I was looking for something that was enough of a spectacle to justify keeping the TV on, but I turned it off after 30 minutes.
There was something deeply odd about the use of great masses of people. For all that, it was awesome. We should have the Olympics in incredibly massive countries with lots of wealth that are still kind of striving more often.
Also are spoilers allowed in this thread?
Something that strikes me in retrospect is them cutting to Putin and Bush leaning over chatting. What were they saying, in light of Georgia?
3: My moral instincts go to: things already taken place but not yet broadcast in the US = bad; things broadcast in the US = OK; things already taken place but never to be broadcast in the US = bad.
Oops, that should be OK for the third there.
All other countries being enjoined to suck it, as is natural.
6: so no can do on Bush licking Putin's ear, per category three?
Oh, phew per 7.
I really liked when they had the giant buddhist monk made of light and they used fireworks to make it look like he set himself on fire.
Oh, phew per 7.
I really liked when they had the giant buddhist monk made of light and they used fireworks to make it look like he set himself on fire.
McCain shortened the "celebrity" ad to take out the Britney/Paris mentions.
What were they saying, in light of Georgia?
Bush (sings): "That's the night when the lights went out in Georgia".
Putin: Heh.
Spoiler: Hundreds of dissidents in jail, but no massacres on the Munich 1972 scale, much less the Mexico City 1968 scale. The stadium seems far less likely to collapse than the Montreal stadium.
"I've killed way more people than are in this stadium right now."
"Heh."
It doesn't really matter which one says what.
We so need new announcers. Oh, the inscrutable Chinese, so precise in their giant circle in the Opening Ceremony! However do they do it? I must understand the Eastern mind.
(God, Costas. The tai chi-ers are standing IN STRAIGHT LINES. Stagger the lines, get the effect of a curve. They line up in STRAIGHT LINES. In this country we can see this inscrutable effect in marching bands.)
Bush is looking like a bored petulant teenager.
I put nbcolympics.com on my desktop and am trying to get live badminton up.
16: Please tell me that Costas wasn't the one spouting nonsense. I really sort of like Costas, largely because he usually doesn't do stupid shit like that.
5 made me laugh out loud. Good joke, B.
I am having zero luck with the live online video feeds.
Here's the index page
Nuts to all of you. I was suitably impressed, and I hate teh Olympics. It was enough to make many of my fellow Sydney-siders recoil in horror at the idea that their "best Olympics EVAAAR BIATCH" mantle could be taken from them.
And the whole time I was imagining a bunch of London ceremony designers saying to themselves, "Oh for fucks sake!"
I really liked the Opening Ceremonies. China put on a beautiful show. I just wish our announcers would shut up.
I think pretty much any event can be improved by Bob Costas shutting up during it.
I think pretty much any event can be improved by Bob Costas shutting up during it.not being involved in any capacity.
We have our annoying sports announcer equivalents in Aus. Fortunately, they completely screwed up the sound feed during the better parts of the ceremony and you could watch the lightshow in blistfull silence. But it is this Bob Costas you speak of that bad?
But it is this Bob Costas you speak of that bad?
You have no idea.
Bob Costas is the best American sports announcer. IMHO. But I admit I am not listening to his current Olympic coverage.
He is, however, usually intelligent and somewhat thoughtful.
29 is correct, but in 28's defense, it's a pretty shallow pool.
I will concede, though, that Costas is good at giving the impression of being intelligent and thoughtful... until you actually listen to what he's saying.
31 is the basic reason that sports coverage in the US tends to suck. More about form than substance, and never seems to know when to shut up.
An old friend used to be Costas's assistant. She said that he's an absolutely great guy. Not just great for a celebrity, mind you, but great for a random tiny guy from Missouri.
That said, someone should do the world a favor and clip his vocal chords. Or make him wear one of those electronic anti-bark collars for the rest of his life.
Bob Costas once referred to Cy Young as having "won" a lot of games, so Josh hates him with the fiery intensity of a thousand suns.
I apologize, Juicy, that that joke makes no sense whatsoever to you (as an Australian).
No need to apologize. You can all have your fun now while I await the imminent Antipodean domination of the Earth.
Not just great for a celebrity, mind you, but great for a random tiny guy from Missouri.
I'd confess to a healthy dose of scepticism on this point, except that I'd hate to think that you might think that I was sneering at you.
Otherwise, I have no opinion on Bob Costas whatsoever, though I can't help noting that he always looks...eager.
36: No, really. And my friend was quite the cynic, not easily wowed by celebrity or niceness. Apparently he's just a very, very nice person -- who completely sucks at his job.
Also, you can sneer at me whenever you want. That was the point of my comment last night.
though I can't help noting that he always looks...eager.
I just looked this guy up and after reading that all I can imagine is being molested by a warren of botoxed circus midgets.
How much must it suck to be in an Olympic delegation of 2 and not be the one who gets to carry the flag?
British soccer announcers should do all sporting events worldwide.
Also, you can sneer at me whenever you want.
Ah, that's sweet. But I'm sure I would never want to sneer at you, Ari. You know: Budge McFarland, and all the rest of it.
Now, when you say "Bob Costas," what do you mean by that?
37: Costas prattles on during opening ceremonies, but at least he's less of a horror than Joe Buck would be. *shudder*
39: It would be awesome. I bet those flags are freaking heavy.
I checked to see if BBC America was showing it too just so that I could avoid the annoying coverage.
If I'm not mistaken, Matt Lauer was co-hosting with Bob Costas. Matt Lauer is so much worse and so much stupider than Costas.
To be fair to Costas, when he fills in for a political reporter he asks much more substantive questions that the regular reporter. Of course, saying that he's better than the typical American political reporter or news anchor is not saying much.
No reason to sneer at Canadians. They come that way.
40: British soccer announcers should do all sporting events worldwide American political coverage.
Sports reporting is a funny area. It's sort of a silly topic, but a lot of pretty good writers end up doing it, just because there aren't a lot of niches for writers. Sports reporters get a freer rein than straight reporters with regard to writing style, etc.
So a lot of sports reporters are actually pretty smart guys.
Of course, part of it is that political reporting is terribly degraded. In a sane world Olbermann would get a B-, but graded on a curve he gets an A+.
48: Yes, and I think the fact that much of what sportswriters cover takes place in the open, constrained by rules, with well-defined outcomes, and observed by many relatively knowledgeable people means that they have learned to stay anchored at least a little bit to objective reality (You can wax lyrical about "blue-grey October skies" all you want, but if you try to ascribe the four horsemen of the apocalypse to the losing Army team rather than Notre Dame you're fucked.) They aren't necessarily as sensitive to nuance when they get into political coverage, but as we have all seen and suffered under, one man's nuance is another man's political elite-favoring biased narrative.
As I've said, sports is sort of the flagship of the newspaper biz, because when they consistently get sports scores right people unconsciously assume that they probably get the big stuff right too.
Relevant cartoon from Keith Knight: If Bush were a sports manager. (The interesting part being not his actions, but the universal opprobrium from Americans that would attach in that context.)
So a lot of sports reporters are actually pretty smart guys.
I this was truer in the past than it is now. Or it might still be true if you read longer form work in the magazines. But it is shocking how bad the writing, reporting, and analysis often is.
re: 53
I don't read US newspapers, but I generally find the sports coverage in the two or three UK papers I read semi-regularly to be almost uniformly excellent.
16 51: Cala and Kraab inspired me to an analogy that is so stupidly grandiose, off-topic and just plain stupid, that I can't resist posting it here. (And with Ogged off doing the swimming commentary for Revolutionary Guard TV who cares anyway.)
The US has been like the Russian space/missile program. They had these big freaking rockets so they thought they didn't have to be smart about anything else. Just strap those big babies onto your ass and blast away. Similarly, we feel we can elect a boob for a president, run around the world acting like demented frat boys and buy half-a-billion dollars worth of crap from SkyMall Wal-Mart every day. And then you wake up one day and not only have the other guys beat you to your prime objective, they've also developed and deployed a whole boatload of valuable stuff in other areas.
I really just meant that sportwriters aren't necessarily as dorky and stupid as sports fans.
"Sports fans": e.g. you, if appropriate.
57: Yes we get it, John you ignorant slut, you're talking about Beefo Meaty.
Although one does wonder at the seemingly great familiarity you have with sports reporting, all part of a pedagogical exercise I assume.
I'm rehabbed after a steps group. If the Twins or the Vikings have a good year I fear that I might slip back into the morass of silliness and stupidity.
it is shocking how bad the writing, reporting, and analysis often is.
I only follow tennis and I know this to be god's own truth.
Sure, but who cares about tennis?
Except for Kim Clijsters (ret., Blg.), I mean.
Speaking of the Olympics (hrm ahem koff), while I hate them for making me install some horrible microsoft video player, the NBC online stuff is actually kind of rad; three hours of announcer-free badminton preliminaries is a completely different olympics-watching experience than anything on TV.
63:Ain't got an SSE processor and couldn't install. Maybe that's why I never got any of the video.
Oh well. Don't care.
Right now I'm watching some women's handball team stretch... LIVE!
Men's field handball was played at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin at the special request of Adolf Hitler[citation needed]. It was removed from the list of sports, to return as team handball in 1972 for the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. Women's team handball was added as an Olympic discipline at the 1976 Summer Olympics.
Thanks, Hitler!
Woo for her too! (I've met the other two. Sada kicked my ass in college once.)
I'm trying to find more information on the hitler/handball connection, but the internet isn't being very coöperative.
Ward and Zagunis are from Oregon. I remember Oregon's first fencing teacher, Yves Auriol (now at Notre Dame), from back in 1964. Some of my friends at Reed worked with him. About 15 years later I also had a PE class at Last Chance U. with Michael Marx, one of the most successful Amertican Olympians (I think). It was a jogging class and I outran him. He was taking it as some kind of warmup, I think.
We don't need facts, Sifu, team handball just reeks murderous hatred and vegetarianism.
His bio shows him only reaching PDX in the 1970s. Perhaps he was just visiting the year I heard about him. The Last Chance U dates match up, though.
It was Leon Auriol I knew at Reed, and Yves at Last Chance U.
History of the Auriol brothers. I really love the internet.
I also knew Laura Maskell at Last Chance U. She competed internationally for a time.
I can't believe that to watch the online video, I just had to lie and say I get cable from Time-Warner. We antenna-only riffraff aren't good enough to breathe the rarified air on Mount NBC.
79: yeah that's also retarded.
Also they seem to have pulled the badminton videos I was watching earlier. Hate, NBC. Hate on you.
You ruined things for everyone by posting about them, Sifu. But that's OK.
71: I'm trying to find more information on the hitler/handball connection
Nothing more really, but here is a CBC article giving some of the history of the sport with a great picture of the German team coming out onto the field for the 1936 final. (They won, followed by Austria and Switzerland.) They repeat the "at the request of Hitler" claim, but I am guessing they just got that from Wikipedia. I did find a place that said it was a demonstration sport at the 1928 & 1932 Games, so maybe Hitler didn't have to push too hard. Note that the game back then was played with 11-players outdoors on filed similar to soccer, it is now 7-players and indoors. The version played in '36 really only came together in the '20s, was mainly German and Danish in origin. I assume Hitler, the little baby, just wanted something else that the Germanic and Nordic countries would dominate at. (The IOC and Avery Brundage stood firm against Stuka divebombing, however.)
JP's squishy position on genocide and team handball is abhorrent to me.
JP's squishy position on genocide and team handball is abhorrent.to me.
Sorry for the mealy-mouthedness.
And it turns out that Hitler was a flip-flopper. He really was a liberal!
When, in May 1931, the International Olympic Committee awarded the 1936 Games to Germany, Hitler had denounced the Olympics as "inspired by Judaism which cannot possibly be put on in a Reich ruled by National Socialists"
NBC put the Badminton videos back!
He was just using that to get leverage on the handball question.
First handball, then the Anschluss, then Munich, and then the tanks cross the Polish border.
Shut up, Tweety. Don't ruin everything again. How can you be a sportsfan without the proper superstitions?
||
Russia is bombing the fuck out of Georgia.
Also, no more masturbating to Bernie Mac.
Sorry to be such a downer.
|>
Damn, pwned by Jesus. Bernie Mac was actually hot enough to masturbate too, as well. Unlike all those exploding Georgians.
Check out what S. Ossetia looks like.
You'd masturbate to S. Ossetia over Bernie Mac?
The Ossetes are the last descendants of the Scythians and Alans who once ruled much of Russia.
91: Yes about 70,000 people, basically one road. Check out Fistful of Euros for some further info.
93. And in the case of the Alans, much of Spain and Portugal besides. I'm not sure such sentimentalism helps here: AFAICS S. Ossetia is totally not viable as an independent state and has a huge mountain range between it and N. Ossetia. Nevertheless, given that the obvious standpoint is to hate the current Georgian and Russian governments even handedly, if the Ossetians prefer to be a Russian satellite, then good luck to them and fuck Tblisi. Georgia clearly started this war.
Woo, Mariel and Sada!
I watched a couple of Sada's bouts last night. Jesus Christ sabreurs/sabreuses have lazy posture. "Keep my off hand up? Why would I do that?"
96: HELL NO! BOMB THE RUSSKIES! I CAN'T HEAR YOU! I WANT A NAP! GRRRR!
The Iberian Alans were just a ruling elite, though. Alans also intermarried with the Bretons when the Bretons came to France. But the Ossetes speak the old Alan language, or something like it.
There's a well-developed theory that the Kind Arthur legends are as much Alan as Breton. Take that, Breton swine!
97: Um, the foilists and epeeists tend not to look like the illustrations, either. It's not actually lazy; squaring off the stance is better for explosive power, which is more important in sabre.
Um, the foilists and epeeists tend not to look like the illustrations, either.
Standards must have slipped in the [mumble] years since I fenced, then. Lord knows my instructors were always yelling at me to keep my off hand up.
It's not actually lazy; squaring off the stance is better for explosive power, which is more important in sabre.
Yeah, I know. Mostly I was always jealous that the sabreurs didn't get yelled at by *their* instructors.
All the foilists I knew were fine with keeping their offhand back. Up was sort of a bonus.
98: Great call, boss.
Bush is looking like a bored petulant teenager.
srriously. Of the ~4 billion people watching, did a single one of them, seeing Bush sitting there, slouched, scowling, his legs spread as wide a anatomically possible, not think "he looks like an ass"?
re: 101
When I fenced there were people in the club I went to who were international team members. They all looked incredibly sloppy compared to the beginner/intermediate fencers. Sword held low and droopy, etc. They were also so absurdly quick that it was pretty much impossible to hit them. I presume there's a reason for the non-textbook stance.
I was watching some today for the cycling, found some interesting things.
NBC's using about 5 channels, none all the time. On satellite—DirectTV—the cable channels have a guide showing the schedules for all of the coverage, more or less. Useful.
It's great to use your DVR to skip through.
Telemundo has some interesting stuff not available elsewhere. Even broadcast-only folks should check that out, as it's an exception to the American-contenders-only rule.
Does Ogged know Phelps just got his first gold medal? Maybe someone should call him.
104: And he kept checking his watch.
108. How to YOU know? Did he drunk-dial?
110: I don't even know if the dude has a phone. I e-mailed him your comment forthwith, with the title "OBAMA IS TEH ANTICHRIST". I encourage everybody else to do the same.
IDB, my boyfriend's brother is at a Canadian University and with the VPN or whatever it is, he can pretend to be in Canada and watch domestic stuff over the CBC.
111. The archives, Sifu, the archives.
How could you miss Ogged's epic conundrum of which phone to get? Or his phone sex with Labs?
114: Done.
Done = you prayed and then you did not tell? Do tell, I pray you.
Er, I emailed forthwith with the title "OBAMA IS TEH ANTICHRIST". I should probably not have done that.
Ogged might say he doesn't like it when you spam his inbox, but really he does.
I'm sure this has been complained about somewhere, but I can't believe NBC is still insisting on delaying live sports coverage for the west coast. It was bad enough when they had that "plausibly live" bullshit when the Olympics were in the US in 1996 and then again from Australia in 2000 and everyone who could get the internet knew that almost nothing was actually live, but now they're bragging about how they're able to bring us stuff live when that just means live in certain timezones. Almost every other channel covering almost every other sport abandoning west coast delays 10 years ago.
No kidding, eb. Like an idiot, I woke up at 7 this morning (I suppose I could just end the sentence there, but...) to watch men's basketball.
Note to self: do not rely on the TV schedule posted at nbcolympics.com. You live in the Pacific time zone, and it is full of lies.
120: they delayed Phelps's swim (which happened at 7PM EDT) on the east coast, and still branded it live. Dicks!
Huh. I guess "plausibly live" is still around.
doesn't bush usually look like a bored petulant teenager when he's not at a podium or other managed shot?
Most high-level fencers break proper form. My understanding of it was that it's to play with distance, and also to give your opponent things that look like openings but really aren't.
That is, if you look totally standard, I know exactly how far away from me you are, where your balance is, etc. But if you're "off," I have to do a lot more work to make sure I'm seeing what I think I'm seeing. And as I'm doing that work, I may come a couple millimeters too close, and bam! Free touch.
Streaming all this video makes it the BEST OLYMPICS EVER!
I have to take the minority position and admit I miss the announcers. Last week I was watching European foil championships, and the announcers (British, of course) were really fun--especially when they explained things like changes in rules, etc. If NBC actually had the running commentary they promise in their little chat boxes, that would be great, but they don't!
And now I've got all these questions! What's up with the reel-less fencing, and why does epee still have reels and mesh masks but not saber? Why isn't there any men's team foil? Why do archers drop their bows after they take a shot? Why do archers pull the bow back and squoosh their nose? Why are they all wearing the same silly hats? Why are people wearing glasses instead of contacts? How does the rain make it harder to shoot?
I am going on the record as admitting I am stupid and I want announcers to spoon-feed me answers to my stupid questions and to the questions I am too stupid to even know to ask!
What kind of scam are you people trying to pull? I was led to believe these Olympic games you've been going on about involved athletes from many nations. If that were the case, certainly NBC wouldn't show the American "women's" gymnastics team talking in a huddle for 5 minutes instead of showing athletics of some kind. Any kind, any kind at all. For the love of god, please.
If that were the case, certainly NBC wouldn't show the American "women's" gymnastics team talking in a huddle for 5 minutes instead of showing athletics of some kind.
I hear you. But: Did you see, later in the same broadcast, the human-interest piece about the 33-year-old gymnast (and mother!) competing for Germany? She's originally from Uzbekistan, I think, and competing very respectably on the vault as an individual event. I had no idea 33-year-olds could even sniff olympic competition in gymnastics.
