Monday, February 20, 2006

Artistic Interpretation

I'll give the BBC one thing about their Olympic coverage: when the Ice Dance compulsory skate was underway, the Italian couple came in first. The commentators didn't agree, and said: "There may be a new marking system, but it's still ice dancing." Brilliant. It almost makes up for the fact that they keep interviewing the British ice dancing couple who have annoying Scottish accents and totally bug me.

One other thing bugs me about ice dancing in this Olympics: the costumes. Is it just me, or are they getting worse and worse? Since so much of ice dancing is based on artistic impression, musical interpretation and overall performance, in my opinion, the costumes count. I think there should be a costume judge - there are plenty of qualified people with taste out there, and there should be deductions for tacky costumes. Just like when someone falls, the overall performance is diminished, so too when the team is wearing what seems to be Henry VIII on acid.

In fact, I think this should be implemented across all figure skating disciplines.

2010 Olympic Hopeful

I've noticed that there is a certain percentage of Olympic athletes that are taking advantage of dual citizenship in order to compete in the Olympics. I don't really have a problem with this; if you can't make it for your home country, then by all means make it for your adopted one. Though, I have to say that this has certainly bitten Canada in the ass. Dale Begg-Smith received the gold medal for Australia in the men's moguls, though born and raised in BC and emigrated only last year. All the goals scored against the men's hockey team were at the hands of Canadians playing for other countries, and the female ice dancer skating for the US is from Kingston, Ontario, and ony received her US citizenship last week.

I was watching the cross-country skiing coverage and the BBC interviewed the lone Irish cross-country skier. It was a piece on the skiers from countries where there is no snow - Costa Rica, Thailand, Ethiopia, and Ireland. All of them knew they weren't globally competitive and they didn't care, they were here for the ride. It hit me. Not to belittle their achievements, which are great and I admire them, but if I get a decent pair of cross-country skis, head over to the Continent to practice every chance I get, I too could be an Olympic athlete. Ireland doesn't have a women's cross-country team. I could be it!

See you in Vancouver. Though, I'll be really old by then - as far as Olympic athletes go.

Sunday, February 12, 2006

Deep thoughts

There are still news stories about Muslims protesting about the cartoons. Doesn't anyone realise that the cartoons are only news now because someone high up in the Islamic world wants them to be news? They were originally printed in September, and only now there is a furor - because someone brought them to the Middle East to stoke the flames. What are the motives for this?

But what I wonder most is that people who don't have access to basic medical care, schooling, or sometimes even food, somehow are able to get their hands on Danish flags. Where are they getting them from?

Addendum

I forgot to mention yesterday that when the BBC commentator said that Canada was currently leading Italy 13-0 in women's hockey, she said, "Canada is leading Italy 13-0 in the third quarter.

It's so bad.

Saturday, February 11, 2006

The sorry state of BBC sports coverage

So I'm a bit of an Olympics junkie. As much as I think the Games are an overly commercial spectacle, and its lofty ideals have been hijacked by corporate greed, doping, bad judging and probably the Russian Mafia, I still love to watch.

But this year I'm in Ireland, and the Irish couldn't give a toss about the Winter Olympics - I'm guessing because there are no horses involved (it's weird how much they love their horses). Though I have to say that I'm really surpirsed that they haven't embraced curling yet. Didn't anyone tell them that the sport involves drinking?

Anyway, since it's far more fascinating to watch Big Bruvva, or whatever the crap reality show of the moment is, RTE, the ever-fabulous Irish Broadcaster, is not showing ANY of the Olympics. Not even a 1/2 hour highlight show. Why would you, when Blackrock are playing Terenure in Rugby? Never heard of Blackrock and Terenure? Well they're suburbs of Dublin - and they're both even on the same side of the Liffey. Yep, high quality international-level sports matches are being played right here in Dublin, preventing the broadcaster from showing a little-known sporting event that is held only once every four years.

Luckily, I get BBC2. Unluckily, they only seem committed to showing about two hours of coverage a day. So far, my verdict is that the BBC coverage is really lacking. You would think that if they're only broadcasting for two hours a day, they would try to cram in as much sports and results as possible. Oh no, instead today I watched an interview with Andre Bochelli, who will be singing in the closing ceremony, an interview with an American skier, and an interview with Herman Meier. They did mention that Germany has two gold medals, Norway - 1, US - 1, and Canada - 1, but didn't mention in which sports these medals were won. They likewise didn't mention any silver or bronze winners. It makes me long for the days of watching American coverage where they would tell you all about an event - as long as an American was involved.

I knew there would be problems during the coverage of the opening ceremony. I started to count how many times they mentioned Torvill & Dean (way too many). That was like, so 1984. It's almost annoying as "Miracle on Ice", except that American Olympic coverage is on 24/7. The commentators glossed over the Canadians coming in because they were still rabbiting on about Sarajevo from when the Bosnia & Herzegovina team came in earlier. They then quickly added, "Canada is great in team sports. The mens & womens team won gold in ice hockey in 2002, made sweeter by beating the Americans, and they have good curling teams - oh and they might play Great Britain, blah blah blah, UK women's curling supremacy, blah blah blah." In the pre-Olympics show, they couldn't say "Canada's gold medal win in hockey" (mens or womens), without adding "made all the sweeter by beating the US" every single time.

Just as an aside, what's up with the lumberjack chic motif of the Canadian uniforms?

Today they covered the women's moguls final, and the short-programme of the pairs figure skating, but they cut away from that to show a bit of luge. They then did a 2-minute highlight montage that showed a German biathelete (I'm guessing one of the medals won today), Jennifer Heil's mogul run, and impressively a couple of clips of the Sweden-Russia women's hockey game. The clips were kind of grainy and far away so I have no idea where they got the coverage from, but they better start buying from the CBC by the time the good games get underway. You could hardly see the players at all because they only had an angle that showed most of the ice surface, which ensures that you can't see any of the action. It looked like they were showing a clip from the 1970's, and for all I know, they were. They then quickly mentioned that currently Canada is beating Italy 13-0 before signing off for the evening.

The BBC should stick with covering cricket and buy coverage from a real sports network.

I checked through the TV guide, and they don't seem to be planning on covering any of the hockey in detail. There is an Australian pub here that shows Hockey Night in Canada games on Sunday afternoons - but only when it doesn't interfere with rugby. Well, as luck would have it, the Six Nations Rugby Tournament is on now - ensuring that the Men's Gold Medal game won't be shown anywhere. Bah. They hold the damn rugby every year and it's just an excuse for the Brits and Irish to drink away the month that is February, so I don't know why they can't postpone it for the Olympics and drink away March instead.

Sunday, February 05, 2006

Religion is the Opiate of the Masses

Ok. It's a CARTOON. I just did a search on the Internet and I can't find the actual cartoons anywhere. However, I'm sure they're not that offensive to anyone who is not a religious fanatic.

This furore over the Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammed is very interesting. One of the cartoons is of the Prophet wearing a turban that looks like a bomb. Meanwhile, adherents to Islam, the "religion of peace", are bombing embassies in retaliation, and protesters are calling for the death of the cartoonists. How ironic.

Now, I'm not painting a billion odd Muslims with the same brush. There are plenty of moderate Muslims out there who are not calling for cartoonists to be beheaded. However, I find it very interesting that governments in the Middle East are calling for the Danish government to apologise and are not really doing anything about the violence. The Danish government shouldn't apologise, the media is an independent body not controlled by the Danish government. Of course, countries that don't have independent media or freedom of speech wouldn't understand that distinction. Further, why aren't the governments in Syria or Lebanon condemning the voilence? Why haven't the bombers been arrested? Maybe it's because the government tacitly supports the voilence. Just like the Saudi government tacitly supported 9/11 and fundamental Imams in the UK tactitly supported the transit bombings in London.

After the London transit bombings, the British government said that that the Islamic community in the UK had a responsibility to stop the recruitment of Islamic extremist terrorists within its community and to stop the preaching of hate in the name of the Islamic religion. Likewise, in countries that are using religion to control its population, they too have a responsibility to the world community when their fanatical adherents decide to declare jihad on the Western World.

Now before someone responds by saying Catholics would be offended if there was a cartoon depicting the Pope fondling a boy, I should say that I was raised Catholic and I wouldn't be offended by such a cartoon. In fact, the Catholic Church deserves it. The cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church comes from the top down. We all know the Pope knows about it, and by turning a blind eye, is condoning it, and Catholics should be ashamed. In Ireland, one priest has been accused of abusing 70 children. 70. Now, in such a small community in southern Wexford, you really have to say, shame on the parents for not coming forward sooner and allowing this to continue because the priest is such a revered member of the Irish community. As it came out in the inquiry, the bishop knew about it and did nothing. When he consulted a lawyer about whether or not the Church could be held for negligence if they heard about the abuse but didn't investigate the accusations, and was told that he and the Church could be held negligent, he took out insurance. That's right. He was told he could be liable and he took out insurance against negligence lawsuits instead of doing the right thing. What a great example of Christianity. I have since decided that while I might believe in the tenets of Christianity, I no longer believe in or respect the Catholic Church as an institution.

But I digress, the freedom of speech includes ideas that are unpopular or offensive. It is only then that we can discuss and debate the merits of the idea in the open. It is only once the idea has been discussed by the populace that it can be either accepted or rejected. If the idea is not allowed to be published because it might cause offence is censorship. With so much violence and crime being committed in the name of God/Allah/whatever, and being sanctioned by religious leaders, it is crucial that our major religions are held up to open scrutiny, and questioning of the institution of religion is not supressed to appease the governments of nations that have no concept of freedom of speech.

That said, this war of Fundamental Islam versus the rest of the world is far from over. As one of the British protesters stated, "Islam is peace but you see there will only be peace when Islam is implemented across the world." The Western World should be worried, but we shouldn't curtail our freedom of speech. If we do, the fundamentalists win.