Olympic Impressions

The 2008 Summer Olympics are over. Beijing can go back to being a polluted, overcrowded pisshole. The factories that supply Walmart, America and many European countries with sub par merchandise can get up to speed and churn out the shlock that modern society craves.

Knock-off I-pods and various other worthless, transient and just plain stupid gizmos to entertain modern man and woman can once again make their way to world markets. The coffers of the Commies (Oh, they're definitely still commies, don't think they're not) will gain yet more moola to help them buy oil, steel, and whatever else their little hearts desire.

I am guessing the Chinese are very happy with the Olympics they presented. They kicked every other country's ass in gold medals. Oh, the US shows more overall medals, but that's just something the media here started this year to make us look better. Even with the underage gymnasts out of the picture we would have still got our asses kicked. The Chinese obviously did their homework on Olympic sports and came to win every thing they entered. How many of the wins were legitimate and how many tainted by unqualified participants, cheating, bad or incompetent judges and the like is hard to say. Every Olympics I've watched has had judging controversies where the judging is done by opinion and not clear cut winners and losers.

This two week period offered a variety of sports and events. Here's my take on the whole deal.

1) The opening: Awesome and scary - the Chinese had a message with this show - the message; watch out folks we're coming and we work together very well indeed.

2) The coverage by NBC: NBC sucks, way too much bullshit about Phelps, too many talking heads that knew exactly zilch about the sports they reported on and not enough plain simple coverage. I would love to have C-span cover the whole show and give a menu of what and when. Then you could chose what you wanted to watch without the never ending talking heads. I will give Mary Carillo credit for some interesting if fluffy stories about China; they were at least interesting.

3) I am a boxing fan and therefore very unhappy with this year's fights. The new scoring system is awful and fraught with incompetence and/or corruption. The fighters knew their score from round to round, so if they were ahead in the fourth round many spent it running away form their opponent. There were a couple of outright thefts of medals or medal opportunities and you have to feel bad for the fighters that had this injustice done to them. On a lighter note; I learned that Irish fighters talk fast as hell and you can 't understand a damn thing they say. I'm not even sure is was English.

4) Phelps and Swimming: the guy is great. But there was too much hype about him. There were a few other good stories on the team that were far more interesting than the uber gold medal winner.

5) Track and Field: Wow, what a mixed bag. On the good side we took the decathlon this year. Makes me proud, it's the toughest thing in the Olympics to do. We had some other champions as well. But, we had the same old crap with the relays. Why can't our guys and gals hold on to the baton? Blows my mind, cause it's not the first time our relay teams have done this.

6) Basketball: Awesome, we finally brought a real team to the Olympics and they played like one. Kudos to their coach.

7) Volleyball: Fantastic results this year and great games indoors and out. I enjoy the women's indoor most of all. The digs, the team play and then the inevitable smash.

8) Baseball : Did we win? I hear it's out in the next Olympics along with Softball. And speaking of Softball; how about our women's team.

9) Other sports: Man can some countries play the hell out of ping pong, badminton and a game called handball. You have got to be some kinda badminton player to do it at the Olympic level. Makes my play in my front yard look a little amateurish and I thought I was pretty damn good. We fielded a good water polo team this year, but I agree with my wife that it's totally boring to watch.

10) The closing ceremonies: OK I guess. I didn't catch that much of it and what I did see looked like more of the same. Lots of people doing the same thing at once. Alright already, we get it, the Chinese are genius at team work!

At heart I'm just a guy and guys like sports. Combine that with world class athletes, some pretty damn fine looking ones,(Here I'm speaking specifically of Women's beach volleyball and stuff like that) and you have a venue that most men dig. Still, it's good to get back to a regular schedule. Somehow Women's handball between Croatia and Sweden at 2:oo AM is a little over the top, don't you think?

Hope you were able to view some sport you enjoy this year. Let me know what you liked and disliked.

The Daily Husband