Over the past week and a half, I have been enthralled with the Winter Olympics, even if I don't really understand half of the events. Since I really couldn't come up with anything else to talk about, I have decided that now is as good a time as any to give some quick impressions on the Winter Olympics thus far.
- The Olympics have been somewhat of a disappointment for the Canadians. For one, their stated goal to "Own the Podium" (a rather cocky statement, by the way) hasn't been going the way they may have wanted. The first week was especially rough, and even though Canada can still finish with the most gold medals, it will not be able to outmedal the United States overall. In fact, if anybody has been owning the podium, it's the good ol' U.S.A. But that's nothing compared to the debacle at the opening ceremonies. During the lighting of the Olympic Torch, there was supposed to be four giant posts rising out of the ground. However, one of the posts got stuck, leading to mass confusion for a few minutes and a pissed-off looking Wayne Gretzky. Finally they just decided screw it, and lit the three torches that had risen up. In the end, it still looks decent, but what a bad time for a mechanical error.
- Speaking of Canada, I have developed a healthy dislike for their men's hockey team. I don't know exactly why, and I don't have a problem with any Canadians in other sports, but for some reason their hockey team grates me so much that I was actually rooting for Russia today. It seemed to me that all the Canadian fans felt that their team should just be rewarded the Gold Medal already and we don't even have to have this tournament, because Canada Rules, eh! However, the U.S. knocked the Canadians down a few pegs Sunday, thanks to some spectacular goaltending from Ryan Miller. The Canadians responded by beating Germany 8-2, running up the score and overcompensating like a man with a large car and a small penis. Then they beat the stuffing out of Russia earlier today 7-3. What struck me the most is that Russia's defensemen are terrible, as they couldn't clear the puck out of their zone to save their lives. But since Canada beat an outgunned German team and a flawed Russian team, everyone is back to thinking Canada's golden again, and the the U.S. team should just leave right now or they will be hammered into the ground like a railroad spike. We will see Canada, we will see. That is, if Canada can beat Slovakia and the U.S. can beat Finland in the next round.
- Speaking of hockey, I have heard America's win over Canada being described as another "Miracle on Ice", like the 1980 Olympics where the US beat the Soviet Union. Well, it's nothing like that, as this US team is full of professionals that play in the NHL at a high level beating another team full of NHL players, not a bunch of college hockey players beating a team that had trained together for years and featured some of the best players of their era, players that would dominate the NHL had the Soviet government allowed them to play. Sure, it was an upset, but not a monumental upset, and it's quite possible that the Americans will beat the Canadians again.
- Let's talk about men's figure skating, shall we? There's a big brouhaha over the judging, as many people felt that defending gold medalist Evgeni Plushenko of Russia deserved the gold over American Evan Lysacek, due to the fact that Plushenko hit a quadruple jump (which I think means four spins in a jump) and Lysacek did not. The judges felt that Lysacek's program was more well-rounded than Plushenko, which Plushenko and Vladamir Putin think is a bunch of crap. Nevermind that Lysacek landed all of his jumps cleanly while Plushenko had a rough landing, because that doesn't matter to Plushenko because he did one thing Lysacek didn't. Plushenko, whom, at least in my eyes, acts as if the world should revolve around him, is in such denial that he created a platinum medal. While I admire his ingenuity, it is the act of a sore loser, kind of like Russell from Survivor making a website declaring him the real winner. Come to think of it, I think Plushenko would do real well on Survivor, but I digress. Look, I don't know how they score these things, but to me, Lysacek had the better program, hit all of his jumps cleanly and had a more even program, unlike Plushenko who front-loaded his program with jumps and basically did spins during the last minute of his performance. In my view, Lysacek deserved the gold.
- It's good to see speedskater Shani Davis and skier Bode Miller do well for the U.S. Each man has won a gold medal, and Miller has a chance to be the first skier to win four medals in one Olympics. Both men have been criticized, unfairly I think, by sportswriters and columnists. Since most of these writers are idiots that barely know a sport such as football, much less speedskating, I am fully in support of Davis and Miller shutting these guys up once and for all.
- Curling seems like an interesting sport, too bad the U.S. aren't very good at it. Both the men's and women's curling team finished in last place, with curling enthusiasts heavily criticizing men's skipper John Scuster. The skipper is the captain of the curling team, so to speak, and ends up each end taking the last two shots. Well, it seemed as if Shuster was curling's answer to JaMarcus Russell, missing key shots in a spectacularly bad manner and actually getting demoted during the middle of the tournament, a move that hardly ever happens in the sport. Things went so bad that the US Olympic Committee is seriously considering changing their selection process for the 2014 games. I don't know what that process is, but this is huge.
- The weirdest sport, at least to me, was ice dancing. In this sport, you have teams of one guy and one girl performing a dance routine on ice. The finals were on Monday and they were, interesting. A lot of these teams are brother-sister combos, making some of their dance moves seem quite creepy. There was a team that skated to a Linkin Park song, which I'm sure was Linkin Park's goal when they first started playing music. The strangest routine probably had to be the Israeli duo skating to the theme from Schindler's List. It was interesting, and I'll just leave it at that.
Well, that's my half-assed recap of the Winter Olympics thus far. I'm sure I missed a lot, as I never got to watch the biathlon, but oh well. If you would like to complain about this post, feel free to comment on it. If you have any other ideas on reviews or any feedback on the Canon Review in whole, then feel free to e-mail me at KtheC2001@gmail.com. Thanks for reading, and Canada sucks, or at least their hockey team does.
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