Passion Lives Here

After the Olympic mascots (which officially became self-parody with the Atlanta "Whatzit"), the first thing I would eliminate is the tacky slogans and mottoes of each Games. That said, my thoughts after the first few days of the XX Winter Olympiad:

• Does anyone really acknowledge or remember the Roman-numeral ordinal label of any Olympics? I've only ever read, heard, or said the year and city when discussing previous years' games. It's just as bad as the Super Bowl. At least the Olympics only add I every IV years...the Super Bowl got to the "enough, already" point with XXXVIII.
• Why did they decide to give out CDs on a ribbon instead of medals?
• I didn't care four years ago, nor do I care now, what Apolo Ohno's middle name is.
• If, after reading the above, you immediately thought to yourself, "Anton," NBC was happy, the US skating officials were happy, some marketing wizard was happy, and I died a little inside.
• Coming up in 9 minutes, more figure skating. I swear, if NBC showed more than four consecutive minutes of any other sport without mixing in some figure skating, there'd be a riot.
• Speaking of figure skating, I doubt it's keeping with the true Olympic spirit of competition to contest events judged not by who's faster or stronger than whom, but by who wears the most sequins and represents the country that corrupted the most judges.
• Do they ever have to Zamboni the luge run?
• Cross-country skiing is the winter version of race-walking.
• For every minute of actual competition shown on NBC, there are three minutes of backstory, vignettes, or pointless interviews that make watching their coverage a true ordeal. This story pretty much sums it up.
• Bob Costas -- zip it.