[Business Day One] “He Looks Like A Shark”
I spent a long weekend on the Cape, and despite the availability of lobster rolls, sandy beaches, mini golf and hot tubs, my attention kept drifting to the Olympics. I didn’t care much for Athens, and I don’t really follow the winter events, so this has been the first time in at least a decade that the international competition mattered to me.
I’m not sure what spurred the interest, really. I’ve done my best to keep pre-Olympic hype on a slow drip instead of an overdose-causing deluge, and picked my stories carefully. I decided that I’d care about Michael Phelps, the US Men’s Basketball Team, and any other Americans that I happened to notice competing when I flipped the television on. The results of this have been good so far. I’m able to pick up and watch whenever I want and also have specific races or matches to look forward to.
The Olympics is best enjoyed as a grand three week buffet. Try a little of everything, find out what you like, and keep going back to that over the course of the affair. Don’t binge or you’ll get tired of it. Don’t avoid it completely or you won’t be able to talk about how awesome it all was afterwards. Speaking as a buffet and sports enthusiast, I feel this analogy holds.
So try to log some time watching. Despite the generally gruesome political and economic climate of late, there’s some splendid purity to be seen in the pool, on the court and in the sand.