Part I: My Olympic Delusions

When I was little, I had dreams of being both an Olympic commentator and a competitor. I'm not exactly sure how I planned to reconcile those two occupations ... I must have thought I could just climb down from the press box area, suit up, and get in line on the track between Kenya and Brazil. And when I was done, I could comment on my own stellar performance. Perfect set-up, right? Naturally, I wouldn't be a bit biased, and after winning the gold medal I would say nothing but nice things about the people who won silver and bronze.

I prepared extensively for both of these occupations. Or at least as extensively as could be expected from a kid with ADHD. For the competitor part, my goal was to break the world record in women's 100m and become the fastest woman alive. Modest goals, I know. But I had reason for optimism. When I was around nine I enjoyed a sizable (dare I say freakish?) growth spurt, leaving me with legs that were disproportionately long, like that of a baby giraffe. As a result, there was a period of time where I could run faster than any other kid in school, boys included. Can't you just see little nine-year-old me tottering along on these giant legs like one of Dali's surrealist elephants? I'm sure it was comical. Still, I had complete confidence in my Olympic future. Watch out Edwin Moses, I said. And watch out Carl Lewis. Cause here comes a fourth grader from eastern Kansas who's going to leave you in the dust! I read my dad's Runner's World voraciously, I chewed GatorGum (a long-extinct type of gum made by Gatorade), and I measured out a hundred-yard stretch of sidewalk by my house for practice runs. Sometimes I ran with my head thrown back like that guy in Chariots of Fire, although it kind of hurt my neck. I was very serious about all of this, you see. That is, until the dark hand of laziness settled over me and I decided it would be easier to be a puppeteer, a la The Dark Crystal. But before that ... ah, before that, I coulda been a contender!

As for my planned career as an Olympic commentator, the preparations were a little more simple. I would set my purple tape recorder by the television and record myself commenting on the Olympic events as they occurred. I would say things like, "Oh yes, that was an excellent jump. Much better than the other guy." Problem was, I never identified the other guy. The specifics of their performances also went unmentioned, and sometimes it wasn't even clear what event I was watching. But that wasn't the point, really, because it was really more about recording my experience of watching the Olympics. Not long ago, I made the mistake of letting Nick listen to one of these tapes. He has teased me mercilessly ever since. "Hey honey, aren't you going to tape yourself while you watch this?" Snicker, snicker. Yeah, I get it. I was a dork. But was that really more dorky than the time I built a vortex out of Legos so that my Fisher Price people could travel to another universe? For pure dorkiness, nothing beats that, baby.

Part II: Celebrity Propaganda on Ice!

As you have no doubt guessed by this point, I love the Olympics. I love ski jumping and bobsled (bobsleigh, officially) and snowboarding half-pipe and cross country. I love figure skating and luge, and I've even built up a healthy tolerance to curling. The only event I don't like is ice dancing. It's all glossy and melodramatic, like the skaters are acting out scenes from a Joan Collins novel. There's the shellacked hair, the demented beauty queen make-up, and the neon Barbarella costumes. Do they honestly think this looks good? And then there's the absurdity of the dancing itself, which makes Laurence Welk look like an absolute hipster. Look, I've tried to be tolerant. But the fact is, if I don't change the station quickly when ice dancing comes on, I'm afraid I'll start having that nightmare about Branson again, the one where I'm kidnapped by unscrupulous tap dancers and held hostage in a boxy little theater somewhere between Andy Williams and the Yakov Smirnov show. (In Soviet Russia, ransom pays you!) Trust me, I don't need another reason to wake up screaming.

Ice dancing aside, I will pretty much watch anything that goes on in the Olympics. However, the coverage was fairly ridiculous this year, and I can sum up the reason in two words. Apolo Ohno. Now before you start sending me hate mail, I'm not offended by him as a person or as a skater. I don't even know the guy. I'm just annoyed by the celebrity culture that caused him to be the most coveted interview in the whole games. I mean, did the announcers really need to chronicle his every movement? Apolo is entering the rink! Apolo is talking to his father! Apolo is adjusting his tights and scratching himself! And then they have to consult him on every occasion, on every topic imaginable. Oh no, it's been five minutes and no one has interviewed Apolo! What does Apolo think of the catfight between Chad Hedrick and Shani Davis? Does Apolo have an opinion on the situation in the Middle East? How does he feel about string theory? What about underwear...boxers or briefs? Sure, Apolo's a great speed skater, but you know what? There were a bunch of other great skaters there, too. That's kind of what the Olympics are about—people who are really, really good at their sport of choice. Interview someone else once in a while, you know? The worst was after the speed skating relays, when the interviewers nearly knocked over the other U.S. skaters to get to Apolo. I just sighed and left the room.

And then there were the stupid biopics. (I saw so many of these about Apolo's life that I could probably recite the timeline of his life more accurately than my own.) Is it just me, or have they gotten a little bit hilarious? Even the athletes who don't have an inspiring story of personal tragedy and struggle against adversity are portrayed as mini-saints. It all begins with the bittersweet music, and the shot of the athlete frolicking in the snow outside his or her family's rustic log cabin home. We see clips of the athlete's previous performances and watch at least one episode of the athlete in tears, after an injury or some other disappointment. At the end, there is the soft-focus close-up of the athlete looking contemplative and brave. "Johnny Weir has been struggling with his aura for years," the voice-over intones. "Will it betray him at a critical moment?" Sweet mother of Bode. It's like all the worst things about television have converged to form abominations so monstrous they just make you want to put your foot through the screen. Even if that means electrocuting yourself in the process, because hey, at least then your suffering would be over.

But I do love the Olympics, and I always feel a sense of melancholy when they come to an end. As a kid, I even dredged up some tears as the flame was being extinguished. This year, luckily, the nostalgia of the closing ceremony was attenuated by the sudden emergence of Ricky Martin and a bunch of scary clowns on bicycles. There's nothing like pure horror to make you forget that you won't be seeing ski jumping for another four years. It's brilliant. In fact, I think they should openly embrace the horror motif for the next closing ceremony. They should bring out acrobats with chainsaws and maybe little girls with ragged dresses crawling out of a 300-foot television. Perhaps they could have a special salsa number performed by the Event Horizon dancers. Lots of high kicks, Rockette style, and make-up that makes it look as if their eyes are missing. My god, that's inspired. You know what? They should hire me to choreograph the floor show for the next winter Olympics. Hey there, Vancouver! I'll plan your Olympics for you. Just give me a call and I'll send over some dioramas of my plans. But I should warn you, you will probably need to start making the sock puppets now. It'll take a while to get ten million made, and sweat shops should always be a last resort.

P.S. One more word about the floor show. During the mime show about the formation of Vancouver (starring an enthusiastic caveman guy who went ice fishing and suffered from a bad case of bed head), I kept trying to imagine what such a show would consist of if they were portraying the heritage of Kansas. What would they come up with? A bunch of Wizard of Oz-themed crap? Dancing sunflowers? Maybe some guys burning Darwin in effigy? Anyone have any ideas?