Sports: 2006 Winter Olympics

So I am now slave to my TV for the next two weeks. Thank God for DVRs, because my new obsession is curling! This pesky thing called a job prevents me from catching the mid-day coverage, and inexplicably, curling has not made it onto the list of Olympic events featured in prime time. We should start a movement: Show the rock at 8:00!

The TV coverage isn't always great. NBC makes it seem like every Olympian has some terrible sob story, as if they're all orphans who were hit by cars and left for dead, before re-dedicating themselves to their sport and showing the "heart of a hero" in making it this far. Blech. But I love the photography of the locations, and the little bits of local flavor and culture. The pictures of the Italian Alps are certainly beautiful so far. I'd like to visit Nagano and Sydney; those cities in particular seemed to shine during their Games. (In recent memory, only the Atlanta Games were sub-par in this regard, IMHO.) And the Olympic theme music makes me a little teary.

The medals for the Torino Games are really cool—they seem larger than usual, but have a hole in the middle ("representing the Italian piazza") and text around their edge. I like the symbolism and local artistry that is always reflected in each Olympiad's unique medal design.

How about that pairs final last night? That was a remarkable comeback from the fall for the Chinese pair who took the silver, although I felt a little bad for the pair who took the bronze and thought maybe those medals should have been switched. And the footage of that fall/drop the gold medal winners had in some competition in 2004 was terrible, poor girl! They make it look so easy, usually, but it's surely quite dangerous. (Even with this new scoring system, I think that one American pair got stiffed in the short program—they didn't get a 3 for the first thrown triple-axel ever landed in competition? No way.)

I can't ice skate worth a damn, and I don't ski or luge or snowboard. But I love the Olympics, Winter and Summer. With all that's going on in the world, it's nice to bring people together for such a celebratory event, where good sportsmanship is usually on display and most people recognize the best efforts or performances, no matter what country they're for. There's just a certain majesty in the Games—like during these two weeks we manage to find the right level of national pride that doesn't cross over into xenophobia. I'm always a little relieved when they're over, because they completely take over my life when they're on, but I'm also very happy to see them return two years later.

Who else is watching?