China Patterns

A sad realization occurred to me the other day. Soon, these Olympics will be over. And while 11 straight hours of Badminton, Rowing and Rhythmic, Acoustical, Death Cage Gymnastics may get old and boring after a while it is still better than 99% of what is normally on TV. For me, no matter how absurd the sport or how hard NBC tries to provide coverage of events that appeal to women (make no mistake, that’s who the advertisers go for) I will still watch because it’s the Olympics and it’s competition. So with the countdown to 2012 London nearing here are some of my Olympian thoughts.- I think it would be alot funner if swimmers doing the backstroke started on the platform like the others instead of already in the pool.

- Watching weightlifting is similar to watching NASCAR. It’s kinda cool but really you’re just waiting for some one’s arm to snap in the wrong direction.

- The folks that squeegee the badminton court better not get paid the same as the kids who do the tennis courts. Come on! It’s only 17 feet wide.

- Michael Phelps winning by .01 seconds almost felt cheap. It’s as if he’s suppose to win by 23 minutes so anything that close is uncalled for.

- Besides the landings does any regular person see a difference in any of the gymnastics routines?

- Speaking of gymnastics. The new scoring system may be better but I understood the old way alot better. I knew what 9.75 meant. But 15.425?? What the heck is that?! After a while I was waiting to hear,  ” Ooh she scored Pi . It’s gonna be hard to beat 3.14 .”

- There was a U.S. Shot-Putter who fouled on his only 3 attempts. What’s more, he fouled on his final attempt in the ‘04 Olympics. How do you do that? Train for 4 years and not even have a legal throw? Wouldn’t that be something you worked on?

- I am withholdng comment and applause for the track events including the amazing run by Usain Bolt. I’ve come to expect that most track atheltes are using some type of drugs.

- I think water polo should be mandatory for every high school student. This would alleviate our childhood obesity problem since this is probably the most demanding sport in the world.

And once again the Olympics have proven educational. A few months ago I blogged about the uselessness of the metric system here in the States. Well, the rest of the world is having a good laugh at our expense. I’m still not sure how much weight was being “clean and jerked”. Doing metric to standard conversions really takes away from the enjoyment. 100 meters I can grasp. But 78 KG of weight and 22.5 meters for a flying cannon ball makes me have to think too much