I Just Read About That…

[WATCHED: July 27-August 5, 2012] XXX Summer Games

So I have been TiVoing the XXX games like crazy and now my suggestion box is chock full of porn.  And Motherboy XXX!

I have watched more of these Olympics than any previous one.  And I think it’s because NBC has been covering the heck out of it.  Not NBC proper, which is blowing it as bad as everyone says, but the satellite stations–NBCSN, which is great and CNBC or MSNBC one of those other stations that nobody watches, have been doing 9, 10 and 11 hour blocks of whatever is on.  And that’s pretty cool.

A few thoughts though—NBC & co., please learn how to cover live sports.  Even the wonderful NBCSN, home of awesome esoteric sports that I really want to see.  If I watch 40 minutes of field hockey and you cut to commercial during the only goal scored, well, you know, that sucks.  Or really any sport that doesn’t stop–you really fuck with momentum if you cut away all the time.  Here’s a simple solution, and its even more aggressive than World Cup soccer which knows how to shill product–compress the picture some and show a banner ad at the top or bottom or left or right of the screen.  You can’t show the no-doubt-well-thought-out ads for whatever it was 100 times like you do now (which I FF anyway), but plaster the logo in the bottom the screen, let it jump around and do cartwheels.  We can handle it, just stop cutting away.

The best Olympics I ever watched was when we had feed from Canada, because they knew how to cover sports–showing all players and teams, not just the winning team (or their own country).  In fairness, the NBCSN has been doing that too.  The shooting and archery have been pretty great to watch.  But I have to admit, I want to hear some other national anthems now and again.  This is an international sport and I don’t think I’ve actually heard the Chinese anthem yet.  I’m super psyched when America wins, but I’m also happy for other people who win too, dammit.

And commentators….  I won’t go into the litany of the egregious things you say, but  I will make two simple points–one, Americans are not the only ones who train hard and try hard and “really want it.”  They aren’t.  And two, explain fundamentals of weird sports to us.  Why is the Judo lady allowed to grab her opponent’s sleeve; why was that one American female swimmer in a pink swimsuit; show us the actual target that the shooters are looking at, don’t just say its a black dot; show us how far the archery court is, and show a side view of a few arrows that go across the court; tell us why handball isn’t the handball that everyone knows–hitting a racquetball against a wall in a NYC park.  Don’t just say, “that’s an amazing hwandiko” without telling us what the hell a hwandiko is and how many you need to win the sport.  Act like we’ve never seen the sport before.  Because in most cases we haven’t.

So, favorite sports so far.

• Women’s archery was awesome.  I was rally gripped by the scoring and everything.
• Men’s Skeet shooting was intense.  The winning American guy was like a robot until he won and then he became human again.  Magnificent.
• Badminton is insane!  My favorite comment: she learned to play in the backyard.  Where the hell else do you learn to play badminton in America?  But man, they were incredible at it, hitting things that they should never have gotten to.  Why, though can’t they call the item a shuttlecock?  Why do they keep saying shuttle?
• Table Tennis was tremendous.  I watched a lot of it but still never learned a few fundamentals–why does it look like they are hitting the ball with their heads when they serve?  Why is the table square?
• Men’s trampoline is great.  It’s just way too short (and was given way too short shrift in prime time–there were more than three athletes, you know).
• Women’s weightlifting has been really exciting, too.  Who knew?
• Judo was pretty cool.  I knew nothing about it until watching  the winning American woman.  And at only 5 minutes a match , it’s a manageable event.
• Fencing was great.  Although they must be the loudest screamers around, they seem so quiet and petite and then they get a point and it’s chaos!
• Water Polo is bizarre and wonderful and man, they must be in amazing shape.
• All the bike road races are great, although I didn’t actually watch all 3 hours of them,  I’m quite happy to see the start and then see who is there at the finish (since I don’t know anyone anyhow).  The velodrome racing…mmm, I’m not really hip to that stuff.
• Speed walking was incredibly dramatic )if not incredibly silly looking) and hooray for the guy from Guatemala!
• And I really enjoyed seeing Jessica Ennis win the heptathlon, even if I only saw the 800 meter race.  NBC–give me more people throwing things–javelins, hammers, shot, whatever, I wanna see it.

I was laughing as I was thinking about certain sports, like how it is fun to see field hockey, which I never get to see (but why is the field blue?) and then realizing that it’s really not that dissimilar to hockey or soccer, or even handball.  Or really any sport with a goalie.

We had a teaser of synchronized swimming  today which was great, and I’m really looking forward to rhythmic gymnastics.  Make fun all you want, those girls will kick your ass.  Ribbons ahoy!