Glistening and Quivering
It's with some bittersweetness and a few crippling withdrawl pangs that I say goodbye to the 2004 version of the Olympic Games. Judging by the size of the crowds at all of the venues, I probably was the only one watching, but it's hard to accept nonetheless.

Gone are the sports no one ever watches or even thinks about in non-Olympic years, lost to their quadrennial slumber of unjustifiable obscurity. Goodbye water polo, we hardly knew ye. Goodbye tae kwon do, table tennis, Graeco-Roman wrestling, team handball and beach volleyball. Farewell javelin, field hockey, hammer-throw, decathlon, badminton and anything to do with boats. You will all most probably be missed by someone.

Mostly I would like to acknowledge the team coverage by mom-and-pop operation NBC-Universal and their quaint global network of stations. They gave the games the down-home feel only a heartless multinational corporation could.

I was grateful to see that they cut back on the saccharine factor that swamped their coverage of the Sydney 2000 games. Their featurettes were slightly less ubiquitous and markedly less cloying and maudlin, focusing more on the sport aspect and not so much, say, the athlete's sister who lost her foot in a tragic bear mauling as a child. "So with his two good feet, he triple-jumps because his one-footed sister cannot." [Slow close-up of bear head mounted on wall backed by tinkly piano music]

One curious thing I noticed was NBC's absolute desperation to catch someone--anyone--crying during a medal award ceremony. I watched alot of these damn things and not once can I remember seeing a flag being raised. It was all tight shots on the gold medal winner as their anthem played. And they didn't care who it was. That guy who won the 5000 meters from Morocco got his own personal 5 minutes on American television (no American even placed in the event) just so NBC could show him edge as close as possible to emotional collapse on national TV.

I noticed it most pronouncedly at the ceremony for the women's gymnastics. The camera panned madly back and fourth amongst the stoic faces of starving 14 year old girls looking for the slightest glisten in the eyes or quiver of the lower lip. Then when they found one, the focus was tighter, lingering until they got the satisfaction of seeing the little Skinnner-box escapee let a tear go.

But now NBC and its family of networks has 70 hours to fill daily of programming now that their meal ticket has up and vanished on them. Working on the logical assumption that the network's penchant for things that glisten and quiver is a universal constant--like myna birds and shiny things--I've taken the liberty of working up a list of alternative things they might show to fill the olympic void.

Other things that Glisten and Quiver [editor's note: some of these things may only quiver when prodded, but they must have the potential to do so at least]:

1. Jell-O
2. Gristle
3. First-time nudists (provided they sweat when nervous)
4. Fat guy at community pool
5. Pudding
6. Labia majora (under the right circumstances)
7. sea lions
8. cow eyeballs from biology class, pre-dissection

If NBC can somehow figure a way to work all these elements into one show, I can guarantee ratings gold. I know I'd watch it.


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 4.2


Pops



- posted by Pops @ 4:23 PM