Zamboni

So let it be written...

...so let it be done.

Twizzles

The Ladies Figure Skating final is currently underway, which means I must hermetically seal myself into a non-news existence until four o'clock in the morning, or whenever NBC deigns to broadcast the footage. I must watch so as to properly affect the outcome, which... by that time will have happened six hours ago on the other side of the world. But in 2002 I made the endlessly hateful Sasha Cohen fall WITH MY MIND and I have every intention of doing it again. Right now she could be sliding butt-first across the ice so often they won't even need to Zamboni for the next skater.

I am, perhaps, overly emotionally invested in the Olympics. We are all familiar with my stellar gymnastics career

even though in my actual childhood, the only thing remotely athletic I could handle was soccer, and 50% of all the goals I scored were actually for my own team.

I held an Olympics Opening Ceremony Mocking Party last week, which indeed managed to take place, as opposed to the last time I tried such a thing. This was in 2004, when I arranged a party on the same day Hurricane Charley made landfall. And I was new to Florida and absolutely could not understand why Friendboy Andy was unwilling to drive 57 miles to my apartment in 90 MPH windgusts. "But the hurricane is going to Tampa," I kept saying. "We're in the middle of the state."

Five hours later, crouched and crying in a dry bathtub as livestock flew past the window behind me, I understood.

As I celebrate every occasion, I did so via sugar. There would be cupcakes! I made cupcakes with sprinkles in the colors of the Olympic rings, and everybody ate them, and nobody even died. They were the Official Cupcakes of the XX Winter Olympiad.

It was a thrilling night for me, and also the Nielsen company, because last week I was a ratings diarist. That's right: For seven days, I was the most powerful person on the face of the Earth.

So powerful that this is a thing warranting its own, future post, but for the time being simply understand that I took extremely seriously my ability to punish and damn at will. I was very happy to punish and damn NBC by noting that we turned on the TV at 8 PM, as instructed, to watch the Opening Ceremonies, but for a full hour there were people flying down a mountain and no fireworks or hilariously attired athletes at all. Just... various talking heads that should have been chyroned "Tool Talk." I mean, by 8:45, we hadn't even attained Bob Costas yet. So as far as the Nielsen people know, the four under-30 people in my apartment were gathered 'round the coffee table watching Telemundo. When-- and this was far more culturally relevant-- we were totally still watching NBC, throwing things at Bode Miller and his Smoking Gun headshot.

Scott the Taller left well before we achieved Costas Status. "I hope the Olympics get better," he said as he departed.

"I hope they start," said Friendboy Andy.

I enjoy hating on Bob, as you may have discovered, but he shall forever rest in a tiny portion of my heart for bringing us the following from the Athens Opening Ceremonies:

KATIE COURIC: And here comes the Aussies! At least we won't have to put up with that chant this year, huh, Bob?

BOB: (stony silence)

KATIE: ...Remember...?

BOB: (hatred-radiating silence)

KATIE: ... Aussie Aussie Aussie, oy oy... oy?

BOB: (bolts an entire fifth of Jack)

As for Turin:

9:01 PM: Brian Williams would like to welcome us to the GREATEST SPORTING EVENT IN THE WORLD, which NBC will not, technically, broadcast, so as to make room for further four-Kleenex sob features about the Swiss cross-country skiier whose head fell off and dog died and lost her luggage on the way to Turin and now her goggles are fogging up.

9:04 PM: Things are very red in the stadium. Red drapes everywhere, and rollerbladers. We are now, officially, in hell. Costas stunned into silence. Andy deems this moment as, quote, "totally worth the wait."

9:16: You know what the world needs? Gigantic cows on wheeled platforms.

9:20: Flipper attempts to rock out to the Italian National Anthem, which she can't do because it's being sung very slowly by a little kid. The little kid is doing a craptastic job.

9:22: I want them to bust out the Shroud and parade it around a few times, preferably accompanied by "I'm Too Sexy For My Shroud." I DEMAND A SHROUD, TURIN.

9:35: The athletes. Why disco? Why?

9:41: There are more people currently in my one-bedroom apartment than in entirety of some of these nations.

9:44: Moldova? Seriously. Moldova?

9:47: Bob Costas: "You will not miss a single country!" Ohhhhhhhhh, thank God. How are they doing this? Picking right up where they left off after a commercial break? Thou art magic, NBC!

10:02: Here comes another piece-of-crap country with one athlete. Also, his peeps.

10:04: Andy completely and totally ruins one of my very favorite commercials, which features a mother bathing her infant in the kitchen sink. Andy thinks the ad would be vastly improved if she turned on the garbage disposal. I kind of hate Andy sometimes.

10:07: Germany. Why the bile green on the athletes, O Nation of forefathers? I hereby renounce Germany.

10:10: India has 1.4 billion people and nine athletes. How did they feel about the rolling cows?

10:17: Brian Williams is full of Fun Facts. He's Fun Facts Brian Williams! Did you know that Iceland has the highest per capita of discos per person? Did you know that Brian Williams makes me want to remove my own intestines with a salad fork?

10:31: What would be awesome was if the Polish athletes came in wearing Pope hats.

10:42: Costas introduces a nation whose name I don't quite catch. I inhale sharply and run from the kitchen, where I have been fetching further Official Cupcakes, all, "Did he just say 'serving a bunch of Negros?'"

Turns out it was actually "Serbia and Montenegro." Oh.

11:02: Gli Americanos!

11:03: Here comes Michelle Kwan with her walker and ARRP card, closely followed by the mouth-breathing Shaun White. I make very excellent snap judgments and always recommend that everyone attempt to judge others as quickly as humanly possible. I was once again precisely correct about Shaun White, as in the days to come he would win a gold medal in snowboarding while wearing his grandpa's pajamas and when Costas interviewed him afterward, he was like, "You're an Olympic champion! So how's it feel?" Shaun, very solemn, hefting the medal up off his chest: "Heavy."

11:19: The Italian federation is apparently represented entirely by pimps.

11:25: The flame, a majestic potpourri bowl atop a tower of spaghetti, is lit.

11:37: Continuing majesty. Four guys throw flags on sticks to each other. It's the Olympics! It's the East Buttcrack High vs. Forrest Tree Prep halftime show!

11:48: There's this guy in the middle of the stadium, and he's... dancing, and... and weird, and... now he's stripping, and...

11:49: Make. It. Stop.

11:49: Seriously, MAKE IT STOP!!

11:50: He's not stopping.

11:51: See, this is why you can't trust Italy with anything but pinot and the occasional boat ride.

11:54: Andy: "F*&# you, Bob Costas. F*^@, F%&*@ you."

11:59: The Olympic flag! Yay, the Olympic flag! Carried by... Susan Sarandon. Okay, there's a reason why this is the best motion picture moment of all time. F*&# you, Italy. F*^@, F%&*@ you.

12:04: The IOC sees Italy's Sarandon and raises them a Yoko Ono. Wow. The only thing that could make this worse was if Peter Gabriel takes the horrible song "Imagine" and somehow manage to make it even more horrible by including, as a special bonus, the smooth stylings of constipation.

12:07: It's worse.

12:09: We all look like the mouth-breathing half piper until "Imagine" is blessedly through. Oogie: "So what's the consensus on the most disturbing moment of the Opening Ceremonies?" Me, crying softly: "I think we just survived it."

12:10: Costas promises "a surprise" when we get back. Oh, please, let it be more cows. Dragging Peter Gabriel behind them.

12:14: Well! The surprise, which was previously reported at the turn of the Stone Age, is Luciano Pavarotti. Luciano has adhered four thousand square yards of felt to his eyebrows for the occasion.

12:20: Andy invites Bob Costas to, quote, "eat" him.

Other Olympian observations:

-It seems that Michelle Kwan, at the age of 107, has dropped out of the Games. Donald Rumsfeld is at fault.

-Why do the medals look like the IOC cleaned out the "Very Large Washer" aisle at Home Depot?

-Best Olympic Moment: NBC was profiling one of the American women downhill skiiers. She's my favorite person in the world right now, because they showed her working out at the gym? And she was doing a power squat with a barbell? And she. Had. Cellulite.

-Much as I enjoy figure skating, I cannot seem to get hold of the ice dance love train. It is so weird. It is Hunter S. Thompson on ice. My very favorite ice dancing moment came several years ago, when a Russian team was skating underneath some big red tarp, and one of them fell. Because she tripped on the tarp.

-Jim The Baby Nephew enjoys... curling. Jim, your forefathers didn't suffer and die in the cold of Valley Forge so you could enjoy curling. No! MY godchild will like luging.

-There is, somewhere wandering the Earth right this second, a Norwegian bronze medal skiier out there whose first name is "Roar." ROOOOAAAAR! That rules. The Fourth Fetus shall be called... Roar.

-If Carmen suddenly ceased to exist, would the entire figure skating industry collapse?

after all these years, Katerina Witt, I hate you, I still hate you so very, very much at: mb@blondechampagne.com

Scott the Taller, Friendboy Andy, Oogie, and Flipper: The Official Mockers of the XX Winter Olympiad. Please note the wine at the bottom of the picture, which is mine and totally did not help.