A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

CAN WE AGREE TO CALL THESE THE 'GRAN TORINO' GAMES AND SEE IF HUGGY BEAR WILL COME OUT OF RETIREMENT? Some random, potentially belated thoughts on the Olympics:

• How can Jim Caple hate short-track? Short-track relay is my favorite winter Olympic sport. Sixteen participants dressed like superheroes race counter-clockwise on an oval the size of a two-car garage. Twelve of them are inactive, but can tag into the race at any moment, for any length of time or distance, at any point on the track, for maximum confusion. The track is separated from the infield not by a clear line or rail, but by a handful of paperweights that recall the days when you'd use your notebook as first base and a garbage can lid as second. For the first 3/4 of the race, everybody moves approximately the speed of junior-high free skate, as if it's really not cool to look like you want to win. For the last few laps, people make screaming left turns on a surface with a friction coefficient approaching zero, with the predictable result that one is almost certain to see one or more participants spinning ass over teakettle into the walls. Because of this, you can never tell who is going to win. Basically, this is the perfect sport for people who like to watch the jumbotron cartoon races you see at basketball games.
  
• Speaking of speed skating, it's nice to see that the Canadians have gone with a look that is only slightly less evocative of what the athletes would look like if they were flayed alive than in 2002.
  
• And while I'm on a fashion note, one of the best indicators that figure skating is as insular and self-deluded a community as beauty pageantry, religious zealotry, and appalachian inbreeding is the continued international dominance of the Patrick Swayze Roadhouse look. My hypothesis is that one judge fifteen years ago made it known that he really liked the kind of roughneck bar bouncer who might also wear tight pants and teach teenaged girls how to dirty dance, so a bunch of skaters started wearing that look. Then those skaters got old and became judges, coaches, or style coordinators, passing the look on as gospel to the next generation. Now you can't get rid of it -- it's just as entrenched in the sport as the flesh-colored fabric intended to connote nudity without a hint of sexuality. (Note: I have a similar theory about how one judge's curiously strong bond with his mother indirectly led to the acceptability of the Sarah Hughes look.