potentialities

What is the deal with there being a team figure skating event? What is the deal with there being a whole evening's worth of sports the day before the opening ceremonies? What is the deal with the former beginning during the later, causing me to miss the 2014 Olympic début of my beloved Evgeni Plushenko???

Don't worry, though, I found a sketchy cam video to tide myself over with. Also Johnny Weir posted a cute picture of himself and Tara Lipinski posing with Plushy on his Instagram to make my shipper heart go pitter-pat. So that's something.

My new favorite Russian athlete of these games is Alexey Sobolev, who seems like both a badass (playing coy with his Pussy Riot-themed board art) and a dork (putting his phone number on his helmet to see what would happen).

It took some doing, but we finally got the evil cable leviathan to disgorge our login information so we can stream NBC's fabled live feeds. The first thing I tuned in to live was the contested end of the men's gymnastics team final. The second thing I tuned in to live was Korean fencer Shin A Lam's protest/sit-in. You do not want me watching your event live, is what I'm getting at here. Nothing good will come of it.

I've also been dipping my toes a little further into tumblr, including hitting up the Olympics tag during commercial breaks. It is less of an unmitigated joy than the Avengers-related tags that I sometimes read; they both have lots of pretty pictures of pretty people and funny memes, but the Olympics tag has a lot more bonus unfun racism to scroll past.

I made my own animated gif of the adorable face that Japanese gymnast Uchimura Kohei made when they posted his final score in the men's team finals. Then I cropped it a zillion times because apparently when tumblr says "Max size 10MB", they actually mean "Max size 1MB if you're posting an animated gif, which of course you are, because this is tumblr". On DW/LJ, though, you're free to watch it in all of its 2.6MB glory, behind ( this cut )

My main problem with the Summer Games is too many sports, too little time. During the Winter Games, even if you stick with/are stuck with NBC primetime coverage, you are going to end up seeing at least a taste of everything, regardless of how esoteric, which is what I enjoy the most. Whereas there is so much going on in the summer that even a super-competent and even-handed network would struggle to cover it adequately and, well, this is NBC. Although this is our first Olympics since the acquisition of a high definition television, so in that respect the quality of their coverage is excellent. ;)

I cannot even wait for the men's free skate tonight! Personally, I'm rooting for Plushy to win, Johnny to flip off the judges, and Evan Lysacek to wash his goddamn hair.

God, I wonder how many hours of Olympics coverage I've watched in the last 18 years. I even feel sort of warm and fuzzy about neverending Visa McCoke commercials and Bob motherfucking Costas.

It's official: the second half of my figure skating OTP will be skating at the Olympics!

... oh God, that means it's been four years since Torino, doesn't it. Eep.

Apparently Bob Costas and the rest of the folks at NBC are all huge Shani Davis/Chad Hedrick shippers, to judge by their ongoing fuss about everything they do or don't say or do to each other. Too bad Shani Davis/Enrico Fabris is totally canon! Are they blind? Did they not see the way Davis kept running his hands through Fabris's hair at every possible opportunity?

Yes, I am aware that I am now just being silly.

Come on, people! Where is the 2006 Winter Olympics slash? I seem to recall that in 2004 I couldn't scroll down five entries without running across someone shipping Michael Phelps and Ian Thorpe, and yet I have only found two (2) pieces of Evgeny Plushenko/Johnny Weir. This is unacceptable.

Only slightly relatedly, I was looking at all the old Olympic medals. I hadn't realized before that the summer games medals have had basically the same design since St. Louis 1904. And the winter games have always had medals that varied wildly from year to year, from the merely lame to the truly terrifying. Really, now, what is this?

Starbucks is discontinuing their Chantico drinking chocolate, otherwise known as an orgasm in a shot glass. I am exceedingly displeased. And I don't even go out of my way to eat chocolate ordinarily, but I've been mainlining these things for about a year now.

Oh well. Now I have no good reason to darken their door ever again. Or until the Christmas drinks come back again. Whichever comes first.

In other news, I had a minute cavity filled but clung stubbornly to my wisdom teeth, rearranged my bookshelves to accommodate 30 more Baby-Sitters Club Books (shut up!) and watched lots of Olympics coverage. satyadasa will corroborate my statement that Bob Costas promised, on national TV, that they were going to shut up about Michelle Kwan and proceeded to violate his promise within the hour. We had snow, but not snow like the East Coast had snow, and why yes I am incredibly jealous.

On Friday I woke up (chez mes grand-parents) and my left shoulder hurt. I complained about this to handynavi and he had me move my arm around in various implausible ways and determined that the culprit was my rotator cuff. I believe that naming it has give it power over me, because it still hurts and it is really starting to annoy me.