Wednesday, February 22, 2006

ON DOWN THE ROAD....


I agree with BrownShoes in that the Olympics seem like they've been hogging up the Telly for eons. I can't decide which Olympics coverage enrages me more - Summer or Winter. I am grateful for the demise of the "UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL" sketches that used to substitute for real coverage of actual events. But this time around, KING 5 TV is being careful to not broadcast anything important till after 11:00 PM .... at which point I am dozing off from a combination of fatigue and sour mash whiskey. So I've been cutting away from the Olympics to watch American Idol, House, Bones, Invasion, Survival, Gray's Anatomy, etc., without much fear of missing anything stunning.

But it is sort of like being sucked into a black hole .... you know going in that you're going to be dragged through endless advertising breaks for the first three hours before the dangled bait is finally dropped onto the screen. Plop! I ALWAYS read the silent results on the evening news to see if it's going to be worthwhile. Plop!

The next Winter Olympics will be in Vancouver and Whistler (I think) and perhaps we will be getting some live coverage of live events.
Comments:
One glorious thing about housesitting (and there are others besides this one) is that the homeowners have a DVR...a magical device that records shows any number at a time for a later date.

I have yet to see an Olympic advertisement as the DVR scans through the recording faster than Bode Miller's been able to ski down the slope.

And if the Ice Dancing looks boring or the Skeleton races look interesting or if I just have to say to myself "Look at the size of her legs!" one more time, then I can pick and choose with the nifty remote exactly what I want to watch.

I know I shall suffer when we go back to our house sans DVR or HDTV(another of the great perks of this housesitting gig).

But I've sworn that by then -- mid-May -- I shall not watch as much TV.

Promises, promises...
 
Oh, I am so with you about the crappy coverage of these fabulously traditional games to show off the lithe, muscular, incredible bodies of these young competitors. But we, like noapologies sitting house, have DVR, and that is keeping me sane! Even so, sometimes we watch what they choose to show us in the "awake hours" and do as you do, flip back and forth between the boring and the Idols or the young Interns or the recordings we have of the Medium or those that are Lost. Sometimes even my Mate's guilty pleasure, Batchelor in Paris! Ack! I hate that show! Everything is so AMAZING! These people (batchelor and those who want him) need Thesauruses!!!!! Anyway, I love the Olympics, no matter what THEY do to them!
 
No DVR here. No high-speed InterNet here. Leastways we've rid ourselves of rotory-dial telephones. Still walking ten miles each way back and forth to school each day (no new fangled bicycles here) and uphill both ways. Grandson Allie would comprehend the physics of that. This morning he arrived as a cyborg ... left half of his brain was metal ... by mid-morning he was vacillating back and forth between being a boy and a dog.
 
Oh - the old "up close and personal"s...how I LOATHED them!
More than anything, I detest the podium shots - the way the camera zooms in for a close up of the American on the dias (or in the audience!) instead of the gold medal winner from any toher country.
last night, the gold went to the skater from Japam - their first ever. What did we see? An endless close up of Sasha Cohen...
WTF?
When we lived in Pt. Angeles, we got Canadian TV - and that was the last time I really enjoyed watching the Olympics...
sigh.
Why won't the world spin according to MY specifications?

bs
 
I have heard from many Olympic-philes that Canadian coverage is wonderful. We were in Greece a week after the Summer Olys were over in 2004 and found out for the first time that the Para-Olympics follows the Oly games for two weeks in the same venues used by the whole-bodied Olympians. Greece covered them. Has the USA ever done that? Don't think so!!! I really sometimes don't like being an Ugly American.
 
'Brown Shoes' and 'mom' -- I'm in total agreement on all points. We watched a lot of past Olympics on Canadian TV ... but this time can't seem to locate a Canadian station on our Comcast subscription line-up.
 
dual posting for the internet-challenged...you rock, fossil gut.


bs
 
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