Olympics fever

I wrote this in 2001, while abroad and waiting for my sorta-boyfriend to write me back that he either still loved me or had a new girlfriend: (It was the latter, the asshole.)

"It's a good thing that I have break right now, and that I have nothing to do with my time. And so, like I have done every two years before now (every four years before 1996), I have immersed myself in the world of international sports. I have logged about 10 hours of television time so far. It's fantastic. You can ask me about any sport, I've watched it.

"I am an avid Olympics fan. No matter the season (summer or winter), no matter the sport, I will be in front of the TV or the computer or the newspaper, whichever medium delivers the most pictures and scores. I become obsessed.

"My favorite, along with thousands of others, is figure skating. My favorite of that is ice dancing. Just a bit of trivial information for you. I also enjoy watching speed skating (the most good looking athletes compete in this sport--kip carpenter the most good looking of all. Oh look, and a bronze medal winner), downhill skiing, and the ski jump (the one where they do all the turns--and, by the way, the athletes in this sport become shorter over time as their spines are compressed when they land so hard on the snow). Yesterday I watched the biathalon, which when you think about it, sounds really boring. Skiing and shooting. But they have some really good commentators and so I found myself completely absorbed.The luge is a really fun sport to watch. It's almost impossible for the TV cameras to keep track of the luger (?) and so the whole time you are watching blips of a dark thing whizzing by, and then the camera changes, and you see another blip whiz by. Then the camera changes again, and so on. When they get a relatively straight portion of the track (? is it called a track?) it is fun to watch the luge person lying there like a heap of blubber. They just look really uncomfortable. Toes pointed out, hands tight at the sides, neck slightly strained to see over their belly....

"The one sport I have not watched yet is Curling. This is a rediculous excuse for a sport. One guy rolls a heavy thing across a piece of ice and his teammates SWEEP THE ICE IN FRONT OF THE HEAVY THING SO THAT IT WILL GO AS FAR AS POSSIBLE. Using BROOMS!!!!! Ss that sad, or what. How is that a sport? How did they get them to admit this as a sport in the Olympics when one of the chief tools of the game is a BROOM? I don't think one drop of sweat will be shed. I am wondering what the commentators do during Curling matches. I mean, what exactly do you SAY at something like this? "Well, George, that was an excellent sweep by Kevin Martin (a Canadian. real guy. I looked him up). A little heavy on the thistles, but he sure smoothed that ice down." "