Not for any boycott reasons. Last night was the women’s long program and for years I have found Russian figure skaters to be mechanistic and boring.<\/p>\n
But this is the first Olympics I haven’t been attracted to in its entirety. One old fart thing: I’m not excited by the vast increase in new “sports.” Most of these events look as if they arrived yesterday via surfer dude-type California youth who drop out of junior high school to follow their dreams into orthopedic hospitals.<\/p>\n
What do teenagers know about death and neurological diagnoses?<\/p>\n
At first, these weird sports, performed on silly ice-covered constructions (only this year, when I thought about it, did I understand why the half pipe is called half pipe), had a kind of “Shit! That is nuts!” quality of interest. But they don’t anymore. How many upsidedown flips in the air can one observer take in without pondering, “What is<\/em> the meaning of life?”<\/p>\n Moreover, the, uh, color commentators have, to put it kindly, a limited vocabulary. About 70 percent of their expressions are clich\u00e9s. They are irritating. I spend more time yelling at the yammering than watching the moves. And who invented names for those moves? Names such as “eight-forty-seven twisted grab with gluten-free unbuttered toast!” (I made that one up. I think.)<\/p>\n I used to enjoy, I do not know why, watching straight-forward skiing. You know, people going 80 mph down an endless slope of twists and turns. What did I find compelling? Whatever it was, it no longer compels me.<\/p>\n What is left to me have been the figure skating events not entirely dominated by the Russians, so tonight I’ll watch the pair skaters, but without much enthusiasm. (Prediction: half of the women will fall on a triple throw, half of the men will fall on a side-by-side triple jump.)<\/p>\n What is<\/em> interesting is how many American figure skaters have gone to top flight colleges, and how many wind up as physicians. Tenley Albright<\/a> was the first I recall and today’s Karen Chen is on a med school track at Cornell.<\/p>\n A note to future Olympic committees, the NFL and NBC:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Not for any boycott reasons. Last night was the women’s long program and for years I have found Russian figure skaters to be mechanistic and boring. But this is the first Olympics I haven’t been attracted to in its entirety. … Continue reading \n