Non-Random Entries Later. Five Things First.

[mrissa]

1. We can add durian to the list of things I can eat but will probably choose not to eat for the foreseeable future.

2. Shut Up, Bob Costas! This is my rallying cry for every Olympics. I love the Olympics, even the Thawed Olympics. In the Real Olympics, I like hockey, which I can watch all the time, as well as the things I can't watch all the time. In the Thawed Olympics, I don't want to watch baseball or basketball or soccer. I want kayaking. I want dressage. I want fencing. I want the weird little short-track cycling thing. And I want it all sort of jumbled together, where you watch a foil match and then switch to water polo and then shooting right after that. Also I want them to stop showing President Bush. He is on television for being PotUSA every day of the year. The alternate-made-good only totally nails a beautiful pommel horse routine* a couple of times every four years, so shove over, dude, and let somebody else's mug on camera for a minute or two. And camerabeings, for heaven's sake, this is at least as much your fault.

3. I should probably read some other fun poet very soon, or else everything is going to have W. H. Auden epigraphs for months and years after this. Sprawling on the couch feeling vertiginous with W. H. Auden (poems, but the prose is in my future) is way better than without.

4. Ista thinks that a few degrees' cooling in August means a great deal more snuggling of the poodle. Oh noes. Oh the horror.

5. Someone made a comment that made me think I had perhaps not been clear: I will not be going to World Fantasy Con this year. It would be awesome in more than one way, I feel sure -- seeing friends in town as well as at the con -- but I am not getting un-vertiginous enough to plan a lot of trips, and the one to Montreal at the end of this month is going to be it for the foreseeable future. And that one will probably be hard enough. So. No Calgary for me. Sorry, folks. Another year.

*I don't even like pommel horse, but damn.

Comments

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

I was going to say, gymnastics! Not as good as figure skating maybe, but amazing.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am ambivalent about some aspects of women's gymnastics. For every girl (oh, how I wish I could say "woman" there) who can incorporate the required dance moves into her floor exercises seamlessly, there are five who do some good tumbling and then jerk their arms around mechanically, and why? Because someone decided that it wasn't enough to have awesome tumbling and flexibility if you didn't demonstrate that this is really truly feminine? But that doesn't take away from what they do well.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

I feel like that about it as well. And there are the random pauses when a gymnast stops doing the smaller moves in time to the music and has to prepare for a tumbling sequence, where you wouldn't want to stop at all if the music was the important thing.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

I agree about those weird arm-waving things--even some excellent gymnasts really can't dance. They don't make the men behave that way. But some of the stuff they do on uneven bars is really amazing.

On the other hand, it was amazing to see a 33 year old compete! But very strange to think of that as being old for the sport...

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I love uneven bars. Yes.

[prettymuchpeggy.livejournal.com]

I agree the dance elements and the music for that matter do not belong in women's regular gymnastics as both take belittle much of what they are doing. As far as the other women's gymnastic equipment/events I think they celebrate the lower center of gravity for women. I love the uneven bars too.

I remember the days when teenagers in this sport were considered the exception vs the rule.

[orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com]

2. No kidding re: pommel horse! Although, holy cow, did you see the Chinese men on rings? At one point the announcer said, "That's, like, impossible!" and I think that was a technical description, not just incoherence.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I missed that part. One imagines they'll show some more Chinese men on rings, though. One hopes.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

same here. i giggled like crazy.

[keilexandra]

2. Yeah, I like women's gymnastics better than men's, but Sasha's pommel horse routine was amazing. So glad he nailed it.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I will *take* Bob Costa, if I can get coverage of more than two sports along with him.

So far I have seen 1. handball 2. volleyball 3. tennis. And it's not for lack of watching and flipping around channels to find more coverage. We were at a large mall yesterday. It turns out they're showing gymnastics on a satellite chanel, and we don't have satellite.

I love the Olympics too, and I am extemely unhappy about this. (And the websites for each country's coverage seem to be protected so you can only get them within that country. So I can't just watch nbc.com.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It does seem sort of counter to the international spirit of the thing, yah.

[biguglymandoll.livejournal.com]

Re W. H. Auden: I urge, encourage, and compel you to look at Fernando Pessoa, if you haven't already. The guy was brilliant, in the way only people who are probably full-blown bonkers can be. GREAT poetry. I recommend "Fernando Pessoa and Co." over his longer "The Book of Disquiet" if you haven't read him before.

I enjoy the Summer (thawed!) sports better, if only because there's a chance I'd ever actually do any of them. The winter sports, I cannot relate. My idea of a nice winter sport is sipping hot mulled wine while watching the kids make snowthings. Also, Bob Costas is an idiot. ;-)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Our library has no Pessoa. Sigh.

I had never thought of relating to Olympic athletes. It just didn't occur to me as something to do. I mean, sure, I've skated, biked, run, swum; I suppose I was even made to shot put and high jump in gym, and to play some of the team sports. But for me it's a lot more about amazing things people can do with their bodies than about what I imagine I could do. With the vertigo, if I was spending the Olympics thinking, "Huh, I have no idea if I'll be able to get on a real bike again, because right now I can't walk unassisted," I would be spending the Olympics in tears. So it's a lot better this way, I think.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I don't think you can blame the camerabeings; they're working under direction from the directors as to what they point the cameras at.

The stuff male gymnasts do on the flat floor is totally appalling, and obviously impossible. MOstly I like the women's better, but man, some of that stuff.

I wish I could see judo and fencing and shooting more. I've mostly gotten out of the habit of even trying, they waste so much time on stupid race sports.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

They have streaming internet coverage of judo and fencing and shooting this time around. Living In The Future FTW.

[brooksmoses]

FWIW, suzimoses has been watching pretty much all of the Olympics on the streaming-video site (nbcolympics.com, I think). They've got everything, as I understand it, except that for stuff like gymnastics that they show live on TV, they don't put it up as live streaming video but wait until after it's over. Much better than TV, I'd think, but they don't do the editing down into a collection of interesting bits that can be watched in something like realtime.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And I may watch some of the events I don't see enough of on the TV, but I don't actually want all of it. In Olympics coverage as in fiction, editing is a valuable skill; the places they go wrong with it don't really invalidate the places they go right.

[carbonel]

I, on the other hand, am very very happy that in addition to the live streaming video, they are archiving the gymnastics -- all of it. (I hope they're doing the same for other sports, but gymnastics is the one I'm watching when I have time.) There are four apparati (apparatuses?) for the women, and for the preliminaries, there were four groups (five or six girls* in each) in each rotation. There were four rotations, with each one taking two hours. So, 4x4x2=32 hours. And it's all there for me to watch, in reasonably high definition.

Ditto the men's, though it's six apparati, and the all-around finals had only three men per country, so I don't know how long each rotation took. But I can watch it if I want, which I do.

On the other hand, ten minutes of pistol shooting is plenty for the two weeks, and I discovered in the bit of sabre competition that they showed (because it was an American medals sweep) that I have no idea how to watch fencing -- a sentiment first encountered in reading the Modesty Blaise novel Sabre-Tooth (and oh, god, the penny just dropped).

*If the other section is men, I suppose I should call them women, but they aren't -- they're little girls. Except for the 33-year-old woman competing for Germany. And just when I start snarling at all the "background on the entrants" videos, they show something like that that makes me sniffle.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I have seen what Olympics I am likely to see-- no TV in my apartment. My family agrees that shooting is not an Olympic sport, even though it makes me feel good to know there's one that I could still theoretically compete in.
Totally agree about Bush.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

There's streaming video on the internet, so no TV is not necessarily a barrier.

Why do they feel this way about shooting? Is it only gun-shooting they don't think should count, or is archery on their no-fly list as well? And if archery, what about javelin?

After I posted this, some moron decided that the best thing would be to subject viewers to Bob Costas and George Bush at the same time with no one else relieving the pain. Aaaaagh.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

I am puzzled. Are they putting news updates on too often, or is Bush really appearing in the Olympics coverage? If the latter, why? I don't remember ever having seen politicians turning up in Olympics programmes once we'd got past the opening ceremonies.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Bush turned up for the Olympics and is going to events, so they're showing lots of Presidential Reaction Shots. Sigh. Also there was a break where Shut Up Bob Costas interviewed him for several minutes straight. He was shown talking to Vladimir Putin. Etc.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

I don't remember ever being told about political leaders attending events (other than the ceremonial bits). Possibly I just haven't noticed, or else ours don't attend, but I'm fairly sure that any congratulatory statements and such have been (briefly) reported in the news, rather than sandwiched between badminton and kayaking.

[bob54449.livejournal.com]

"He was shown talking to Vladimir Putin."

Hopefully letting Putin know that the Olympics has not made USA overlook this little war in Georgia Russia has started.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That's approximately what he told Bob Costas he'd said.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

It's only really gun-shooting that is questionable. It's a skill, but it's not... I don't know, it seems to rely more on the gun and sight technology. In the end, they do not propel the bullet to the target.
I'm capable of having a debate with myself on the topic. It *is* a skill, and it's really amazing how good some of them are. Their perception and ability to become still are miles above my own.

I think I saw that interview. It was part of what got me out of the house and back on the road to home. The Olympics cannot be apolitical, but the only politics I tolerate are smiles, handshakes, and congratulations on the medals.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The things I know about the physicality of shooting a rifle or a pistol are all secondhand, so I'm probably not the right person to have an argument about it. Ability to become still seems pretty physical to me, though.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I'm not the right person, either; like I said, I'm capable of having the argument all on my own.

[prettymuchpeggy.livejournal.com]

I loved the opening ceremonies when it was not being interupted by color commentary. I wish they had had screen titles instead of anyone talking over things that were happening. Makes me wish that they had an SAP function to eliminate "color" commentators.

I also wished that there had been a great deal less close ups. I would have liked to see the light designs and people designs that were being created. Spectacular - what was shown.

Men's gymnastics was unreal or surreal, depending. Agree GW Bush should have been a footnote, not 1% of all things shown.

There was all sort of commentary about how the Russian and Romainian have lost there edge in women's gymnastics. They have also lost their steriod use - just saying.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

A "Mute Bob Costas" package would be great. The segments that are just Bob Costas could be replaced, perhaps by a picture of a waterfall or a street scene.

I've seen people screw up at the Olympics before, but watching the Romanian women's gymnasts do it had a whole different quality to it. Everyone I've seen screw up at the Olympics before had this passionate intensity. They sort of had this, "Should I do a backflip here? Huh, maybe that was a bad idea. Oh well," sort of feel to them. Very strange.

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

Dressage?!?!? You want to see Dressage?!?!? Yikes. I was bored senseless very quickly.

two random things make a comment

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

1. if you think durian is bad, try durian gelato. scary shit.

2. my dad was a judo camerabeing at the Thawed Olympics in atlanta. they made a hat for him: MR. JUDO, it said.

Re: two random things make a comment

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Please oh please tell me your father kept the hat.

Re: two random things make a comment

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

he certainly did. he had a great time shooting the olympics, i don't think he would get rid of a souvenir like that. :) i might ask him to wear it out here on his visit in september.