Keeping Score

Thoughts on the Olympics

1). Hey, Bermuda, we get it. You invented the shorts. You can stop wearing them in every single parade of nations ceremony. We're famous for jeans and t-shirts, and you don't see us using that as our national uniform every Olympiad.

2). Dear NBA: Please teach your "second string" players like Iverson and Duncan and Marbury how to shoot an outside 2pt. shot. And by "outside" I mean like from 3 feet away. Watching our guys get their asses handed to them only justifies that we've stopped playing Basketball in our country and now play Dunkball. Do you think we enjoy watching 2 and a half hours of guys who get paid millions of dollars losing to a country whose GNP isn't worth half as much as our team's annual salary?

3). Women shouldn't be allowed to announce events, evidently. I have yet to hear one who's not totally catty or just downright numb. Like the one in the gymnastics commentary:

Woman Announcer: (for the 80th time) "Ooooh, see that step? The judges could take off a tenth of a point for that if they wanted to."

Man Announcer: (so sarcastically you can hear his eyes rolling) "I think they want to."

4). Evidently there are only Swimming, Gymnastics, Basketball, and Track and Field at these Olympic games. Hey NBC, would it kill you to actually show a few different events? Like, the 10 minutes of table tennis was pretty interesting. However, after watching five hours of Men's Basketball and Gymnastics qualifying rounds, I'm beginning to wonder where you're coming up with the footage for handball. That actually looks like it's a pretty cool game. Thanks for showing exactly 3 seconds of it during your recap of what happened this weekend. I watched the games all weekend and didn't see one iota of handball or badmitton. I don't know about the rest of America, but I'm sick of watching 14 year olds on balance beams. Call me crazy.

5). Diving cameras are THE BOMB. I want one, even though I have no use for one.

6). Best. Pregame. Show. EVER.

7). Oh good, apparantly I missed Fencing. Glad to see I watched every waking hour of coverage on NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, and yes, even frickin' Telemundo this weekend so that I wouldn't possibly miss it.