Games of yore blog.

Been watching more television, and much more sports, than usual because of the Olympics, which I have a fondness for. NBC’s lousy coverage is a good case for upgrading from broadcast TV to something with more channels, but I will resist. It’s only a good case, not a compelling one.

Something I wrote during the Seoul Games; Sunday, September 18, 1988:

“Yesterday I took a long walk, drank a fair potage of beer, read some Further Tales of the City and watched the Olympics with Barb and Steve and their dog. [I did not own a TV in 1988, and was a better man for it.] The athletes were accomplished, of course, even flawless to an untrained eye like mine. The coverage, on the other hand, was commercials every time you paused to take a breath; commentator blah-blah-blah; and the sense watching the coverage that mostly Americans were competing in the Games, along with a few a other people from other places.”

I could have written that yesterday. I noticed in a bar in Minneapolis last week that the Games were better with the sound down. But at home, Lilly turned it back up when I tried that.

“Actually the most articulate of the commentators was a former gymnast who now models women’s underwear. Good career move, probably.

“I saw some really striking high-dive girls. One in particular: a Soviet girl in a red bathing suit who did well but didn’t win a medal. Wow, I don’t remember such stylish bathing suits in ’72 or ’76. Maybe it started in Los Angeles, but I didn’t watch any of those Games. Anyway, I have to wonder if the stylish Soviet will be allowed the opportunity to pursue a career in, say, underwear modeling. I doubt it. That would be stretching glasnost too far.”

Not something I could have written yesterday.