The View From the Couch - Chilly Reception

“I don't care about the Olympics. It's like watching gym.” – Bill Maher

And the hits just keep on coming.

For the next couple of weeks, scanning the papers, or web or channel surfing will result in one of two results: If you hit on someone who is paid to cover the Olympic Games – things in Turin(o) are eccellente. However if you come across someone who is not in Italy - all this meeting of the world’s youth is stupido.

And maybe it is, but I suspect that North American-bound press bitterness is more of a result of not being in the Alps sipping on a Bicerin (Turin’s official beverage: a yummy layer of molten chocolate, a layer of hot espresso and a layer of cream), while letting a giandujotto (the local chocolate) melt in their mouth.

Regardless of the location, it has always been fashionable amongst the journalism elite to beat up on the Olympics, unless, of course, those elite happen to be working for a rights holder. Rights holders have paid millions to get the good word out about all things frosty – and the hired help know to tow the line.

For an example of this towing the line, how else could you explain this sight? NBC's ''Today'' show hosts Matt Lauer and Al Roker clad in skintight race suits actually riding a doubles luge sled through the bottom of the luge course. Said U.S. Luge spokesman Jon Lundin, and I’m not making this up, “They had a blast.”

Roker was the bottom by the way. If you didn’t see it, please don’t try to imagine it – it will only do you harm.

For we fans, since these sports are for the most part obscure, and in some specific cases, insane, 99.9% of our enthusiasm comes from our patriotism. We’ll cheer anyone who is representing our country, no matter how retarded the event they’re involved in.

We get impassioned seeing our flag on a chest, any chest, going for gold – even if it is in a sport that only matters for the hour or so we watch it every four years. How else can I explain the heated conversation I had over the weekend with my father-in-law about the relative fairness of the ½ pipe snowboarding rules. At the time I was frikin’ outraged how my guy, (whose name I now forget), was jobbed out of making it to the final. Outraged!

If our home country athletes are not going for a podium, even for the most rabid winter sport devotee, watching the goings on can get a tad tedious. Like, say, the opening ceremonies. Last Friday night ABC's "Dancing with the Stars" beat out the opening ceremony’s ratings.

If you were watching Jerry Rice rumba – you didn’t miss much – except for the seeing the impossibly fat Luciano Pavarotti, (he had to be perched up on a stool – and appeared to be not able to walk), sing, "Nessam Dorma" which literally translates to, "Let No One Sleep."

Good choice of song – but it didn’t work.

But once the competition starts, it’s all on board. Patriotism is a weird and wonderful thing. For 16 days, we live and die with people we don’t remotely know, but are only bound to by passport.

Being from the great white north, it is impossible for me not to be a Winter Olympics fan. However, that birthright doesn’t blind me to the silliness of some of the sports - like say, luge. It’s impossible to defend it in fact

And two man luge? The best line of the Winter Olympics thus far: NBC's Mary Carillo saying “two-man luge looks like a bar bet gone bad.”

Clearly Al Roker lost.

Cheers - Gavin McDougald – AKA Couch

Remember to drop us a line at rants@betED.com to voice your opinion on one of McDougald's articles or on anything else you read at betED.com!