OlLYMPICS ARE WEARING ME OUT

Here's the good news from last night...



Here's my NOT good news. I don't know if other people all over the country feel this, but there's too much Canada-for-Canada dialogue between the hosts -- it's like a theme song, played too often.

Especially because I read what happened to skaters and snowboarders who arrived early, hoping to try out the slopes and rinks. They were not allowed to use the areas until after the official opening of the Olympics -- they had to hang over the fences and watch the Canadians practicing.

I feel the local rah-rah pride stuff is belittling what the Olympics stands for.

Anyhow, while watching the men skaters earlier Wednesday evening, before the snowboarding, fear was in the air, like a jinx.

After Yevgeny Plushenko who did a quad and scored high, the next guy, and then the next goofed -- trying their triples, actually fell -- kerplunk -- and of course they were out, even as they bravely went on with their routines. And the jinx continued to infect all the skaters that followed. Even in the next group and the next group.

(Why oh why do so many of the skaters use quirky sounding "current" popular music, that doesn't support what they're doing?)

Evan Lysacek, the American, was tense -- so tense that it emanated from our kitchen TV. In an interview before his turn on the ice, he'd bragged, promising he'd win the gold (oh dear, never never should you do that before a contest). Well, he managed to do that first series of tricks quite well (triples, not a quad) but poor Evan was so pressured, so uptight, nervous, that he wept while he was waiting for his score.

I was relieved, but after he got his 90-something score, I didn't want to watch any more, and changed the channel.

We missed Shaun White's triumphant win in snowboarding, but here's what I found on line. The music the film people superimposed, is Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana." This video shows Shaun's fantastic double twist.