Well that didn’t take long.  After a 9 month absence, our 2nd post is an Old Man Rant.  In case you’ve forgotten, Old Man Rants are me venting my frustration over common, daily irritations.  Complaining may not help anything, but it at least makes me feel better, and hopefully is good for a laugh or two.

Today’s topic:  The Winter Olympics

Despite my love for winter and the Winter Olympics, several things have annoyed me this year about the games.  But instead of being my usual, negative self and merely criticizing things- I’ve decided to be positive, and suggest ways to improve the situation.  I have 4 suggestions- here they are.

Air Horns:

Figure skating is exciting and the athletes are incredible.  But you know what would make things even better?

One single air horn.

Here’s how it would work:

Upon entering the arena, one lucky fan would be given an air horn, and escorted to a private viewing area where their friends and other spectators cannot bother them. Their air horn would somehow be set-up only to have air for one single blast.

The fan would be able to sound the horn one time during the competition, whenever they choose.  Maybe they’d be nice and just waste it in between skaters.  Or maybe they let it rip just as someone leaps off the ice for a triple axel!

Of course, we would need to have some way of preventing the skaters from getting hurt.  I haven’t worked that part out yet.

Medal Count:

What are we?  A bunch of school kids on the playground?  

“I won more medals than you did.”  

“My mom’s cooler than your mom.”

Why do they show the medal count everyday? I thought the point of the Olympics was to cultivate peace and unity throughout the world, not to brag about how many medals you won. 

The medal count is even more stupid when you consider how much larger some countries are than others.  The US, China and Russia are each bigger than several other countries combined- let’s not get over excited about the biggest kid in class beating up the smallest, especially when the small kids often do so well (shout out to Norway!)

Doping:

When I was an elementary school teacher, seriously misbehaving students would get sent to the office, where they would receive a short lecture before returning to the classroom to repeat their bad actions over again.  This cycle was repeated often.  No serious consequences were given, therefore there was no incentive for students to improve their behavior.

Hey International Olympic Committee, Russia, and Russian Olympic Committee- sound familiar?

When a country is banned for doping- they should be banned.  No backdoor work-arounds.  

When Kramer from Seinfeld got banned from the fruit stand- he couldn’t go buy fruit.  That’s what being banned is.  Although later in the episode, he did manage to get some fruit from George.  

I think banned countries should be kept out of the games until the doping suspension ends.  But in the meantime, if other countries want to share their medals like George shared his fruit-I say go for it!  That fits right in with the Olympic ideal of cultivating peace and brotherhood.

Announcers:

On a related note, the whole situation with Russian Olympic Committee skater Kamila Valieva is a mess.  At the performance right after her reinstatement, the NBC ice skating announcers were so upset about the whole thing, that they decided not to do any “play-by-play” or commenting during her routine.

Ironically, they stumbled onto a brilliant new commentating technique where they don’t actually say anything at all!  This made watching the routine much more enjoyable and stands as a model for how things should be done from now on.  Great work guys!

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