Curling Up On the Ice, but NOT wearing ruffles on my shirt!

I had intended to write several blog posts about the Winter Olympics – but I had also intended to play in the NBA – some things just don’t happen.  Nevertheless, just a few miles to the north from my house lots of people have been hanging out and watching athletes do their thing on snow, ice and TV.  I started off strong with taking in the festivities, but real life got in the way and I’ve missed quite a bit.  On that topic this note hit the HTF mailbox recently that is definitely worth a bit of a response despite the misguided smackage aimed at my Jayhawks (currently ranked #1):

Dear HTF,

The Olympics are finally here so I thought that an Olympic-related letter would be very timely!  Plus, I have been in the smack talk offseason since the end of Fantasy Football, & my skillz are getting rusty.  I need to get tons of practice time in so I will be ready to make fun of the Kansas Jayhawks come March Madness time.  That's assuming, of course, that they even MAKE IT to the tournament --looks REALLY doubtful right now!!!  Ha HA!  (Stress is on the second "ha" so as to sound super intimidating.)

Here’s the deal:  I think I could beat you at curling.  I don’t exactly know how to play, but I won't let that stop me from feeling like I would win if we were to have an Epic Battle on the Ice.  (I don’t often wield a broom, but I’m amazingly talented at sliding around my kitchen in my socks.  I think this skill would transfer well to curling.)  I do think that you would beat me at ski jumping if we were to have an Epic Battle on the Snow.  (frogs = good jumpers = mad ski jumping skillz).  However, I also think that we both would win medals over Bob Costas at providing amusing, insightful, and information packed Olympic-related commentary if we were to have an Epic Battle on the Television.  (I would give you the edge over me as you are quite capable of forming complete sentences out loud, and this is a skill that I have yet to master.) 

Importantly: do you agree with my assessment?  More importantly:  do you know if there are any tricks that the Costas or anyone else could pull that would thwart the Quests for Gold Medal Greatness?  Most importantly: what are you doing to prepare yourself for when you find out that Kansas is NOT invited to the Big Dance????  Ha HA again!

AGM

(Note to the readers – I’m intentionally ignoring all the KU digs and refuse to be goaded into responding… yet)  So last night I found myself in a swanky (defined as a place where I know I’m underdressed because the people around me pretty much look like they’re just about to go the the Emmys) restaurant in Miami.  At the bar were TVs showing Olympic coverage of Curling.  This sport is a little like Alpaca Farms for me in that I was aware it existed, but never thought much about it.  After roughly 2 seconds of watching I realized that I could definitely crush anyone at this “sport.”  I’m a strong sweeper, although I’m better with crushed Cheerios, and I once walked on a frozen lake for several seconds without falling down – isn’t that pretty much all that’s required?  The Canadians had a lady competing on their team who was 5 MONTHS PREGNANT.  Let’s be clear, I’m not anti-pregnancy or anything (as evidenced by my four adorable tax deductions at home), but if there’s a sport where the height of world-class competition features an athlete well into her second trimester I’m ready to call that a non-sport.  Perhaps more of a hobby.  Those folks seem nice and all, but they should definitely get WAY smaller medals than the other athletes at the games.  Pretty sure your guy Bob Costas was fighting hard to hide the smirk as he referred to the curlers.  You do realize that dude has the whole Benjamin Button thing going on – every time I see him he looks younger and that’s over a sustained period of like 25 years.

One idea for you – the announcers should all have to randomly choose a sport to compete in.  Picture a fancy goblet where they would draw out pieces of paper with the odd-looking symbols for events on them.  The NBC crew, all 3,492 of them would take turns drawing one and then they’d compete.  Bobby might get ski-jumping and, well, we probably wouldn’t hear from him again.  Though I’d rather see him doing a little Ice Dancing – at least he’d look significantly more masculine than the real male ice skaters.  Did you SEE what those guys were wearing?  Really?!  Do you skate better with 80’s shoulder pads and doilies on your wrists?!  Sheesh.  After I saw some of those costumes I officially swore off “men’s” ice skating.

I could add a lot more about the show in Vancouver, but this post is kind long already.  Thanks for the note.  I’ll look forward to taking down all curling challengers as I sweep up somebody else’s ice-mess with my mini broom!!