perfidy

Some thoughts from the Olympics:

• I loved the opening ceremony. These affairs can't help but be a little cheesy, but the sheer majesty and taste with which the long theatrical sequence covered the 3,000 year history of Greece made up for any faint ridiculousness. Bonus points for alphabetizing the nations by the Greek alphabet. Points off for NBC for Bob Costas and Katie Couric. Note to Bob and Katie: nobody-- nobody cares what you think about what Fiji is wearing.
• What is going on with NBC? With a stable of associated cable networks to exploit (USA, Bravo!, MSNBC, Telemundo), you'd think they could put together a nifty package that puts the marquee sports—gymnastics, swimming, maybe volleyball/beach volleyball—front and center in prime time for the first week of the Games. But nooooo! Last night Bravo! edited their coverage of Olympic badminton (!) to end precisely at 8 and switched to regular programming, just in time for NBC to go on the air with - synchronized diving?
• Synchronized diving? What the fuck?
• The lady gymnasts need to eat some cake.
• The men gymnasts are scary in a Shaolin kind of way.
• What is going on with NBC? Last night the best gymnastics coverage I could find on any station was on RAI. Never heard of RAI? It's from Quebec. Broadcasting in French. NBC was showing doubles marshmallow eating.
• Olympic badminton is scary. That wussy little shuttlecock and flimsy little racquet in the hands of experts become weapons of fearsome power. Last night in a doubles match I watched a short little American guy with a 35-inch (!) vertical leap whip off a kill that must have been going 85 MPH when the shuttlecock hit the court. Unbelievable. More unbelievable is that they got taken apart by a Norwegian team who played like implacable machines.
• Olympic ping-pong is scary. The players watch the ball with all the concentration of a severely autistic child focusing on the one thing that makes him react, and volleys skitter and glide millimeters above the net only to whip off sideways when the ball hits the table. I swear some of these men have more than the usual number of arms.
• What is going on with NBC? Right now in Greece, competitors are vying in boxing, fencing, equestrian, table tennis, water polo, swimming, badminton, soccer, baseball and softball. Between now and noon, NBC's many networks will show us live: table tennis, soccer, and water polo. Weak.
• One word: Thorpedo.”
• The only way to watch soccer is on Telemundo. One word: GOOOOOOOOOAL!”
• We USAians got our ass handed to us in basketball by Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico. Let that sink in. Puerto Rico. There can only be one response: "Mr. President, I have reason to believe that Puerto Rico is harboring Weapons of Mass Destruction."