Olympic Friday

It’s the small things, the small details, that amuse me about the Olympics. Like did you watch the Chinese dude in the 110m Hurdles Final? That’s one fast Chinese kid. He won gold in world record time, but the best part is he looked like a 5 year old kid doing it, running with a unique “arms flailing about” technique, as if he’s running away from the bogie man. Then when he was celebrating, he got blocked out by a track and field official cuz he almost ran into some javelin thrower (imagine the headlines, if that contact went wrong)… and then he then turns around and progresses to celebrate awkwardly, pointing at the crowd like Hulk Hogan. Which prompted my irish friend Miriam to say “He’s celebrating too much, the Chinese aren’t know for their hurdle skill are they?”

Or there’s the Japan chick who ran the 10K final, and it looked like she ran the whole time with her mouth wide open. Is there anything more amusing than a Japanese chick with big bushy hair, running with her mouth wide open? In the Olympic final for a gold medal? I cant help but imagine she was yellin “BAAAAAHHHHH” the whole time while she ran, which reminds me of Angelo from elementary school, who took the special bus to school. She lost by the way, lapped even. And does it make it any funnier that her head is absolutely huge? So yeah, that’s been the bulk of my Olympic experience today. Its been fun, an enjoyable Friday. I love the Olympics.

Being in Ireland, Im also in a unique position to watch these Athens Games from Irish and British eyes. RTE for Ireland, and BBC for the UK are my two main outlets here for the Olympics. I was actually quite looking forward to this, coming into August. It meant leaving behind the NBC coverage, whose “USA! USA!” bravado, contrived tape delay broadcasts and feel good background stories make it look like its produced by Oprah. Unfortunately though, after almost two weeks of Olympics viewing, I found out that RTE and BBC are really not much better. First of all, RTE tends to show all the crappy second tier sports that I couldn’t give two shits about, like field hockey, hammer toss, sailing, team handball and water polo. Handball? I didn’t even know this sport existed past the 7th grade. Also, Ireland is doing terrible in these Olympics, yet still RTE insists on showing all the loser Irish athletes that finished something like a 8th during qualifying. I guess as a national broadcaster, you got to show your guys, but day after day, pining hopes on athletes that are obviously outclassed, you start to feel sorry for Ireland. Like the other week, the Irish mens doubles sculls rowing squad came out to a blistering start in their final, but quickly got caught up to and passed, ending up finishing 6th or something. In the interview, the rower said “I think we rowed a incredibly good race, and if the other boats weren’t so fast, we coulda won”. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Brilliant. Finally though, today, in the final few days of the Olympics, Ireland got their first medal, and its in the showstopper event of equestrian show jumping. The winner, Cian O’Connor is a national hero now, in fact his parents was just interviewed live at home on national TV. Now Im preparing myself and dreading the next few days, where this horse jumping exhibit will be celebrated, analyzed and repeated ad nauseum. Arghh… its horse jumping for Pete’s sake.

BBC on the other hand, is a little like the Americans, in that they overty trump up their athletes to unreal levels. When they win gold in anything, its a sickingly brash celebration, with BBC Commentators yelling its “Olympic champion! Olympic champion! This is the best thing to ever happen ever!” (each and everytime, in a pompy english accent). This especially hurt when the British fours rowing team barely edged out the Canadians last week. And when their athletes fail, the commentators either openly put on a face of denial or provide built-in excuses. The best example is Paula Racliffe. So last Sunday, here’s Paula, world record holder, British deity, and gold medal favorite, competing in the marathon, and for some reason (fatigue, maybe) with like 4 miles to go, she puts her hands on her sides, stops running and doesn’t even finish. She gave up. BBC then goes on to comment “that is sooo unfortunate, but Paula will keep her chin up, she is a great athlete, great champion, she is not a quitter…” … but ummm, no…on the contrary I think she is… she just quit, actually. Look, shes right there sitting on the roadside. Murray, who works beside me and is from New Zealand, had a field day enjoying BBCs effort in trying to turn the Paula lemon situation in to proverbial lemonade. They covered up, made excuses, the whole shebang, and openly wondered if she would re-establish her dominance in the 10K race. Fast forward 5 more days to today for the 10K Final. Paula started off okay, but somewhere along the line she picked up a 70 lbs backpack (or from her body language it sure looked like it). Close to halfway through, with her patented head bobbing run style, she was struggling mightily. And then, she slips further and further back from lead pack, falling back to near the stragglers group which included the open mouth japan chick. Not liking how things were going, she just got fed up and again pulls up and starts walking. She quit AGAIN! Its not like Felicien, who unfortunately tripped during her race, but she actually just said “screw it, I wont win so Ive had enough”. I started laughing, really loud, I couldn’t help it. Like as if I didn’t see that coming. BBC then goes on “Running the 10,000 meter, 5 days after running the marathon. Its really is difficult to recover from”. Well, that’s if she actually finished the marathon, maybe…

Well this is the kind of stuff I had to watch instead of something really important, like the USA Basketball team losing to Argentina in the semi-final. All I got to see instead was show jumping and womens javelin. Stupid Ireland.

The Formula

There is one universally accepted scientific formula that encompasses every know thing within the human world. It rules life as we know it and defines all our interactions. Often enough its commonly identified by the basic monnicker "The Formula". No its not E=mc^2. The real defining equation is "divide by 2 plus 7". Perhaps you've heard of it. Ideally, its all the math anyone would ever have to know, ever. You take a dudes age, divide it by two, add seven, and you get the ideal female age range for dating, relationships and intimate companionship (and if you get into specifics, you can put a +/- 2 statistical correction factor). Pretty simple, and solid as a rock. My buddy Eric lives and dies by this formula, he swears by it. I mention it now because I have fallen in love yet again, and its all good, the formula says so. Her name is Logan Tom, star outsider hitter for the USA Womens Indoor Volleyball team. Now she use to have medium-to-long hair... like when she played as a 19 year old in the Sydney Olympics and throughout her collegiate play at Stanford. However for these Athens Olympics, she has sported a new hairdo, a short cropped one, and Im jelly beans. You see, I have a weakness for short hair, and this is where my pal Martin and I strongly disagree, he's a long flowing locks kinda dude. Well, whatever. So as you can tell, despite my anti-American tendancies on almost everything (to spite mostly), I was distraught when the USA Womens Volleyball team lost to the Russians a couple of days ago. Logan did her best though, with something like 5000 kills. Poor Logan (And how cool of a name is that? Logan Tom? It defines awesomeness)

Now one more comment: if I were the president of NBC Sports, the network that now has Arena Football as its only major contract (how pathetic is that?), I wouldnt skip a beat in adding Volleyball and Beach Volleyball to the broadcast schedule. Its a fast game, and the Olympics have proven, an extremely exciting and TV friendly game. Its a popular game with widespread participation on recreational levels, and finally, you got your cant lose moneymaker in hot tall athletic girls jumping around, trying to spike a leather ball into the opponents face, while wearing short-shorts. And for the female viewers, you get hot athletic guys jumping around, trying to spike a leather ball into the opponents face. And in the beach version, the girls do it in sports bras and bikinis. How can you go wrong? You might as well print your own money. Other good sports, also for possible consideration? Badminton and Ping Pong.. but I digress.

Oh by the way, I just heard Eric is off the market, and for some reason, apparently the formula was not used. I tell ya, I leave Vancouver and Vancouver goes bizarro on me, up is down, left is right, rain turns into sunshine...

Defining Awesomeness..

logantom
Originally uploaded by Noli Abecia.

Sorry Martin, but short hair absolutely rules...

The Hillary Effect

Imagine the moment when Hillary Duff, up and coming 'It' girl, with a blossoming movie career, blossoming pop music career ("Let the RAIN drop down, and wake my dreams"), a new teen idol icon clothing line "Stuff by Hillary Duff", and a highly successful Lizzie Maguire TV career, found out that her arc-rival Lindsay Lohan, suddenly, almost overnight, got impressive C size breasts. Just imagine, cuz before, Lindsay only had mild success with a movie remake, Freaky Friday. But after that precise moment, suddenly Lindsay is taking over; first she starts appearing on all the teen magazines proudly displaying the new big 'uns, and then her hotter than hot movie, Mean Girls, comes out, the outright success of the early summer movie season. And THEN she parlays that into hosting the 2004 MTV Movie Awards, where she displayed dance skills as awkward as Jessica Simpson's dance routines. But still, she was hosting the MTV freakin movie freakin awards; I tell ya, thats big time yo, definitely 'A' List type stuff. And quicker than a cats ass, shes getting offered 7-10 million dollar movie offers, becomes the female Ashton Kutcher in terms of overt media publicity and attention, and also gains the eye of the Enrique Iglesias of Young Hollywood; the guy who plays Fez from That 70s Show. Hillary subsequently struggles to stay in the public eye, her movies pass by without a word and she falls quickly to the mid-to-low 'B' list. Hillary must of been FUMING mad, sporting a 10 out of 10 on the scale of scathing evil eyes, having to live through this constant reminder. Lindsay, her enemy, had just past her by to mega-super-duper-supreme-stardom-with-cherry-on-top, without even flinching. Hell, Lindsay even did something very un-PC and called people "retarded" on record in the media, and didnt even get into much trouble for it. Picture the resentment that Hilary built up during this turn of events, further compounded by the fact that the switcheroo happened during just a few but highly eventful months, beginning no sooner than early 2004. Its the type of malcontent that could boil water. Well now try and capture this raw emotion and try to relate to the deepth of Hillarys extreme pain. Try to grasp it. And now if you take Hillary's state of perpetual furious anger, mutiple that by 3 or 4, and thats how mad I got when I found out my new car got a dent while I was parked in Belfast. SO mad! Like I just got it! Sommabitches... theres no going back from this, ya know, its a permanenet ugly scar. Whats a guy to do? I started throwing wild punches.

Well what can you really do, actually. At anyrate, Im a little okay now. As Mr. Miyagi taught me, breathe in, breathe out. Very important.

Moving on other things, Im a little embarrassed with the delay, but Id like to point you out to a new website, www.jenniferandzebedee.com. Two of my good friends Jen and Zeb got married two weeks ago in Vancouver and Im really sad and dissappointed that I wasnt there for it. Stupid Ireland.

Congratulations you two... and I'm slightly excited cuz I hear their first boy, whenever that will be, is going to be named J! for Jay!. hahahahahaha... (inside joke)

Congratulations also to Portia and Glen, who, incidently, got married on the same day as Jen and Zeb. Surrey represent! yeh...

And uhh.. who else... hmm... congrats to Anne Marie, she just had a birthday!

Geeezzz...

llohan
Originally uploaded by Noli Abecia.

Thats too much, I need to take a breather just thinking about it. The power of C Cup.

Knight Rider

a2nite
Originally uploaded by Noli Abecia.

Do you see the scratch? Irish bastards..

More music songs...

Occasionally Ill turn this blog into a resource. A pop culture resource, of the Irish variety, with, of course, some general European flavor. So every once in a while, Ill provide some opinions on what I found to my liking on Irish/UK TV (Ali G, Hollyoaks, One Tree Hill) and post some songs that caught my ear. Of course, I will try my utmost best to stay away from the boorish English Pop that populates and dominates the BBC Radio 1 and Virgin Radio; my gosh, there is a lot of crap music here. I do not lie, and I cannot emphasize this enough, there is virtually a new boy band every week. The UK and Ireland is heavily invested and infested with boy bands / girl bands, and that wanker Robbie Williams. Well sometimes I dont mind the girl bands, cuz more often than not, theyre pretty smokin, so they end up being quite bareable according to Noli's music rule #1: Hot chicks rule. And then, of course, there is Rachel Stevens. I love her... AND SOMETIMES, in a few select instances, my guard will drop and let in a pop song so catchy, you cant help but like it.

Here is an example: The song Superstar by Jamelia... only because I really like the "EH-OHHHH EH-OH, EH-OH" part... you know the kind of part that you would shout during Karaoke, but not know any of the rest of the words. Download it ... youll know what I mean...

So here are some songs I currently like over here. Perhaps youve heard of them, perhaps they are already played where-ever you are... I dont know... but they made it into my iPod... These are pretty chill.

Everybody's Changing by Keane
Cannonball by Damien Rice
Run by Snow Patrol

Now in exchange, someone please update me on Ashlee Simpson. Im totally missing out on this... I had no idea.

Impulse Post #1

This is my first impulse post... just to warn you, this will happen when I am especially emotional about something and need to express myself to reflect the moment. A quick snapshot, or window if you will, into how I am feeling right here, right now. So I rush to the iBook and start typing like a madman....

Now, if there is one thing you will learn about me during this reading, its this; There is only one reason that would make me change the channel from watching womens olympic swimming; that would be the best movie of all time, Karate Kid. See, here I am watching the Olympics, watching the BBC broadcast of one of the most exciting events in sports history, an event so rare and so momentus that it happens once every four years, womens swimming... and I start to surf the other 7 channels, cuz Im guy and we do these things, and Im brought to my knees when I find Karate Kid playing on TV3. Shock and awe I think is the trendy term. Shock and awe. Ireland Rules. Nevermind the fact that I own the DVD and watch it frequently, but Karate Kid on Television is an event. Its like a celebration on broadcast TV and everyone is invited. So as you can tell, Im pretty pumped right now, so I had to share. Usually I would call my friends to let them know... but my only friends in Ireland so far are Guiness and Ipod, and both dont watch TV. Their loss.

Anyways, Daniel-san is getting smoked by a gang skeletons right now... this needs my complete and total undivided attention... laters.. sweep the leg...

Two more days till...

My most frequented webpage, by far, is ESPN Page 2. I have included an excerpt to illustrate why it is so brilliant; here are parts of a quiz found on the site today: (Summer Olympics Theme, too, so two birds, one stone, considering the close proximity and all)

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Multiple Choice:

What is the best film ever made about the Olympics?
A. Miracle
B. Chariots of Fire
C. Prefontaine
D. Cool Runnings
E. Breaking the Surface: The Greg Louganis Story, starring AC Slater

Answer: E

What is the worst film ever made about the Olympics?
A. Personal Best
B. Running Brave
C. Golden Girl
D. American Anthem
E. Breaking the Surface: The Greg Louganis Story, starring AC Slater

Answer: E


Tie Breaker Essay:
Send an composition of 2,000 words or more on each of topics below. All answers must be handwritten. Please enclose a $5,000 entry fee with your submission.

1. Team USA Men's Basketball will not medal at Athens. Explain why. Use the following to support your answer; no defensive intensity, no half-court passing, and the total inability to hit jumpers against the zone.

2. The Modern Pentathlon, shooting, fencing, swimming, cross-country running and equestrian show-jumping, is outdated. The following will comprise the new, Postmodern Pentathlon; Golden Tee, EA Madden NFL 2005, Tony Hawk's Pro-Skater, Halo for Xbox and Fantasy Football. Explain why.

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tears of joy folks...

In a future post, maybe I will highlights the merits of ebaum website (piss your pants funny), and the most important resource ever known to man, imdb.com.

Rosse Buurt

Okay, yesterday I was in Amsterdam, and I accomplished something insanely big (huge) and highly notable... something almost damn near impossible to do, elephant through the eye of a needle type impossibilities... I didnt go to the Red Light District. Repeat, in Amsterdam, ate Fritz with Mayonaise, walked the Canals, but didnt go to the red light district and everything that comes with. This is like David Hasselhoff going to Germany and choosing not to sing. Doing something like this just HAS to rank high on the scale of scales. It must... granted, I do realized its uncomfortably obscure, like eating 50 hotdogs in 12 minutes. Why? It sounds pointless, stupid, wasteful, even retarded... but sometimes somethings need to be tried. Sometimes, we must test ourselves...

Hellssss no way Im doing that again, though. Red light is afterall so naturally soothing to the senses...

Oh a belated note, congratulations to Marty and his buddy Sherwin with their "White Castle" movie coming out last weekend. Pursue that Mo fo, and sue their asses for not being compensated on violations for likeness rights, being the obvious artistic basis and character basis for the movie's slope-eyed-yellow-oriental and coming-from-terrorist-based-country central characters and therefore being true owners of the intellectual property. Recognize...

n.