Olympics:
2008 August 25
We are trying to trudge through an immense pile of TiVo’d stuff, and still have half the gymanstics and the opening ceeremonies to go through. A few thoughts:
- I can’t imagine who the heck programmed this stuff, but lawzy me, I never knew that the USA audience was so up on nearly naked women – er, beach volleyball, volleyball, etc. I found it irritating. Mere wanted to know why the programming was so limited in scope and USA-centric.
- They can cut the preliminary rounds for practically every sport, and I’d be just as happy.
- No, we didn’t watch much swimming. We did see the US-China basketball game, but that was it for basketball.
- Diving was wonderful, and the Chinese divers were superb.
- Gymnastics was wonderful, and the Chinese team was incredible.
- Meredith wasn’t sure if it would be a huge faux pas to room for the US and for China. We said – sure, feel free! And she did. She also got to be a huge, perceptive critic on the performances.
- Mere was also interested in some of the field sports that she’d never seen before, like discus, javelin, hammer and shot put. Part of this was because of the movie MATILDA. (Mere has been turning into a stone Roald Dahl freak, which is fine with us.) Me, I was surprised to see that the hammer isn’t a hammer anymore.
- We felt that the Chinese female gymnasts probably were underage, but that the IOC would be jerks to yank the medals after the fact. It’s not the kids’ fault. Blame the Politburo.
- Mere was particularly rooting for Jiang Yu Yuan, whose name ( 江鈺源) is close to Mere’s (江玉彩) Jiang Yu Cai, but the Yu means something else for Mere….Yu Yuan = Treasure Source, Yu Cai = Colorful Jade. I tried to explain to Mere that Jiang is a fairly common family name, and that we have no idea what her original birth family name was. However…
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