I’m likely to do these days is off the second story balcony of my home office when I can’t figure out how to pay the bills any given week. Sigh. It is fun to dream, though.

I wonder …  why I’ve never before heard the term “haboob” to describe the massive sand storms that roll across the summer landscape in Arizona. This seems to be the year of the haboob – and I’m not talking about our current Vice President. Rim shot!

I wonder …  how I can ever thank the star-makers at NBC News enough for promoting Ann Curry, the former overly empathetic, drippingly sentimental and hyper-politically correct news-reader on their flagship TODAY Show, to her new position of co-couch-sitter alongside Matt Lauer. I now have one less weekday morning distraction and am able to work on pressing projects much sooner than I used to. Not that the über-liberal Ms. Curry is ideologically any different from her predecessors, Meredith Viera and that irrepressible cheerleader for all left-leaning causes, Katie Couric. Heavens, no. It’s just that Ms. Curry’s interviews and “reportage” drip so heavily with breathless sincerity, hand-wringing angst and feigned concern, she routinely gets in the way of her stories and subject matter. The power-off button on my remote is so much easier to push on now.

Whew. See what I mean? It’s a wonder I get anything done. I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a repost of my edited column first published yesterday, 9.1.11, in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

A Pitchy Performance

I confess to having purposely avoided watching NBC's "new hit smash, critically acclaimed show" The Voice. For one thing, I'm not a fan whatsoever of the so-called coaches that mentor the contestants each week -- especially Cee Lo Green and Christina Aguilera – who I think both can each be blamed for single-handedly degrading the standards and quality of popular culture.

I also don’t have any desire to get sucked into yet another talent/reality show having been a devoted follower of all things American Idol for the past too many years and a sometime watcher of America’s Got Talent – now that Howie Mandel has replaced the laughably lame David Hasselhoff, the show is actually mildly entertaining at times.

Having said that – the first ever live!! (except on the west coast, of course) episode of The Voice happened to come on at my house last night and nobody in the room was interested or energetic enough to reach for the remote to change the channel to something less mind-numbing. Pathetic, right?

So through the process of digital osmosis, I wound up half-watching most of an episode. Unfortunately.

Last night’s show opened with the four celebrity coaches “singing” a mashup of Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and “We Are The Champions.” I put that verb in quotes because – in all honesty, and with the possible exception of the non-rocker of the group, country star, Blake Shelton – having sung as poorly as they did on last night’s show, I can’t imagine any of the four celebri-singers making it past initial auditions for The Voice, Idol, America’s Got Talent or even the old Star Search show with Ed McMahon.

I mean, seriously? They forgot lyrics, mumbled, sang off-mike and were at least a half-step below most of the late great Freddie Mercury’s high notes. Talk about pitchy. It was painful. As in, dawg, I’m just not feelin’ it. Watching these supposed pros stumble and struggle through the opening number, I could only hope that the live show wouldn’t be the death of their careers. Then again …  

What night is Glee on?