Sighinide

One last little thingy- I’m going to be streaming these games over the app, not watching over broadcast, so hopefully I’ll be avoiding a lot of the annoying jingoistic stuff that we see on NBC, etc. I mean stuff like daily / hourly medal counts.

I didn’t mention Vonn; I probably should have. It’s nice to see her again, it’s impressive that she’s out there even after her injury. I thought she handled herself well in her press conference. Wild that her coach is Aksel Lund Svindal! One of the few non-American names I easily place from past Winter Olympics. I mean, non-skating athletes. Like… Bjørndalen, and… yeah, I’m not going to start a list.

Yeah, I’m not watching broadcast; fuck that.

So I didn’t watch the minimovies today. If they’re still around, maybe I’ll watch them later. Like, maybe much later. I saw the Men’s Big Air Qualifying Rounds instead (did I capitalize that right? IDK). Then I watched the 7 “Road to Milan Cortina 2026” specials. I think I made the right choice. The minimovies can be watched at any time, the specials beg to be watched before the opening ceremony tomorrow.

Stuff I gleaned: It seems that Mikaela Shiffrin has won over 100 (!!!) World Cup titles in her career, an unbelievably staggering number. I had no idea. You would think this would be common knowledge, especially in her home country, but no. Ugh. Jeebus. I believe this would be the perfect time and place for a rant about the tyranny of the typical ‘Murican professional sports.

Look, I’ve done that stuff before, I’m not going to do it again, and everyone who reads this has surely thought along similar lines at points.

A few months ago I was pleasantly surprised to see Katie Ledecky in a TV commercial. It was then that I knew that Olympics season was around the corner, because… why else would a swimmer- even the unquestioned world’s best, be in a commercial? It’s kind of sad, honestly.

Over the winter I joined the local health club and I would spend hours in the pool, just… swimming. Not vigorously, lol. But for fun. It was glorious. What a fantastic way to spend a Sunday afternoon! Sometimes I would take aquatherapy classes. Also fun, lol. When I would leave the pool and go to my locker to change, I would pass by the locker room TV, which was there, I guess, to blare the requisite distraction to hurry everyone along. ALWAYS, without fail, it was showing a football game. I always wondered what football had to do with swimming pools. It just seemed… so odd. So out of place.

I mean this is… off of the subject at hand, I guess, but… is it?

I mean she was featured a bit in these segments, so…

Seriously tho, it’s all very strange, isn’t it? Why is it that the world’s greatest athletes are all virtually unknown in the public in our supposedly sports- crazed culture?

Maybe it’s just an American thing. Perhaps the culture is different in other nations; I wouldn’t know. I suspect / hope that it is.

I found the segment about the Team USA Gymnastics training camp really interesting. Obviously curated but it needed to be so I suppose.

Back to the sport culture- the skating lineup for the USA is stacked for sure. Ilia Malinin the “Quad God” is obviously on another level with his actual Vampire-on-ice routine. He almost / actually flies. One might say that he’s been learning from me, somehow, on some magnetic or quantum level. Honestly, he might or even could probably be; I wouldn’t put it past some of these people, especially the top level guys.

For real tho: his routines are literally, weirdly, the routines that I would come up with if I were to combine all of the best ideas and energies I’ve harvested from previous Olympics and skating athletes, going ALLLLLL the way back to Elvis Stojko (!!!!). I mean we are talking A LOT of stuff, tossed into an all-encompassing melting pot here!

But that would obviously be preposterous of course, so…

But again- why is the man who is by far the world’s greatest athlete in his sport- if not perhaps the greatest overall athlete in the entire world– a virtual unknown in his own country, a country that is supposedly “sports crazed”?

I mean, the mind boggles at this. It is utterly absurd. Someone like this should need no introduction to the general public before the Olympics, let alone during them.

I maintain that sports leagues like the NFL have a place in society, and that they absolutely belong, but they have been put on too high a pedestal.

Well… there you go.

I suppose the blogging cobwebs are falling off lol.

Ok, I’m taking the bait.

I mean… whether I’ll swallow all of it remains to be seen, but… OK, here goes.

Well… I *MIGHT* augment my posts here with my powers. Might. I mean, we’ll see. I kind of think I won’t, but… these things do tend to get out of hand, even if it looks like it won’t, this time.

And it doesn’t. Honestly.

Some initial thoughts- things look much more “fun” this time around, which is very very much appreciated. I mean it’s not like things have started yet but that’s certainly the kind of vibrations I’m getting from the place. I mean- I’m contrasting this Olympics with, say, Sochi and the war nonsense etc. This one seems “normal”. Good.

Well… I see that NBC / Peacock did it’s prep work to prepare for me this time around, and I of course prepared for them ahead of time as well. I intend to make full vampiric use of the athletes’ energies. A couple of weeks ago I purchased a set of very expensive high end urethane dumbbells that I will eagerly break in during the coming festivities. I’ll probably also hone all of the new barre/pilates exercises I’ve learned in my classes lately.

On that note I’m still using two small ankle weights per leg. Maybe by next Olympics I’ll be using one large 10 lb ankle weight per leg, or maybe one 10 lb plus a smaller one. Or maybe that’s for a distant future, IDK.

It’s fun, this stuff, lol. Really, it is. It is A LOT of fun getting stronger. Especially when it is done in ways that are so complete and safe.

At any rate, I will suck as much life energy as I can out of everything that I can, like… IDK, some kind of creepy old vampire, lol.

It appears as though I may be living for a very very very long time, if things are what they appear to be.

Hooray? Who knows, lol. We’ll see I guess.

Anyhoo- back to the games- today I watched a bunch of stuff on peacock… Prime? Premium? Extra? It’s the package you get with Xfinity. Athlete highlight reels, promos and such. Tomorrow I’ll be watching the little movies and whatevers. You know, the little mini docs about past controversies and the requisite minimovie about the Miracle-On-Ice, etc. I guess I’ll do this to get in the swing of things, to taste the Olympic flavor, to… ahhhh touch the cauldron, to, well… absorb the experience. Then, the opening ceremony. Then the stuff.

You know- I’ve not mentioned you-know-who, or… you-know-who-else. And I likely won’t, except right now… yes, I WILL mention… nah. Nope, won’t do it, not going to. You were allllll waiting for it, weren’t you? Well, MAYBE I’m writing this because my Italian wife who must not be named put that on her insta, MAYBE not, but you’ll just have to guess, because quite honestly, I care not what you think, and that my friend is God’s honest truth.

To the games!