The Italian Job

The Winter Olympics in Italy? I'm not feeling it.

I don't mean I'm not enjoying the Winter Games.  I mean I can't find anything insightful or witty to say about them.  I watched the men's figure skating program and I actually enjoyed it without irony.  I particularly liked Ilia Malinin (above) in his short-program routine.  He is the Quad God!   And I also got to see some luge, skiing, and curling, though not a lot of speed skating just yet.  

But so far - and I don't expect this to change, really - I haven't seen one moment or event worth satirizing, ridiculing, or even highlighting with wry commentary.  The most trenchant comment I could make is that there are an astonishing number of American male figure skaters such as Malinin, as well as Canadian Stephen Gogolev, are sons of emigre athletes from the former Soviet Union.  Hardly earth-shattering news or relevant to the Winter Games, though I guess you could write a serious article about that.  But no one's paying me to do that, so what? 

Maybe it's because I just turned sixty, or maybe it's because my generation is so far removed from competing in the Olympics (Generation X more or less dominated the Games from 1984 to 2000), but I'm just not looking for satire.  No, I'll qualify that.  I never look for something to satirize; I let something worth satirizing present itself..  You consciously look for something to make fun of, then it sounds forced.  Perhaps I've gotten too old to recognize satire-worthy moments in sports.  Or maybe it's the culture; with the Super Bowl having just concluded, I've heard plenty of commentary about the halftime show, starring one Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, and the counterprogrammed half show staged by Turning Point USA, starring one Robert Ritchie.  But the game itself?  Not a word.

Also, there are more important things to talk about, like Jeff Bezos gutting the Washington Post, which I have to talk about, and will, as soon as I feel like it.  Oy.  I've recently been spending time correcting typos and factual errors on previous blog posts - what would be called "curing" in counting provisional election ballots - and I'm down about this whole writing thing right now.  I'm on call at the news site I once wrote regularly for since a new editor took over, but in fact I haven't written for it since June.  I think I'll just chill out for now (very easy to do in the bitterly cold Northeast) and enjoy thew Winter Olympics..

And as soon as these Games are over, I have to write the International Olympic Committee again to get them to move the 2028 Olympics out of the United States.