my life as a nomad

the olympics

i haven't been terribly hardcore about watching the olympics, but i have been watching what i can and keeping up with the general flow of things. here's some random thoughts and observations:

-snowboardcross is pretty much the coolest event ever. and i'm not just saying that because a guy from Maine won the inagural event... i'm saying it because it is. that's pretty much the only olympic event that i think i would watch on a regular basis, if it were to become a mainstream sport. however, i think they could spice it up even a little bit more by doing the following:

• having 6 or even 8 snowboarders compete at a time. this would equal more wrecks and chaos, which would make it even more exciting
• split up the course; put in a couple of intersections where you can go one way or another, and then have both rejoin further down the hill
• have a pack of rabid wolverines chase them down the hill. that way if you did have the misfortune to fall, you better believe you'd be doing your best to get back up and headed downhill again a.s.a.p.

-in the two-man bobsled event, a guy from jamaica won a silver medal. yes... a jamaican bobsledder. granted, he was competing for the canadian squad (they were so desperate for help, they had to turn to a country that doesn't even have any snow), but still, why isn't this getting any more attention? cool runnings, anyone? the jamaicanadian even said that he was inspired by the movie! the only thing that could possibly tip the scenario further into the surreal would have been for john candy's ghost to appear behind the medal podium, with tears of pride in his eyes. maybe i'm the only person in the world who's fascinated by this, but hey... that's how i roll

"we are the jamaican bobsled team..."

-bode miller isn't a bust. really. you can make an argument for bigmouth or bloomin' idiot, but the same people are busting him up for not living up to the hype are the same people (this means you, "the media") who created all the hype in the first place. seems sort of ludicrous. he hasn't exactly been tearing up the world cup coming into the olympics, so to assume that he'd walk out of torino with five gold medals seems preposterous at best. besides, have you seen this guy ski? he may not have won any medals yet, but his recoveries from a couple of near-disasterous falls were both nothing short of sensational. the guy can flat-out ski... he may not win any medals, but can you knock a guy who is as incredibly gutsy as him with the way he skis? i can't, at any rate

-any olympic event which determines a winner based solely upon a judges scorecard shouldn't be an olympic event, period. speed skating? keep it. ice dancing? scratch it. downhill and cross country skiing? keep them. figure skating and the halfpipe? scratch them. i want concrete times and scores to be the criteria for disbursing medals, instead of relying on the whims of a panel of judges. that's how i see it, anyways


finally, this doesn't have anything to do with the olympics... but today was president's day (also known as "another meaningless holiday which let's government employees take the day off and encourages car dealerships to try even harder to sell you a new model, with no money down and one trillion dollars cash back! hurry, come in now and get one!). we didn't get any mail today, and the library was closed. so basically, the presidents deprived me of two small glimmers of joy. thanks, guys. anyways, here's a link to some useful presidential trivia. how many of the twenty facts did you already know? (i think i recalled hearing 8 or 9 before, but that's about it)



i think roosevelt is my favorite president. who's yours?


-noonan-

posted by Patrick @ 8:49 PM