What
· Sports
· · Baseball (21 fragments)
· · Basketball (1 fragment)
· · Cricket (1 fragment)
· · Curling (2 fragments)
· · Cycling (3 fragments)
· · Field Hockey (1 fragment)
· · Football (4 fragments)
· · Golf (1 fragment)
· · Hockey (9 fragments)
· · Olympics (1 fragment)
· · Soccer (27 fragments)
· · · World Cup 2010 (9 fragments)
$1,000,000,000 Theatre · While, like many, I’m ambivalent about the Olympics, I lean to the positive side, and was moderately happy when Vancouver scored the 2010 Winter Games. Since then, the infrastructure preparations have ripped the shit out of our city, the financial arrangements have gone sideways, and I failed to get any of the tickets I signed up for ...
[9 comments]
[9 comments]
Olympics Out · I sure enjoyed them; ski-ing and bobsledding and, well, anything run against the clock gets old pretty fast, but the hockey and curling and speed-skating are good entertainment, especially that short-track stuff. Our women hockey players were hot stuff; there was the cutest picture of big star Hayley Wickenheiser with her gold medal looped around the neck of her little kid; how come you never see pictures of the men like that? I thought the opening and closing ceremonies both made excellent TV, even though the over-wrought Renaissance costume-drama bits really didn’t do much for me. I thought the short Vancouver segment at the closing hit the spot OK; there are probably a hundred million people now who think Canada is native elders, circus acrobats, and Avril Lavigne. You could do worse, I suppose. But you have to hand it to Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan, a quadriplegic, who pulled off a nice extended wave of the big Olympic flag with some deft wheelchair rotations. Watch for me in the crowd in 2010.
Watching the Olympics · The CBC Olympics coverage on its HDTV channel is just outstanding. Good picture, good schedule, and good commentary. The NBC feed is is not as egregiously sugar-coated as previous US offerings, but the US-centricity really gets old fast. The CBC’s video logo/trailer is an outstanding piece of eye candy; is it online anywhere? There are even occasional high-def ads. One in particular from Target, reminiscent in style of their big August 2005 New Yorker buy, is just a treat to watch.
Athens and Twin Valley · At Lauren’s Mom’s farm in eastern Saskatchewan, someone turned on the tube to show the great capture with the new antenna, and there were the Olympic opening ceremonies. “People Of Earth” began Mr. Rogge, and you know, that’s who he was talking to, more or less, which is worth something. We ended up watching quite a bit of Olympic TV then on August 15th went to the Twin Valley Riding Club Rodeo southwest of Esterhazy, so the farm visit was quite sports-intensive. Herewith Olympic remarks and rodeo pics ...
