First off, I think the Olympics are as irrelevant as ever these days, and I can’t say that I’ve watched anything beyond the 25 minutes a day that I’m running on the hamster wheel. But I have noticed that there is a whole lot of television coverage focused on a whole lot of volleyball, soccer and shit like rowing. I guess the marquee stuff like basketball point shaving and women’s gymnastics is saved for times when people are actually capable of watching it.
But today, I caught a glimpse of Olympic ping-pong. Doubles, no less. With great amusement, I kept the television on the event, so I could see what ping-pong at the highest level looked like. For about 35 seconds, the players on both side of the table would position themselves intricately, bob up and down and Hulk themselves up, preparing for the serve. The serve would come, and the point would be decided in less than five seconds. There would be fist pumps, roars of victory and high fives for every single point. And then it would repeat itself, the preparation that takes longer than the payoff.
Don’t get me wrong, I think ping-pong is entertaining, and I’m not demeaning it in the least bit. Personally, I suck at it, and I marvel at people who are genuinely really, really good at it. But it’s still the kind of game played in rec rooms, moms’ basements and old folks’ homes, and to see that it’s an Olympic sport is kind of funny to me. The width of two men standing side by side is often times way wider than the width of the table alone, and it’s entertaining to see them getting all pumped up and standing in postures that emphasize the visual that no tiny white ping-pong ball can traverse between them.
And to think that the British nixed baseball at their Olympics as their right as host country, while ping-pong gets to stay. One of the biggest knocks on baseball is that it’s a boring sport, but frankly, I think getting one exchange every sixty seconds is a poorer allocation of time than baseball could ever be.
Whatever though, because the Olympics are pretty irrelevant and corrupted anyway. Swiss being racist to Koreans, Korean fencers getting screwed and told to accept it, Korean wrestlers given no reason why they have to share a tied bronze with the Japanese, and the NBA thugs obviously gaming the gambling lines and point shaving, before messing with the spread with loafing in the first quarter before blowing away the opposition by 60 points in the second half. I look forward to the end of the Olympics so that America’s Got Talent can return, even though the Hunger Games duo were recently eliminated.
