Curling is a great game of strategy and hand eye coordination. It’s a 500+ year old sport, so you know it has something going for it. It’s over 90 feet from the hog line to the opposite button, and the stones weight 40 lbs, and they curl as they go down the ice. You can control the curl and distance to some extent with the sweeping, but you have to judge that and be able to tell half way down whether you were heavy or light with the throw, and how much the stone is going to curl. And then there’s the strategy part.
I ended up watching quite a bit of curling for the first time in my life. Early in the games, I was waiting for a late night hockey game and was forced to watch it for a few minutes. It was either that match or the next one that I saw Shuster begin working his magic. So, it started out as me passing time until the main event (at least, in my mind) then it became sort of a running joke to watch Shuster shuster things up over and over again. By the end of the curling competition, I actually understood a little bit of what was going on and how the scoring worked and started to enjoy the sport. I plan to watch more at future Olympics, particularly if Shuster returns for redemption. Shuster's Redemption? I call dibs on the movie rights.
Looks fun to play but it was awfully boring to watch. Especially when NBC was broadcasting it nonstop for days on its main and secondary networks.
Man the city is still going crazy. I'm still shocked at how lively it is in Vancouver, which is usually one of the most laid back cities in the world. I'm never going to forget how amazing the last two weeks have been in Vancouver.
Once you start to pick up on the strategy it’s actually quite interesting to watch. There are usually several reasonable options, and then there’s your opponent's strengths and weaknesses to consider, and where you are in the game. I can easily see those Wall St. guys in a bar sipping scotch and debating shot choices. In Canada 7 million people watched Kevin Martin’s gold medal win, and that would be the equivalent of about 63 million in the US. The women’s national championship game drew 1.2 million in Canada and a good game otherwise would draw about 700,000. Multiply these numbers by 9 to get the roughly equivalent numbers in the US.
The winter Olympics only come once every 4 years, but if you like the curling there’s a lot more of it on Canadian television.
I was pretty dissapointed in the closing ceremonies. Neil Young was great and "Long May You Run" was the perfect song for shutting the torch down but what was the deal with all of the hokey sound effects during the bits by Shatner, O'Hare and Fox? If I was a Canadian I would be annoyed at the artistic director for that and also for having the chunky youtube guy's beat poem at the opening ceremonies.
I actually felt a little embarrassed for Canada by the closing ceremony. Giant bevers, moose, and lumberjacks?! Ohare was pretty obscure too. There are so many great Canadian comedians and they get her? Final thought, I wasnt that upset when Canada won the gold in hockey, until the final ceremony and they had an entire hockey routine going on. How great it would have been for them to focus on that to only have lost.
Canada is cool, love their country, love their cities, people, and health care, of course they can afford that when they don't have to support a military. For some reason I thought their tank would be at the closing ceremonies too. I wonder what IT was doing. DD
I was concerned that the closing ceremonies were be too subtle for non-Canadians to get, and it looks like I may have been right. That was all done tongue in cheek. They were making fun of Canadian stereotypes, the giant moose, Mounties, lumberjacks, etc. All of that, and especially the giant table hockey game, could have come straight out of Douglas Coupland’s Souvenirs of Canada, and Coupland is a Vancouver author and artists so maybe that was the inspiration. It was done in fun, but I know a lot of foreigners and I know that a lot of that a lot of that may not be obvious to them.
It wasn't that it was too subtle, I got it. It was that it wasn't subtle enough and instead was just clubbing the viewer over the head about quirky Canadians are to the point of just being tacky. Its like if we had the Olympics in Minnesota (which has many of the same stereotypes as Canada) and it was done like Fargo. Or if the Olympics were in Texas and it was done like the "Dallas" TV show.
I thought the closing ceremony was totally fitting for Canadians. I thought they went SCTV on us. They should've also brought in The Mckenzie Brothers. <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/BRI-A3vakVg&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/BRI-A3vakVg&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
I guess it depends on the context whether or not those would be funny. I will add that this will have been planned and rehearsed before the games, and I don’t think anyone expected the nightly partying in the streets of Vancouver that broke out, or the recorded breaking gold medal performance. If the Olympics had been more of a toned down athletic competition then maybe some goofy comedy at the end might have been refreshing, but I will admit that after the surprising outbreak of partying and patriotism in preceding couple of weeks the closing ceremonies didn’t seem to fit in all that well. It would have been a good time for a gracious celebration of global unity, but instead it kind of smacked of more Canadian chest thumping, even if it was done in an ironic way this time.
Didn't watch the closing ceremonies, and frankly I don't give a **** if it was embarrassing. As a Canadian nothing could have brought my mood down last night. RED MILE RESURRECTED :grin: :grin:
both Opening and Closing ceremonies were crap. but then again, Beijing 2008 was pretty much the greatest show on earth so that's a lot to live up to Pretty much the only thing worth watching was the parade of nations to see the different people from around the world but Bob Costas managed to even **** that up
I was showing someone who didn't watch the closing ceremonies the video on the NBC site and one thing I noticed was that the giant hockey player cutouts the hockey players had silver medals around their necks even though they are wearing red jerseys. You can sort of make it out here in this pic. I'm wondering if that is just Canadian modesty or if the artistic director had been preparing for a possible letdown in the championship game.
