#295: A Frightening Lack of Curiosity, but Plenty of Anxiety

Dan Klass

Hudson’s video camp was cancelled, so we created our own.  Well, we basically started working on his adaptation of Max Quick: The Pocket and the Pendant.  Check it all out on Facebook.com/MaxQuickTheWebSeries.

 

We had some friends over for dinner, so I almost burned down the back yard AND the house.  Afterwards, we didn’t watch a monumental human achievement on television.

13 thoughts on “#295: A Frightening Lack of Curiosity, but Plenty of Anxiety”

  1. Is there some kind of a filter the US broadcasters apply to the Olympics coverage? Listening to you, one would think the games are put on as some kind of a immigrantion recruitment exercise, look at the USA, this is somewhere anyone can achieve. As of tonight, a country with a 1/4 your population has achieved 57 medals, 25 of them Gold. Ok, it’s Great Britain. Where were the USA in the track cycling, where we won almost everything. The rowing – yep, once again, we dominated. Heptathalon. Jessica Ennis walked it. 400 metres final. No American at all. Wow. 800 metres. 200 metres. 100 metres. Zilch.

    Let’s face it. The so called success of team USA owes more to the immigrant and slave lineage of its athletes, as Michael Johnson recently covered in a BBC documentary, not that this will have been reported in America, who are scared to admit this.

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  3. Wow, what an achievement – 10,000 and 5000 metres Gold (Mo Farrah of the UK), Jamaica win 4 x 100 metre record. About 60% of all the USA medals are in Swimming and Athletics, both heavily “sponsored” by scholarships. Did they even show these events in the USA, or do they only show events you are likely to win?

    Can we now put to be officially this suggestion of dominance in Sports?

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  4. Wayne –

    1. We love you
    2. Wow
    3. Speaking as an average US citizen Olympic domination is not much on our minds. Trying to keep a job and make it through the economic rollercoaster is enough. (Also fixing houses that are no longer The American Dream – but are the American Nightmare as they are no longer worth what we paid.)
    4. My favorite athlete is British even though many Brits do not claim him anymore – David Beckham. (No not just cause he is hot – even though it is a perk that he is easy on the eyes.)
    5. I could mention the level of stupid competition against kids where I live in academics and sports being a factor in our sports – but I won’t. They can talk to their therapists later.
    6. As the world stage is set I can say that as countries one is about as f*&$ed up as the rest.
    7. Are you armed? Did we mention we love you?
    We are all friends here. 😉
    8. If you really want to feel better check out one of our reality shows – Say Toddlers and Tiaras. You will see how dominant we truly are – not.

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  5. You know what Wayne – insert this on at #3 and push the others down. What we are really concerned about or should be concerned about here in the US (anyone with half a brain) is our upcoming election where we are hoping to get a worthy and effective president – and excuse me but neither a&&hat running fits the bill (incumbent or not). Keeps most of us up at night.

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  6. There is no filter, Wayne, there is just a complete absense of sports appearing on our televisions where we don’t strongly expect to medal. 😉 Isn’t the whole thing just swimming, gymnastics and basketball? I’ve never even heard of the Heptathalon. Is that where the have to smoke a lot of pot and run around? Oh, what’s a Hemptathalon.

    I assume all nations are the same, they focus on what they need to focus on to seem like they’re doing well. That’s really what the games are for, right? National pride and corporate sponsorships and the hope of tourist money for the host.

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  7. Dan, RZ, no offense intended to you fine folks.

    I guess when NBC pretty much pays for the US olympic team, they feel like the whole thing is about them and their corporate interests, so they feel they can show events 6 hours delayed and of course edit carefully to only show the good US stuff. This is a real concern I think, when a broadcaster pulls the strings.

    Watching the closing ceremony here. Really really proud as I was with the opening ceremony. For a small country, we punch above our weight with music and the whole stage production

    I’d say the US is the absolute worst at focusing inward – we have had about 24 channels of TV here and coverage of everything, so it was was great to see Michael Phelps but also great to see some of the other countries stars too, and of course the UK’s fabulous medal winners, all 65 of them. Things like dressage – crazy, but so entertaining. We had Michael Johnson as one of our expert analysts with the athletics and I think that says a lot as he would surely be snagged by a big US channel, as there is no-one more authorititive.

    RZ, I agree with you, but if you have a political system that depends on donations from interested parties, and actually only two choices (after Perot, they changed the rules so that no-one could ever do that again), this is what you get, and the fact that your only choice is either ultra right wing politics or hard right wing politics.

    Crazy, crazy country.

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  9. Wayne – your link took me to The Spice Girls “If You Wanna Be My Lover”. I agree lyrics like that don’t come around all the time. JUST KIDDING!

    If we can’t laugh what do we have left? 🙂

    I am glad you are a proud British citizen. I am proud to be American. One thing we can agree on is The Bitterest Pill.

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