Gomabseubnida

The 2018 Winter Olympics are already history, the closing ceremony having already even held in PyeongChang, South Korea, where it's before sunrise, Monday, February 26, as I type this.  So, rather than wait for the tape-delayed closing ceremony to be broadcast on NBC - which is opposite PBS's airing of the season finale of ITV's "Victoria," the series about the first and only British monarch of that name, which I've been watching - I thought I'd offer my traditional end-of-Olympic thank-yous and other acknowledgements now.  I figured I'd do it now before I get as sick of writing commentary on the Winter Games as you must already be of reading it.

Oh yeah, but before I do that, the Olympic Athletes from Russia beat Germany in men's hockey for the gold medal.  You realize that they should not have been in that game, right?  I don't mean the Germans.    

Right.  Well, here I go . . . 

I'd like to thank Mike Tirico for doing a better job than I thought he would at being NBC's Olympic prime-time host.  While he won't make me forget Costas, I have to concede that he is as close to a Costas or a McKay as my generation (he's a year younger than I am) will likely ever come.  With a little more skill-honing, this guy could go places.  Actually, he likely will; PyeongChang is probably a good "dry run" for Tirico at Tokyo in 2020.  

Thanks also to Carolyn Manno for her cool, calm delivery as a daytime host and to Rebecca Lowe for the same.  And - you knew this was coming - thanks also to both for being hot and blonde, and to Rebecca Lowe for being British on top of that.  Sexism, you say?  What, you thought I was going to look at two female sportscasters who are gorgeous and not notice that obvious fact?

Thanks to Lindsey Vonn for her last Olympic performances, and thanks also to Bode Miller for commenting on the Olympics and not getting good and drunk the day before . . . even if his commentary, while abundant in expertise, had all the excitement of Melba toast. Thanks to Phil Rosenthal of the Chicago Tribune for suggesting in a column that Vonn ought to replace Miller as a ski commentator for the 2022 Winter Games.

Speaking of the Chicago Tribune, thanks to Dan Hicks for declaring a winner in the women's super giant slalom before the eventual winner, Ester Ledecká of the Czech Republic, won in an upset.  Seriously.  Dan, you've proven yourself worthy of being a sportswriter for the Chicago Tribune, the paper that, on the day after the 1948 presidential election, declared Thomas E. Dewey the 34th President of the United States.

Back to the athletes.  Thanks to Mikeala Shiffrin, the U.S. women's hockey team, Red Gerard, Chloe Kim, Mirai Nagasu, and so many other American athletes that space does not permit me to name for competing, whether they won or not.  Hey, the most important thing is to take part, right?  Thanks to all the ice dancers, but next time, please don't overshadow your pairs figure skating counterparts - I actually had to go to Wikipedia to find out who won that!  (For the record, Aliona Savchenko and Bruno Massot of Germany won the pairs figure skating gold, Sui Wenjing and Han Cong of China won the silver, and Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford of Canada won the bronze.)  And special thanks to the figure skaters who skated to Beatles medleys in their programs and to Maya and Alex Shibutani for skating in the gala event to Frank Sinatra's "That's Life."  That's my favorite Sinatra record. But did you have to mash it up with hip-hop, kids?

Thanks to the American men's curling team for its gold medal, but no thanks to them for their off-key a capella rendition of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" at the end of their appearance on NBC's post-game chat!  At least you didn't butcher a good song.

No thanks to Wal-Mart for its commercial during the Olympics advertising its two-day delivery service, which used "Ring My Bell," one of the worst songs of all time - an inexplicable chart topper in 1979, and an obvious influence on Madonna - as its music.  Another Wal-Mart commercial used "Bust a Move," which I used to dislike but now appreciate because "Ring My Bell" makes "Bust a Move" sound like "Stairway To Heaven" by comparison.

Which reminds me . . . thanks to Blogger.com for spell-checking me.  It didn't get all of my typos while I was doing my rapid-fire, get-it-out-fast Olympic commentary, but it saved me from many embarrassments, because you know sometimes words have two meanings. Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiving . . . how everything still turns to gold.

The United States is rumored to have toyed with a boycott of the Winter Olympics because of tensions of the Korean peninsula, so I'd like to thank Rex Tillerson or whoever was responsible for preventing a boycott for doing just that.  No thanks to the Trump administration for its choice of representatives for the U.S. at the opening and closing ceremonies - Vice President Pence, who only stood for teams from nations that refuse to honor the Paris Agreement, at the former, and Ivanka Trump, who, last time I checked, is still Ivanka Trump, at the latter.  Thanks to American skier Gus Kenworthy, who questioned Ivanka Trump's presence at the closing ceremony - "Honestly, [WTF] is she doing here?"

I don't know any Koreans or anyone of Korean descent to dedicate my commentary to, so I'm just going to thank Kim Jong Un for not pressing the button.  In all seriousness, I hope the inter-Korean truce doesn't end with the Winter Olympics today, Sunday the 25th.  Because, as I recall, the original inter-Korean truce from the late 1940s was ended by the North Korean invasion of the South on . . . Sunday, the 25th (June 25, 1950).

And so end the 2018 Winter Olympics.  On to . . . ugh - Beijing?  What, again?  Weren't we just there in 2008 for the Summer Games?  (Almaty should have gotten the 2022 Winter Games; my commentary on 2022 would have make much benefit for glorious nation of Kazakhstan.)

I'll be back on Wednesday with more miscellaneous opinions and thoughts on just about anything.