I’ve been watching the Olympics, and I even sat through the whole opening ceremony. Cynicism was in full swing during the opening ceremony, for obvious reasons. I just can’t take that much grandiosity in one sitting and keep my mouth shut. I love the winter Olympics, there are so many weird sports that we never ordinarily get to see, and many of them center around going really, really fast. I love that.

I was sorely disappointed to see Steven Spielberg carry in the Olympic flag as the representative of “culture.” That made me want to gag. Not even Bob Costas could remain respectful when the floating, ghostly animals were trotted out. I actually thought the animals were really cool, but how could you not laugh at the seventy foot rattlesnake chasing away those ghost horses?

I’m looking forward to the skeleton event — it’s luging, head first. Seems crazy to me. I also like Olympic hockey, for some reason it’s much more fun than the NHL. I’m also heavily into the alpine skiing events.

I think NBC has done a pretty good job so far, maybe they’re learning from absurdity of their coverage in pretty much every Olympic games I’ve watched over the past 10 years. Their Web site is also quite good, I’ve found the TV Listings page to be very usable.