Lightkeepers: Live-Blogging the Olympics: Day 5 [Olympics]

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Live-Blogging the Olympics: Day 5 [Olympics]

via Gawker by Adrian Chen on 2/16/10

OK! We are trying something new tonight. Let's live-blog NBC's prime-time coverage of the Olympics, shall we? Tonight: The men's figure-skating short program features fur-bearing mammal Johnny Weir. Snowboarder Cross! Downhill skiing! Let's pretend all of this didn't already happen!

8:31PMNow that was some ice-skating! Or so we are told by announcers who actually know what they are talking about!

Plushenko did a quadruple toe-loop to a triple toe-loop. And it earned him a 90.85. Evgeni Plushenko: "He's back!" Dick Button thinks there was not the same "Chutzpah" as last time around. But then, his name is Dick Button. Dick Button! Someone needs to assemble a list of weird names from the Olympics and put that shit up on Digg.

8:20PM Holy crap, 2006 Gold Medalist Evgeni Plushenko's profile! It probably set a new standard for Olympic hyperbole. (Which puts it high in the running for most hyperbolic thing ever.) Is this a man who puts on tight pants and spins around on the ice or a Bond Villain with his finger on the trigger of a world destruction device!?

Would love to hear the director commentary on some of these profiles.

8:13PM Men's figure-skating is a boon for anyone who has a thing for men wearing blouses.

8:09PM Guys, they just talked about an upcoming Russian skater but his name was so hard to understand that I can't even Google it. FOREIGNERS.

8:05PM We are told that Florente Amodio's is the "Quintessential Olympic story." Right, because of all those other Brazilian orphans who were diagnosed with Osgood-Schlatter disease at 12? ("also known as tibial tubercle apophyseal traction injury" according to Wikipedia".) FACTS.

8:01PM

So, we begin with the ice-skating. French 19 year-old Florente Amodio: could this guy's backstory get any more Dickensian? We are reminded not once, but twice, that this guy was ABANDONED IN THE STREETS OF BRAZIL. Waiting for his long-lost mother to run out on the ice in the middle of routine and beg him to come home.