I know I said I was done with the Olympics, but

The closing ceremonies, starting with the clown mechanic "fixing" the broken piece of the torch, were definitely better than usual. After the IOC officially closed the games in its usual ridiculously solemn way, Canada's final act was so odd and over the top as to be a classic. You knew you were in for something weird when the whole section is introduced by William Shatner. The last 10 minutes in particular, with the giant Mountie and hockey player cutouts, and maple leaves with seductively attired female "stems," and the inflatable beavers pushed by lumberjacks, and moose balloons, and men running around with canoes stuck around their midsections and Michael Buble singing on a giant Mountie hat, was probably the most bizarre spectacle I've ever seen on television.

Random Non-Olympics

I have to segue into non-Olympics topics again.

On my way to pick up my daughter, there was a flashing road sign that said "Use Extreme Caution." SInce I consider myself to be an extremely cautious driver to begin with, this made me very tense. What was I supposed to do? Hold the wheel with 3 hands?

There was a sample of a South Beach Diet bar in my driveway this morning, along with the newspaper. I will not eat it. I try to have a consistent policy of not eating things that I find lying in my driveway and it's worked for me so far.

When I was a kid my uncle said he had a "trick knee." That sounded kind of jaunty and cool to me at the time. Now I can tell you that the "trick" in trick knee is a sudden intense shooting pain if you step on or off the curb the wrong way. Just one more of the nice surprises you get being an adult.

Something's missing

After all of those Olympic events, have you heard anyone ever say that they're cold?

Blueteeth

My wife's car wouldn't start, so we had it taken to the local mechanic, who got it started by told us to take it to the dealer while it was still running. So of course because I'm the guy I got to drive the sketchily running car while my wife followed in mine. This was fine, except every time she pulled up behind me at a red light, the bluetooth in both cars would activate. If you don't know what this means, it's a hands-free phone, where there's a speaker in the car and you talk into that little front window shade where there's a secret microphone. It means your handset will dial, but you can't talk on it. So what would have happened if she called someone? I would have heard it in my car and been able to speak with whoever was on the other end, but my wife wouldn't have been able to. And then when I got a few years away from her it would have popped onto her handset.

And what would have happened if she had called me? I guess I could have talked to myself.

Whew!

I'm glad I'm not related to and don't know personally anyone in the Olympics. The death rate among friends and families of the athletes is disturbingly high.

Yet more Olympics

If I hear the word "redemption" again I'm going to scream.

Yet another rousing "O Canada" after the incredibly intense women's hockey final. It's hard to watch figure skating after watching these women go full speed and full effort like that. Just seems very slow.

If I pause the Tivo it suggests that I go get a beer. I haven't checked to see if it does that in the morning too.

Even though I'm sure it was overblown, I'm glad Julia Mancuso called out the USA Ski people (and by extension the media) for putting so much focus on Lindsey Vonn that it sucked all the oxygen out of the room for the others on the team. Vonn's great and she's very pretty, but so is Mancuso and she's done it in two Olympics now.

I saw the guy who won the silver medal in the  Freestyle Big Air interviewed by Colbert yesterday and he seems pretty amused that he was asked to leave Italy after he finished his run at the Torino games after getting into what must have been a hellacious bar fight. I heard from other sources that the most intense drinkers are the curlers.

MMMM, pancakes

I guess this is apt after Free Pancake Day, but snow days at this point remind me of the late Mitch Hedberg. He's talking about something being "really exciting, not pancake exciting. With pancakes it's "MMMM! PANCAKES! and then after you've eaten a couple of them it's uhhhh, pancakes."

What's that they're drinking?

As advertising guy, I always have my eye out for clever product placement. So imagine my surprise when I saw what was obviously a Dasani water bottle at the ice rink with the brand covered up with the word "WATER." Clearly the Dasani folks didn't pony up to the Olympic Committee and were unsuccessful in their attempt to get a little free air time for their product. Then I noticed when a skater was blowing her nose that the tissue box had no markings at all on any of the sides. Anyone ever see a tissue box like that? Not me, so Kleenex? Next time pay up or you're outa here.

Yes, I think Ice Dancing is a sport and other Olympics overload

I didn't sleep well last night. I had many dreams, at least a few of which were clearly inspired by Curling. This is not a usual state of affairs. Most of my life slides by uninfluenced by Curling, and I'm okay with that. So I'm beginning to think I'm getting Olympics overload.

Another sign that I've overindulged is that I've developed very strong opinions on whether or not Ice Dancing is a sport. You hear these kinds of arguments around various sports-like activities, like golf, complete with hair-splitting arguments over what differentiates a sport from a mere game, or in the case of ice dancing, an exhibition. The thing you really don't get on TV is how incredibly strenuous ice dancing is, I guess because there's no jumping. It's anaerobic. That's not unusual in sports in and of itself. A 200 meter dash is anaerobic too, that's why you see people panting afterwards. But a 200 meter dash lasts 20 seconds and a Free Dance program lasts 4 1/2 minutes. That's a long time to be feeling oxygen deprived and doing complex choreographed movements.

You may object and say that you get just as out of breath doing the StairClimber, to which I would reply that that may be true but using a StairClimber is a stupid activity, because people don't like climbing stairs even when they need to. So why would you pretend to climb stairs? I never got that. But count me convinced of Ice Dancing's sportness.

I also noticed last night that when I watch the skiers that I'm on the couch leaning into the turns. I was doing that during the halfpipe too. If I catch myself doing it with the bobsled too then I am turning the TV off.

Olympics in brief

For those who don't have time to really focus on the Olympics, here is a description of everything that's been happening in the Winter Olympic events from the athlete's point of view:

1. I can get there faster than you can
2. I can go higher and/or farther than you can
3. I can propel this thing closer to a chosen spot than you can
4. I can put this thing in a chosen spot more times than you can within the allotted time
5. The judges like me more than they like you and they think what I do is better than what you do (or my team gave them better presents or both)

Actually, if you add.

6. I can throw this thing further than you, and
7. I can beat you up

you pretty much all sports, except of course, for baseball, which is why baseball is the best sport.

So call me a Republican

One of the downsides to being a teacher is that when you make a statement you need to be able to back it up with facts or research or proven hypotheses. In a way, I preferred it in the advertising business when you could make a statement forcefully based on what you believe to be true, even if you just made it up. It was always understood that this is what people do and that it's more important to sound sure of yourself than to be correct.

The sky is falling!

Our carport doesn't have a solid roof. It's a bunch of planks that provide about 75% shade and it makes the view out the windows better than if we were just looking at cars in the driveway. But it's not a solid roof by any means. The carport, like everything else, has had 3 feet of snow sitting on top of it for a week and a half. But today, when I went outside I saw that the roof was collapsing. Now why would that be? The snow is melting and I know that water is heavier than snow, but if I remember correctly from Chemistry then there's no way the weight of the stuff on the carport can increase all by itself.

I'm not looking forward to the rebuilding process. The people who fashioned it are a weird mix of Amish and other not-so-worldly types and they had to make the pieces twice before they fit together. I also have no idea who's paying for this. I'm guessing our insurance covers it, but I'd prefer to have the contractor take care of it. Oh well. For the moment, we have to get a brace put in so we have somewhere to park the cars, since there are still no spaces on the street. Hopefully we can get it tomorrow.

More Olympics

Athletics aside, I want the Canadians to win gold all the time because Canada has the best national anthem. Not only is is a great song, but the whole crowd sings it loudly all through the ceremony. It's actually kind of moving.

So Yevgeny Plushenko acted like an arrogant jerk when he only finished second in the figure skating? To quote Iago from Disney's Aladdin, "Now there's a big surprise! I think I'm going to have a heart attack and die from this surprise." Arrogant jerk is hardwired into the guy's system. We kind of excused it when he was 15 because, well, he was a 15 year-old boy and what did you expect? Now it's both annoying and kind of sweet that he's kept his boyhood personality all the way into young adulthood.

The problem is that his skating hasn't evolved much since then either. He doesn't like the scoring system, but his outrage is obviously manufactured because he was complaining about it even before the competition. The current scoring system has been in place for several years and just because he didn't compete at all during that time and get used to it doesn't give him any special privileges. It just makes him a whiner. He happened to start competing at a time where the scoring was perfectly suited to him. In the periods before and after, not so much. I myself also enjoy having the comfort of having a built-in excuse, but that's still all it is.

How happy do you think Julia Mancuso was that Lindsey Vonn didn't place in the super-duper combined skiing thing yesterday? She actually got interviewed! That poor girl had to wear a tiara to the medal ceremony to get noticed the day before. The media's fixation on Vonn does nobody any favors.

I am a big curling fan. I've only played that game not on the ice, where it's called either bocce or shuffleboard, depending on the variation. But I love watching it, especially the way the people move around on one shoe that grips the ice and one that slides.

Olympics musings

There have been several funny moments in the last couple of days of interviews. First, the guy who won the men's snowcross, who is 33 years old, was aksed if he expected to compete in the next Olympics. He said yes, that's the plan. The interviewer asked, "Even at 37 years old?" and he replied, "Hey, it's winter." What a great attitude. Hey, it's winter. What else am I going to do?

Two things from Shaun White last night. He's smart and has a sharp wit on top of being a goofball. He knew he had won before he took his second run on the halfpipe, and he asked his coach what he should do. The coach said, "Anything you want," and White replied, "Should I just go right down the middle?" The coach stared at him for a moment and said, "No." Then later, as an NBC reporter was introducing her interview with him, he stood behind her, and jumped around and made faces and then as soon as she turned to him he got perfectly serious, though he shot a glance at the camera with a slight grin.
Here's a link- the interview is at around 6:05

Finally, Bob Costas interviewed Steven Colbert and you might as well just watch that. Make sure you watch all the way to the end.

And she's a great skier, but anyone else tired of hearing the name Lindsey Vonn yet, or even worse, Lindsey Vonn's shin? It's way more fun to say Lindsey Jacobellis.

Actual Quote From Ski Area

Willy Whiteface says, "Do a risk assessment of your daily activities."

Always good advice, I suppose, but I think Willy is kind of a downer and I don't want to go skiing with him.

Oh Limpics

I like watching the Olympics and I'm glad they're on TV, but could they possibly get more self-important? I know the Olympics only happens every 4 years, but it's just a big track meet, with a few extra events thrown in for amusement. And one thing that track meets don't have is a 4 hour-long opening ceremony. I want to start all of my classes with a parade of students, followed by a performance art piece, followed by the students reciting an oath that they will participate fairly and then I will recite an oath that I will grade them fairly and then someone special will come in and set something on fire. That would be fun. And ridiculous. So how about next time we start the Olympics with an athletic competition of some kind?

I actually liked a lot of the opening ceremony this time, but it really crawled to the conclusion. After all the athletes and the spectacle, you start with the speeches in 2 languages and then the whole torch lighting extravaganza. This time it seemed to go on forever, first because they had a mechanical malfunction and were waiting for the thing to operate properly. Then, it seemed to occur to people that the torch was inside where nobody could see it, so they threw poor Wayne Gretzky into the back of a pickup truck to drive him across town in the rain to light yet another torch that they were keeping behind a cyclone fence just for this kind of occasion. That part of the proceeding took almost an hour, and was enough to ensure that I will watch the next one at double speed.

Oh, and didn't those torches the people were carrying look like something that someone might want to smoke?

What I've learned about families

My conclusion is that, no matter what your particular family dynamics, people within a family are programmed to drive each other crazy.

Skiblog

I went skiing with my sister and her kids today. It was pretty much fun, in a group activity kind of way. Group decision-making dynamics can be tedious and difficult, revolving around such things as when are we going to leave, when and where are we going to eat, who's going to sit with whom, and how long are we going to continue whatever it is we're doing. Even though I'm always sure I know exactly what's right for everyone, nobody seems to want to listen and everyone has their own opinion.

My sisters kids are younger than mine (she's almost 10 years younger than me), which is okay. She does have two boys, one of whom doesn't talk too much but is generally mischievous, and another who seems to talk pretty much continuously. I asked his younger sister if he ever stopped talking and she said, "When he's sleeping."

It was odd driving out of Philadelphia and as soon as you got 25 miles north of the city there was a fraction of the snow that we had at home. As much as I like snow, every time I went outside at home all I could think was, "Man, that's a lot of $%&!@ing snow." You just don't see snow like that very often. Even when we had the blizzard a few years ago it wasn't this much.  It felt weird to just leave our cars buried.

Yes, we leave the cars at home and rent an SUV for this trip. I already wrote about the rental experience. Let me just say for the record that this particular SUV (a Dodge Journey for those keeping score at home) is awful. I don't think it's 4-wheel drive. Why would you make an SUV without 4-wheel drive? Isn't that just a big station wagon then? Who would seek out and buy such a thing? Maybe it's nobody, and that's why the rental car company has it. And it's not like it makes up for it by being nimble. It is one of the worst handling things I've ever driven. At least I've managed to make it so dirty as to be unrecognizable.

Of course I didn't make the journey here any easier by bungling attaching the ski bags to the roof rack. This led to a brief interlude on the Blue Route when one of the bags was hanging by bungee cords over the passenger side of the car, bouncing away. I re-secured them once to no noticeable effect, so I had to take them off entirely and start from scratch. I had no feeling in my fingers for quite while after that. But it was no problem thereafter.

Olympics Fever

I hadn't realized what a reflexive sports fan I was, but I just stumbled on an article that said Lindsay Vonn, the top American skier, has an injury that might hinder her medal chances at the Winter Olympics. My immediate reaction was "Oh No!" and then my reaction was, "Wait a second, I care about this because...?" I mean, I know who Lindsay Vonn is. She's very pretty and I've seen her ski on TV a few times, but in the ski gear she looks exactly like everyone else doing the race except she finishes in a couple of tenths of a second less than the other people. This is exciting and important why?

I still remember a column I read by a guy named Lewis Grossenberger, who wrote for Adweek magazine. He was ragging about the Winter Olympics in general, and one of his pet peeves was the skiing. "Downhill skiing? What's so impressive about that? Any idiot can ski downhill. Now uphill skiing would be another story." The other line I remember from that was about luge, concerning which he noted that (1) it's hard to get involved in a sport where you can't tell if they're doing it on purpose and (2) that it would be much more fun if they all went down at the same time.

I like weather

I wanted to be would have been very happy being a meteorologist, though I was unable to connect that desire with anything resembling a work ethic during college, so I never pursued it. I also just like being out in weather. Aside from under 40 degrees/raining/windy I enjoy being out in it. I took a long walk last night and came back completely snow-covered and content.

This morning, I had to rent an SUV for the weekend. There's a rental car place about 1/4 mile from my house, so I was all ready to head over there when Vlad, the rental car guy, called me to tell me that all he had was a small SUV with no roof rack. We decided I'd go look at it and decide, so I walked over. It seemed like a very nice car, but too small for what I needed, so Vlad, who is very friendly and helpful, called first the airport and then the downtown locations to see if they had a bigger one I could swap it for. Downtown had something, so off I went into the snow. In the 10 minutes or so I was on the expressway, I saw fewer than 10 cars total.

The roadway wasn't clear, but I spent my formative driving years in upstate New York and am very comfortable driving in the snow. The objective of driving in the snow is the same as any other time- get from where you are to where you want to be without bumping into anything. In the snow that can be more difficult because you can't count on being able to either turn or brake, so the main rule is to stay as far away from the other cars as possible, because they probably have no idea what they're doing, most people around here don't, and they can't stop or turn either. You need to drive at a speed where you can stop, even if stopping means skidding and doing a 180. And you should know how your car handles in the snow, which of course I didn't.

Once in Center City, I had to deal with there being several inches of snow in the street, but I made it to the place. The guy working there, John, was completely humorless. How can you be out working at a rental car place in a blizzard and be humorless? The whole thing is inherently funny, renting things that pretty much don't work in the current conditions. The guy behind me was renting a Ford Focus. I hope he wasn't planning on, well, driving it anywhere. And this place rents those teeny SmartCars too. What could be funnier than trying to drive one of those things in a foot of snow? It would be random motion.

He rents me the car, claiming to know nothing about it aside from the key number and tells me "It's in spot 17, but you can't see the number because of the snow." And off I go to search the unplowed lot. The car is brand new and bright red. Easy to find in the whiteness. It has 4 miles on it. I drive off and the moment I get on the expressway it beeps to tell me it's out of gas. Now I know perfectly well that the only way for a car with 4 miles on it to be out of gas is for it never to have had gas in it in the first place, a curious condition for a newly rented car to be in.

By the time I got back it was snowing much harder and the roads were pretty much covered, but I made it to the gas station and then home. And that was my first adventure of the day.

Random stuff

I'm not sure what it says about me that I spent a small, but noticeable period of time today trying to figure out why awesome and awful don't mean the same thing. They come from the same root and had similar usage until about 200 years ago, but have now gone their separate ways.

A small piece broke off my printer, so now the tray that holds papers after they've been printed can't be pulled out to its full length or it will just fall off. I looked online to see if you could get a new tray, because it seems to me it just snaps into place. Nothing to be seen, so I e-mailed tech support. I told them the printer was less than a year old and that I'd like a new tray under warranty. I got a response telling me that this is not a user-replaceable part, and since my printer is still under warranty that they will send me an entire new printer and I will send the old one back in that box. Does this seem right to you? If this thing isn't user-installable, I'm surprised they allow you to change ink cartridges, because this doesn't look any more difficult.

I am a big New Orleans fan. I like the football team too, but I've visited New Orleans at least a dozen times and have loved it always. It's the first place I ever saw a "Mom went to ____ and all I got was this lousy t-shirt," I took a friend there for a bachelor party, I've eaten lots and lots of crawfish and danced and listened to lots of music, and over time, tried to soak up some of the charm and soul that permeates the place. THe weather's kind of muggy, but it's a favorite place. So I couldn't be happier for the city after the Super Bowl. I think my favorite part of the game was the 2 minute-long scrum for the ball after the onside kick, with all the players milling around and pointing that their team had the ball. I wasn't sure the officials were ever going to sort it out.

I guess it's good for the environment

The toilet paper I just bought seems to be about 1/2 in narrower than the last kind we had.

Fun things to do on a snowy weekend morning

Call the taxi company and tell them you absolutely must get to the airport.

Knock on neighbors' doors and ask if they have change for a quarter.

Call for pizza delivery.

Make a complaint that the newspaper hasn't been delivered yet.

and

Call applicants to your alma mater at 8:30AM to set up an interview. Act irritated when the teenager is not available to come to the phone at that moment. Speak in a Eurolilt. Play classical music in the background LOUD. Leave a message with only your title and last name, like Dr. Somebody, because you're too important and/or secretly insecure to leave a first name.

Okay, so that last one actually happened. Is it okay to base your judgement of a college choice based on whether or not you like the person who interviews you or, in this case, your kid? I now officially don't want my kid to go to this school, even if it's an prestigious Ivy league school that rhymes with Shmarvard. I've known nice people at or from that school. But I guess if your goal is to alienate as many potential applicants as possible, this is a good way to go.

Don't think I ever saw that before

I was just at the gas station and the guy at the pump next to me started to drive off with the nozzle still in his gas tank. The hose popped off the tank and came right along with him. He drove a few feet and realized what had happened. At this point, I'm thinking, what's he gonna do? Is he going to tell the attendant? And can you believe it, he just puts the hose on the ground and drives off. Funny, but kind of sad in a faith in human nature kind of way.

Gramalicious

Thank goodness musicians didn't repeat the somberness of the Golden Globes. If anything, you can count on Lady Gaga to not act bummed out. I did eventually have my fill of the huge production numbers. During the Dave Matthews set, we were expecting him to be frightened when he turned around and saw those 1000 or so musicians and backup singers behind him. Curious how you could still hear him over all those people. Maybe they weren't entirely necessary. As bad as Taylor Swift sounded (we were debating if the engineers were messing with her earbuds as payback for her not thanking her pitch-matching technicians in her acceptance speech), at least she was just standing up there with a band. And her skin is very nice. I also liked the mostly silent rap number.

For an award show, this one seemed very short on awards. That's fine. Aside from Colbert, I don't remember anyone saying anything interesting. I would have liked to see Lady Gaga on stage in the outfit, though. It didn't have the full effect sitting down. I like her even more that I know Gaga is her high school nickname and her real name is Stephanie or Stefani or something.

For the greater great

I saw a wonderful ad yesterday, on top of a taxicab of all places. It was for some auto collision place and their slogan was "The best in excellence."

Now I always say that once your business gets to the point where your ads say, "the best just got better," or something like it, that it's time to turn off the lights and go home. This, however, has infinite possibilities. You can almost hear the customers, "Wow, that was the best excellence I ever had." And, like I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, it can apply to pretty much anything.

One of the weird logic twists in advertising is the use of the superlative. You can say your product is "best" if all the products are identical, I guess because "tied for best with everything else" isn't compelling and if maybe it's not true, it's not exactly false either. "Unsurpassed" would be more accurate, I suppose. What you can't say without proof, however, is that your product is "better." Once you throw a comparison in, you need to support your claim. So "better" is superior to "best." Tell that to your Latin teacher.

When I was working advertising Sprite, we did a taste test versus 7-Up, which was the leading lemon-lime soda at the time. About 80% of tasters couldn't tell the difference. Of the remainder, about 10.3% preferred Sprite and 9.7% preferred 7-Up. So, of course, we did an ad that said, "Taste tests show, Sprite tastes better than 7-Up" and then at the bottom of the screen in little white letters it said (Among those stating a preference). This is why (a) advertising is fun, and (2) advertising is evil.