Day 1293 – Our Continuing Crappy Coverage of the Olympics

Wednesday, July 31, 2024

Here at NBC we’ll show you minor sports with little to no explanation of what any of it means.

Let’s switch to Peacock where we’ve teased that you can watch all the medal cerimonies and not miss a minute. This is true. We put the camera on something and let it roll with little or no explanation about what is going on or what is coming up. Somewhere in the time from 7am to 5pm you’ll see a medal ceremony.

Go instead to highlights and we’ll show you Coco Grauff complaining to the umos. Why is she complaining? Who knows? How about that great fnish in montain biking? Yeah, we saw a woman crossing the finish line all alone. Terrific work there crew. Switching now to cycling we’ll watch people slip on the rain covered streets. Who won? Who cares. 

Okay enough. Switch to Gold Zone. We showed you four screens of action at once. Oh, you thought you got to pick? Nah. In fact, sometimes we show you one screen, and sometmes four, and sometimes we don’t know what we’re doing then we’ll show you a black screen. Remember you paid extra for this! Now that we’ve figured out there’s a black screen up there we’ll show you what looks like a 1950s postcard of the Seine River with the catchy title of “Enjoy this view of the Seine.” Clever. Now back to four screens. We got tennis – too small to see, badmitten – too small, natch, Beach Volleyball and Equestrian. Let’s go big screen on Equestrian. This is horse prancing. Very interesting – for three or five seconds, because the drama is well, slooow. Okay, let’s switch to BMX. I forgot this was in the Olympics. This is like half pipe snowboarding but with bikes. Performed by mainly slightly pudgy twenty year olds. There are basically two moves that they do: “Don’t Do That! You’ll Break Your Neck!” and “I Told You So.” The latter is actually only done when someone crashes, which is frequent.

One BMX guy did something besides take his hands off the handle bars or spin his front wheel while in the air. He rotated the bike in a vertical plane: back wheel over front, while he wasn’t holding the bike. Pretty cool. Or was it front over back? Now back to four screens. Water polo is up in one corner. Something important is going on. Not sure what. Two teams. Oh, it’s a shoot out. Goalie versus opposing player from ten or fifteen feet away. Cool. What makes this really interesting is we are getting the audio from the BMX competition. Now a shot of a tennis match. When tennis or badmitten is in one of these little qudrents you can’t see the ball, just the players running around – who know what’s going on? Oh wait, the girls in green on the water polo section are jumping up and down. They must have won. Probably Australia. Who knows? Now to kayaking, now called something or other canoeing. But first crewing. Back to volleyball. Don’t those ladies get sunburned? I remember there was a big hoopla about them being required to wear those little two piece bathing suits and the protests over that. I can only think one thing – butt crack. Same for the gymnists. And what about those weird bathing suits for some of the men’s teams? We want to highight the men’s jungue. Maybe not. I dunno.

Okay. let me give Gold View a better try. Stand closer. Go with the flow. Oh, what’s this? A note on the bottom of the screen of the kayaking (Excuse me canoe paddling or something or other) explaining the green and red gates? Well, everyone knows you gotta go throughhe green gates going down stream and the red upstream. (Said no one, ever.) Just like in rugby, it’s important where you place the ball down in the end zone (I mean try zone). This determines where you kick the extra point from. We’re talking angle of kick. Yeah, would have been nice to have an explanation. Also, off sides and a penalty, but hey, what do you want from one of the premier sports organizations for broadcasting in the world?

Did you hear about the USA women’s rugby finish for bronze? No? Go to Peacock, click on the “Gold/Bronze women’s Rugby” icon and see … see…What is this? Finland and someone? WTF? They areno\’t in the final four. Oh this must be one of the playoff games of eight teams leading up to the four teams to the two teams, which is the final. Just advance the clicker and when you stop, wait for two minutes of commercials to find out where you are and what you are watching. There’s no little fast motion screen to show you where you are. Just drop in, wait two minutes of commercials and see where you are. Not the right place? Click agian. Wait two minutes. My tolerance was five times or ten minutes of crappy commercials and not finding the game, and we paid for this?

Hey, Comcast or Verizon or NBC or somebody I got a boffo idea. Do what they do in Cambodia. Have a channel for each sport and let the user with a remote click around. Weird huh? You can watch as much as you want of a sport then click to another one. No? You know what’s better? Yeah, force me to watch your crappy coverage. Hey, did you hear we didn’t qualify in air pistol? Did you show it? Maybe. Somewhere. Who knows? Replace them guns with AR-15s, the rifle of America, and we’ll show you. As targets have school children. Not real ones just pictures of the ones that were massacred. Too much? Bad taste?  Yeah. Okay.

Then there’s the outrage over the greek live scene of drag queens (was it drag queens?) dressed up emulating a Greek painting. Oh, the outrage. Making fun of the Last Supper. OMG. The outrage is from people who have never been to France – obviously.

Back to dressage, Mitt Romney, prep school waterboy, had a horse in this event a few years ago. What a competitor. Why isn’t pranercise a sport in the Olympics?

I gotta go. I’m waiting to see the murder ball sport with the grapefruit sized ball. What is that? Get Snoop Dog out here.