You Know What I Hate?

When the swimmer takes the turn, and NBC superimposes the name of the leader on top of the lane, so you can't see the turn or the first few strokes. As if all the television audience cares about is who's winning, not the swimming. As if!

(I also think Phelps should have immediately turned to his right and shaken hands with Cavic, and, you know, if he was a woman swimmer, he would have.) (Well, actually, if he was a woman swimmer he would have hugged Cavic, which leaves me kind of cold, but the point is the sportsman--woman--ship, and I think the women swimmers have it all over the men.)

(And one of the many reasons I am not an Olympic athlete is that I think getting a silver medal in the Olympics is a huge triumph, not a failure.) (See women's gymnastics, albeit a few days ago.) (And speaking of women's gymnastics, given that we have a 12-year-old girl in our family, and given that we live in one of the American centers of Chinese adoption, we happen to know about a half-dozen 12- and 13-year-old girls who were born in China, and let me tell you [along with everyone else who is telling you], those Chinese gymnasts would fit right in with M and her peeps, and they'll definitely be having their 16th birthdays a few years from now. [Because Shawn Johnson may be tiny, and all of them may have a distinct lack of cleavage, but you can see it in the face, and Shawn Johnson has a face like our teenage babysitters, not M.])