i am not feeling the olympic spirt.
Mind you, according to the rules of said multinational sporting event currently being held in China, i'm not allowed to use the "O" word in reference to their games, so instead i'll refer to the spirit of the home of the Greek Pantheon, whom i seldom feel the presence of.
That aside, i'm also not really feeling the thrill of watching a bunch of folks who've spent the better part of their lives training endlessly for a two or three minute event only to spend the rest of their lives wondering why. Sorry, just not really into it. i've tried a few times in the past to watch the thrill of victory and agony of defeat, but inevitably decide to flip over to something more interesting on the Discovery Channel or PBS or maybe just go out and ride my bike. i'm not saying that the athletes don't perform amazingly and who's efforts will stand the test of time. It's just that it's going to most likely be "some" instead of "all" and considering that most of the folks that get the Au also break the previous record.
This year, i'm not even going to try to pay attention. i may check the stats in a few months to see if i need to remember the answer to a trivia question "Really? Latvia won the pole vault this year?" but that's about it. Heck, about the only thing that looked moderately interesting was one bit of the opening ceremony where there were a few hundred drummers, and mostly because i was wondering if those things would be showing up at WalMart's next month.
Anyone else interested?
i'm less nice about the whole olympics thing…
http://ultramookie.com/wayback/2008/08/09/look-i-can-pole-jump/
I'm interested in everything but the sporting events. The technology, the sponsorship, the media, the infrastructure, the short and long term impact, the costs.
But the sports? Seriously, if I don't care about the 400M sprint for three years and 11 months, why would it change in an August where the year mod 4 = 0?
As for national pride: does anyone really consider these to be national accomplishments?
Actually, I'm pretty darn interested in the Olympics. I love the idea of the Olympic spirit and I've seen how sports can bring people together, both in India and here in the US. I get that its highly commercialized and several of the sports (you can both dive EXACTLY the same? REALLY? LET ME SEE!!!1!) are BS, but several are true human tests. Perhaps I'm too much of a sports fan. I don't memorize stats or anything, but certain events do grab my attention. I'm really not sure about the few mins of fame. Those of us who are engineers build things for years, yet people might appreicate this (or not) for a few seconds. Their few mins on the screen might be fleeting, but what they provide to other people in the form of inspiration and the records the build can be quite lasting.
Just a few thoughts.
And yes JR, I'm still alive. Ya'll seem a bit tired out on me though.
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I thought I was the only one who thought this way.
While sitting down to watch the opening ceremony last night, all I could thing of was ' holy shit, how many hours did these people practice, I wonder if it was voluntary or if they were forced'? Whatever happened to just running into the stadium and lighting the torch, didn't that used to be the opening ceremony, followed by all the teams marching around the arena? When did it become such a spectacle?