What is it about the Olympic Games that makes uninteresting sporting events so riveting that I can’t look away? Track and field events, figure skating, curling, and the queen mother of WTF athletic competitions, biathlon (the one with target shooting crossed with cross country skiing). Take uninteresting sporting competitions, wrap them in the Olympic flag and BAM, I can’t stop watching. Is it hypnosis? Is it some weird brain washing thing? Is it a form of nationalistic propaganda that our brains are hard wired to respond to?
Maybe… or it just might be fun.
There is one Olympic event that I follow pretty religiously. It’s not figure skating, though there was a time in the past where I had a family connection to that sport based on my cousin having dated a super famous US competitor. It’s not soccer either, though it might be in the future as I have a family connection that may or may not be involved with the Olympic development program and may at some point in the distant future end up playing goal for the USA. No, you can probably guess if you read through past posts on this blog. It’s hockey.
Hockey was always the best part of the Winter Olympics, but when the NHL players were allowed to participate, suddenly the Olympic Ice Hockey tournament became the ultimate international competition, featuring literally the best hockey players on Earth. Sure it took a couple of Olympics for the whole thing to start living up to it’s potential, but once it did. Damn, were those games ever fun. Best hockey tournament ever.
Last night Jen and I watched a bunch of Olympic highlights on YouTube. One of the things we saw was a 15 year old Russian kid landing the first ever quadruple jump in Olympic Women’s Figure Skating history. When we were kids, quad jumps were myths. No one, male or female, had ever done one in competition before. Now we have this 15 year old kid (who looks like she weighs 90 pounds soaking wet, but who could probably kick my ass with just her pinky finger so bad she’d break every bone in my body) landing two of them in one routine. Super Human, literally.
I mentioned to Jen that I had heard something about a skater failing a PED test. I hadn’t heard anything more than that. I didn’t know who how why what where when.
I was really looking forward to the NHL sending players back to the Olympics this year but I really should have known better. It’s no use getting our hopes up about anything anymore. Here in Covid-land it’s all gone to shit and we’re just going to tread water in said shit for the rest of our days.
One year ago today I wrote this:
“Now we just have three work days, and a Christmas Eve to go before our first and hopefully last ever Covid-19 Christmas. Here’s hoping the little bastard goes down in history as a unique little blip on the universe. HoHoHo.”
Nope. It was most definitely not a unique little blip on the universe. It was a solid kick, square in the balls. Fuck you, universe.
Fuck. You.
Okay, so that got more dramatic than a handful of hockey games deserves, but on the scale of life, the universe, and everything… yeah, fuck you.
The NHL shut down the Calgary Flames for Covid the other day. Today the Bruins, after playing Calgary a few days ago, had two players, including Brad Marchand, go into the Covid protocol. Then later the league postponed the Carolina vs Minnesota game for, you guessed it, Covid.
The debate is raging over whether or not the NHL is going to participate in the Olympics. How are they going to keep everyone safe in the viral incubator known as the Olympic village if they can’t keep everyone safe during normal operations?
They are talking about keeping everyone home. You know, I was really hoping for some NHL/Olympic hockey this year. It’s going to suck if they back out.
The depleted Bruins are playing Vegas tonight. Here’s hoping no one else gets sick. Covid is a prick.
ADDENDUM: Vegas is kicking the shit out of the Bruins. We are down 3-0 after one. Crap.
Is our hot water heater dead, or is it just messing with us like the jerk that it is?
I’m working from home today. Hopefully there is a plumber coming to check on our water heater. I had one cold shower yesterday and I don’t want another one. Why is a cold shower such a soul crushingly miserable experience? Why can’t it just be… cold? I don’t get it.
I was talking about the lack of hot water with my step kids yesterday. I said they were probably going to want to skip taking a shower this morning. My step daughter got all indignant (well, a tiny bit indignant at least) and said she was going to take one anyway. Ah to be a cocky teenager again. Wait, was I ever a cocky teenager?
Hey, do you remember when the Olympics were interesting? I do. Back in the long distant past the Olympics were can’t miss television. We used to watch coverage every night. Even the most ridiculous events had us glued to the tube.
Oh, check it out! Synchronized Swimming is on again! Yeah!
When did that change? Was it the end of the Soviet Union? Was it when they added snowboarding? Was it when they let professionals compete thus creating “the dream team” and crap like that? Was it the year the network (was it NBC or CBS?) tried to tie in a pay per view option? What did they call it? Olympic Triple Cast or something like that? I only remember David Letterman ripping the whole thing to shreds on a nightly basis. It was probably a little bit of all of the above (but mostly snowboarding).
I still get really excited for Olympic hockey during the winter games, but other than that? Snooze. Rio this week will mark the first games held since we ditched cable TV and I don’t regret it for a second. I’ll be visiting my mom for a while tonight so she might have the opening ceremonies on. Otherwise I won’t watch any of the coverage at all. Part of me misses the pageantry of the whole thing, but given the mess that Sochi seemed to be two years ago, and the disaster that seems to be shaping up in Rio… well, maybe it’s time we start re-thinking the whole thing.
I didn’t post to my wordpress.com blog yesterday, but I did post to medium.com. Does that mean I am done with wordpress.com? Probably not, but maybe I am for a day or two. We’ll see. One thing that is infuriating me about medium is that it refuses to let me put two spaces after a period at the end of a sentence. I hit the spacebar twice but the bastard cursor only moves once. That’s definitive proof that medium is an evil, unAmerican enterprise. Two, two, two spaces following a period at the end of a sentence! Damn you and your markdown menace!
When I first started looking at medium.com as a blogging option, they had an iOS app but it was read only. You couldn’t post from it. That wasn’t a deal breaker but it was damn close. Now you can write and post and upload images from the app (at least from the iPad version).
This very post, in fact, has made use of both the iPad app and the web app. I started writing this while sitting at my computer. I got about halfway through the stuff about the Olympics and then had to stop for a little while. When I picked it up again, I went to the drafts list on the iOS app and continued writing. After finishing the Olympic stuff I had to stop again and now I’m back on my Mac. Pretty cool. I never did that with wordpress, although I know I could have. Still, living in the future is kinda fun.
Speaking of living in the future, I just turned on the lights in my living room, and my air conditioner using apps on my iPhone. Yes, living in the future rules.
I have to ask a serious question about a not-serious topic. When did Hollywood lose the ability to make a decent DC Comics movie? The first two Superman movies are classics. The first two Tim Burton Batman movies are fantastic. Batman Begins is excellent, and The Dark Knight is about as good as comics movies have ever been. Now though? I didn’t hate Batman v Superman as much as most people did, but some of it was just laughably bad. Hey, what was it that made Batman and Superman stop trying to kill each other and become BFFs? Yeah, that’s what I am talking about. Now Suicide Squad comes out today and, while I really had no interest in it at all, the reviews are vicious. Is it really that bad, or has Marvel just bought out all of the critics? Maybe they took some of that massive Disney money and did just that.
My step kids and I watch the DC TV shows. We all love Flash. They love Arrow (I think it’s okay). We just started watching Supergirl so the jury is still out. My only beef at this point is, why does Jimmy Olson look like he could bench press a mini-van? Isn’t he supposed to just be a nerdy little guy? Regardless, DC is getting the TV shows right but getting the huge budget films terribly wrong. At this point I can’t imagine it is simply bad writing or bad directing on an individual movie basis. If it’s a trend then it has to be coming from higher up the management food chain, doesn’t it? Is Suicide Squad going to be bad because the parameters within which it was written, cast, filmed, directed, edited, and marketed bad? It’s starting to feel that way. It’s starting to feel like the DC movies are going to be awful before the stories are even conceived. It’s like they have three strikes against them before they even start.
The little Justice League tease they released at the San Diego Comic Con was pretty exciting, but when push comes to shove… who cares, there’s a Star Wars flick coming out in December.
Okay, so I’ve been picking at this for an hour now. Do I have anything else I need to leak out of my brain? Nope, just going to wait for the plumber to check in.
First, I would rather the Winter games. Can you say Hockey?
Second, logistically hosting the games here would be an absolute horror of a nightmare. We are a small city with a ton of people packed into a really small area. Think of the traffic. Think of the construction. It would be awful.
Third, I REALLY REALLY WANT IT TO HAPPEN!
Forth, if we do host the games in 2024 I will do everything humanly possible to see an event. Any event. If they have gum chewing in the 2024 Olympics I will try to get tickets. How often do you get the chance to see an Olympic event in person. Once in a lifetime? Less than once in a lifetime? I want to go!
Team USA lost the bronze medal game today to Finland, 5-0. I didn’t see the game. We were at IKEA shopping for desks for the kids. Given the final score, I am kinda glad I didn’t see it. At the same time, not having actually seen the game does not alter the depth of my pain.
We were down to the final four teams, and there are three medals… and we didn’t get a medal. Oh the hockey pain! Oh the hockey suffering!
Having said that, prior to the tournament’s start, I was figuring they would finish fourth. So I guess I can’t be too upset.
I’ve had three heart attacks so far. There is no score in the first, but Canada is going onto the power play. We’re only nine minutes into the game and it’s already the most stress I’ve felt since the Cup Finals last year.
My step kids just started a spontaneous, USA USA USA chant.
The second round of four games in the Men’s ice hockey tournament Quarterfinals happened today. I mentioned earlier that Sweden beat the crap out of Slovenia. In the second game of the day we saw a gigantic upset as Finland (lead by Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask) beat Russia, 3-1. Russia had been one of the gold medal favorites, and here they are bounced out in the quarterfinal.
At noon today there were two huge games. First, Canada beat Latvia by the skin of their teeth, 2-1. At the same time, the USA was beating up on the Czech Republic, 5-2.
There are four teams left, and three medals to hand out. Team USA is in pretty good shape… except…
The Semifinal round match ups are all set now. All four teams have tomorrow off, and then on Friday at 7:00am Eastern time, Sweden plays Finland in a battle for Viking supremacy. I think Sweden is the better team in this one, although I will be rooting for Tuukka and the Fins.
Later on Friday, at noon Eastern time, the battle for North American supremacy will commence. Canada vs The United States of America. This is a rematch of the gold medal game from last Winter Olympics. That game was quite possibly the best hockey game I’ve ever watched. The only negative about that game was the the US had to settle for the Silver. Now I will be wearing the red white and blue on Friday, and there is no doubting where my hockey loyalty lies… but it’s hard to see anyone beating Canada. Although, they haven’t quite been the monster everyone has expected, and the US has been dominant in all but one game. I think we have a chance. I think we have a shot at making it to the gold medal game.
Coincidently, if my two predictions come true we will see a rematch of the 1980 gold medal game between The United States of America and Finland. I could definitely get into a match up like that.
As expected, Sweden pummeled Slovenia last night by a score of 5-0. Of the eight teams playing today, six are what you might call powerhouses. Sweden is the first of those to advance.
Next up is Russia and Finland at 7:30. About an hour from now.
Inside the Red Head's Head 