Today's the day

Finally, the time has come. Today is the start of the Winter Olympics! I love the Olympics, especially the winter games. I like to watch just about every competition in the winter-- even the curling! (My Dad used to curl in Madison) Perhaps my excitement over the Winter Olympics was first sparked by our hometown speed-skating champion Eric Heiden in 1980. I seem to remember there were a lot of athletes from Wisconsin at the Olympics in 1980, and after they came home, the city held a huge celebration for them at Camp Randall (the UW football stadium). It was really fun. Of course the skiing (primarily downhill) is my favorite event to watch, and this year I think I'll recognize even more of the skiers because I've been watching a lot of the world cup races on TV this winter. I'm especially looking forward to watching live coverage of all of the events, given that we're in the same time zone as Torino. That means I won't have to watch all the packaged programming that shows in prime time in the US with all the stupid background human interest stories (that somehow always seem to be tragic) when only the top competitors are shown. I want to see ALL the skiers go down the hill, not just the Americans!

One might wonder why, if we're living so close to Italy, we're not going to the Olympics. That's a good question. I'm seriously tempted to get on a train this weekend and just show up and see if we can get tickets.

Not to be outdone by the Olympics, today is also the day that German music video channels (MTV and Viva) will be premiering the next Madonna video: "Sorry". They've been advertising it constantly. They'll show it at 3:30 this afternoon. I'm not sure why they have to give an exact time. It reminds me of when the Michael Jackson "Thriller" video came out in 1983. Do you remember how they promoted it? It was first shown at like 5:00 on a Friday afternoon and everyone watched. Well, at least everyone in my world...