I love a good Gold Medal

Confession:

The Olympics are a fantastic and unexpected gift to me, like finding a twenty dollar bill in the Target parking lot or passing a billowing gas monster in a crowded movie theater and convincing your family it was that "disgusting guy in front of you" that did it.

With each, I end up saying, "where the hell did that come from?" and taking it for granted though I may, I usually become obsessed with wanting that same surprise from everything else in my life...only to be left emptily disappointed. Unless it's a long movie and I've recently consumed more than four Cheesy Gorditas from Taco Bell.

The Olympics start (well they never stop for the athletes, but they start for you and I) about two weeks before they start. The host city begins their preparation about 12 years before they're even chosen as the host site. The athletes begin training for them roughly 6 months prior to their own conception.

But all I have to do is watch Bob Costas for thirty minutes each night and I'm caught up on who I should be rooting for and against. Pretty sweet deal for me. For example, I know who Apollo Anton Ono is. I just remember Apollo Creed, the indomitable heavyweight boxer from the late 70's who died in the ring at the hands of that Russian bastard, Ivan Drago. I then imagine Susan Anton in her loveliest pose with feathered hair. Lastly, I imagine John Lennon and his domineering wife lying in bed for three weeks protesting the Vietnam war without bathing or wearing clothes. Mash all those images up in a blender and you have the mnemonic device...Apollo Anton Ono. See? It's easy.

Anyway, I know who he is from the last Olympics and all the cool stuff he did and the sweet facial hair. But he hasn't exactly been in the forefront of the news the way that normal celebrities are. He's been busy training and getting faster at skating and things like that while regular celebrities like Jon and Kate plus Eight have been hogging the spotlight by breathing air and eating food and getting divorced and tending to their weird children. You know...important shit. The newsworthy type of behavior that catches my eye.

So Apollo comes around to my circle of interest twice, maybe three times in his lifetime, and only when there's a gold medal and a tearjerking National Anthem at stake. That's cool, I figure. But can't he and Lindsey Vonn-Jacobellis and Shaun White and Bodi Miller et al. do something for the other 1500 days between Olympics to keep me interested in them? Like, I don't know, something aside from trying to achieve a lifelong goal? Aside from getting up at 4 in the morning every day of the week to run sixty miles to train for the upcoming games four years down the road?

Come on people!? How am I supposed to keep track of your every move if TMZ won't follow you to your three hour workout before church each Sunday? Can't you spice it up a little? Why not attend said session on the bruised heels of a 13 hour bender at the Viper room with enough coke and Red Bull in your system to jump start your car? Why not show up for the free skate with a crowbar and a new tatoo over your face depicting the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? Could you at least get divorced or file bankruptcy once between Olympic games?

Of course, all this absence of dirt is why we love the games. I cheered mightily for the Chinese couple to win the pairs figure skating gold. You know, the married couple that came out of retirement in their late 30's to train and live in separate dorms to capture the only honor they've never received. It could have been Betsy Ross and George Washington skating against them and I would have pulled in the direction of the Big Red...not because I'm a Commie, but because I cried during Rudy, Hoosiers,The Blind Side, Lucas, Angels in the Outfield, A League of Their Own, Chariots of Fire, Rocky IV, Victory, Ladybugs, Caddyshack and every other sports movie ever made.

We love winners and losers. We love to exhalt heroics and opine over near misses and lament what might have been. We love to look back in retrospect and adore the greatness of years gone by. We love a video montage that stretches our own shortcomings into someone else's achievements with a song we can beat our chest to. (Note: In my funeral video montage, there will be various pictures fading in and out of me from ages three to whatever age I kick it. Mostly toothy grins and hugs...really sap it up, please. The following songs need to be included: Prospekt's March by Coldplay, A Lack of Color by Death Cab for Cutie and Wherever I May Roam by Metallica. In that order. It'll be nuts in that church by the end.)

I love the Olympics. For a couple of weeks I can stop hearing about Charlie Sheen smacking the old lady around or caring whether or not Brangelina have adopted another child from Madonna's litter. For a couple of weeks, I can drift in and out of Bob Costas telling me who on this planet we should really be rooting for...regardless of country, religion or color. I like that. I also like when Danny Noonan overcomes the smoking Denunzio hollering in his backswing in order to sink that clutch putt to win the Caddy scholarship. Those are the things that really matter in life.