Monthly Archives: February 2010

OH: “Should they have given Shaun White the Gold, and the Silver?”

OH: “Quit givin’ her an out, man.”

OH: “You wanna see Vonn fall, so Clay can cry?”

OH: “Two Silvers are better than Gold, I say.”

We watched the Moguls event in the Winter Olympics for women and men over the weekend.  While those athletes are no doubt highly talented at skiing moguls, I couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow the ‘mogul skiing’ has gotten lost in the “Mogul Event”.  For one thing, 1/2 of the scoring is about making the turns, but 1/4 of the scoring is about speed. So – simply put – the fewer mogul turns and the faster they are made down a single fall line is rewarded.  Several times, the announcers emphasized how important it was for the skiers to go fast by being slightly out-of-control and simply skip over the top of the bumps rather than actually make skillful turns on or around them, lest they slow down.  Lastly, the jumping is focused on two Kicker ramps placed within the course at specific intervals. The jumping is awesome – double twisting back flips – but one competitor commented on her success by saying that that she really trained for it with ‘thousands of jumps into the pool’.  What?

Call me a traditionalist, but I would probably have been in favor of  a longer course, more points for the ability to actually ski the cleanest line down a more varied and variegated run.

But then again, I don’t run the Olympics.

Monsters of Folk

Asia

Velvet Revolver

Them Crooked Vultures

[will grow as late-day office conversations continue]

Want to dive into a trivia hole from which you may never emerge? Start trying to think about all the cars that have been named after various animals, fish, and birds. I won’t even go into insects…

Anyway, I thought there was only one fish car — the Barracuda — but a quick strawpoll in the office coughed up two more, at least: the Corvette Stingray and the Hyundai Tiburon (which means ‘shark’ in spanish, so says my colleague).

So, because this is the kind of thing that keeps me up at night if I don’t write it down, here you go…

Fish Cars:

Barracuda

Stingray

Tiburon

Rambler Marlin

Animal Cars:

The Goat (Pontiac GTO, not technically the badge name but nickname)

Bronco

Pinto

Mustang

VW Rabbit

VW Touareg  (a touareg is a member of a north african nomadic tribe, which – as a human – technically is an animal)

Cobra (those Shelby road sports cars)

Jaguar

Cougar

Viper

Bird Cars:

AMC Eagle

Buick Skylark

Thunderbird