Today the curtain rises on the Beijing Olympics. Weirdness is guaranteed. Sports fans, the kind who tolerate gymnastics and water polo and wrestling and crew and weightlifting in small doses once every four years, will be mildly entertained. NBC will bludgeon us with "up close and personal" profiles. Advertisers will advertise. I can hardly contain my excitement.
Actually, since the US Track and Field Trials were in Eugene, I'm anxious to watch Olympic Track and Field. How often do you get to see people you know from your home town compete in the Olympics? Can't help but wonder how much that nasty Beijing air will impair performance though. Running hard, especially at long distances, is a painful experience. Having run plenty of marathons, I know this based on harsh experience. I can't imagine how much the pain will be compounded by the unavailability of decent quality air to breath.
But the strangest thing of all will be the whole Chinese spectacle. The Communist Chinese government broke their piggy bank, at enormous sacrifice to the people they govern so cruelly, to put on a show to dazzle the world. The newly constructed Olympic facilities are architectural marvels---kudos to the Chinese for that, I guess. But nice buildings and well-choreographed ceremonies cannot conceal China's colossal shortcomings, from human rights to environmental Armageddon.
Let's just hope that this Olympics is free of terrorism and that the games unfold without tragic mishaps. The Chinese have set the bar at world record height. I'll be happy if we somehow manage to get through unscathed.
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