Olympic Fever!

Well, more like Olympic hypothermia. As numerous groundhogs predicted, we finally got winter. Three feet of winter. That fluffy white crap sure is heavy when it gangs up on my shovel. For the most part, I don't care, because I have something to watch on television: The Olympics!

So far, my highlight was making up a story with my grandmother that Roberto Benigni not only lit the torch, but did it while on fire. That's what my mum gets for not watching. Oddly, though, she believed Benigni, but doubted Sophia Loren and Susan Sarandon as flag-bearers.

Hey kids, Susan Sarandon...Janet from Rocky Horror, she was involved in the Olympics! Will wonders never cease?

Apparently, some wonders do cease. Of all the hyped athletes in Team USA commercials leading up to the games, only Shaun White, who featured in a snowboarding video game we play like mad every chance we get, managed to win a medal so far. Bode Miller? Came in 4th. Michelle Kwan? Don't bring her up, I'll start crying again. Apolo Anton Ohno? What happened there? Why do I like Short Track Speed Skating so much? Is it a flashback to my Korean past life? So many questions.

There are 12 more days for this show to get more interesting. I thought, being part-Italian, that I'd dig the whole Italian vibe of these games, but so far I've seen alps, and I saw Theed Palace in an overhead shot, and I heard...disco. Peter Gabriel coming out of the floor dressed like a homeless man singing Imagine was interesting, and that's all I'll say on that. Nah, I'll make it my run-on paragraph instead. I was so stunned by the appearance of Yoko Ono in Italy, that I think I didn't quite absorb what his performance was about. All the world knows Peter Gabriel, I hear. I wonder if they knew him in that setting, singing Imagine, though. Peter Gabriel has some pretty big songs of his own, doesn't he? True, most are about love, swimming, tools, and monkeys; John Lennon wasn't available to sing his own song, so I understand how the musical pairing came about. Sort of.

The USA network, home of Monk and The Dead Zone, is going to cover Curling from 3AM until 11AM, because only people who are awake at those hours like things that can only be described as extreme Scottish marbles. CNBC will be carrying more Curling at 5PM, and I can't wait to compare the coverage. I'll probably hate the CNBC coverage, because I usually don't like anything at 5PM. I do love Curling, though. Even more than Figure Skating, now.

(For those who do not rabidly follow Olympic Figure Skating, Michelle Kwan has been to four Olympics, once as an alternate in case Tonya Harding was arrested, and twice as a medalist--Silver in 1998 and Bronze in 2002. As (evil, shitty) luck would have it, she was injured this season, and had to withdraw from competition. She's tied for non-Olympic titles with Dick Buttons and Carol Heiss--neither had to do half the insane stunts required of today's skaters--and she most likely will be remembered as the best female figure skater this country ever produced.)

Olympic Fever!