Thursday, August 12, 2004

OLYMPICS WRAPUP POST DAY #2: I may or may not make this a regular feature during the Olympics. It'll be easy to do tonight--only two sports to talk about, and I should be studying anyhow.

Soccer: Iraq over Portugal--I give this half a HOLY CRAP! Yes, the men's Olympic soccer tournament is mostly useless, but under-23 Portugal should still cream under-23 Iraq. BUt look at world events--Iraq had a million reasons to play out of their heads. And I guess people really do perform better when they don't fear for their lives, a lesson for all you dictators out there.

Would-be soccer pundit Franklin Foer is already trashing their win. Franklin, dude, this is impressive no matter how third-tier the Olympics are. And maybe the reason that Soccernet didn't have squat on about the Olympics (even for the women, where this is a major tournament; Soccernet covered the women's World Cup) is that NBC is the competition, hmmm? I know I was looking there for live scores. Soccernet covers fifth-level English club soccer--they'd have Olympic scores up if it was on ESPN or ABC. (I guess ESPN has the Champions League contract stateside again--what a waste.)

There were some other games, but that was all I found notable.

Archery: South Korea owns archery. I mean, look. Here. And here. Like they own speed skating in the winter games. I have no idea why; I always think that the government decided to start throwing money at sports that it thought were less than competitive, or maybe the Friends of Oliver Queen just has a much greater penetration there than we ever realized. I have no idea. But--especially on the women's side--this is the southern Hermit Kingdom's event to lose.

So that's your sports report. Hey, how about Governor "I am a gay American" McGreevey today? It was some weird alternate version of the Kobe Bryant adultery confession, except Governor Jim managed to portray himself as a dignified person for the first time in his career. (Kobe looked like he was acting. "She's my backbone." Puhleez.) Maybe there is too much prejudice against gays in this country, which force men like our governor to hide their affairs and hire the people they are having their affairs with to a series of cushy state jobs. Or maybe he's just a Democratic party hack with a zillion scandals swirling around him so he picked one that would give him a good excuse to resign.

I told you guys to vote Schundler.

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