HELL yes, since some of you asked, I still manage to enjoy Track & Field, with reservations, whenever NBC can cut away from its coverage of the five minutes between every platform dive. If I want to watch young women showering I will go elsewhere. Elsewhere in the house. On video. In case I need to make that clear.
I've enjoyed a lot of what's on the Korean feed I get: table tennis, badminton, team handball. Swimming's okay, it's just not nearly as compelling as Track, just like soccer's no football; opinions vary. It's the goddam jingoism and corporatism I can't stand. I could probably even watch Gymnastics, were they to be edited to the meat, instead of the action being tolerated as the price of admission to the sidelines-full of soap opera and waterworks. That, and the fact that you cannot look at a female American gymnast without the acute awareness that the star machinery surrounding her is the very engine that has driven her, and especially her Loving and Sacrificing Parents, for years, making it a bit like investing real emotion rooting for the heroine of a Busby Berkeley movie.
Add water polo, and there's your list of badass sports that Americans (including me) don't bother to watch, but would probaly enjoy if more of us realized they could be taken seriously. I'd have liked to see badminton and ping pong played at a high level on the teevee, at least every four years or so, and given that they're big in Asia, you'd think NBC could have scared up some coverage from Beijing, even with the lack of American table tennis moms to zoom in on after every point.
ReplyDelete(I don't know why volleyball isn't more popular here either, given that enough people appear to play it drunkenly in college to get the idea that it can be competitive and exciting, but GE latched onto Misty Mae's bikinied ass without too much provocation.)
I feel a suspicious dewiness about the eyes -- and I don't even follow sports. I suppose it's my yardies having one day of genuine jubilant solidarity and pride. We come by them so much harder, you know.
ReplyDeleteHow dare you have fun and not be an American. hahahahahaha love it
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