Update re Pooh’s comment: I *love* the movie Cool Runnings. Have watched it multiple times.

First order of business: It wouldda been The Ol’ Boy’s 51st today. I know he’s out there gnoffing and gnoffing about our latest $700 vee-hickle adventure. Love you, ol’ boy. Wish you were here. Seeya on the dark side of the moon. Or maybe on the dark side of the beach.

Okay. The GG watched a swimmer from a small country somewhere struggle to even reach the finish line. I missed it. I saw (I think, I may have been falling asleep) that hot-shot “Planet A2” swimmer win the gold. That’s cool but I am almost more impressed with the guy who could barely finish the race. I’m assuming that he faced more obstacles *getting* to the Olympics than the hot-shot. I could well be wrong.

And then there’s the guy from Togo who won a bronze in whitewater kayaking. Did NBC (or whoever) cover him? Didn’t sound like it. Now, I am *not* a whitewater kayaker. I can handle a little lake-type bounciness in my Walden Vista and I can do teeny tiny ripply rapids. But whitewater? Not. But I can certainly identify with that kayaker. I think he should’ve been front and center on NBC’s coverage.

But mostly, I am falling asleep in front of the Olympics. I used to enjoy watching the Olympics when I was a kid. I love the downhill skiing events. I was never more than a competent amateur at that and I only do cross-country any more, but I have some idea about what’s going on there. Figure skating? Yeah. Fun to watch but there was a reason The Commander wouldn’t let me join the skating club when I was a little kid. Still fun to watch. Summer Olys? Swimming, diving, gymnastics, and I wish they’d show some of that whitewater kayaking.

During the winter Olympics of 2006, I was getting up every day and driving down to the Henry Ford Hoosegow, where Grandroobly (my dad) was trying desperately to get himself out of the predicament he was in by turning back time. Or dying. Shattered pelvis. Two major surgeries. I won’t go into all the details. Some of y’all know he survived that horrific hospital stay only to die a month later. At least he was home in the town he grew up in, his beloved Sault Ste. Siberia. Anyway, every afternoon/evening, I would drive home, do my daily email status message on The Ol’ Man, blog and fall asleep in front of the winter olympics. And get up the next morning only to do it all over again. I remember thinking about my life during that period. Mostly I was just getting up and doing it again and trying not to think too hard but there were moments when I could almost not put one foot in front of the other. But then I would think about my dad in the hoosegow and my mom, who wouldn’t set foot out of the hoosegow campus the whole time my dad was down there and was staying in a spartan hoose-gow campus apartment with no vee-hickle or means of doing anything for herself. Downtown Day-twa. A city she worked in and traversed with aplomb when she was young in the earlier part of the 20th century. And I knew that falling asleep in front of the olympics every night on a comfortable couch in a nice but not fancy house on The Planet Ann Arbor was a luxurious situation to be in.

I like to watch the gold medal winners. But I also like to watch those who do “obscure” sports like whitewater kayaking and I like to be able to cheer on (from my couch) those who are the best swimmers (or whatever) in their country but can barely finish the race. I won’t even go in the direction of steroids and whatever medications some of those “athletes” are taking. Or computer generated fireworks or smog or cute lip-synching child singers or fancy olympic buildings that have displaced who knows how many Chinese families. Hype, hype, hype. And yet, having written this, I will probably go back into my back living room, turn on the boob tube, and fall asleep in front of the olympics again.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 12th, 2008 at 7:26 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.