The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

I didn’t have the gumption to post on a daily basis during the 2010 Winter Olympics, but I did watch a lot of them.  As I get older I find that I enjoy the Olympics more and more, although I think I prefer the Summer games more.  So here’s some random observations on the 17-day spectacle that was the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics…

• First off, I know I’m not the only one who thought NBC’s coverage sucked hard.  I don’t even care about the tape delays so much (since I’m not around to watch during the day anyway), but there was so much else to hate.  Look, I get that television networks are businesses, and the primary goal of a business is to make money.  But really, could NBC have been any more clumsy about the unending barrage of commercials?  After awhile it felt like I was watching one long infomercial for Visa, Verizon, AT&T, Diet Coke, Lexus, and McDonald’s among others.  (It’s the Visa show, brought to you with limited Olympic interruption!)

• I totally missed the opening ceremonies, but from the online commentary I saw I don’t think I missed much.  Slam poetry, for real?

• Every time I saw the Olympic logo I kept thinking of the cover for Rush’s Test for Echo album.

• Speaking of Rush – how the hell do you have a closing ceremony that celebrates the essence of Canada and not include Rush?  Avril Lavigne?  Nickleback?  WTF???

• Say Apolo Ohno again.  I dare you, I double dare you mother*^@%&@%!

• I’m not ashamed to say I watched more curling than any other event.  I do feel kind of bad for all the crap John Shuster took for leading the U.S. team’s march of futility, but it was damn frustrating to witness.

• To watch the commercials and little human interest stories that dominated NBC’s coverage, you wouldn’t think any of the athletes had fathers.

• I’m not going to bellyache about the U.S. men’s hockey team falling short in the gold medal game – considering they weren’t even expected to medal at all – but it would’ve been sweet to win the whole thing.

• Great job by Steve Holcomb’s gold-medal bobsleigh team, but if I never have to see his ass jiggle in that skin-tight suit again it’ll be too soon.

• Dear Julia Mancuso – STFU and stop whining.  Joannie Rochette cried less than you, and that poor girl just lost her mother.

• It’s cool and all that Shaun White dominated the Halfpipe, but I can’t get into it.  It’s the equivalent of the slam dunk competition at the NBA All-Star game.

• Best line of the entire Games goes to Bob Costas just prior to the closing ceremonies, praising Canada for their “innovations in science and whatnot”.

• I seem to remember coverage of the Beijing games being spread out over a lot more networks (with a much greater variety of events), but maybe I’m imagining things.

• Ballet, classical choirs, and giant glowing hamster balls.  Holy crap, Sochi means business.

Even if you’re not a huge fan of curling, you’re probably familiar by now with John Shuster’s underwhelming performance as captain of the U.S. team at this year’s Winter Olympics.  Through four matches, Shuster and the boys have zero wins.  But what makes this year’s futility especially painful is Shuster’s propensity for coming up short at crucial moments.  Three matches have been lost because he couldn’t make his final stone count.

Well the mob has spoken and they’re not happy.  In addition to the deluge of anti-Shuster Tweets, the captain’s Wikipedia entry has undergone some creative editing.  Luckily it’s all saved in the article history.  Here are a few choice ones just from today (in addition to the edits that show him as deceased):

• A personal tidbit – “Shuster failed four times to make a game-winning shot in the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. He chokes more than a prostitute.”
• Interesting - “Growing up Shuster was an avid baseball fan. In 2003, he attended a playoff baseball game. When a foul ball was headed towards the stands, he made a play for it but unsurprisingly he couldn’t make the play. Steve Bartman is now blamed for the epic loss because Shuster couldn’t make the play.”
• Now that’s just mean – “John Shuster has single handedly ruined the USA chances to compete for the gold. He missed 3 final shots that could have been made by a one armed, one legged, brainless monkey”
• I didn’t know this was his nickname – “John “chokey mcchokestein” Shuster (born November 3, 1982) is an American curler from Chisholm, Minnesota and Olympic medalist.”  (another variation had his occupation as “choker”.)
• Sorry to hear that – “After the lost to Denmark, Shuster’s fiancee officially denounced their relationship, stating that he would have failed as a husband down the line sooner or later. Shuster’s father is currently disappoint.”
• Can’t argue there – “Shuster won the 2010 United States Olympic Curling Trials and is destroying the reputation of the United States at the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver.”
• Here’s a whole bunch of gems:
  • “He currently works as a quality control specialist for Toyota.”
  • “Upon John’s pathetic performance at the 2010 games, he has decided to retire from the sport. And an hero.”
  • “In a side note, in 2008 Shuster attempted to commit suicide. Unsurprisingly to those who know him and have watched him play, he failed at the attempt; Shuster used a gun and once again completely messed up the shot.”
  • “Shuster’s 2005 college roommate stated that he only bought Shuster a shot once. He said that after the first attempt, he never trusted Shuster with a shot ever again.”
  • “Shuster has come to be known as the biggest choke artist of the 2010 Winter Olympics, and is the lone reason the USA curling team has not won a single game this Olympics.”
  • “Shuster said he draws inspiration from Bill Buckner, Brad Lidge, Scott Norwood, and the city of Cleveland.”
  • “Nicknamed “The Largest Choke Artist Alive”, Shuster distracts his opponents with horrible shots and general terrible overall play. He is known for folding under pressure situations and never making clutch, let alone easy, shots.”
• Of interest to etymologists – “The term “you messed up,” has officially been replaced by “you Shustered it.”"
• Yes, but has he ever vomited during play? - “His inability to hammer out points in clutch situations, such as during the 2010 Olympic games, Shuster has recently become known as the Donovan McNabb of professional curling.”

Anyway, you get the point.  Look on the bright side John – if nobody cared about curling they wouldn’t bother castigating you like this, right?

By the way, what’s Pete Fenson up to these days?

CNNSI ran an interesting piece this week called “25 Things We Miss in Football“, and while it hit on a few things I would definitely have in my own list (Al Davis as a genius, well-dressed coaches, and the Orange Bowl played in the Orange Bowl) there are naturally some missing items.  So to rectify that I’m going to list the things I miss not just in football, but in sports in general.  Let’s take a look!

1. Helmet/Bullpen Carts:  I miss helmet and bullpen carts for a few reasons.  One is the pure fun and novelty of the concept.  I mean, the notion that a professional athlete needs motorized assistance to travel a few hundred feet is laughable on its face.  Still, despite all the cynicism of our modern age I have to think there’s room in peoples’ hearts for sweet rides like this or this.

Secondly, seeing an athlete with a career-threatening injury being carted off the field in what looks like a bizarre amusement park ride doesn’t seem quite so sad.  I’m sure carts like these are still in use somewhere, but not seeing them on the professional level is sad.  (Paul Lukas of Uni Watch wrote a good article on bullpen carts a few years ago)

…keep digging 8 things I miss in sports

As cynical as I can be sometimes (most of the time), I find my interest in the Olympics is a lot higher than it used to be.  At least for the winter variety.  And now that the 2010 Vancouver games are less than a year away, my anticipation is growing bit by bit.  And I can’t be alone on that.

I’m all too familiar with the host of complaints that accompany the Olympic Games every time they’re held – they divert money that would be better spent on more worthwhile things, local citizens are at best inconvenienced and at worst harassed or violated in some way, the organizers and even some of the athletes are crooked, it’s an antiquated event that has no relevance for our modern, connected world, yadda yadda yadda.

Are a lot of these complaints are valid?  Sure.  I’m not blind to that reality.  Truth be told I don’t know how thrilled I’d be to have the Olympics in my backyard either.  But I honestly think that more than ever we need grand spectacles like the Olympics so that, if only for a few weeks, we can focus on human accomplishment rather than human misery.

Don’t worry, the rest of the world will still be living in poverty and needlessly killing each other when we’re done watching, and we can all go back to feeling guilty and depressed then.  But dammit, I wanna forget about that just for a bit and see some curling!

So despite all the negative press the upcoming Games are sure to receive, I’m on record as being a fan.  Except for that hideous London 2012 logo – holy crap is that an eyesore.

For the past few days I’ve been mulling over this whole Alex Rodriguez steroids story, and the more I think about it the more I just can’t bring myself to care all that much.  It’s not that I don’t think he’s a cheating scumbag and I’m certainly not impressed by his weak defense, which basically relies on the fact that the substances he took weren’t banned by Major League Baseball at the time.  So what?  Then why lie about it to Katie Couric?

Nor am I bowled over by A-Rod’s claim that he doesn’t know what substances he took that caused him to flunk.  Barry Bonds used a similar defense, and it doesn’t pass the smell test.  Am I seriously supposed to believe that a person whose career depends on their body being in peak physical condition would just blindly take substances without knowing what they are or what they do?  I guess in Rodriguez’s mind it’s better to be seen as a total moron than a cheater.  Now he can be both.

Anyway, there is much gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands over A-Rod, a player to whom many baseball fans looked at as the “clean” savior that would break Bonds’s tainted home run record and restore some credibility to the game.  D’oh!

So I think that how you feel about A-Rod now has a lot to do with how you feel about baseball in general.  For those who still think of it as some sacred American institution (and that includes all those venerated individual records), Rodriguez’s transgression is yet another gut punch and unforgivable betrayal.

But for those who, like me, view the game mainly as a pleasant enough distraction and good way to kill a few hours on a summer afternoon, the news is met with a collective “meh”.   It’s hard for me to get too worked up over just another miscreant on what is a fast-growing list for sports in general.  Sure, he’ll have to endure endless “A-Roid” taunts this season (from Yankees fans as well as opposing teams’ fans), and the highlight shows will suffer no shortage of fans bringing giant novelty syringes to the ballpark.  But they’ll still pay to see him play and at the end of the day, as long as he’s out there hitting home runs he’ll be forgiven.

It seems the question posed in Gladiator still applies today – Are you not entertained?

Congratulations Okalahoma City!  Your new NBA franchise, the Thunder (née Seattle SuperSonics), is now the proud owner of one of the crappiest and most unimaginative logos in professional sports.

Oh.  My.  God.  If that logo doesn’t scream “Banged out by a student at a local community college’s graphic design program” I don’t know what does.  Reading the press release announcing the franchise’s new name and logo/colors is laughable.  Here’s my favorite part:

With a nickname denoting energy and power, a classic-look logo, and the colors of an Oklahoma sunset, Oklahoma City’s NBA team unveiled its identity today.

A classic-look logo?  If by ‘classic’ you mean ‘sometime in the last 5 years’ then sure, it is I guess.  And if the team name is Thunder, why would you want the colors of an Oklahoma sunset?  Wouldn’t the presence of a pretty sunset typically indicate a lack of thunder?

And I just can’t shake the feeling that I’ve seen other logos like it before.  Hmmm…hey, I remember!

So yeah, good job on your new WNBA logo, Oklahoma City.  If you ever change your mind, you can use this logo I designed for you:

Warning: This video is not for anyone easily offended by derogatory words concerning female anatomy.

Curious?  Yeah, I thought so.  I haven’t watched a second of MSNBC’s Olympics coverage, but I think I need to start right away.  Particularly for the “Olympic Update” segments featuring co-hosts Tiki Barber and Jenna Wolfe.  Tiki, as most of you probably know, was a running back for the New York Giants until 2006, when he retired under less than friendly terms with the team.  They of course went on to win the Super Bowl without him at the end of last season.

That’s what Wolfe is alluding to at the beginning of this clip.  Pretty nasty dig for the situation I must say.  But then Tiki took it to a whole ‘nother level with his supposed slip of the tongue.  It’s at the 28-second mark:

Wow.  Just wow.  There is no way that was accidental, and Wolfe knows it.  Notice how she can’t even look at Tiki after his remark.  Now that’s interesting television, people.