To truly enjoy the Vancouver Winter Olympics is to enjoy the imperfections. Sort of like walking to work in San Francisco. The weather isn’t always the best, and sometimes you see people yelling and crying for no discernible reason other than attention seeking. But the scenery’s pretty good, and it’s never boring. Well, almost never.
Really, why is everyone so enamored with curling? Entire cable networks are devoted to it right now. People can’t stop talking about it. Pregnant ladies are competing and nobody blinks an eye, mostly because they’ll miss catching a glimpse Cheryl Bernard, the Canadian curling SMILF (she’s a step-mom). I still don’t get the appeal of watching televised shuffleboard on ice. What’s next, croquet in the Summer Games?
Still, even though this country seems to get more and more Canadafied by the day, there are a lot of interesting Olympiad-related things going on. Also, I’ve interspersed some things I’ve noticed on my daily walking commute from Alamo Square to 4th and Market (that’s right, I dare you to find me and unmask me for good one of these mornings) and other stuff. Lots of non-column-length things to talk/laugh about. Let’s get to it:
– One of the best subplots of this Olympics, and the entire NHL season, is Mike Milbury’s hatred for all things Russian. Usually he saves his illogical diatribes for Alex Ovechkin, but calling a team “eurotrash” on NBC, as he did the Russians after their suckalicious performance against Canada, was surreal.
– C’mon Milbury, it’s not like the Russians were wearing man-capris!
– There are ads in parts of San Francisco that actually show side-nip right now, thanks to Diesel’s Be Stupid campaign (click “view the campaign” if you’re really curious…it’s the chick flashing the security camera). Makes me feel like I was in Europe.
– I think we learned yesterday why the Sharks won’t go any further than the second round of the playoffs: Evgeni Nabokov.
– See, that’s the difference between the NHL and the NFL. In the NFL, you can win the Super Bowl with Trent Dilfer as your quarterback. In the NHL, you can’t hide a regular season goalie in the playoffs
– Good thing Scotty Lago isn’t taking the whole banishment from Vancouver thing too hard. So a girl was photographed pretending to blow his bronze medal? The IOC should just be happy he didn’t turn his new prize into the first ever medal-pipe and hotbox a Subaru with Michael Phelps.
– A couple weeks ago I was walking through the Tenderloin and saw a cop chasing a guy on foot. The dude almost got away, until he tripped over his saggy pants in the middle of the Leavenworth-and-Eddy intersection, after which the cop tackled him, rubbed his face into the ground and cuffed him, all while an oncoming Lexus that had been traveling 45 mph toward the intersection screeched to a halt. Seven police cars were on the scene with 45 seconds, and some guy in a suit with a badge strolled up to the scene a minute later, looking like Peter McNulty from The Wire. I’m never taking that route to work again.
– This isn’t about the Olympics, but the Warriors really should have traded Monta Ellis when they had the chance. I wonder if his public trade demand will come before or after the next draft, and how long it will be before Ben Gordon and Don Nelson are finally brought together. You know it’s coming.
– And now it’s also too late to trade Andris Biedrins, who seems to have gone into an “emo phase.”
– I think O.J. Mayo would work much better with Stephen Curry than Montizzle, and at a much cheaper price, but maybe the Warriors shouldn’t be slammed to harshly for rejecting that trade with the Grizzlies, who today sent Hasheem Thabeet to the D-League.
– Back to Olympic soap operas, led by the whole VonnCuso dustup. I guess I’d care more about the whole Lindsey Vonn vs. Julia Mancuso thing, except they both seem like bitches and their respective attractiveness levels sunk around the 8th time I saw either of them crying on TV. Girls crying: not a turn on. That’s why I hate Claire Danes, who makes that same scrunched-up crying face in every … single … thing she’s in.
– I know Johnny Depp is supposed to be the Mad Hatter in those Alice in Wonderland posters I see at bus stops all around town, but to me he just looks like Elijah Wood.
– And since the Olympics are all about drug testing, let’s move to the world of baseball … sort of. Jay McGwire is out trying to make some Canseco-money with a book about his roided-out brother. Who cares. But I had no idea how much juice Jay had flowing through his system when he was a bodybuilder. That picture of him halfway down the article is stunning in its grotesqueness, isn’t it?
– Everyone’s all excited that NBC decided to treat all of us like adults and show us the US/Finland game live at noon tomorrow. But before we all start patting the GE network on the back, remember that tomorrow’s Friday, when nobody watches TV in the evening besides senior citizens who can’t make out the puck on their TV screens. I would have been watching it live anyway … on my computer, where we’re all going to get all of our TV programming within the next 10 years. Hopefully my boss doesn’t walk by and wonder why instead of writing riveting job-seeking articles for accountants, I’m watching Zach Parise and Ryan Miller.
