OLYMPIC UPDATE: CHICKS WITH STICKS

Good news: I'm watching Olympic hockey right now from Tortellini "Passion Lives Here" Italy in glorious HD and Dolby Digital 5.1 sound. The bad news: it's WOMEN'S hockey. At least it's something, and it's in HD. Nice. As the Canadian team pounds the polenta out of the Italian team 16-0, I'm wondering why they don't just go to running time. Anyway, there's also some ski jumping on at the moment, which also looks great. I'll have to watch as much as I can in HD before I fly down to Florida on Tuesday morning.

The Opening Ceremonies looked like a well orchestrated acid trip, as usual, with some mohawked guy skating around, and flaming speed skaters. They had eight women carry in the Olympic flag, and one of them was Susan Sarandon, for some odd reason. And yes, Yoko Ono made her appearance, and luckily I was in a bar at the time and couldn't hear her warbling poetry. It looked like some of the US atheletes were wearing tighty-whiteys on their heads, who picks out those hats??? And apparently, Italians love donuts, as a Ferrari F1 car tore it up. All told, it was ceremon-tastic!


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GRETZKY AND BETZKY! This was the headline on the cover of the Daily News yesterday. I'm so sick of the sports media (and the media in general) and their treatment of this Rick Tocchet gambling charges, and the allegations against Mr. and Mrs. Gretzky regarding their involvement. Of course, every day in the newspaper they print the odds/money line/point spread for every game; they predict game scores by saying "Take the Giants and the under"; they have NCAA brackets, and websites have fantasy sports sites for it; they take calls on sports radio, and people make their Super Bowl picks according to the numbers they got on their "pool boxes"; the day after the SB-XL was declared "the biggest gambling day in Vegas history!" In other words, gambling is everywhere in sports, everyone does it (whether its illegal or legal), sports lives off of it and gets ratings because of it, and the media helps promote it. So when someone is caught in an "illegal gambling ring", it's suddenly a horrible, deplorable, criminal act! This will give hockey a black eye! What an outrage! How fucking hypocritical is that?

Vertullo said it best: the reason the media suddenly treats this with such disdain is not because it's "illegal", but because the government doesn't get a piece of the pie. And the way the media is attacking the Gretzkys, with currently unfounded allegations I might add, is typical Schadenfreude: people have a sick fascination about knocking famous, wealthy, and successful people off their perches. But if you ask people about this, whether they're hockey fans or not, I guarantee you that 9 out of 10 aren't the least bit outraged by any of it. Personally, I don't care at all.
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You may have to hold off on that Michele Kwan-a-thon: she may have decided to withdraw from the 2006 games.
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Joke of the Night (Friday 2/10 Happy Hour Edition). Rob made this joke while we were thinking of songs to request next time that Tuney McOldsong plays a set at Bourbon Street: "Smells Like Tune Spirit". Hilarious.