TEN RANDOM THOUGHTS, OLYMPIC EDITION

1. Curling is the Munchos of Olympic sports: Everyone agrees it sounds (and ought to be) horrible, but you just can’t tear yourself away. I’ve heard gobs of people say they find the curling strangely compelling–as do I.
2. In terms of absolute flapjack lunacy, it’s a close call between the ski jumpers and the skeleton racers. The ski jumpers practice a controlled fall at a distance and speeds that would kill just about anyone, but the skeleton racers fly down an ice-encased concrete mail chute head-first at 80 MPH. Hemingway would say these are both real sports.
3. But Bryant Gumbel wouldn’t, of course.
4. The Chevy ad with the SUVs on top of the mountains with their horns bleating out the Olympic theme just reminds you that there are some places motorized vehicles ought not be allowed to go, ever. And is there anybody dense enough to think that those SUVs got to the mountaintops under their own power? If so, they’re probably the same folk who think the NASCAR Monte Carlo and the showroom version have anything in common besides a name.
5. By the way, I am a Bodeist: I, too, have wasted alarming quantities of Nike’s marketing money. They’ve been advertising to me for 20 years and I have yet to buy anything with a swoosh on it.
6. It’s time we all faced reality: 1980 was probably the last moment ever of US Olympic men’s hockey glory.
7. If two-man luge jokes were your license tags, you’d get pulled over.
8. Isn’t it amazing how Jerome Bettis just happened to be in Torino last night so they could announce he’s joining NBC’s NFL broadcast team? I mean, what are the odds? And will NBC pay the CBC royalties for the name “Football Night In America”?
9. OK, I think the real reason so many people are wrapped up in the curling (Wrapped! Curling! HA! I amuse myself!) is because it’s the only Olympic sport we look at and think, “You know, I could maybe do that.”
10. But in the whole realm of Sports You’d Rather Not Have People See You Attempting, it’s a close call between classical cross-country skiing and racewalking.