Monday, February 22, 2010

olympicated



Some of the ways we've been enjoying the Olympics:



. Eating grilled cheese sandwiches on thickly sliced homemade bread.



. Imagining that the male ice skaters are wildly dressed servers at Olive Garden. I'll be back with your bread! (pirouette) Some salad for you! (triple jump) Would you like romano cheese on that? (swizzle, swizzle, swizzle)



. Practicing our reactions if someone offered us tickets to the opening night of compulsory ice dancing (where, it would seem, everyone dances to the EXACT SAME SONG-- a nerve-jangling salsa-polka hybrid thing... clearly written by DRUNK 80-YEAR-OLD LEIDERHOSEN JUNKIES. (Whimsy: Um, you can't make me go. Chip: Thanks, but I'd rather shoot myself in the unmentionables.)


. Trying to figure out what downhill skiers are envisioning when the cameras catch them minutes before their run, standing with their eyes closed, hand motioning through the air, head waving side to side. (So far we have thoroughly REJECTED the suggested answer of "running through the race course" in place of the following top three: wildly specific dance routine set to Flashdance, maneuvering their car through downtown Vancouver traffic, swim strokes for their attempted crossover into the summer Olympics so they don't have to wait another four years for a medal.)



. Repeatedly rewinding ski crashes (firstly ensuring that no one has died or harmed themselves irrevocably--- we are crass but we aren't tasteless).


. Watching Chris Del Bosco's helmet camera's first person view of his wipe out during Sunday night's ski-cross final. Our favorite part? His shadow as he's pinwheeling in the air just prior to the stellar faceplant.



and lastly



. Theorizing the origins of those terrible personal photos displayed for each and every athlete just as they are about to compete. (Some possibilities: out takes from prom night, evil photo booth sitting outside a wind tunnel, mug shots styled by Nick Nolte.)





Now it's your turn. How do you watch the Olympics?

4 comments:

Amanda said...

I watch by taping each night of the Olympics and watching it the next day fast forwarding through most of the commentary. I also enjoy rewinding crashes and falls and checking out their uniforms. I get the commentary from my eight year old who has some weird olympic stat wiring in his brain (I can't figure out how he knows this stuff).

I also cry during the P&G Mother commercials.

wandering nana said...

I"m not! I don't have control of the remote so my mom gets to pick all the TV programs and unfortunately, the Olympics is not one of them. I love watching, especially the skating!!!! The Mr and friend went to Vancouver on Saturday. He saw a guy holding a sign that he would pay a $1000 for 2 tickets to the hockey game that night (not even USA and Canada ).... but I loved your updates. Thanks.

Alicia said...

Your Olive Garden idea is PERRRRRRFECT.

Kieran (and Brad, by extension, who had to look up the rules for him on Wikipedia) has gotten really into curling in the last 24 hours.

When I was little - like 2ndish grade - I used to pretend my index and middle fingers on both hands were the legs of Olympic ice skaters that I would skate all around my desk at school. They did very elaborate routines.

Anonymous said...

We watch late into the evening, past our self imposed bedtime of 10pm and we say, "come ON - stop with the commercials and get back to more wicked half-pipe stuff!!!" and we get agitated the farther past our bedtime it becomes ... WE ARE SO OLD!! oh, and I cry, too, duing the P&G "thank you, Mom" commercials. Those are awesome. K8