Liukin vs Kexin

Before I get into the matchup, just wanted to give a shout out the Jamaican girl who won the 100m. That had to be one of the funniest and silliest celebrations we've seen in the Olympics, she looked so happy running around with the flag, and confusing the cameramen by changing directions and falling over herself with pure joy.

Yesterday we watched and listened to the entire sequence for both CBC and NBC's coverage of the women's individual gymnastics on the uneven bars. There was some hoopla over the scoring for the event, mostly coming from the US, which ended in a tiebreaker that awarded the gold to Chinese He Kexin over American Nastia Liukin. Since none of the American commentators new the rules for tiebreakers, they ended making a huge fuss over it.

I actually thought Liukin's routine should have scored higher. Having watched both the US and Canadian coverage of it (each channel has a camera from opposite sides of the apparatus) it seemed to me Liukin made 1 or 2 less mistakes. "He" had a pretty awesome double release move, but at the end of the day they both had the same start value and difficulty, so you would assume the person who made less mistakes gets a higher score. But then again what do I know -- my experience as a spectator of gymnastics spans approximately 8 days.

I found it interesting that the CBC coverage simply explained the tiebreak, whereas the US coverage went on and on first about not understanding the logistics of the tiebreak, (at which point they were blaming the computer, which I take exception to). Then upon being enlightened of the rules, they thought the rules were stupid. Which is pretty much what anyone would say if they lost on a technicality, which Liukin did. But it still seemed pretty comical coming from the commentators point of view.. reminded me a little of a Pro-Line commercial and the US being on the losing side of one.

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Eczema and other annoyances

Over the past few years I've noticed that I get a rash in the summer time on my elbows and knees, but this year in particular it's been pretty crazy. I used to just wash it thinking it was just sweat, but recently I found out it was eczema. I remember a few years ago scolding AT over and over again for scratching her scars, and now I understand why she wouldn't stop. Boy is it ever itchy!

Now I'm the one with scabs all over my arms, elbows and knees. I'm the one rubbing steroids into my skin and trying not to scratch. What a pain in the butt this is. Maybe I shouldn't be using the word "butt". I'd hate for this thing to spread over there..

Ina and I have discovered while watching Olympics that we need to pick and choose the station based on the sport, which can have varying degrees of annoyances amongst the commentators. Either you choose the American commentators of NBC who are extremely biased towards the USA, or the Canadian commentators of CBC, many of whom have no experience commenting on the sport they've been assigned to so they often sound like complete morons.

So it comes down to US Patriots versus Canadian Idiots. I am one of those Canadians that absolutely *loathe* American pride. And yet in this case, I choose the bias because outside of swimming the US hasn't really been doing all that great. China seems to be winning everything else except for track and field where the Jamaicans are cleaning up. Besides, other than media types and journalists the NBC commentators have been pretty gracious.

CBC commentators are the absolute worst, particularly because they hired a bunch of former athletes who have no business doing commentary. This becomes apparent particularly in diving, where Anne Montminy seems to be reading from a script which contains these two lines:

1) That was a miss for him/her/them!
2) That was terrific!

She's got a 50% chance of being right, and it seems like she gets it right half the time so my guess is she's using a random number generator to decide which line to read. My favorite comment in diving so far came from her partner, who we heard say "Looks like the judges don't agree with you" after she had commented that one of the pairs of synchronized divers had missed badly.

Anne also believes these two women look exactly the same:
The second annoying commentator is Paul Romanuk, commentating for Olympic basketball. I can't think of too many guys who could screw this up more. Perhaps Rod Black, who thankfully works for CTV. There is nothing worse than a hockey play-by-play guy doing basketball.

Finally, if you have spent any time in the subways, or watching CBC, or driven by the billboards you should have seen Bell's latest ad-campaign. The annoying little beavers are finally gone, ill-advised if you ask me, and they've got this new "er" thing. Which makes very little sense, I have no idea where they are going with it, but I'm having a lot of fun.

Jubilation

... is the word I would use to describe the 4x200 men's relay in finals swimming. Watching the US overcome a significant lead by France to win the gold, with the help of an older man on the team. That was awesome, and helps Michael Phelps continue his quest for 8 gold medals! To see him celebrate in joy was great too, I think that picture will be one of those images we will see again and again for the next couple weeks. Simply awesome!

Before I begin the following rant, let me just say that the opening ceremonies were spectacular. They were by far the best ever without any doubt. I can't help but shudder at the thought of what Toronto could have come up with. Granted, China likely operated on a limitless budget, but still. What is Canada famous for? What legacies do we have, what are things we can be proud of? I wonder if Steven Harper would even bother showing up.

Ina and I have watched a lot of Olympics because of our ability to record everything. We've been recording the CBC feed, but have noticed that they re-run a lot of footage, and skip a lot of the things we want to see, while showing a lot of stuff online instead (which we can't view due to a slower internet connection). Furthermore, why would we watch on a little screen after we paid for HD content? That's been pretty disappointing to say the least, when you consider that in the past CBC has been a treat compared to the available US feeds.

We're at the brink of switching all our recordings to the US feed, who have more emphasis on things we actually want to watch, such as team gymnastics, swimming, rowing. It seems that CBC has "sold out" a little bit, putting more emphasis on Canadians, even though they all suck. Rarely do we get to see an event that Canada is not involved in, except for maybe beach volleyball. I don't know about the average Canadian viewer, but personally when I'm watching the Olympics I would rather see the best compete -- excellence, regardless of who is competing -- than watch yet another Canadian fail.

For example, why show the entire match of the Canadian boxer who got pummeled mercilessly by the Kazakh, 20-1? How necessary was it show that entire fight, not to mention twice more in various re-runs. You didn't make us watch Sue Nattress miss 25 shots in shooting, so why force us to watch a Canadian getting the snot punched out of him?

Also, say it with me -- "LAST PLACE". There is no such thing as 4th place out of 4 teams, 12th place out of 12 competitors. Nobody needs to be patronized. It's last, so just say it.