winter olympics

[friarjohn]

opening ceremonies were cool. its a shame about the Georgian athelete that was killed this morning,

 

[Laughing_Gnome_Invisible]

They started!? I'd better get up there quick! I'm supposed to be in the slipping up on your ass team!

 

[ChshreCat]

Of course, we can't see anything live. In the pacific time zone they're tape delaying everything. Even though the OLYMPICS are TAKING PLACE in the PACIFIC TIME ZONE!

I ****ing hate NBC.

 

[twig]

try watching it online. no tv so i'm watching it right now on ctv.ca, but not sure if that will work from an american IP adress. pretty impressive ceremony so far. i'm a sucker for good celtic fiddle music.

 

[Fingers]

I don't like KD Lang's grating stand on certain issues, but I sure had to respect her rendition of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. She really crushed that song. Well done.

 

[Bedlam]

Sadly, I was too tired to even make it through the "B's" during the Parade of Nations. Can't wait to see the skeleton and the bobsledding, though!

 

[Laughing_Gnome_Invisible]

Sadly, I was too tired to even make it through the "B's" during the Parade of Nations. Can't wait to see the skeleton and the bobsledding, though!

They didn't parade in alphabetical order. it started off:-

Belgium
Ukraine
Luxembourg
Laos
Spain
Honduras
Italy
Thailand

The remaining nations then all mixed themselves around the stadium so they could start off a game of scrabble.

 

[Yooper]

I don't like KD Lang's grating stand on certain issues, but I sure had to respect her rendition of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. She really crushed that song. Well done.

I agree. That was awesome.

Some of the opening ceremonies just seemed to go on too long. Maybe I'm just getting old and crabby but it seemed like some of the segments were endless. The effects were amazing, though, and it's always good to see all of the athletes parade in. I'm glad I stayed up late (for me!) to watch it all.

I have to admit though that the Pitt/UWV game was in three overtimes, so I kept switching back and forth for a while.

 

[Bassman]

At the end end of the ceremony they had these 3 giant torches in a big sculpture. They looked like giant joints. I bet the snowboarders got excited seeing that!

 

[Fingers]

At the end end of the ceremony they had these 3 giant torches in a big sculpture. They looked like giant joints. I bet the snowboarders got excited seeing that!

There were supposed to be four of them. They had a hydraulic problem.

Did you notice the four erect penises under the giant vagina at the beginning? First we run a lit joint across the country and finish it off with an incredibly suggestive phallic ceremony at the end. Welcome to Canada.

 

[Yooper]

At the end end of the ceremony they had these 3 giant torches in a big sculpture. They looked like giant joints. I bet the snowboarders got excited seeing that!

It's funny you noticed that, too!

One of our local "boys" is a snowboard cross olympian. He's good friends with my future son-in-law. The cool thing is last week he talked at a pep rally about living your dreams, and staying off drugs. I saw him briefly last night as they marched in.

 

[Laughing_Gnome_Invisible]

I thought the effects were terrific! Especially the ice floes. Anyone else notice the one who was pretending he fell in the water and was trying to swim to safety?

The tech side was great. I never could take all the dancing and stuff that these shows are always rife with though. Come to think of it, I didn't know they had clog dancing in Canada.

 

[BBKing]

Canadas opening ceremony was pretty lame I thought. But then again I guess I'm comparing them to Chinas opening a few summers ago. Tough act to follow in my opinion.

As far as that luge incident went, I seriously CANNOT believe that those columns that Georgian busted himself up on weren't already padded. It wouldnt have helped that fellow much at an estimate 88 mph, but still.

This is gonna make sound like a dick, but its probably best that he passed. With the way he hit, I cant imagine the spinal injuries he would have had to deal with. I'm no doctor but I doubt he would have been able to walk again.

And it sounds like that luge run is gonna be quite contreversial here in the next week or so. According to NBC (or whoever I was watching) its the fastest in the world and the head of the Lugeing committe wasnt too thrilled about it in the first place. Should be interesting to see.

Mens downhill is sometime today I think. One of my favorites!

 

[Fingers]

The tech side was great. I never could take all the dancing and stuff that these shows are always rife with though. Come to think of it, I didn't know they had clog dancing in Canada.

Multiculturalism. We have one of each in Canada. There is a thriving gnome community in the eastern provinces.

 

[buffalobrewer]

I thought the ceremony started off pretty slow but picked up after the athletes came in. Wasn't Rush supposed to play?

I hear the canadian ballet is popular entertainment too. Sure those weren't stripper poles?

 

[Laughing_Gnome_Invisible]

Wasn't Rush supposed to play?

Limbaugh?:cross:

 

[ChshreCat]

Limbaugh?:cross:

hehe that was my first thought. At least he'd be able to tell Lindsey Vonn where to get some good painkillers for her shin!

 

[humann_brewing]

Of course, we can't see anything live. In the pacific time zone they're tape delaying everything. Even though the OLYMPICS are TAKING PLACE in the PACIFIC TIME ZONE!

I ****ing hate NBC.

Yeah what the f is u with that? Also I wish they wouldn't have moved the start point of the luge up I know they have to save face but c'mon I want to see them go fast.

 

[ChshreCat]

The "investigation" of the luge death kind of bugs me. They decided that there's nothing wrong with the track and how it's designed and that it was the rider's fault. They said “It appears after a routine run, the athlete came late out of curve 15 and did not compensate properly to make correct entrance into curve 16,” and it was his mistake that killed him.

People make mistakes! All the time! So you have to have a perfect run if you want to live? Mistakes should mean you lose, not that you get killed. You should be able to make a mistake and not fly off the track and die.

 

[buffalobrewer]

hehe that was my first thought. At least he'd be able to tell Lindsey Vonn where to get some good painkillers for her shin!

nope, geddy, alex and neil. I'm sure back in the day they had some pretty good "painkillers" too.

 

[Yuri_Rage]

I usually get a kick out of the Winter Olympics. So far, I'm not enjoying the 2010 games.

Opening ceremony...
Sweet opening scene. Neat effects. Bored me to tears. Malfunction.

Luge accident...
Extremely sad. My heart goes out to the family and teammates.

Media sensationalism of said accident + graphic crash video shown repeatedly...
I'm considering unplugging the TV for two weeks.

 

[friarjohn]

I read an article last night calling the accident coverage "death porn".

 

[jspence1]

The "investigation" of the luge death kind of bugs me. They decided that there's nothing wrong with the track and how it's designed and that it was the rider's fault. They said “It appears after a routine run, the athlete came late out of curve 15 and did not compensate properly to make correct entrance into curve 16,” and it was his mistake that killed him.

People make mistakes! All the time! So you have to have a perfect run if you want to live? Mistakes should mean you lose, not that you get killed. You should be able to make a mistake and not fly off the track and die.

We have different degrees of mistakes and sometimes people die. It's a mistake to make a left turn in front of a rig but it happens and people die. They have made more than 5000 runs down that track without someone getting hurt, my conclusion **** happens I feel bad but it happens. Nobody will ever know what happened, maybe he turned the wrong direction, maybe he swerved to miss a dog on the track. If we could read his mind we would know exactly what happened before the crash.

To think that a sport that involves rocketing down a hill on a toboggan at 140 km/h involves no risk of death is foolish.

I think that they should ban horse riding if they did that Christopher Reeve and countless others would still be alive.

 

[barely]

Is it just me, or was (is) the audio horrendous? I mean is the on-air announcer supposed to be completely drowned out by the background? Heck, there's better audio engineering when I watch public access coverage of the local junior-high basketball team. The only thing that makes it half-bearable is to mute the damn tv and use the closed-captioning...and endure the typing delays. /grumble/

 

[Homercidal]

There are a few olympic events which could very easily cause serious injury or death. Flying down an ice track on a tiny sled at close to 90 MPH is one of them. Luge is a dangerous sport.

 

[motobrewer]

People make mistakes! All the time! So you have to have a perfect run if you want to live? Mistakes should mean you lose, not that you get killed. You should be able to make a mistake and not fly off the track and die.

make a mistake racing motorcycles and you're in for some hurt too. or flying an airplane.

it's a very dangerous sport, and this is a world-class track. it's going to be fast, tight, and technical.

i'm not trying to defend the track. did they end up shortening it after the incident?

 

[motobrewer]

I think that they should ban horse riding if they did that Christopher Reeve and countless others would still be alive.

Chris lived for 10 years after his accident

i'll also add, the scoring on the figure skating short program was amazing in its randomness.

granted, i don't know much (anything) about figure staking, but the announcers seemed to be shocked at times. not that that means anything.

but couples who fell down were scoring higher than couples that didn't. maybe that's not a big a deal as i think it is.

 

[Homercidal]

Chris lived for 10 years after his accident

i'll also add, the scoring on the figure skating short program was amazing in its randomness.

granted, i don't know much (anything) about figure staking, but the announcers seemed to be shocked at times. not that that means anything.

but couples who fell down were scoring higher than couples that didn't. maybe that's not a big a deal as i think it is.

I don't care for that part of the olympics. Too much room for personal opinion.

I enjoy watching the skating, but too often I see some scores that really don't seem to match the performance I just saw. Favoritism?

 

[BBKing]

What bothered me was the mens short track finals.

First off, if Apollo Ohno is a homebrewer and is reading this....dude, your "lag behind the whole race then sprint to the front in the last lap" routine works pretty well...in Qualifying and Semis. You're gonna pull that **** in the FINALS? Really?

With that being said, I thought short track was supposed to be an Individual event. It seems to me that those S. Koreans were working together, which I get to a point. But they were REALLY going out of their way to screw Ohno over.

Ohno got damn lucky those two wrecked.

 

[mmb]

I just liked that the Chinese couple skated the to Queen.