Plum Crazy

Here's why I don't bother with this year's Winter Olympics:

1. The action isn't live. It's Memorex. Why watch something when you already know the results?

2. NHL stars in the hockey competition. When the U.S. team upset the Russians on the way to the Gold in 1980, it was a tearfully inspirational story. A bunch of young kids no one had ever heard of pulling off the greatest upset in the history of sports. If the U.S. wins this time, they do it on the strength of a bunch of NHL studs rather than scrappy amateurs. It's Goliath vs. Goliath, not David vs. Goliath. Doesn't have the same appeal.

3. No Michele Kwan. I'm not a huge fan of figure skating or of Kwan, but it would have been nice to see her finally win Gold like it was cool when Dan Jansen finally won Gold.

4. Obnoxious stars. Somebody needs to tell Bode Miller to shut up. His stupid comments have been plastered all over the place prior to the Olympics, starting with his comments about skiing drunk and proceeding to his interviews in Time and Newsweek, and now he's doing these ads for Nike that tout his website. Memo to Miller: you get to talk it only if you walk it. So far he's been shut out in these games. I'm not especially fond of Johhny Weir either. He told reporters to "eat it" the other night and then blamed a bus snafu for his poor performance in the long program Thursday. Face it pal, you skated poorly and lost. There's no one to blame but yourself.

5. They're boring. I don't like skiing, don't like bobsledding, don't like the luge or the skelton, don't care for snow boarding, and on and on. The only two sports I remotely care about it are women's figure skating and men's hockey, and I don't care especially much for either of those.

p.s. I'm not the only one who isn't jazzed about these games. They're being beaten soundly in the ratings.