olympic notes: review

well, i gotta say thanks to my blogmates for TRULY picking up the slack and writing a whole helluva lot while i was (mostly) off the grid in vancouver.... very *ahem* surprising, and enormously well done... i'm incredibly proud of you dudes and your insistance on capital letters... ;)

with two days til the flames suit up again, i've got juuuuust enough time to do a superfast olympic review. i'm gonna do it in reverse cause it'll be easier... feel free to skip over parts that don't interest you.

closing ceremonies
according to duthie and laflamme, the theme of the closing ceremonies was "canadian humour," which pretty much explains right off why nickelback, simple plan, and hedley all shared a stage, or why avril lavigne sang motionless in stilettos.... the show started where it left off in the opening ceremony, with the final ice crystal in the fortress of solitude cauldron being "pulled" out of the floor by a mime ("see ?" says my buddy SV texted me from the rafters in bc place, "it was a chicken ! no one is to blame, and it's also hilarious.")... too bad the comedians featured (shatner, o'hara) weren't funny, and the projectionist missed his cue, thereby totally effing up the michael j fox lever gag.... on the other hand, the michael buble number (complete with rockette-style mountie girls, enormous inflatable beavers, and oldschool tablehockey players) was pretty solid. i like buble, and i like tongue-in-cheek over-the-top humour where canadians can make fun of themselves.....

gold medal hockey: canada v. USA
i gotta say: the states probably should've tried to net a couple more goals during the parts of the game where canada seemed to either get bored, not care much, or fall into the defensive shell. ultimately, this is where the game was tied up, and i was in no way convinced that we were gonna be the ones to score in OT. i will also freely admit that moments before crosby tallied the "golden goal," i was bitching about wasting him on a line with iggy.... ;) in a postgame interview with ryan rishaud, crosby was asked to describe the game winner, "i don't really remember. i just shot it from around here, i think it went fivehole." no doubt about it, the entire country went apeshit, and crosby is inarguably the face of hockey canada, and they sure couldn't be more ecstatic..... bob nicholson ruffled sid's hair in congratulations like a father, and jaques rogge rightly paused before placing the medal around his neck ---a moment for the crowd to applaud him....

the other little things that amused me about the gold medal game:
-whatever bobbylu said to pattykane in the post game handshake line
-whatever iggy said to crosby while skating towards the team photo setup
-dave hodge saying "well done to the losers of this game."
-commenter and friend, goad, texting "just playing scrabble. why, is there something going on ?" midway through the second period.
-eric staal joining the triple gold club
-a lot of people seeming to know the iggy holler, including sid the kid, as stated in this article (well worth the read):

"All of a sudden he was yelling, going for the net," said Iginla. "I was hoping I wasn't too late. He was screaming ... yelling 'Here Iggy Iggy Iggy ..."

-this license plate, seen around salmon arm enroute back to calgary:


quarterfinal: sweden v. slovakia
hockey is superfun when you don't really care who wins. i was pulling for foppa and the boys but wasn't overly disappointed when they lost. the game was actually pretty lame for a QF, and the most notable stuff came in the third when the slovaks were protecting their lead. one defensive tactic they employed was lining up all five skaters on the red line in hopes of 'trapping' the opposition. mikeH referred to this as the "red rover defense." the only other gamenote was that lundqvist was noticably pissed off the coach wasn't pulling him out with 1:45 left (and sweden down a goal). he would skate about ten feet out of the net and throw his arms up in disgust. i'm sure he was yelling "WHAT THE FUCK !!?!" but we certainly couldn't hear'im.... ;)

qualification playoff: canada v. germany
i still can't believe i went to this game.... it was so incredibly fun, it should have been illegal. mikeH did a pretty good summary below and i don't have a whole lot to add, aside from noting that while he was in the bathroom counting the number of provinces on the poster by the urinal, i was doing this:
most awesome olympian
jon montgomery is my new hero, pretty much. there's nothing like a redheaded herb tarlec jumpin' on a cafeteria tray and sliding at 150kph down an ice track in a full-body speedo. add to that the fact that he holds a jug of beer like a man, and chugs it like a pro.... oh, and he has the best description of skeleton ever.... of course, i think joannie rochette is truly amazing for accomplishing what she did under duress (mind you, jasey jay also overcame some serious adversity ---aka, the elements)... i went to university with bobsleigh gold medalist, heather moyse, and i KNOW she's a rad chick. she was my buddy's girlfriend back in the day, and she was always way cool. now she's way cooler cause she grooved out on the top of the podium with an olympic gold around her neck..... oh, and i guess the entire canadian womens' hockey team are in the running for getting their drink on at centre ice post-win.... tough call, but i'll go with montgomery FTW.

most awesome accident while i was in vancouver
the winner in this category will be the fact that i bought qualification playoff tickets and they turned out to feature canada.... running into jeremy roenick and craig button (not together) at GM place was kinda cool, and discovering the anza club on west 8th and ontario (a seriously amazing place to hang/drink during a game) were also incidents in the running for the title.... as was catching clara hughes and her bronze on the train.... really, it was no contest, though.

other final olympic notes:
-i was the official tripleJ drive show correspondant for the vancouver games. i didn't get accreditation, but i WAS offered an expired guest pass for their 2009 xmas party.
-i totally would've bought a dan boyle #22 tshirt but they didn't make any... my options were luongo, iginla, pronger, niedermayer, and crosby. go figure....
-i could have bid on a dan boyle #22 jersey in silent auction but that's so not my thing, and REALLY not my thing for $380.
-the czech republic and slovakia have been seperate countries for about 17 years but people still refer to them currently as czechoslovakia with absurd frequency.... this drives me mental.
-mikeH owes me money :P