Sorry, no blog today. I'm busy watching the Olympics. For the hockey men, I predict Gold: USA, Silver: Canada, Bronze: Slovakia.
I'm just watching the hockey women accept their medals. I hope Canada's men win the gold, but I also hope they will be as gracious as the Americans women in defeat if they don't. And the Finnish women made me love them, all proud to have a medal, regardless of colour, and making little personal gestures at the people they hoped were watching the TV coverage. Probably on the men's teams neither the gold nor silver medalists will cry. I think I see tears on both sides for the gals.
The medals themselves are ugly, though. They look crumpled.
Update: I'm very happy to be completely wrong on my medal prediction. What a fantastic hockey tournament. GO CANADA! U - S - A! HYVÄ SUOMI!
20 comments:
Better than the 2006 ones which were giant metal donuts.
I figured I should add a link so you would know what I'm talking about: check them out here.
At least the 2010 ones are solid pieces :)
I remember the donuts. I like them better than the ripple chips.
I can't wait to see the hockey game tomorrow. I don't care who wins. I thought Canada got a little cocky against Belarus and if they let that happen tomorrow, they'll get beat. If not they can win.
Personally I love curling. It's been so fun to watch.
And the medals are so cool!~
When I first saw a person wearing the 2010 medal, I assumed he had been given a wrinkly paper stand-in until the real medals were minted.
The Canadian Mint has a display setup where you can pick up a sample medal and have your picture taken with it.
The lineups to do that have been from 4hours to 7hours long. We stuck with the 1hour lineup to see the rest of the displays, including picking up a 40-oz bar of gold.
Other lineups include: 1hr 45minutes to see the 6minute "4D" film about Ontario, or the 6-8hr lineup for a 15-second zip line ride.
So what would you put on a sports medal? It's a no-win choice between ugly modern and tacky traditional!
I'm glad our guys got their act together for the bronze.
As for the final, Go Canada!
The medals in my mind look like they've spent their previous lives as rupture plates or chamber tops that have gone bang.
That was one good game. It kept me on the edge of the couch. Congratulations to Canada for a wonderful 2010 Olympics. Y'all shined!
Doesn't even bother me that we lost... what an epic game!
Even after the Big Game, I still like Canadians. Sob.
What a great Olympics!
Sorry about the closing ceremonies. That was one long, embarrassing, self-congratulatory in-joke. It was as if they had a brainstorming session on what the presentation shouldn't be, and then forgot to do the opposite.
I liked the closing, except that I thought they had too many music groups after the "show." I particularly liked that they got Shatner out for an "I Am Canadian," although I wish they'd worked in more of his famous version.
You didn't find it boastful? I'm glad, because as I was watching it I was cringing with the knowledge that this was going out to the world.
I thought it was inappropriate to go on about how many medals we won and then roll out the model hockey players in effigy. Stripper mounties, Bill Shatner implying he could even get in a canoe, and then floating images for anyone whose command of the Canadian idiom was low enough to have been spared the sex in the canoe image on the first pass. Yes, we drink, but the Olympic ceremonies are the wrong time to brag about the number of beers you can put away, especially as Shatner mispronounced the term he claimed Canadians could pronounce after four beers. I was seriously expecting a giant pot leaf to come dancing out next.
The next morning on the radio they were discussing what VANOC chair John Furlong would do next. I sincerely hope it's "take French lessons." His was 'make it stop!' painful.
Re: I was seriously expecting a giant pot leaf to come dancing out next.
And add Catherine O'Hara Those parts were really embarrassing. Why not comics who are actually funny? Maybe - Rick Mercer? Or Brent Butt? Or best yet, Russel Peters!!! Oh wait - maybe I get it. This was in that section of Pathetic Canadian Cliches - and yes in that case, they had the perfect choices - sad.
re: His ((French)) was 'make it stop!' painful.
I think he made a valiant attempt to reach out - apparently many Francophone Canadians felt the lack of French in the opening ceremonies - so for that full marks. But maybe someone could have written him a phonetic version to read??
A Japanese friend wrote and asked if French was the dominant language in Canada, since all the announcements during the games were made first in French. (Signage, often, too).
French first in the official announcements might have been a concession to the fact that there was so little French used overall. I know there were some complaints from francophones on that point. Another possibility is to keep the mainly anglophone crowd listening. They're going to listen to the French int he hope of understanding it, and then listen to the English to confirm what they think they heard, whereas if they do English first, then everyone is rowdy overtop of the French, like during airplane safety announcements.
I can't find it on the IOC website, but I believe French is an "Official Olympic Language." yeah, Furlong's was painful.
I've always heard and said Juan de Fyooka, but I think Fooka is allowed.
Yeah, Russel Peters would've been great, I'd never heard of Catherine O'Hara and most of her stuff got the painful silence it warranted.
I like the French first for exactly the reason Aviatrix said: my French isn't great, but I'm not bad at listening and understanding, so it's a great way to see if I can keep up.
I was really down on the Olympics before they started (I voted no back when Vancouver had a referendum), but overall I think VANOC managed to pull it all off quite nicely. Of course, it helps that I'm here and got to benefit from all the other activities, and the traffic problems didn't affect us much.
We thank you for the shout-out!
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