my favorite things about the 2000 and 8Â Olympics:
Watching 2000 and 8 Chinese soldiers bang menacingly on drums in unison as they shouted out how welcome we were to their country.
Getting to watch a cute girl sing the Chinese national anthem in the Opening Ceremonies.
The time that Togo led Canada in the medal count (with the tiny African nation winning more than a thousand times more than our neighbors to the North). Oh wait, that wasn’t just a moment — it was almost the whole games.
The refreshing lack of orientalist discourse deployed by the press upon their discovery that the Chinese had trained prepubescent girls to contort their underaged bodies in unnatural ways, for compensation of gold coins in the gymnastics events.
Simsby’s matter-of-fact reply when I tried to amaze him with how amazing it was that the Australians always won so many medals, despite the country’s small population: “Yes; they’re very sporting.”
Men’s field hockey. I know right?
The graphic motif on the Chinese athletes’ uniforms.
Finding out that not only is diving an Olympic sport, but now diving training is also its own sport. It goes by the name “trampoline gymnastics.” No one has yet noticed the redundancy.
Anticipating the introduction of a new Olympic sport: synchronized trampoline gymnastics.
The old die-hards: men’s water polo, men’s diving, men’s gymnastics. I am very sporting!
The moment I learned that Nasty Lookin’, the drag queen who won the girls’ gymnastics all-around gold medal, was actually a genetic girl named Nastia Liukin. She is very pretty.
Videotaping the marathon and then watching it on fast-forward. Who knew their wiry little frames could carry them so fast?
Nasty Lookin’
That’s funny!
“My thoughts are with you,”