A Summation of the Olympics

As all my Facebook friends know, I was so into the Olympics I may as well have been running the USOC Twitter account.  All night, every night I was glued to the TV.  The Olympics are so compelling for a lot of reasons.  The greatness and athleticism you are beholding is unreal.  There is a great sense of pride and patriotism.  These people are sick at what they do.  I really feel this way mainly for just the Summer Games.  The Summer Olympics is 100 times more entertaining than the Winter Olympics.  The sports are better and the women wear less clothes.  Now that the ceremonies have concluded, here are a few observations I made over the 17-day sports extravaganza:

SWIMMING

I admittedly have a bias here considering I swam for most of my youth.  These people make it look so damn easy it makes me want to vomit.  Anyway, it's always a hell of a meet and America comported itself quite well as usual.  Michael Phelps won a handful more medals.  La di da.  I honestly think that he didn't care as much.  He just wanted to be there.  He said as much and it showed.  He still won four golds.  Sheesh.  I still don't think that's as impressive as the girlfriend he's landed himself.  Holy cow.

Ryan Lochte.  It might be fair to say he's overrated.  Either way the performance didn't match the hype, and it was a little disappointing.  But it's all good because he's dreamy.  The women killed it.  Missy Franklin broke through.  Multiple world records.  Relay dominance.  A 15-year old from Bethesda.  Awesome.  A great showing from everyone.  They're most graceful work was done in the Call Me Maybe parody video.  Talent abound. 


GYMNASTICS

The U.S. women won the gold!  Awesome.  Beating Russia and Romania in their national sport is glorious to me.  Gabby Douglas winning the all-around was certainly another highlight.  And to think some or all of these girls may not even be on the next Olympic team.  They certainly made this one count.  (Sidebar:  I do think gymnastics is lame in that you can challenge a score at the end of an event.  Seriously?  Why wouldn't you do that after every apparatus?  That's such a crybaby lowlight in a sport gushing with subjectivity.  It's not fair to begin with.  Don't be a sourpuss.)


TRACK AND FIELD

I was happy to see the women finally win golds that have eluded them up until now.  Sanya Richards-Ross and Alysson Felix got it done.  My girl LoLo didn't, but that's okay (read my friend Kelaine's piece on why she's still a winner http://ben​ignhumor.w​ordpress.c​om/2012/08​/13/why-be​ing-lolo-j​ones-is-be​tter-than-​being-a-ha​ter/).  Because she's smoking hot.  The rest of them are hot too.  It was great to see.

Jamaicans are fast.  The end.


WOMEN'S SOCCER

Most people would agree that the game against Canada was one of the best soccer games they've ever watched.  I'm just glad America came out on top.  Canada can have hockey.  I want everything else.  But the No. 1 ranked team in the world came away with gold and that's what counts.  Though I do find it interesting that the women's game is different than the men's side.  The men play U-23 squads.  I don't know why it's different but whatever.  Our women won the gold.  No need to worry about it now.


BASKETBALL

Women, dominant.  Five straight golds.  Not much else you can say.  In the men's game, the world is catching up.  That's why the U.S. has got to have it's best players on the team.  Unfortunately, a few of them were hurt this summer.  But the LeBrons and Durants of the world came through.  It wasn't always easy, but I don't think we can expect it to be anymore.  The point is that they won every game they played in and won the gold.  That's all we were asking. 


OTHER SPORTS/GAMES

Women's Beach Volleyball - Three time gold medalists in May-Treanor and Walsh-Jennings.  That's good work.

Women's Volleyball - I'm in love with a Hooker.

Wrestling - This is where the Middle Eastern countries shine.  Combat.

Shooting - As one who has shot trap in the past, I find this totally amusing.  You could conceivably be a 65-year old Olympian in this event.  But I'm sure the pressure is pretty intense.  Still, not athletic by normal standards.

Water Polo - There's a lot that goes on under the water that we don't need to see.  Good job, U.S. women.

Cycling - Okay, this could go away and I wouldn't lose any sleep.

Table Tennis - The hand-eye coordination is at a level I could only reach in my dreams.


In the end, all I care about is the medal count and the U.S. won both overall and gold medals. Eat it, China. I like holding the medal count over every other country. Who knows how it will go in the Winter Olympics or any Olympics in the future?  But we took London as best we could.  Cheerio.

Anyway, I thought it was a GREAT Olympics.  Records were set.  Greatness was etched in stone.  Athletes had lots and lots of sex with each other.  Seriously though, watching the Olympics can make a person feel bad about themselves.  The collective body fat of these nations is like 7%.  Okay, I suppose you have to take out wrestlers and weight-lifters (some of those women are scary as hell, by the way).  I think you get my drift.  These people are in peak physical condition.  I marvel at them.  As I eat burritos and pizza.  I'm already pining for Rio.

The Dark Knight Rises: A Bittersweet Conclusion

I just finished watching The Dark Knight Rises.  While it is sad to see the Christopher Nolan Batman series end, it was in fact a great way to end it.  Nolan did not disappoint us at the end.

I will say before continuing that Rises is not and cannot be better than The Dark Knight.  I'm not sure if anyone expected it to be, but there was never any way for this third one to reach the heights that its predecessor did.  Some claimed The Dark Knight as the best superhero/comic book movie of all time.  Whether it was or not, Heath Ledger won an Oscar for his performance as The Joker.  Not much doubt that his was one of the best villain performances of all time.  So it's not fair to expect more out of Rises than we did out of Dark Knight.  For the record, I don't think Rises was better.  But that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it.

First of all, behind Joker, Bane was my favorite villain.  Tom Hardy is great as the jacked-up destructor.  For me, adding Bane to the franchise totally completed the series.  Anne Hathaway is in the movie as Catwoman.  Technically, they don't call her that, and that's good.  No need for cartoon-y stuff.  You know, outside of all the other make-believe stuff going on.  Look, they probably didn't even need her in this movie.  But I'm sho glad they put her in.  Anne Hathaway could steal everything from me and leave me for broke so long as she spoke to me in a seductive voice.  I'm only half-kidding.

There were some parts I didn't fully enjoy.  Bane showing emotion near the end sort of killed me, but it made sense with the plot line.  It's just he's so ruthless...and enormous that it was almost a shock to the system.  The fact that whole city is destroyed yet everything will probably be okay is very positive thinking, but overall the movie is super-entertaining and ties everything up well (though I needed a few things explained to me because I'm an idiot).  And they left an opening for a Robin follow-up.  No matter how you feel about Robin as a sidekick, that's pretty cool.  The ending was amazing.  IMAX was great, though it was hard to understand Bane with the seriously loud Vader voice. 

I am sad that's over, but I'm glad Nolan didn't overdue it.  He has solidified himself as one of the best filmmakers in Hollywood today.  He made the best Batman movies that have ever been made.  The problem is that someone is going to relaunch the damn thing probably within 10 years, and it will most definitely not be as good.  Hell, Spiderman has already returned, and Superman comes out soon.  Superheroes are en vogue and Hollywood can't get enough.  Anyway, Nolan reaffirmed, over the course of his three movies, that Batman is my favorite comic book hero.  He did fans everywhere proud.