you were open and now you are closed

The Olympics are over. I am devastated. Actually, that's an exaggeration, since there are benefits to the end of the Olympics--for instance, I can catch up on all the work that I needed to do over the past two weeks, have dinner with all the friends I blew off, and get ready for my upcoming move to Ireland. It seems like a lifetime ago that I watched the opening ceremonies at the Old Pro sportsbar. A lot has happened in those sixteen days--I got an apartment, I went to New York, I celebrated Claudia's birthday, and I watched at least seventy hours of Olympics coverage. Here are my highlights:

1) Apolo Anton Ohno's performance in the 500m final. This made up for his entirely-expected defeats at the hands of the brutally-talented South Koreans. He led the race from start to finish, and no one can ever dispute any passes or on-ice shenanigans as a result. He looked so incredibly thrilled with his win, as might be expected from someone who sacrificed four years of his life to live in the Olympic training center and practice constantly. The bronze in the 5000m relay a couple of hours later was just icing on the cake.

2) The incredibly angry Italian ice dancer. During the second of three (wholly-repellant) nights of ice dancing, an Italian dancer dropped his partner, dashing their hopes for gold. She was visibly furious with him; they stood on the ice for almost a minute before finally saluting the judges, and she spent that awkward interlude glaring at him with all the fury of a woman betrayed. Dick Button was shocked (shocked!) at this display, since pairs and ice dancers never seem to show how angry they are at each other while on the ice. Instead, this woman glared for awhile, performed a cursory bow to the judges, and then didn't speak to her partner again until after their last performance. They even warmed up separately on the final night, which seemed to guarantee failure, but their final program was okay. She forgave him at the end of the third program and he immediately broke down in tears, probably because he no longer had to be concerned that she was taking out a contract on his life.

3) Joey Cheek trying not to cry during his gold medal ceremony. He's adorable, and I hope he comes to Stanford, even though he's a bit old for the undergrad experience. 'Nuff said about that.

4) The Olympics commercials. Some of them were awful (United, for example, tried to turn a regular 2d-animated businessman into King Arthur, with no success). Some of them were ironic (Nike's 'Join Bode' campaign; the 'Bode on Winning' commercial always seemed to play right after he bombed another race). But some entered that grand hall of fame in my mind where all fantastic commercials live. Three especially stood out: 1) the beer commercial (I think Michelob?) where a guy hard-tackles a girl during a game of touch football and shouts 'you were open and now you are closed!'; 2) the Coca-Cola bobsled commercial in which four guys pretend to bobsled on a loveseat while four other guys chant around them (I can't figure out the whole sequence, but I think they start out by saying 'Bananas! Sledding! Four! One more!'); 3) the Volkswagon 'fast' commercials, where the evil little 'fast' convinces guys to do dumb things (like when an ugly guy tells his inexplicably-attractive girlfriend that he 'can't hear the sound of the engine over all [her] yakking', since his fast likes the windows down). All three of those commercials have impacted my life in strange and wondrous ways, and you should expect to hear me reference my fast for months to come.

5) 'Pass the torch, so to speak'. One of the local SF commentators said tonight that the closing ceremonies were a time for the host city to 'pass the torch, so to speak' to the next host city. Was it really necessary for her to say 'so to speak'? In fact, if there is ever a time in the modern world where a torch is actually passed, isn't it at the Olympics? Didn't this phrase originate from the Olympics? I just thought this was entertaining, probably because I had just watched way too much of Ricky Martin's closing ceremonies performance and needed a quick injection of humor to make me feel better.

6) Tammy. I've seen Tammy every day for two weeks, except for the Wednesday night that I spent in NYC. It's been great fun, and I was rather sad that she left today and took her blanket, her magazines, and her coursework with her rather than leaving some of it here. We're going to have to rent a house or something for the next Olympics so that we can take vacation and watch them together.

7) Dick Button. The best thing about the games was his commentary. It's too bad he's 77--I would love nothing more than to hear commentary from him forever, but that seems unlikely at best. But, he gets a personal medal for being consistently entertaining, even if his commentary does absolutely nothing to illuminate the technical aspects of the sport for me.

Goodbye, Torino! I enjoyed the Olympics, even if I wish that NBC had spent more time on esoteric sports and less time on hyped-up pseudo-controversy, and even if Tammy and I were the only Americans to watch them regularly. 2008 can only be more exciting.