Excessive Variance

So the Winter Olympics are over, and I spent a reasonable amount of time watching them.  Okay that’s not really true… I spent a good amount of time watching curling, hockey, bobsled and speed skating and skipping out on ice dancing and cross country skiing and the other events that suck to watch.

I spent more time watching curling than any other sport.  I’m not even sure what my fascination is.  I know the Canadian mens team has some guys on it who seems to make ridiculous shot after ridiculous shot, but none of their shots are as ridiculous as the pants worn by the team from Norway they faced in the gold medal match.   Ridiculous is the wrong word here, I think I’m going to go with spectacular… yep that’s it, they had spectacular pants.  I think the appeal of curling is that it looks like something anyone could be good at and they could do while drinking excessive amounts of alcohol.  I mean there was a woman competing who was 5 months pregnant so clearly she wasn’t drinking, but that has to be part of the appeal right.  Also, there are lots of good looking women in curling, eye candy never hurts* sports you don’t fully understand.

Can NBC do anything else to prove how poorly run that company is.  First they had the Leno/Conan fiasco, and now with the Olympics  I don’t understand how an action sport like Hockey is left on MSNBC while cross country skiing gets the NBC feed.  The main difference being which one is available in high definition.  Hockey is one of the sporting events that benefits most from an HD feed, because it allows you to follow the puck more closely.  Cross country skiing on the other hand is not dramatically improved by HD.  So fuck you NBC for partially ruining what was a very enjoyable hockey tournament.  As for the tournament itself, it’s pretty clear that the two best teams made it to the final game and played for the gold.  Two things however were disappointing.  First that we couldn’t get a 7 game series between these two teams, because the quality of play and the drama was very high.  Second losing the gold medal game in overtime after beating Canada by two is a little frustrating.  In two games Canada was outscored 7-5 in regulation play on thier home ice, and they had to go to OT to win one of the two games.  As close as that was I find it hilarious the bragging from Canadians about “this is our game!!!”.  If the US ever happens to lose to Canada in a international basketball tournament during the round robin portion and we came back and barely beat them in the medal rounds I think I’ be happy about escaping with a win, not gloating about how great we are.  I will give credit to the Canadian fans who showed appreciation for a few of the US players who put on great performances, very classy showing.

It’s also been reported that the NHL is considering not letting their players play in the Olympics.  Being just a very casual Blackhawk fan I can say that this was some of the most enjoyable hockey I’ve watched in a long time and I think it would be a mistake for the NHL players to not be able to play.   It’s like all star teams that care and try hard, how can that be wrong?

The one thing I can’t stand about the Olympics is the judged events.  There is just something wrong about the scoring systems to me and it makes me lose complete interest when the performance is subjectively scored.  Not to mention some events are just boring, and could use some interesting twists like allowing the crowd to throw snowballs at the competitors.  Just imagine ow crazy some of those speed skating relays would be if they were each allowed a skater to go around and pelt the competition with snowballs.

Also the award for best quote of the Olympics goes to Odd-Bjoern Hjelmeset who said this… “”My name is Odd-Bjoern Hjelmeset. I skied the second lap and I f’d up today. I think I have seen too much porn in the last 14 days. I have the room next to Petter Northhug and every day there is noise in there. So I think that is the reason I f’d up. By the way, Tiger Woods is a really good man.” I have no idea who this guy is, what sport he competes in, or why he feels the need to discuss porn and comment on Tiger Wood’s character, but I like it.

Anyway enough with the Olympics.  I missed work last Friday due to pulling a muscle in my back, and then while heading in for the second half of the day I blew out a tire on my truck and found out I don’t have the proper tools to replace it.  So I missed the whole day and ended up getting picked up by my pal to go see Shutter Island.  What follows is a my brief review (sans spoilers).

Shutter Island is well made as you would expect from a Scorsese film, however I did have a few issues with it.  I think the first 15 minutes of the film tried way to hard to set a mood with background music that was way out of proportion and overly dramatic lighting effects that seemed better meant for a horror film than what this story is about.  The story itself is good, not great, but I thought it was a little predictable.  When I got home after seeing it I actually saw a new preview for the film talking about the “twist ending that leaves audiences in suspense”… I’m just going to go ahead and disagree with that.  This isn’t the Sixth Sense v2.0, but it doesn’t really need a twist to be entertaining.  The acting was pretty solid, the pace was a little slow at times but nothing to complain about.  I do think its a movie people will want to watch a second time to catch a few things they ma have missed, but after that I’d say it has little to no worth as something you can watch repeatedly.

*Ice dancing is an exception, no amount of eye candy makes that shit worth while.