So far my favorite part about the Olympics is when the curling people slide on the ice with those crazy shoes they wear. They aren’t skates and aren’t really athletic shoes, either. Yet somehow the curlers (really? Are they “curlers”) get around with some sort of funky propelation. It’s like they have some sort of modified bowling shoe or something.
Not to denigrate the curling competition or the Winter Olympics as a collective, but I really don’t get it. OK, maybe I get it, but just don’t see the allure. There that’s better. There are millions of people tuning in every day to watch the events, which is baffling. Who watches taped/staged events and what is the appeal of curling?
Look, I like to watch track & field events and marathon racing, so I’m hardly innocent here. But to me curling looks like shuffleboard with ice and lots of cheating. If I were interested in such a thing, I could just go to the Sunny Valley Retirement Village and watch the residents go at it in those cutthroat tournaments they have on the pitch next to the clubhouse. Word is the shuffleboard scene at Sunny Valley was like the fights Michael Vick used to hold in his blacked out garage in Virginia.
Only bloodier.
OK, kidding aside the thing that stands out most about these Olympics is that they seem to be lasting forever. Flip through the dial and one can catch glimpses of someone slippy sliding away on the curling, or back-flipping high above the mix way up in the air, or, maybe even playing hockey. It’s kind of fun to stumble on these things rather than the standard fare offered during the course of a broadcasting day. Besides, who wouldn’t rather watch the overwrought drama of a curling match than the hang-wringing (faux) indignation from Olbermann on MSNBC.
I know we have a list of things that have jumped the proverbial shark—like Wing Bowl, for instance—so it’s only fair to put guys like Olbermann and his ilk (on both sides) on the list, too. Poor Keith is only being mentioned here because his show has been bumped around in order to broadcast curling.
Anyway, that’s about all we have there… the Olympics are on and it seems like they have been lasting forever. The thing is, I’m kind of comfortable with that. It makes me think about Jim McKay.