Ah, Olympics. I caught the end of the luge, the medal ceremony for men's halfpipe, and and the figure skater's pairs program. The luge was great, as someone totally unexpected -- an Italian, at that -- won the gold, beating a German and an Austrian. Despite, or maybe because of, the upset, the silver and bronze medalists boosted the gold medalist up on their shoulders after the medal presentation. That's so cool. That's the sort of Olympic picture I love -- athletes honestly revelling in the skill and thrill of the sport. Yay.

The men's halfpipe ceremony was cool -- I can understand the chants of "USA! USA!" when US snowboarders swept the event. I have to admit I choked up at the national anthem, and yes, I sang along (badly, as the anthem is difficult enough to sing without having to deal with trying not to cry). Yes, I am pathetic.

As for the figure skating... yeah, it's results like this that make me join the raft of people who object to sports that require subjective judging. I'm not a skater, so I can't tell what the judges saw that I didn't, but it sure as hell looked to me like the Canadian couple, which ended up with the silver, skated better than the gold-winning Russians.

Which leads me to my media rant. The part that made me cheer the loudest was when Scott Hamilton (I think) said, right before someone started to skate, "We're not going to say much during the program." Thank you! Yes! That's exactly what I wanted to hear. Mention something when it's relevant, but otherwise, shut up. Just let us watch the program.

So that part went pretty well. But then, then! after the scores were announced and it was clear the Candians had won silver, stop with the extreme closeups on the Canadian chick's face. We get that it's poignant. We get that they're incredibely disappointed and sad. We get that life sucks. We do not need to count the pores on her face. We don't need to be able to see exactly what the mucas trail looks like. Give her some privacy, for god's sake. She's just suffered a crushing loss --- she doesn't need your cameras up her nose.

Speaking of the medal ceremonies, my dad said that they had been doing a wacky Cirque de Soleil acrobatic bit before the medal presentation. Apparently Bob Costas was apologizing for the weirdness of it all. I didn't see that today -- is NBC just not covering it, or did the Salt Lake folks finally get it through their heads that the medal ceremony is quite dramatic and entertaining enough? Jeez.

As for my own (paltry) athletic endevours, I went swimming again after class at Old Town. So far, so good. We'll see how I feel tomorrow.