Inaugural Oh! Lympics*

The fortuitous convergence of complete control over my television watching (yay for solo living!) and an enormous amount of free time has resulted in me really enthusiastically throwing myself into the 2008 Beijing Olympics. I've always loved the olympics, both winter and summer. i remember when i was a little kid, i would pretend to skate around on a mattress pad while the competition was going on. however, this is the first year that i've REALLY gotten into it. thanks to dvr and my penchant for making complicated schedules, i've mapped out everything that i want to watch and when it's on. i started by watching the full opening ceremony (okay, i ff'd through a few countries i never heard of, but i paused for the hottt ones. serbia, anyone?), and the next day tentatively stuck my toe in uncharted waters. I started out on saturday by only watching the main nbc channel, and it was then that i would discover i apparently enjoy watching volleyball. interesting, since it's one of my least favorite sports to play. from that, i moved on to beach volleyball---there was comfort in familiarity but still the intrigue of something new. after this, i had an epiphany-- if it turns out that i like watching volleyball (and apparently football), how many other sports that i brushed off would i be able to get into?

a lot, it turns out. i went to the nbc olympics website and looked at all my different sports options. i knocked out ones that i figured would be boring to watch (sorry rowers and archers) and then checked out when my chosen ones would air and on which channel. then i set my dvr in blocks to record everything that i might be into, prelim matches and heats included. I DO THIS EVERY DAY NOW. i am up to my ears in glorious olympics and i feel so in the know!

so here's my point - there are some really hilarious things that happen when you watch hours and hours of olympics all day every day, and most of them have to do with the commentators. there was a period of time i considered live blogging what i was watching, but i figured that would just be too extravagant and unnecessary. so i decided to feature comments every once in a while that really tickle me.

There were quite a few from the past two days, but I only remember a couple, so we'll kick this feature off with double the fun:

#1 - Finals, Women's 30m platform Synchronized Diving. China is kicking ass with their amazing (read: robot) synchro divers. these girls are tiny little carbon copies of each other, and when they enter the water, there is barely any splash. canada comes up to dive, and one of their girls is a little thicker than the rest. she is definitely not chunky, definitely not fat, but she is noticeably bigger. through two jumps, the female commentator is like, subtly calling her a fat ass! after they dove, she mentioned that it's harder for them to avoid making a splash because the "Chinese are so slight". After the Canadians' last dive, which was not great, the commentator described the splash the bigger girl made as a tidal wave.
bold.

#2 - Prelim Softball USA vs. Venezuela. Another lady commentator, talking about a specific player who is fond of pranking. apparently, when this player has chalk on her hand, she likes to put the hand print on as many backs as possible, once even doing it on President Bush. With the following quote, she was demonstrating that the player had done this to her many times, but when you take how she worded it, how she said it (man i wish everyone else had heard this because it doesn't have the same effect in written form) and the stereotype of softball players (Team USA wouldn't win all the softball gold medals if Lesbinonia had a team, ifyouknowwhatimean), it makes for an amazing exchange:

** i didn't really know the proper punctuation to convey the feeling of this sentence, but basically after each phrase, she was trying to correct herself, but it just kept getting worse

so, lady commentator is talking about how she's not realized that pranky player has handed her until later, when she finds the hand prints on "all different areas--all different shirts--on the back--oh god"

SHE LITERALLY SAID OH GOD AT THE END OF THAT RAMBLY SENTENCE!!!!

go america.

*thanks to CtS family member Bill, who won the title contest!