EXPRESS LINES
‘Great news! I made varsity curling!” said no one ever. Yet this year’s Winter Olympics, probably the most boring and least watched, is so tedious that to liven things up and attract a whole new audience to the Games, they’ve added doubles to a sport no one cares about: Curling. Yes, now there’s mixed-doubles curling, which apparently doesn’t mean that you and your best gay friend give each other perms. It means that instead of just one gender brushing a big fruitcake looking thing with a giant squeegee broom back and forth across the ice, men and women get to do it together. This mind you is probably less difficult than getting a man to push a broom at top speed across the floor at home. But the insane sport, which must have been invented by a couple of bored high school janitors who had to sweep the gym floor every night, is about as exciting as these Olympics get. It’s worse than actually eating the fruitcake. And if curling is just weird, there’s another thing that is just flat-out creepy about this Winter Olympics. It’s those brother and sister ice dancers, Maia and Alex Shibutani, aka, the “Shib Sibs.” The only way my brother would ever lift me up and grab me is if I was choking to death and needed the Heimlich maneuver, and even then he might decide it’s just easier to let me die.
Now interestingly, during this same week, the Westminster Dog Show was on. While some might not think this is a sport, I disagree. You think it’s easy to trot around a ring in health shoes with a pouffy dog in a matching hairdo, while dressed in a getup that looks like you bought it from a prison catalog or the pet aisle at Costco?
Tragic truth: When watching Westminster is more exciting than watching the Winter Olympics, we got a problem.
Not that the Summer Olympics can’t be just as dreadful and corporatized. But at least then there’s guys in Speedos, which are so tiny that if a man showed up in one at your local pool you’d call the cops, or maybe just figure he’s from Germany where man thongs are normal.
On the good news side, at least during this Olympics we don’t have to put up with pervy Matt Lauer dressed like a yeti.
But the question remains: Why DO countries fight like they’re going to war for the right to host the games of international peace and brotherhood — since at least 10 countries have gone nearly bankrupt hosting the thing?
No clue. And worse, what’s left once the Speedos and the yetis go home? Well, Brazil has a slimy, rusted-out, condemned swimming pool to remember the Olympics by, and now South Korea has a shiny new curling rink. Divorce Hollywood Style: Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux have split up. So who gets Justin Theroux’s only shirt? . . . Divorce Georgia Style: A Woman in Augusta was arrested for trying to rip off her boyfriend’s moving man parts after he demanded that she alone clean up the doggy doody around the house. She told the arresting cops, “You’re damn right I was going to rip his ---s off.” Well, she does have a point . . . . Trolling for Panthers: Hate-filled white supremacist internet trolls have taken to social media to use actual images of battered women, (one, ironically, is the wife of Trumper Rob Porter) to claim that these are images of white women who were beaten by black people at showings of “Black Panther” in theaters. Meantime, it’s white gun nuts who have turned movie theaters and concert venues into killing fields.