Monday - Sychronized diving. How yummy was the hunky British diver? YUMMY! :) Oh, and the American men achieved a Silver medal in the All-around Team Gymnastics competition! Yea! That's the BEST they've done in YEARS. To quote Paul Hamm: "This is the first medal for a USA men’s team in a non-boycott Olympic Games since 1932. We made history here."
Tuesday - go to TCom to complain about the letter that says my DSL will be turned back on on the 20th and oh, by the way, there's a 99.95€ fee for that. Wait forty min behind a clueless lady with NT who wants DSL and doesn't understand what the - very patient - sales person is explaining to her. Finally get up to the other sales person, explain the situation, she calls the main office, somebody had already taken care of removing the 99.95€ fee. Yea. :) As icing, the American Women take Silver in the All-around Team Gymnastics coverage. The Russian came away with the bronze. It was only AFTER the competitions were over that Svetlana smiled. Until then she looked like she really didn't want to be there and was just going through the motions. Okay, whatever.
Oh, and Bill moved in with me last night! I now have more oatmeal, tuna fish, and bath products than I know what to do with (combined stuff that couldn't be shipped from both him and his ex). I'm sure it'll all get used though. :)
Do you guys have absolutely annoying gymnastics commentators over there too? My god! Every single time that a gymnast fell, hit an aparatus or the like, not *once* did they say "oh, I hope X is ok." And it seemed like *every* routine they thought was good was scored low and every routine they thought was bad was scored high. Maybe we need some new commentators instead of new judges.
And can you blame Svetlana for being bitchy? She was screwed out of the gold last olympics. But I really think she was intense. If she was truley uninterested, she wouldn't have been happy about the silver.
Yesterday was the first day I didn't hear word one about the Olympics (except for watching the 12:30 broadcast at work ... they don't give away the prime time stuff on NBC during the afternoon broadcast. lol) before I watched the prime time coverage. It must be so nice to watch them live over where you are! :)
Posted by: Amanda at August 20, 2004 02:25 PMThe commentators are different. They still mention things like "at this level, every tenth of a point counts" and stuff, but not as much. Mostly, there seems to be a disconnect with what the camera shows and what they talk about. For example, the camera will show the slo-mo play two or three times after the exercise, but the guys are talking about other players or overall standings, or if a German is in contention, how everybody else is doing in relation to the German. I miss the background info, personal details, and technical by-play that the American commentators give, but I don't really miss the "OH NO!!! She'll NEVER compete AGAIN!" or "HOW _WILL_ she get back in MEDAL contention?" comments.
What was really funny the other night in the Womens Individual All-Around, was how enamored the one German commentator was with Anna Pavlova from Russia. Every time she was on-screen, he just gushed about how much he really liked her. Quite funny.
Posted by: Anna at August 20, 2004 11:22 PMOh, and it IS nice seeing the events live. However, when Paul Hamm won the Gold, I was so happy and surprised, I immediately wanted to share the news and talk with Mom about it. She didn't get to see it for another 4-5 hours though, so I couldn't really give it away. The most I could tell her was the there would be some ups and downs through out the night for the American men, but she'd be happy with the end result.
Posted by: Anna at August 20, 2004 11:24 PMWell, just like your mom, I've been trying to avoid news during the day so I could be surprised as well. (That's harder than I thought it would be.) Wednesday night, I was heading up to Sherri's house for her birthday, and I had the sports radio station on because they were talking about football ... but I was expecting the news update guy to say something like "now turn down your volume if you don't want to find out ..." I didn't hear the final result before I got the volume turned down, but I did hear "It was a record-breaking day for men's gymnastics." As it unfolded when I came back home to watch, I thought the *other* American was going to win it when he was in 6th. That made it exciting that I wasn't quite sure who was going to win it.
Oh, this is a tragedy! Her hopes -- dashed! This may be his last event *EVER*! (That kind of stuff ... yuck!!! lol)
I want to get rid of our commentators too! I am so tired of how well everyone else does and then we are racked over the coals!
Anna, I have to agree with the German commentator about Anna from Russia - if Svetlana wasn't there she would have won a medal. Also, in my opinion, the reason Svetlana got a lot of her points was because of who she was - not for what she did!
Tonight is more swimming - isn't Phelps great! Plus, lets see if Laura can pull it out to win again in diving.
Posted by: Mom at August 21, 2004 09:01 PMI *swear* I almost picked up the phone and called you during the gymnastics. I think the biggest thing that bothers me about the commentators is thier overuse of cliches. "She really wanted that one." Well, no poop. They *all* really wanted it, or they wouldn't be there in the first place, would they?
Grrr
Posted by: Amanda at August 23, 2004 02:45 AM