Watching: Olympic Trials
I love the Olympics. I really do. But I do not like sport-casters. Seriously, I wish they would all put a sock in it.
Except Scott Hamilton, but that's just because he's so pinchably cute.
My friend and I used to joke that Dick Button had the world's second biggest beer bong sitting next to him as he tried to interject some poetry into his commentary. (Chris Matthews has the biggest.) Only in the end, poor Dick would wind up going on and on about how some skater was "caressing" the ice or "oozing the essence" of the mambo. (Note to Dick: oozing is never a compliment.)
Aside: my favorite Dick Button story is when one of the sportcaster guys who does "sports" as opposed to "figure skating" asked Peggy Fleming if she thought there were any girls outside the US who could beat Michelle Kwan and company that year. Peggy gave a polite diplomatic answer, and Dick just piped up with an unsolicited "Not a chance." The silence that followed spoke a thousand words and I just had to love him for that.
Back to Beijing: NBC has begun really pushing the Olympic trials - because the existing weeks of competition aren't enough, they want to drag the Olympic season out to months and years just like the election - meaning that there will be months and years of drivel to wade through before we finally get to the good stuff.
The track and field coverage had a commentator who desperately needed a thesaurus. He who kept describing people as "dangerous". "He can be really dangerous in this race." "She'll be very dangerous here." Okay, find a new adjective, sweetie. You go right along the line before each race; they can't all be dangerous. How about troublesome? Devious? Hazardous? Perilous? And you know there occasionally has to be someone who's just flat out harmless, just for variety.
Oh, but the swimming...
Did you know Michael Phelps is going for seven gold medals? Really. He really is. Seven gold medals. Seven, I tell you! Mark Spitz! (Best name for a swimmer ever.) Michael Phelps! Seven!
I swear the commentators are so programmed to mention Michael Phelps, that if one of the runners had knocked over a water bottle, the brains of the guys in the booth would have trip-switched at the sight of a small body of water and they would have started talking about Michael Phelps and his seven gold medals.
Or Dara Torres and the fact that she's over forty! She's been swimming at the Olympics since she was fifteen or something, which is an extraordinary thing to accomplish - but damn! There is simply no reason to harp on the fact that she's... Just. So. Old. She's forty here, not a hundred and forty. There's no imminent danger of breaking a hip. Senile dementia is at least a couple decades off. Get over it already.
