The get-together in that Chinese city

[Golfhaus]

Anyone watching the Olympics these days? I'll confess to being a huge Olympics nerd. I was fascinated by it as a young'un in 1984, and have followed the games with much interest ever since.

I don't much care for the gymnastics, or the swimming, or the basketball, or the soccer. I was excited to find that soccer and basketball had their own dedicated channels this time around, to free up the other eight members of the NBC family for the uncommon sports that I love to watch every four years - judo, table tennis, team handball, that sort of thing. So at this moment, here's what going on:

NBC Basketball Channel: USA-CZE women's basketball
NBC Soccer Channel: BRA-CZE women's soccer
Universal HD: BRA-CZE women's soccer
USA HD: USA-CZE women's basketball
MSNBC: BRA-CZE women's soccer
NBC: nothing until 10:30
CNBC: nothing until 5:00pm (really? on a Saturday? Who the hell is watching CNBC on a weekend?)

They DO have online feeds of everything going on, though, which is hot. I was up until 3:00 this morning watching judo and fencing. I have a feeling most of my niche fandom will be coming from the online feeds.

[Golfhaus]

Just as an aside, I just watched the Italy-Russia volleyball match, featuring Ekaterina Gamova. I kept searching the stands for an intelligent-looking, smartly-dressed bear, but to no avail. I'm sure at some point Cornelius has made some public proclamation about Tibet that kept him from getting a visa or something.

[wombat]

I watched the Puppy Games on Animal Planet. It was much superior to Puppy Bowl in the number of smush-faced dogs involved.

They actually invited me to watch the filming but I was working that day and since I'd recently done a story on Puppy Bowl I knew I couldn't get an article out of it. I would have thought harder about how to make it if I'd known they were going to have a pug, bulldog, Boston terrier, and something that might have been a French bulldog. Curses!

As for the real Olympics... not having any ice skating is like not having any smush-faced dogs. I can't get excited about it. It is of theoretical interest to learn that they have something as weird-sounding as team handball, but not enough to make me actually watch it.

[Arachno-capitalist]

So much of the gymnastics events seem too contrived. I can't get into something so artificial. "Ok heres two rings in the air, now show how strong you are by moving around in the air with them, well score you on something"
Swimming, in comparison, is something people do. its something weve always done, and seeing who is the best and fastest swimmer seems like a natural evolution.
Team sports at least have strategy and evolve from battle. There are definitive goals that can be met and that is the score.
Handball looks fuck*ng bizarre. Soccer with your hands?

[Golfhaus]

Handball looks fuck*ng bizarre. Soccer with your hands?

Soccer with your hands on a basketball court. I actually think, of all the sports Americans don't get, handball is one we'd probably enjoy if we just gave it half a chance. I mean, people go to see Arena Football, ferchrissakes.

If I can commit to it, I'd consider starting to take judo as a means to get in shape.

[Doc]

Handball always weird me out because it reminds me of primary school. Do they allow 'Catchies' at the olympic level? This seems a legitimate question.

[melack]

We had sort of a drinking game going last night to make the opening ceremony a little more interesting. Any time a medium-sized or bigger country was due up, we'd try to guess the number of atheletes they had. Canada had about 6 times as many as my guess, but I was only off by a couple dozen on China.

I also realized, quite sadly, that the only olympians I recognize are NBA players.

[CortJstr]

One of the SO's coworkers is competing for American Samoa. Because she lived there for like a year as part of a fellowship and they were really hard up for athletes, especially for stuff like swimming. Apparently the Olympic Committee is really lenient about them using American citizens.

I haven't really watched the Olympics for years. All the sob stories about how the athlete was diagnosed with cancer of the nostril after seeing their mother get shot in the face while at their only brother's funeral but, dammit they persevered got really old. Plus the thing where Keri Strug (sp?) injured herself for no reason whatsoever but everybody acted like she single-handedly won the gold and wouldn't shut up about her for like like a year.

I do kind of like beach volley ball, though. I blame Super Spike V'Ball.

[littlefallsmets]

It all looked like a goddamned Nazi rally to me.

Fake smiles, explosions, thousands of people doing things in mechanical unison so that they aren't beaten.

Call me nuts but it looked like the kind of frightening display of national unity/power/ability-to-waste-resources that connotates a desire to invade a neighboring nation within about three years.

[Arachno-capitalist]

So I was watching the sailing race. Spain won. And evidently their reward was this topless woman hopping on their boat. The camera guy made a point of zooming in on her a couple times, fully exposing her tits. This is not the first time I have seen tits on the internet, but it is the first time I have seen tits on NBC, and during the Olympics.
Screen Grabbed because I needed proof:back
front

[robot_god]

Dude!  That's a dude, dude.

[wombat]

Handball always weird me out because it reminds me of primary school.

Totally. If there's handball and ping pong, why not marbles and tiddly-winks?

[wombat]

I haven't really watched the Olympics for years. All the sob stories about how the athlete was diagnosed with cancer of the nostril after seeing their mother get shot in the face while at their only brother's funeral but, dammit they persevered got really old.

I remembering reading that they started this kind of coverage to attract more women viewers. For the record I would like to say that this shit does NOT make me more inclined to watch.

[wombat]

Wait, even better than marbles and tiddly-winks - how about dodgeball and monkey-in-the-middle?

[Victoria Waterfield]

Wait, even better than marbles and tiddly-winks - how about dodgeball and monkey-in-the-middle?

For monkey in the middle, you could just toss the medal around, and if you don't get it - no medal.