Here are my random musings on the games:
**The new scoring system has largely ruined figure skating...
For as far back as I can remember, figure skating (and gymnastics, for the Summer Olympics) has always been a bright spot of the Winter Olympics. I'm generally more interested and invested in sports that require some sort of artistry (diving, ice dancing,
synchronized swimming, trampolining, etc) and figure skating generally held the gold standard for the fusion of athleticism and creativity. Nowadays? Not so much. Not that I don't enjoy putting my joint MIT degrees in theoretical physics and advanced mathematics to use when figuring out if a skating routine should win or not, but, oh wait, I don't. The figure skating competition has gone from having a well choreographed, cohesive routine that actual had a focus and meaning and turned it into a mad rush to fulfill required elements and rack up as many points as possible in a very short amount of time. Beyond that, you either have to be omniscient or have slow-motion replay of every element in order to determine if the competitor's foot was more than a quarter turn off her line at the time she landed. You think I'm exaggerating? Oh, how I wish I were. The judges literally look at the foot placement of every landing to determine if a jump should be downgraded or points deducted and if the foot is even slightly beyond a quarter turn, it doesn't matter how 
beautiful the jump was or how well it fit into the routine, it gets knocked. It's just plain silly. Even the most artistic of skaters has a hell of a time fitting in anything but the required elements. My darling Johnny Weir and other skaters who are more accustomed to putting together an artistic, comprehensive program rather than a jumping match suffer the most under the new system. It doesn't matter that he delivered two clean routines that actually managed to have some artistry and flare (in spite of restrictions), he gets judged in a very cold, clinical way that leads to a sixth place finish. The new system was instituted to dispense with the subjectivity of judging in the past, and while I appreciate that that was a problem, it was a problem that I thoroughly enjoyed watching and discussing. Back in the day, it actually mattered if the audience and judges connected with a routine. It was fine if one routine were a little more difficult if was also better choreographed and performed. Now? It just doesn't matter. You can fall flat on your face and have no grace or personality whatsoever and still excel. I totally grant that there were some judging blunders made and that some truly terrible calls have led to some 
skaters getting screwed, but at least people cared. Quite frankly, I thoroughly enjoyed the corruption. It made for scandal and intrigue in a sport that no one should really care about. It made the whole ordeal that much more fun to talk about and discuss. People knew when scores were undeserved and loved talking about how their favorite team got robbed. Under the new regime, all routines look basically the same and you need to be a mathematician to tell the difference. No one really cares if one skater gets gold and another silver because the audience has no idea who did a better job. I miss caring. I miss having even the foggiest of ideas who should win and who shouldn't. I miss the artistry. Not only do all skaters have to do certain required elements, but more and more, they do all these required elements in the exact same order. I have found that I fast-forward through routines (especially the long program, which should be renamed "the 
painfully long, nigh interminable" program) and basically just tuning in to see results. Johnny Weir was one of the few male skaters to have interesting routines and he was swiftly punished for it. The think tank at NASA may not like Johnny's skating, but the audience certainly does. The boos and whistles at his low scores felt a little vindicating, but I think it was the crown of roses that managed to make things right with the world. Hats off to Evan for the win, but I wish it had been Johnny instead. Skating to Lady Gaga... Also, for all of Plushenko's caterwauling about how he would have won under the old system, I have to point out that the reason the system was changed was because of, wait for it, the Russians cheating on the pairs outcome in 2002. No one but your homeland to blame, Yevgeny.**You can try to convince me all you want that Curling is a sport, but until Shuffleboard, Croquet, and Hopscotch make their Olympic debuts, I ain't buying it...
Curling is a game. Plain and simple. The round-the-clock coverage of Curling on CNBC and MSNBC may try to convince me otherwise, but
in fact, they've been having the opposite effect. I tune in, thinking that maybe, just maybe, this time I'll find Curling to even kind of sort of resemble a sport, and every time, I have visions of retirees playing Shuffleboard on the deck of a cruise ship. I'm sure there's some skill involved and I'm sure it takes a long time to be good at Curling, but the same goes for Chess or Poker. Quite frankly, I would much rather watch a game of Croquet. I'd say Croquet and Hopscotch are
on a par with Curling physically, but are a hell of a lot more fun to watch. Some people seem fascinated by Curling, and that's cool, but it still doesn't make it an Olympic sport. As I watch the oftentimes old, unathletic, occasionally doughy curlers on the ice, I just can't believe this game is an Olympic sport at all, let alone that it gets hours upon hours of coverage (albeit cable). In related news, I've tried to watch Curling several times and still have no clue in hell how it's played. Between the sweeping and the standing around, there just seems to be way too much excitement going on for anyone to take the time to explain how the play.**I realize I'm from America, but that doesn't mean I only want to see Americans competing in events where Americans might win more American medals...
Dear NBC, the Olympics are about people from all over the globe coming together in competition. I DO NOT want to watch coverage that only sporadically focuses on athletes who aren't American. It seems to get worse with each passing Olympics. I don't know if it's just American arrogance at work or if the brass at NBC really don't think other athletes matter or what, but I'd like to see events that have no viable American contenders and I don't need to see the ice dancing routine of some random couple of skaters just because they're American. Seriously, I'd rather see the kickass competitors from Norway who finished 6th (or whatever) than the mediocre American team that finished 17th. Or, better yet, stop covering Curling (see above) and show more of each competition. Oh, doing away with meaningless qualifying
rounds would help as well (you know, not like the quaterfinals or anything, but like the initial qualifying round where they start winnowing down the 137 competitors). I could also live without ever seeing Apolo Ohno ever do anything ever again. Oy. Also, showing mostly Americans just leads to even more showing of jackasses chanting "U-S-A!" and being generally obnoxious to the people around them. It's embarrassing enough without the more overt hubris. (On a related note, if you insist on showing up to an event shirtless with body paint, please have a nice body. There simply isn't enough eye bleach to go around...)**This isn't really the Olympics' fault, but nonetheless, my mother can't remember anyone's name so I have to give them all ridiculous nicknames... which is kind of fun, but also kind of taxing...
My mother is adorable, but I'm quite frankly running out of nicknames for athletes. Most of them I just have to give a brief description of who they are (by which I mean a complete delineation of their en
tire history as an athlete) and hope it rings a bell. The ones that have a good nickname are certainly easier to keep track of. Evan Lysacek is called Superman because he kind of looks like Superman, but more because of the way he slicks his hair for competition, but not in real life (and quite frankly, after how gracefully and coolly he handled Plushenko's comments, he really is a super man). Plushenko is affectionately called "The Russian Mullet" for obvious reasons. Johnny Weir is called The Fabulous Johnny Weir and that seems t
o clear up all confusion. Other skaters have less-than-flattering nicknames... I'm none too fond of Rachel Flatt's skating or her style, so she's subject more than a few. The fact that she can't seem to find tights that even kind of match her skin tone and insists on having a bump-it style hairdo are the basis for most... Lindsay Vonn is simply The Blonde and Julia Mancuso rather thankfully dons a tiara, so she's particularly easy to keep track of. Which, I have to say, the US has some seriously attractive athletes at the games this year. When the skiers are about to start their runs, they have a picture of them with their names and half the American team look like head shots for a casting agent. Kind of bizarre... Anyway, if anyone knows of an easier way to keep track of athletes, I'd love to hear it because frankly, a lot of these people are pretty nondescript. "Wait, which one was he?" "Uh, you know, he's the, uh, guy with the... skis..." Not helpful.**When 1st and 17th place are separated by less than a second, it dawns on my just how stupid a lot of this is...
I rather enjoy watching the downhill racing (and to a lesser extent, the speed skating), but it kills me when the commentators are like, "Ooooh! Random L. Skier got off to an incredibly slow start and is currently two-tenths back! My god, how will he ever make up such a defi
cit?!" Seriously? Two-tenths of a second? Or worse, one event that I saw, the top 7 or 8 finishers were separated by about two-tenths total. Which means gold, silver, and bronze were separated by a few hundredths of a second. I guess in skiing that's like an eternity or something, but it just seems stupid to me. Don't get me wrong, it's still fun and exciting to watch, but I kind of have to forget how minute the differences are to really take it seriously. I'd much rather watch downhill than cross-country though. For as stupid as hundredths of a second making the difference is, it's still better than sports where you can't get more than one competitor in the frame at one time. "Nesbit is in the lead, but Johannsen is right on his heels!" "That's right, Dan, Johannsen made some huge strides in that last mile and half and is only 12 minutes off the leader. Amazing." It may be amazing, but it's not all that much fun to watch...Anyway, I'm hanging in there, but I'm kind of wishing TV would hurry and come back. Seriously, aside from USA Network offering new programming (god bless you, network), there has been nothing on opposite the Olympics. Which means that I have a hell of a time building up a cushion before watching the Olympics and I think we all know that there's a lot of filler to fast-forward through. And bobsledding. Which the Canadians call "bobsleigh." How cute is that? It's like if Santa were an Olympic athlete... Wait, no, having watched some Curling, I think we all know a "sport" at which he could really excel...
Come back, TV. Come back... :(
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