Olympics, oh, boy

Have you caught the Olympic fever that’s spreading through our country?  Yeah, me neither.

I’m sure you knew that the Opening Ceremony is on Friday night.  You know the one that’s 20 hours long and the USA comes in behind almost every other country because our founding fathers decided to start our country’s name with a U.

Couldn’t have started it with an A as in Awesome States of America.  Or just America.  Or at least somewhere at the beginning of the alphabet.  Every Olympics I stay up and watch until the US comes in with the flag.  I don’t know why.  Or course, I’m a proud American and all and I watch, but it’s the same every time — the US comes in with the flag, there are tons of American team members, and they walk around waving.  You know what’s fun?  Watching all the countries with 4 athletes and the announcer talks about how one of the guys always wanted to compete in swimming, but didn’t have a Speedo.  Cue the taped segment that tells us more than we ever wanted to know about said guy with no Speedo who, now we know trained in a kiddie pool, but since there has been a drought for the past four years in his country, has had to practice in the local lake that happens to be inhabited by piranha.  Oh, and his mom died last week and he didn’t want to participate in the Olympics, but it was his mom’s dying wish that he go to Beijing, ’cause she’d never been out of the village.

I watch the Olympics for the drama.

I also watch the Olympics for the falls.  You know you do it, too.  Don’t act like you don’t watch the rhythmic gymnasts with the ribbons on sticks and hope they drop the stick.  My personal fave is when the male gymnasts miss the uneven bars.  I like when they fall off the pommel horse, too.  I know I’m a horrible person.  I can’t help it.  It’s not like I’m yelling “fall!” at the tv, I’m just thinking it in my head, the way you’re supposed to root for stuff (and my favorite way to think).

The drug scandals are a fun thing to watch the Olympics for, too.  When all else fails, there’s always the drug scandals.

This year there will be American protest over China’s human rights policies and violations.  They’ve even set up designated protest areas near the venues — how great is that?  Let’s start a pool and we’ll bet on how many days of the games it will take before we spot a sign by some dude with Beijing spelled wrong.  I know you just looked at how I spelled Beijing and thought, is that spelled right?  Yes, it is.  The Chinese spell their cities names with extra letters just like we do!  If you don’t believe me — well, have you ever seen Plaquemines on a map?  Maybe you’re familiar with Calcasieu.  I clicked spell check for that and it suggested calculate.  We like our vowells in Louisiana!  I’m telling you, when I moved to South Louisiana I just gave up ever trying to spell anything right again.  I printed invitations for Kim’s shower with Ponchatoula spelled wrong and had to reprint them.  Dumb spelling.  Back to Beijing…

So, Friday night, get some take-out and settle in for a long night of Opening Ceremonies.  Mmmm…the Olympics are yummy like egg rolls and moo goo gai pan.