FRONTIER JUSTICE, Roman Numeral 19 Addition
Johnny Loftus
— In the wake of America’s precious medals haul in snowboarding, Our Dopey Media can’t resist a smirk when relating information about the winter games’ newest addition, or its righteously stoked athletes.
At the same time, NBC has chosen a format for its Olympic coverage obviously skewed towards an audience that’s no stranger to the curious colloquialisms spouted by US snowboarders in next- morning interviews with that fraudulent hipster Matt Lauer. Indeed, with fast cutting and flashy editing, informational dropins featuring backing music by current alternative heroes, and whizbang on-screen graphics akin to ESPN2’s X-Games, NBC should be happy, as these early snowboarding victories dovetail nicely with its youth-oriented brand positioning.
And yet, you still get morning hack Katie Couric flailing on a snowboard with Jeff Burton, as if whispering to cornbread America: “Look how silly all of this is.”
After Kelly Clark took home America’s first gold medal, hooting and hollering ensued about her headphones playing Blink-182 as she tore up the halfpipe. Well what’s the big deal, NBC? She’s 18, it helps her pull off sick moves you can’t even watch without cringing, and besides, you booked Smashmouth, Dave Matthews Band, and Foo Fighters to play your medal ceremonies. Remind me again who your target audience is? I thought so. There’s a reason curling is relegated to C-NBC.
And what about those medal ceremonies, anyway? The nightly event seems like a re-tooled version of the ceremonial finale at the end of Star Wars, when Luke, Han, and Chewy receive their medals of heroism from Princess Lea. As glacial blue mist swirls in the air, vaguely humanoid female handlers lead the bewildered athletes – still wearing their battle uniforms – onto a platform, at which point a woman dressed like galactic senator Orn Free Taa glides onstage to present the medals. In the background, a disembodied female voice coos in French and Japanese, lending a otherworldly Blade Runner feel to the whole operation.
I keep expecting Admiral Acabar to hobble out from stage left and begin a briefing on the impending Death Star attack.
— Overall, barring incessant yacking by moronic analysts (not even including bald goblin Scott Hamilton), NBC’s coverage of the XIX Winter Games has been satisfactory. After all, we already knew that Couric, Lauer, and suave dwarf Bob Costas were a bunch of squares. And at least there’s no way Bill Walton can horn on the Winter Games. So too much cynical yapping about the media coverage of this year’s games is wrong.
Instead, Glorious Noise will save said yapping in a large mason jar, and use it when Danny Kass arrives on the cover of HIGH TIMES in about two months.
JTL
It’s not Japanese. French and English are the “official” languages of the IOC. All ceremonial announcements are therefore read in both languages.Where can I get one of those Roots brand jackets and hats? I want a snowboard with a skeleton soldier airbrushed on the bottom. What brand of jackets do the Austrians wear? Something from flash Gordon, me thinks. If I can’t hook-up with Katie Couric, maybe I can hit on Julia Dragos, the local west michigan ABC news anchor, instead. Man, those Foo Fighters sure are good American patriots, playin at those Olympic games.
Jeff Burton is a NASCAR driver. Jake Burton is the founder of Burton Snowboards.
I can’t help it. I’ll always give cred to the Foos, Dave Grohl’s da man.I saw where that gear is being scalped out of sight. When some paunchy wall street exec starts wearing his Roots hat that he paid $1000 for to the office, they will no longer be cool.
Oh, and that Bill Walton comment cracked me up!!
You can bet that Danny Kass traded his Roots hat for a fat sack, boyeee.
Ok, I’ll give you Admiral Acabar, but nobody keeps Orn Free Taa in their back pocket. We’ll maybe nobody but bald goblins and suave dwarfs.
Doesn’t anyone find it odd that that U.S. gear from Roots is from Roots–which is a Canadian company. And Roots is also adorning the Canadians, too. (One could argue that the guys who started Roots actually did so in DTW before they moved across the border, but I’m not gonna buy that.) I imagine Phil Knight and the minions at Nike are pissed.BTW: As for all of the cracks about Hamilton’s dome: Be aware guys that he had testicular cancer, and one side effect of the treatment is hair loss. (He also was born with a genetic defect, which causes him to be tinier than the average diminutive figure skater.)
I’m just wondering if anyone else noticed he Viagra commercials during snowboarding…Ask your doctor about a free trial 6-pack…Maybe the people who were watching and thinking “foo-who?” and we know there are more of them than us, maybe the commercials were there for the middle-aged couch potatoes who want the life, but will never get there. Now, at least they can take a magic pill and f**k their wives like an Olympic champion.And on a side note Viagra works for women too, so if you do decide to dive in, share the wealth boys!
As I sit here watching bobsled on CBC and reading Johnny’s post, the commentator mentions how excited he is to be there, or: “If I were a snowboarder, I’d be ‘stoked.'” -ha!Oh, and Johnny – thanks for the Blade Runner connection – I’ve been thinking those ceremonies have a bizarre sort of Ridley Scott quality to them, but I couln’t quite figure it out…
What I want to know is why I can’t watch the freaking Olympics? Events are going on from very early morning until very late at night every day. We get three hours of coverage per night from the PeePeeCock network. 11 of every 30 minutes is devoted to commercials. Half of the remaining time is devoted to some stupid Ice Skating thing or another, and half of that remaining time is used for slick looking slow-mo bios on American athletes who we are always told are there for the gold. But in the remaining 10 minutes per hour of actual sports we find that that American athlete sucks; they’ve never even placed in a world class event, and the Germans end up winning.Witness sunday’s coverage, which was consumed by NASCAR! They might as well have been showing the WWF, it’s the same audience.
I don’t mean to gloat, Scotty, but that’s why the CBC is BOSS – I watched Olympics *all day* Sunday, in between doing four loads of laundry and playing enough SSX to make my thumbs throb. Cross Country, Curling, Giant Slalom – it was a great day.Then evening rolls around, and NBC (and CNBC, which had devoted the day to golf) gets around to showing us some of the games, and I got to see a very small portion of what I had seen during the day (Cross Country and, yes, Skating), only this time with the added benefit of *real American* sportscasters, who can really teach the Canadians a thing or two about yelling *really* loud into their mics, and about making stupid, racist remarks.
I used to live on in the southeast part of Michigan and I could watch the CBC. That was cool. I remember watching late night french films that I couldn’t even rent in Ann Arbor! Today I can at least listen to the BBC on my local public radio station. That’s about the only non US media outlet I can find. As for the Olympics….whattupwitdat?Remember 8 years ago when there was talk about many many channels of coverage via Cabel TV for things such as the Olympics? Looks like NBC learned that the best way to control when and how long we watch is to give us no choice whatsoever. And what do we have on cable? Right wing news channels, multiple MTVs, a Discovery channel that replays PBS wildlife documentaries ad nauseum, Bands On The Run, $50 pay per view boxing (which is fixed anyway), and Weekly WWF events. And to top that off, my local news still sucks.
Get off Juliette Dragos’s back Scotty5000! She does a fine job with West Michigan news and she’s a hot old broad to boot. You can’t discredit her standing as a journalist just because you’ve seen wasted in damn near every bar in town.As far as TV goes, give me the Food Network and I’m set for weeks.
If cable TV went to a complete pay-per-view system, i.e. you only paid for what you watched and didn’t have to “subscribe” to anything, we’d actually have decent content. Of course, the chance of this happening is slim to none, especially with the way that media businesses are run these days, in which having as much of a monopoly as possible is the way to win viewership, rather than by programming compelling shows.
Sab, I’m assuming that what you’re referring to as a “complete” pay per view system is something akin to a giant pay to order file system. Networks and otherwise content providers would make their programs accessible, you would access/download the program to watch whenever you pleased, and you’d be charged a fee for it. I could come home from work on a Thursday, select Friends, ER and the Discovery Channel’s latest offering and watch them that night as I pleased. I’d be billed for each (how much I don’t know, but hopefully only a fraction of what I would pay for digital cabele).To me, that would be a true pay per view system. The alternative would be a “build yor own” basic service, where you payed a per month fee for each channel you recieved.But you’re right, sab, by forcing us to pay for 35, 65 or 600 channels, the media mafia is offering us no choice other than to buy it all or none at all. Pay $85/month (the local rate for full Digital Cable through ATT in my town) or F-off! At this point, I’ve chosen to F-off, and I’m going it alone with my trusted rabbit ears. The only thing I miss is Showtime and HBO original programming. I guess I can rent Queer As Folk at blockbuster, eh?
Jolie and I recently switched to DirectTV and with HBO and the local network channels, it’s only like $56 bucks a month, which was cheaper than basic cable in Chicago with HBO.
I’d still rather drink my $56, 16 ounces at a time. I might have to start showing up at Pat’s house on Soprano’s night, though.