Track and Field I don’t fully understand why track and field is only appealing to me as an Olympic sport, why I would never watch the track and field world championships or any other major competitions. I guess it mostly hinges on how Olympic track and field fits into the greater Olympic narrative…for some reason all of the analogies coming to mind have to do with foods that I would eat in combination with other foods, but not on their own,… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Blog
Final Olympic Thoughts: Part 1
Gymnastics The event finals were the first time that the gymnastics crowd seemed anything other than supportive of all of the athletes. It was amazing to see two Brazilian men medal in the Floor event final, but when they were in second and third positions with one competitor left to go, the crowd actually booed during Sam Mikulak’s floor routine. Okay: if you boo at a hockey game you might get angry looks, but if you boo as someone is about… Read more »
The greatest
I’ve lived in my current apartment for more than six years, and for five of those years I’ve lived in the room that has roof access. This has translated to: various handymen, roofers, and landlords crawling in and out of my window when there’s a hole or a leak or an air conditioner problem (not that we have central air conditioning…the store downstairs holds that honor). For a while there was a roofer named Willy who consistently called me before… Read more »
Books that made me want to go to ________ // 02
American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett made me want to go to the American Southwest, New Mexico in particular. The novel is classified as literature, horror, fantasy, and science fiction depending on where you look…so it’s none or all, basically. Reading it made me realize that as far as science fiction or literary fiction with a science fiction bent (but not wanting this to be a post about genres, categorization, or what’s “literary”…) goes, I prefer to read about very old… Read more »
Olympic Dreams
…no, not that kind. I haven’t had those since I was maybe seven and realized I was never going to be an elite gymnast (yes, it was that obvious even then). I mean LITERAL dreams. Three, at this point, which means…enough for a LIST: Several weeks ago I had a dream that Simone Biles was up on vault–it was hazy as to whether this was team or all-around finals–and that when she ran down the vaulting runway her steps were… Read more »
Olympic Thoughts, Days 6-8
Gymnastics: What’s more exciting–utter domination or the slimmest of margins among competitors? BOTH, of course. Unsurprisingly, Simone Biles utterly dominated the women’s all-around final, but her male counterpart, Kohei, was part of a men’s all-around that managed simultaneous total domination–from 1. Kohei, winning his second Olympic all-around gold (he also won silver AA when he was 19 in Beijing) and capping off eight years of beating everyone all of the time, to 2. Oleg Vernaiev absolutely catching up to him… Read more »
Olympic thoughts, Day 4
Swimming I love watching track because you can see the athletes’ faces and they look, well, much more visibly human than the swimmers, who resemble graceful aquatic mammals until they win, take off their caps, and suddenly it’s not a manatee or Aquaman but instead a large British child. That said, I fully love these swimming commentators. They sound like they’re having the GREATEST time and their pitch and speed increases so dramatically at the end of every race. And… Read more »
Olympic thoughts, Day 3
Gymnastics Rebecca Andrade’s floor music seems to be a Beyonce medley. Well, not seems: is. The availability of live streams for qualifying rounds is <choose one of the following cliches> an embarrassment of riches, a mixed blessing, likely to reduce both my socialization and my iPhone step count for the next few days. Yesterday I watched men flip for about 5 hours, mostly while I was soaking my foot in a tub of water because I inexplicably ground some glass… Read more »
Books that made me want to go to ________ // 01
Waterland by Graham Swift made me want to go to the fens, the flattest parts of East Anglia in England. The book didn’t make them sound particularly uplifting or physically beautiful, but it did make them sound magical. I read this book my senior year of high school and my English teacher told us that there was a famous writing program there, and that there was speculation that the flatness of the land (see also The Iowa Writers Workshop) had a role… Read more »
The Olympics
I’ll start by saying that I once climbed halfway up Mt. Olympus in an epic day/night that started in a grove of fig trees, traversed mountain, beach, and highway, and ended in a Greek heavy metal bar. But that…contained very few feats of athleticism, unless you count the record-setting number of cups and plates I broke the next morning while trying to wash the dishes. It feels gauche, or perhaps well beyond that, given the human rights violations, corruption, pollution, doping, and… Read more »
