kata Drew

photo credit: Andy in Beijing

If you watched the opening ceremony of the Olympics on NBC hosted by Bob Costas, please tell me if you also felt like Bob was on several occasions speaking condescendingly of the more obscure nations with few participants. It was like he couldn’t wait for them to parade on by and get off the screen. Anyways…

Ralph Lauren did a great job with the American parading outfit: white trousers, navy sports coat and white beret. Very smart. Very American. Well done.

Proud of Ralph, less of Bob.

“With the greatest respect to women, football is the most beautiful thing in the world.”
-Slaven Bilic

photo credit: mammaDJ

Big props to the Manchester United boys for pulling off a win over Chelsea today in the Champions League Final which ended in a brutal, rainy shootout. After following all 100+ minutes on the BBC’s World Service channel on XM, the difference between professional European soccer and professional American football emerged.

During the Final there were no referee time outs, no TV time outs, no commercial breaks, no half time show, no cheer leaders, no ostensible sponsorship, no family-friendly atmosphere, no multi-million dollar commercials; just ~120 minutes of solid, professional soccer (however, sometimes it didn’t come across all that professional!). It wasn’t about some commercial enterprise, it was about watching (or in my case, listening to) the best European soccer of 2008. The match didn’t even start until 10:45pm Moscow time and ran past 2:00am. Not the kind of family-friendly entertainment that is the Superbowl (but, I guess the Superbowl isn’t that family-friendly anymore, is it? Can you say “wardrobe malfunction”?).

Anyways, it’s still decidedly about the sport. I think…