Geography

Well, the Olympics are over. Four more years to train for the next Games. I sometimes wish they competed in the Tazmanian Hula, but then I remember that if it were an official event, people would actually train for it and I'd lose my advantage in a hurry. Perhaps I should try out for ping pong. Or maybe one of the "armpit noises" events.

Sigh. Let's face it, even if the category was "Impersonations of Minor Star Trek Characters" (at which I am excellent), there'd still be someone who's better at it than I am. I do a lot of things well, I'll admit, but have never really stumbled upon that one thing that could elevate me to the Olympic podium. I have pretty much just given up on those dreams, and am learning to settle for merely being a middle-of-the-road, normal, boring type of generic macho-stud he-man.

Or at least I was giving up...until I watched the "rhythmic gymnastics" competition. Have you seen this stuff? It's where these pixie-ish girls put on colorful tights and dance around on a gymnastics mat, waving a big streamer of ribbon as if it were a fourth-of-july sparkler, occasionally stopping to bend their legs in directions that human limbs are simply not meant to bend. The event has an eerie sort of beauty to it, I suppose, if you can force yourself not to think about the possibility that these chicks are shape-shifting aliens using the Olympic venue to select the juiciest victims. I don't know exactly why the image is so strong, but when they bring their legs backwards up over the top of their heads, I find myself hoping that Sigourney Weaver will show up with a fork lift and a flame thrower to put an end to it.

Anyway, I overheard someone asking if this is really a "sport". It certainly requires training, strength, agility, and coordination. It probably takes as much discipline as any other athletic endeavor, and yet...and yet it still looks like kids running around in the yard on a warm summer evening. Is that a sport?

As I've said before, I enjoy sports where there's either a ball or a finish line. I'm not such a fan of events where the winner is picked by subjective judging. Those events, rather than being designated as "sports", should probably be categorized as "reality television" and should end with Ryan Secrest telling the audience to phone in their votes. I suspect that some of the diving and gymnastics events might have ended differently under those conditions.

And come to think of it, maybe we should hire Chuck Barris to organize the next Olympics. Put a big gong beside the balance beam, and let David Hasselhoff smack that puppy whenever a routine goes bad.

[Unrelated topic: What's up with remaking the "Knight Rider" TV series? What's next -- "Gilligan's Island" starring Seth Green and and that guy from "King of Queens"? Lordy.]

Anyway, the subject of this blog is "geography", so I should probably get around to discussing the topic. Here's the deal: I was watching the men's marathon...which has a finish line, and is therefore a positively dandy sport in my opinion...when the announcer mentioned a runner from Eritrea. At first I thought had said that the runner had air-itreeia, which I assumed was some sort of tuburcular infection that would leave him wheezing on the roadside before the next aide station. But then I figured out that he was talking about the dude's home country.

OK, so maybe I don't keep up on current events as well as I should. But I'm pretty sure that there was no country called Eritrea on the globe when I was studying geography back in the one-room schoolhouse. Of course, the world has changed a lot since then, and I have kept up with some of it. I knew that Yugoslavia had gone away, for example (along with the lovely Yugo automobile, drat the luck),and that the Soviet Union now only exists within Dolph Lundgren movies...but some of the African restructuring had escaped my attention. Anyway, I looked up Eritrea on the web, and found that it is one of those little countries over by Djibouti, bordering on the Better Dead Than Red Sea, or some arabian fjords or something. The Capital is Asmara, which I would've thought was either the name of a skinny supermodel, or another type of pulmonary disease.

[Unrelated side note: Didn't K.C. and the Sunshine Band do a song about the turmoil in that area. "Shake Djibouti"? Hmm.]

The Olympics website had a really cool little geography tool that told about each country, when they joined the Games, and what sports they sent athletes too. It was really interesting, but unfortunately, they've removed the page already. But the point is that whether you consider ribbon-swinging a sport or not, there is much education to be gleaned from watching sports on TV. I'm urging you, from my position as a newly-educated north African scholar, to pay attention when you hear an announcer appearing to diagnose an athlete's lung condition -- you might be able to learn something about a new country, and about this world we live in.
That would be cool.

Happy to be of service. Have a great day!