eptivity

I emerge to comment on everyone’s favorite blog topic: the Olympics.

This is the first time I’ve ever had access to a cable sports channel for the Olympics, so I get to watch more than just the highlights (live coverage here from 2 a.m. to 5 p.m.), and also some sports that don’t receive much attention in the U.S. Like handball—apparently huge in Europe. Who knew?

Also: British announcers! They do pronounce “apparatus” differently; and they like to pop off with expressions about cats being amongst the pigeons, whatever that means; and they sometimes blurt out things like “this is the best day in the history of swimming!…in the last 20 years…for Britain.” But one of them is Scottish, which I very much appreciate, and none of them is Bob Roll, which is my number one criterion for commentators.

At the end of their hour-long recap, the sports channel we watch runs a blooper reel, featuring the day’s most entertaining video segments set to music that, more often than not, would be highly inappropriate were it played in its entirety. [Note: handball players getting hit square in the face feature prominently in these montages, sometimes repeated in slow motion for extra awesomeness.] They also like to play snippets from the Kill Bill soundtrack whilst showcasing the shooting competitions.

Speaking of shooting competitions: a few years ago, this person to whom I’m now married was discussing the Tour de France with this other person to whom I’m related. This person may or may not have claimed that biking isn’t really a sport; not like Nascar. (You tell me!) And so we have just this week struck upon the key definition of sport:

Question: Would a person’s performance in this competitive activity be enhanced by performance-enhancing drugs of any kind?

Yes:
biking
swimming
weightlifting
track
rowing
gymnastics
football (American and other type)
tennis

No:
table tennis
shooting
sailing
Nascar
bowling [Dave Barry: "a sport whose finest athletes train on a diet of beer and CornNuts."]

My work here is done.