Beijing Blech

This Winter Olympiad sucks.

I've had the TV tuned to the Winter Olympics while involving myself in online activities.   My mother has never been able to comprehend how I can possibly go online and watch television at the same time and give both my full attention.  Well, maybe I can't, but it's still a good way to economize my time.  Anyway, I was watching the Olympics while working on my laptop a couple of nights ago, but when it became apparent that the opposite was true, I turned off the TV.  And for good reason.  The competition is dull, the most interesting events don't get decent coverage - would you believe that I've only seen one long-track speed skating race, and it wasn't the one Erin Jackson won? - and there always seems to be one of the following events on when I do tune in . . .  figure skating, freestyle skiing, and curling.

Definitely lots of curling. 

And I don't think I want to see another curling match unless one of those stones blows up.

Another reason not to tune in is because, thanks to the thirteen-hour time difference between New York and Beijing (or the sixteen-hour time difference between Los Angeles, where Mike Tirico is hosting the Winter Games from thanks to COVID, and Beijing),  you know the results of the competition before you see in on TV no matter how hard you may try to avoid hearing what happened.  Oh, sure, I was glad to hear that Kamila Valieva ended up out of medal contention before I saw any figure skating Thursday night, but I also heard who won and, as I expected, there were no Americans who won medals.  By the time the gold-medal game in women's hockey was broadcast late at night, and I lost complete interest in men's hockey once I saw online - again, before seeing it for myself - that Americans were out of medal contention. (Oh great, now Christine Brennan is going to talk again about how well the women have done at the Winter Games and made no attempt to hide her smugness - you can almost hear her thinking, "The women keep winning all of the events the men lose.  Nyahh!")  

And I completely lost interest in skiing - both sexes - when Mikaela Shiffrin got disqualified in a third race. 😢

Do I miss the travelogue features that NBC obviously couldn't do this time due to the COVID outbreak.  No.  I see stories about Chinese culture on the evening news!  And unlike NBC's puff pieces, these stories tell the truth!

Would you believe that the motto of the Beijing Winter Olympics is "Together for a Shared Future?" 

Ha ha, charade you are!

I'm definitely not tuning in to watch the closing ceremony tomorrow night - there are to many other programs on TV tomorrow that I want to watch anyway.  Besides, if the Winter Olympics are so damn terrific, how come NBC, which aired the Super Bowl this past Sunday, devoted so much air time to Super Bowl coverage before the game even started?

What, they don't like curling? 😛