Recommended

NewMexiKen has finished with last week’s New Yorker and three items that are online merit your consideration.

Anthony Lane writes about the second week of the Olympics in Letter from Beijing. It’s a superb piece, especially as a counterweight to the TV coverage. Strongly recommended.

Ryan Lizza writes about politics in Colorado and the new Democratic party in The Code Of The West. Insightful.

And Janet Frame’s 1954 short story Gorse Is Not People is as sad a piece of short fiction as you’d ever care to read.

Best line of the Olympics, so far

“Pete McEntegart of SI.com, on Olympic sprint sensation Usain Bolt: ‘He’s so fast, he’s literally invisible to American viewers until 13 hours after he finishes.’”

Sideline Chatter

Maryland My Maryland

“Katie Hoff, with her three swimming medals, and Michael Phelps, with his eight golds, call the same Baltimore suburb home,” pointed out Bob Molinaro of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot. “If Towson, Md., were a country, it would rank among the top 20 medal winners.”

Sideline Chatter

NBC sucks

Once again NBC shafts half the nation by tape-delaying the USA-Argentina basketball game.

It’s live, but only in the eastern time zone.

The Olympic Games

Precisely.

Most people will stay home and watch the events on TV, having no other option, but be warned: what NBC chooses to broadcast is not the Olympic Games. They offer selected clips of selected American athletes, largely in major sports, sometimes hours after the event, whereas, if the bruised Olympic ideal still means anything, it means loosing yourself, for a couple of weeks, from the bonds of your immediate loyalties and tastes. It means watching live sports you didn’t know you were interested in, played by countries you’ve never been to, at three o’clock in the morning—not just watching them, either, but getting into them, deluding yourself that you grasp the rules, offering the fruits of your instant expertise to anyone who will listen (“I think you’ll find the second waza-ari counts as ippon”), and, most bewildering of all, losing your heart.

Anthony Lane from Beijing. It’s a good article — and even if you disagree with the above, which is almost an aside, you may well appreciate Lane’s review of the first week.

Most irritating line of the day, so far

“Cannot play media. Sorry, this media is not available in your territory.”

BBC SPORT

That’s what you see if you try and watch the video of say Jamaica’s Usain Bolt winning the 100m in world record time UNTIL NBC IS GOOD AND READY FOR YOU TO SEE IT. Bastards.

A race of less than 10 seconds and he’s cruising with a big lead. Awesome.

Bolt, is that the greatest name ever for the “world’s fastest human,” or not?

12,000-calorie-a-day diet

Here’s [Michael] Phelps’s typical menu. (No, he doesn’t choose among these options. He eats them all, according to the [New York] Post.)

Breakfast: Three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise. Two cups of coffee. One five-egg omelet. One bowl of grits. Three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar. Three chocolate-chip pancakes.

Lunch: One pound of enriched pasta. Two large ham and cheese sandwiches with mayo on white bread. Energy drinks packing 1,000 calories.

Dinner: One pound of pasta. An entire pizza. More energy drinks.

WSJ Health Blog

The voice of Beijing’s ‘Smiling Angel’

When Lin Miaoke, 9, belted out “I Sing for My Country” as the Chinese flag entered the national stadium, she became an instant celebrity and was quickly dubbed a “smiling angel.” The image of her dressed in a pretty red dress appeared around the world.

But she apparently wasn’t the one singing. Chen Qigang, the ceremony’s music director, told state broadcaster CCTV that the voice hundreds of millions of people heard was that of 7-year-old Yang Peiyi. Yang had the voice and was supposed to perform but was yanked at the last minute because she had crooked teeth.

Los Angeles Times

Here’s the video of the song.

Performance enhancing

Will all these swimming world records, someone better give a drug test to the pool.

The Olympics Sap-o-Meter hits a record high

Undaunted, the Sap-o-Meter stayed up late churning the treacle, and it’s got a new record to show for it: an inspirational 38 Sap Points.

If you watch enough NBC, you know that there’s a flag-waving mom behind every extraordinary achievement. Well, supporting last night’s record-breaking performance were a remarkable 13 mothers—that is, 13 mentions of the words mom or mother. NBC also continued to dream big, with a robust six mentions for the second consecutive night.

Slate Magazine

Olympic Notes

James Fallows continues to have interesting stuff about the Chinese Olympics.

Athlete without Compelling Personal Drama Expelled from Olympics

“A member of the U.S. Olympic diving team was disqualified from competition today when it was learned that he did not have a sufficiently compelling human storyline to exploit on the NBC telecast of the worldwide sporting event.”

Borowitz Report

Stunning

Here’s the video of the U.S. victory in the men’s 400m freestyle in case you missed it (as I did).

Exciting stuff.

May require software download.

Headline of the day

“Michael Phelps and relay teammates relish their golden moment”

Los Angeles Times

Umm, didn’t they all swim the same distance? And wasn’t it Lezak in fact that was the hero?

This and that

School starts this week in Albuquerque — Wednesday is the first full day. NewMexiKen never started school before Labor Day and none of my kids did either. What’s with this August-to-May school year anyway?

I bought regular gasoline yesterday for $3.58 (I’m rounding off the tenth of a cent from now on). I was thinking I shouldn’t fill up (that is, I should buy short), because the price will continue to drop at least until election day.

What percentage of time during the Olympic coverage on NBC is actually spent watching athletes do athlete stuff? 10 percent? 15 percent?

There are rumors that McCain will pledge just one term to offset the age issue. I know an even better way — no terms. The Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch tells us Why McCain would be a mediocre president. “A careful look at McCain’s biography shows that he isn’t prepared for the job. His resume is much thinner than most people think.” Amazingly, McCain is even more of a dilettante than W.

Remember my rant about Comcast and the comment from a representative of Comcast? Well, it seems the outreach is real:

From a sparse desk dominated by two computer screens in the new Comcast Center here, Mr. Eliason uses readily available online tools to monitor public comments on blogs, message boards and social networks for any mention of Comcast, the nation’s largest cable company. When he sees a complaint like Mr. Dilbeck’s, he contacts the source to try to defuse the problem.

“When you’re having a two-way conversation, you really get to clear the air,” Mr. Eliason said.

The New York Times has more — Complaining Bloggers Have a Cable Company’s Ear.

The iPhone is great except for battery life, which is OK at best.

Before Phelps

During an Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) swim meet, Duke Paoa Kahinu Mokoe Hulikohola Kahanamoku broke the world record in the 100-yard freestyle swim by 4.6 seconds in Honolulu Harbor on August 11, 1911. Officials were so incredulous at his time that the AAU would not recognize his feat until many years later. Duke Kahanamoku swam using a unique combination of an Australian crawl stroke with a flutter kick to add speed.

Known as Duke, or the Duke, he was a three-time Olympic gold medal winner. He broke another record and won a gold medal for the 100-meter freestyle swim at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics where he also won a silver medal in the 200-meter relay event. The 1916 Olympics were not held because of World War I. Kahanamoku broke his own record at the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, winning gold in both the 100-meter freestyle and as a member of the U.S. 800-meter-relay team. At the 1924 Olympics in Paris, he won a silver medal in the 100-meter freestyle (his brother, Samuel Kahanamoku, won the bronze medal and Johnny Weismuller captured the gold). Kahanamoku also was an alternate member of the U.S. water polo team that won a bronze in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics.

The Library of Congress has more on Duke Kahanamoku, the Father of Surfing.

Another Olympic line of the day

“There was much talk about whether some of the pixies on the Chinese women’s gymnast team are really 16 years old (they have to be at least 16 at some point during 2008 in order to compete). There are rumors that some are only 14, or even as young as 12. But that’s nonsense. One of those girls was clearly 9.”

Joel Achenbach

Best Olympics line of the day

“If I have it figured correctly, when it’s noon here, it’s 1 a.m. tomorrow at the Olympics and sometime last night on NBC.”

David Thomas of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram quoted at Sideline Chatter.

Miss the opening ceremony?

NBC has the video.

I like to watch

Don’t like the Olympic coverage that’s on? Try watching online.

There’s nothing on as this is written because it is the middle of the night in China, but at times you can watch full live coverage of any event without commentary.

The same link will let you find customized TV listings for your location and cable provider. At least NINE channels are carrying events! NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, USA, Universal HD, Telemundo, and more.

Did you know handball was an Olympic event?

“Chauvinism” and Olympic TV

Again, James Fallows with some Olympian insight.

This is normal! I switched just now to Korean TV, where I saw the Korean team playing soccer. Then NHK, the Japanese network, with a badminton doubles match involving a Japanese team.

The Olympic Games are for “the youth of the world,” but they’re organized and scored by countries. It’s no surprise that countries treat them as vehicles of national pride, and assume that their people will be most interested in their own athletes. So anybody who was saving up to write an angry letter, blog post, or op-ed about NBC’s chauvinistic coverage: don’t bother! They’re actually more above-the-fray than most.

WiiBowling, WiiTennis, we ready?

Anyone up for a more modern pentathlon?

As in an Olympic event combining something more 21st century than the current combo of fencing, shooting, swimming, horseback riding and running.

“Its replacement could be WiiSports, a pentathlon of tennis, bowling, golf, baseball and boxing,” wrote Lorne Chan of the San Antonio Express-News. “There’s plenty of skill involved with perfecting the tennis power serve or getting the right spin on a bowling ball.

“There would also be the added joy of seeing a 9-year-old win the gold medal.”

Sideline Chatter

One hour into the Olympic opening ceremony….

James Fallows watches the Olympics opening ceremony in real time and tells you what to look for when you watch it 11 hours later in NBC time.

The first 35 minutes sound awesome!