That was adorable. I love that the grown men at the end also wanted their hugs.
Love it. I bet Harden's beard scratches when you hug him.
During this, my boyfriend's mother remarked, "Oh how cute, Mrs. Obama is at the Olympics. I wonder how much that's costing us."
Also, my expensive decision to get like 9,000 channels of TV has really paid off during the olympics. Shall I DVR modern pentathalon? Yes!
3: Boyfriend's mother sounds really charming.
You know, before Obama, all of the REAL First Ladies (IYKWIMAITTYD) paid for all of their travel and security out of pocket.
"Oh how cute, Mrs. Obama is at the Olympics. I wonder how much that's costing us."
Tell her not to underestimate the (monetary) value of symbolism. See, for example, Hendrick Hertzburg's observation about the cost of good will:
It was completely typical of [Carter] that one of the first things he did was to sell of the presidential yacht, the Sequoia. The truth is that this was a mistake. It was a mistake because the Sequoia was one of the most cost-effective items in the federal budget. A president could take some important Senator out on that yacht and give him a few drinks and flatter him and they could sit together on the deck and watch the sun go down in the cool of the evening, and when they got back to the dock the president would have that Senator's vote on some important bill. Without the yacht, the president might have to offer something more concrete and expensive to get that Senator's vote -- like agreeing not to close a big military base in the Senator's state. That yacht paid for itself many times over each year.
More boyfriend's mother Olympic commentary:
"He doesn't look Italian. He looks Jewish."
"The chinks are good at ping-pong, surprise, surprise. I mean his name is probably Ping Pong."
"Is that supposed to be a woman? There's no way that's a woman." [practically every time she sees a woman athlete]
"That guy is definitely gay, right? I would be outta there right now if I was that interviewer." [during an interview with Ryan Lochte in which his shoe collection is displayed]
<boggles>
That sounds like a charming afternoon.
"Is that supposed to be a woman? There's no way that's a woman."
Have her watch beach volleyball. Problem solved.
Or just stream pron on the TV.
"There isn't much chance he's gay and that's very obviously a woman."
"Shit my boyfriend's racist Mom says"
"The chinks are good at ping-pong, surprise, surprise. I mean his name is probably Ping Pong."
I used to think like that, so I changed my name to Slam Dunk, but I still couldn't touch the rim.
Having skimmed a couple of profiles of Ryan Lochte in the usual suspect magazines, I have been impressed by the groaning efforts of the writers to skirt the obvious: i.e., Lochte is a douchebag of epic scale.
the usual suspect magazines
Come on, Flip, you're not alone. There are still dozens of Details subscribers.
14: I thought it was just so obvious, it didn't need to be said -- like pointing out that Mount Everest is tall.
Lochte is a douchebag of epic scale
I confess this was my first reaction to the shoe interview, but boyfriend's mom's remark made me want to like him.
Of course LeBron took the longest one- what a hog.
15: I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about, he typed, closing the GQ app on his iPad.
16: The most self-loathing of the profilers attempt to ironize the obviousness through acknowledgment and then mitigation: he's just a kid, he's growing up at last, swimming is boring so he's some sort of assembly-line worker if you really think about it, etc., etc.
14, 16: Yeah, it's struck me too, running through the whole Phelps-Lochte rivarly story. As far as I can tell that's manufactured entirely by Lochte (or, maybe, by NBC with Lochte cheerfully playing along), and Phelps doesn't give even a tiny crap about the twerp. Appropriately.
L., have you told her to fuck off? How can you stand to listen to that shit?
I don't understand why swimming, which is basically pretty boring to watch, has become the prominent men's summer Olympic sport in lieu of track and field, which is the true and most Olympic of all Olympic events. Or, I do understand, but I don't like it.
Boyfriend told her she should get the gold medal of racism, if that's any consolation.
Has it? I mean, there are still two more weeks of Olympics. Maybe swimming just seems dominant because it was scheduled first.
Gymnastics gets a lot of Olympic attention. I wonder why judo doesn't get more coverage, given the growth of MMA.
Boyfriend's response was pretty good. Good for him for calling her out.
Hi, Mrs. Lochte. File under 'apparently not falling far from the tree, the acorn'.
"I try not to pay attention to it, but I have the Google alerts on my computer," she said. "Obviously, I get all of that, and all the little blogs, and the fights that go on between one and the other."
27 aside, I certainly do not put too much stock in judging the actual qualities of athletes as revealed in media pieces and interviews.
Gold and bronze are too brown. She should get a silver.
24 -- I think so? Here's the 2012 USA track and field roster. We've got lots of good people, but I don't think any are being hyped in the same way that Lochte, Phelps, and Missy Franklin are.
Gymnastics is so great, both men's and women's. I totally get why that gets the attention it does.
I hadn't heard of Lochte and Franklin until last week.
31: Now name a member of the US track and Field contingent.
Lolo Jones has been on a zillion commercials. I don't know what her events are but she's definitely track and/or field.
Dix? Just because I remember that Gay and Dix were battling each other.
How come he's named USA-in if he's Jamaican?
42 to 34 after consulting wikipedia.
Margaux Isaken is a hottie with a great website. Check out that gun!
Thanks for playing, but 32 was directed to Moby Hick only, who proved my point beyond my wildest imaginings.
Like I'm supposed to keep track of every little island.
I did remember that Ben Johnson was Canadian.
Didn't some guy try to snatch a wallet from Ben Johnson once, thinking he could outrun him?
That's probably why I remember him. I think I remember Phelps because he got busted for pot.
50: So, he caught you right quick I assume.
I must confess to some surprise when NBC last night described some British synchronized diver as "the most popular British athlete in these games."
Ben Johnson = better running through chemistry, and how!
Hmm, I guess after Andy Murray lost Wimbledon, and the Brit riders could not deliver Cavendish.
There's no way not to find the water polo hats totally adorable, is there? BIG HULKING SWIM DUDE. cute leetle hat with stringies.
According to my local NBC listings, the prime-time coverage for swimming will end on Friday, the same day Track & Field picks up (and continues through the end of the games).
when NBC last night described some British synchronized diver as "the most popular British athlete in these games."
Maybe Jason Statham made them all think of diving as a launching point into action flicks.
I must confess to some surprise when NBC last night described some British synchronized diver as "the most popular British athlete in these games."
Among male athletes, aside from the people who play professional sports and are therefore in the news all the time (soccer, tennis), this is probably true. I listen to a couple British mainstream-pop-culture-radio podcasts and for some reason Tom Dailey is up there with Jessie J and James Corden as a household name.
52: Possibly Tom Daley, who is also an individual diver and is indeed super popular.
I listen to a couple British mainstream-pop-culture-radio podcasts and for some reason Tom Dailey is up there with Jessie J and James Corden as a household name.
Presumably because he competed (and won a medal?) at the last Olympics at the age of 14.
Huh. A friend of a friend on fb just expressed some kind of excessive warm regard for Tom Daley, who I of course hadn't eard of but then googled and was mildly squicked to find is scantly 18 and looks like a little boy, albeit a terrifyingly buff little boy. Eugh.
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You know what song I would really prefer didn't get stuck in my head so often? "Washington, Washington...Six foot eight, weighs a fucking ton." I tried to get it out of my head with the Polish version of "Sweet Georgia Brown," but to no avail.
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63.1: You should see the pix of him from the last Olympics!
I can't tell if Daley made this list. I do note that google suggests I search for "Tom Daley bulge".
Jessie J is a singer who became a footnote in entertainment history by appearing on Saturday Night Live despite having absolutely zero fans in North America. James Corden is a person who seems to be mainly famous for being overweight but I recently discovered is an actor.
I heard of Jessie J for the first time ever last night while looking through the website of some photographer whose name I forget at the moment, but who does a whole bunch of rock star photography (though way more of Gary Numan than anybody else).
way more of Gary Numan than anybody else
Given the option, wouldn't this be true of every photographer?
I know at best 30% of the Top Gear "Stars in a Reasonably Priced Car." The one with the lead singer from ACDC was pretty good.
The Daley thing is partly because he became really successful very young. World Champion at 15 or 16, European Champion at 14, etc But also because of the tragic back story: his Dad was ill with a terminal brain tumour throughout his career, and died last year. So, young, super-successful, tragic back story, young girls find him cute. Also, English, which makes a big difference. If he'd been Welsh or Scottish, or from some part of the dirty fringes of the UK, he'd have been less attractive to the mainstream English press.
I'd doubt he's the biggest athlete at the games, though, for the British press. Several cyclists [Wiggins, Cavendish, Hoy, Pendleton], and definitely Jessica Ennis among others, are all as high profile.
I'd doubt he's the biggest athlete at the games, though, for the British press.
Maybe not this time round. Last time it was all Daley all the time as far as I could tell, as a completely uninterested observer.
You know what song I would really prefer didn't get stuck in my head so often?
The Spanish-language Mr. Plow jingle.
As an interested observer, I'd disagree over last time, too. Well known, yes, with the soapy element and youth making him fairly famous. But he wasn't as written about as some of the people who actually won stuff at the last Olympics.
76 reads snippier than I meant. Just as a person who does follow sport, and reads the sports pages/press, I'd disagree re: coverage. Maybe because of the soap stuff Daley's story bled through to the non-sports media slightly more than some others, though.
Oh, I'm sure there were other athletes who got more coverage in the sports pages. But in terms of celebrity, ie coverage in the non-sports pages and on non-Olympics dedicated telly, he was getting a huge proportion of it.
Track was definitely downgraded at some point and may be better covered now just because NBC is putting more hours on the air. Still, I expect that the only way to get coverage of the 10k will be to watch online. It was almost impossible to find the Atlanta men's 10k, which happened to be one of the greatest in history.
NBC's primary play-by-play track announcer has a difficult time not sounding bored by any race over about a mile and he's pretty ignorant of the sport as well. I get that they want to involve non sports fans so they go with stories and try not to sound too technical, but they seem pathologically intent on not providing the information you need to understand longer races: very few split times, very little discussion of strategy. The runners switch up the pace and sometimes they barely notice, hey cut to ads when 10 people are together and then come back when there's only 2 or 3, and so on.
The sprints and the relays, on the other hand, are pretty much as hyped as any other event, but since runners can't get 8 golds, you get less of that kind of story.
Here in the UK the track stuff will get a lot of coverage. Week 1 is all swimming, gymnastics, horse-riding, etc but once the track stuff gets going every event will get decent coverage. We have the advantage of having no ads, though, and informed play-by-play commentators [balanced by sometimes insipid or ignorant people anchoring the studio coverage, mind].
We have the advantage of having no ads, though, and informed play-by-play commentators
Don't gloat, now.
Now that I think of it, because of the Oregon guy, NBC might do slightly better with the men's distances this year.
A thread making fun of Olympic athlete names and no one mentions Destinee Hooker? I mean, what on earth were her parents thinking?
83: pimpin' just got a little bit easier?
83: She is 6'4", apparently. Wow. (NSFW, probably.)
86: Wowza. (Also, it looks like her legs snap on like Barbie legs!)
That whole photo essay is yowza. Perv equally on everyone doing their sport naked!
And then crack up when you get to ROBGRONKOWSKI
That's probably a medical condition.
Kind of cool to see them include for pervation/envy legless rowing cutie Oksana Masters.
After a long day in the pepper mines, I catch up on Unfogged. I was hoping that this thread had some Brits gloating about their women's football team beating Brazil. Nope. Just naked athletes. (Chandler is doing a discus thrower.)
After a long day in the pepper mines
"The canary... it's sneezing! It's sneezing like crazy! RUN!"
Discus throwers will spin you right round.
Finished going through those pictures. What very fit people! I feel so inadequate.
Right round, like a record machine.
One night in Bangkok, I caught an earworm.
Ponarke nanama, inky obe! Horb, horb.
Horb Horb
Ponarke Nanama
Inky, OBE
Took great
Care of his Mother,
Though he was only three.
Horb Horb Said to his Mother,
"Mother," he said, said he;
"You must never go down
to the end of the town,
if you don't go down with me."
That whole photo essay is yowza. Perv equally on everyone doing their sport naked!
Yeah, yeah, that's nice and all. But a little artsy. For proper perving, you need the German women's national soccer team (considerably more NSFW).
That is wildly bizarro to me that a women's soccer team would pose for Playboy. I mean, half the women I play with are dykes, and beyond that, pretty much all the players do not display any girly coyness close to anything like in those photos. I mean, I'm sure many of them are feminine when they are not around their soccer teammates, but those women are posing specifically as part of their team. That is just so weird.
It's not just the toplessness - I could see soccer players being photographed naked. It's the Playboy-ness of the photos. The simpering-ness. That is just so...un-dykey.
I'm sure plenty of people have looked at those photos and wondered why explicit lesbianism isn't included.
108: WPXI to the rescue*.
*Photo essay title is "Olympians don bikinis despite rain". So, 50 pictures of women volleyballers in bikinis and 1 picture of people in the stands with jackets and umbrellas.
107: I was thinking the same thing. Those pics are appealing really intensely to some audience that isn't me. If I'm going to perv on some naked athletes, I'd like to see some muscles on them, some toughness, maybe actually looking like people who play sports. Under all the red lipstick and heels, it's hard to tell those women are anything other than ladmag models.
The photos in 104 are .. odd, especially when compared to the ESPN gallery. Like Germany is beaming in from 1973. Although the modesty photoshopping in the ESPN gallery is also amusing.
The guy getting licked by the horse, naked? Um, uh. Yeah.
111 some of them remind me of hilariously awkward academic nudes when someone's been told no naughty bits slightly too late in the process to compose things properly.
Under all the red lipstick and heels, it's hard to tell those women are anything other than ladmag models
You say that like it's a bad thing!
In seriousness, I suspect that was kind of the point: to communicate to girls and young women that you can play soccer and still be sexy/girly. Despite the overall popularity of women's sports in Germany, soccer is gendered male to a degree that's hard to appreciate as an American -- think American football, or chewing tobacco.
Further to 113.last: I probably should have expressed that in a different tense, because I think the image of women's soccer has changed a lot in the last decade with the success of the national team in international competitions.
Girls and women being the primary readership of Playboy in Germany.
re: athletes bodies, this blogpost from one of the UK female weightlifters is good:
http://zoepablosmith.wordpress.com/2012/07/23/thanks-but-no-thanks/
As Hannah pointed out earlier, we don't lift weights in order to look hot, especially for the likes of men like that. What makes them think that we even WANT them to find us attractive? If you do, thanks very much, we're flattered. But if you don't, why do you really need to voice this opinion in the first place, and what makes you think we actually give a toss that you, personally, do not find us attractive?
Damn it, 102-3 are cracking me up at work. Silent shaking, tears, etc. Hope everyone else was really concentrated on their stuff and didn't notice.
Girls and women being the primary readership of Playboy in Germany
It was (not surprisingly) reported in virtually every mainstream media outlet at the time. And because German mainstream media are not averse to a a little breast-tastic titillation, the coverage extended to some prominently placed reproductions of the tamer shots.
I guess you NBC deprived people don't want to know the result of the time trial?
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What's with all the super-short comment threads recently? Is everyone in Maine this month?
My lower back hurts SO GODDAMN MUCH! It was all I could do to get in to work today. Sigh. When I am dead, at least I won't have to deal with lower back pain anymore.
Also, flies have been bugging me a lot recently. I will have to deal with flies when I'm dead, probably, at least for a little bit, but presumably it shouldn't be too irritating.
Anyhow, no plans to die anytime soon, and I am going to see a doctor about the back pain. Trying to be healthy. Sigh.
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Is everyone in Maine this month?
We're freezing in the forest
There's no wood to heat the house
We took axes to the furniture
We pulled the floorboards out
There's animals scratching at the door
And they know we're gonna die
There were big tall trees and rocky coastline
And the waves came in so wild
I've never been to Maine. Or Massachusetts.
Don't know if it's feasible, Natillo, but Olympic-stylee weight lifting has done wonders for my back, which has been jacked for going on 4 years now. Crossfit does a lot of this, but nothing stops you from doing this at the Y as long as you watch some YouTube videos to understand proper form.
Olympic style weight lifting is twenty thousand times awesome, but could be a hard place to start off. Power lifting might be easier to approach.
Oh duh. Yeah, I was thinking deadlift and back squat to start. I've been doing a lot of snatches and clean and jerks in CF, along with front and overhead squats on occasion, and my back is getting better quickly.
125-127: I do need to start getting to the gym on a regular basis. I was doing okay for awhile, then got sick, then doing okay, then job situation deteriorated, and now I haven't been in for some time. Right this minute, I'd be lucky to pick up a $5 bill without having my back seize up entirely.
I've been doing a lot of snatches and clean and jerks
Say, now you're talkin'!
I was surprised how SFW the results I got were whilst looking for "split snatch" on Google.