• I wish I were a hockey fan. I missed the game and it didn’t destroy me.  And that’s the problem.  It’s great to be an individual with your own drumbeat in the drum line and all, but it sure is fun to be instep with the rest of the world who loves hockey and give yourself the gift of elation or heartbreak when your team does what it ends up doing.  Vancouver was a sea of maple-leaf-red after the Canadian team won gold.  I want to care enough about something to wear red for it and bump into people on the street while screaming things.  How come I’m stuck loading the dishwasher in a state of envy and indifference?  I will not let this happen again.  I will watch.  I will embrace the chaos, the fight, and the inability to really see the puck on TV.

• The Canadians didn’t just own the podium, they paid off the mortgage, raised five kids, and buried all their dead pets there. Fourteen gold medals.  They deserve it.  If nothing else, for being in our shadow all the time.  (Marsha, Marsha, Marsha.)  I’m not sure why the Americans are called the winningest team or the most decorated.  We (you know, Lindsey, Shani, Apolo and me) got the most coin necklaces, but bronze has only the fraction of the importance that gold does:  He’s worth his weight in bronze.  It’s a bronze opportunity.  Nothing bronze can stay.  Bronze Girls.  Bronze Gate Bridge.  Fool’s bronze (even the fools won’t have it).  Bronze digger (hey, that might be me).

• The US men’s four-man bobsledding team ended a sixty-two-year honor drought and won gold. Glad I didn’t hear this statistic before.  I didn’t know how bad I had it.  But no disrespect, seriously.  I’m always happy for people to shock themselves by how cool they are.  What I want to know is how you get in to that sport.  Is there a pee wee bobsledding league or is all training done in saucers?

In any case, thanks for joining me here at Saving Private Mommy for your primary source of irrelevant Olympic coverage.  I had a great time being rubber cemented to the TV and the laptop.  Now we, the good spectator citizens of the world, must rest up for more adventures in the summer of 2012 in London.  It’s going to take of lot of napping between now and then.

And coming up, is the gorgeous spring outside that nature will officially hand over in the next few weeks. In anticipation, the trees in my neighborhood are sprouting their pink blossoms and the hills are soggy and green.  Ahead are longer, warmer days, and a big boot to comfort foods, plus the Easter Bunny and my girls turning three and six and me turning thirty-nine and my husband, too.  And my oldest turning eight much later.

I hope you’ll join me as I put my feet up for a bit.  I’m going to need my dogs to be in good shape and perhaps you do, too.  I have telemarketers to take on and a governing board of the PTA to make fun of.  Please check back.

And now, a little March poem from our favorite spinster, Emily Dickinson.

To March

Dear March, come in!
How glad I am!
I looked for you before.
Put down your hat–
You must have walked–
How out of breath you are!
Dear March, how are you?
And the rest?
Did you leave Nature well?
Oh, March, come right upstairs with me,
I have so much to tell!

I got your letter, and the birds’;
The maples never knew
That you were coming,–I declare,
How red their faces grew!
But, March, forgive me–
And all those hills
You left for me to hue;
There was no purple suitable,
You took it all with you.

Who knocks? That April!
Lock the door!
I will not be pursued!
He stayed away a year, to call
When I am occupied.
But trifles look so trivial
As soon as you have come,
That blame is just as dear as praise
And praise as mere as blame.

At a time like this, the only option is to quote Robert Frost (just ask S.E. Hinton or the writers of daytime television drama).

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Okay that felt good.  No matter how much this poem has been exploited and abused by bad writers (not you S.E. Hinton), you can’t argue with these words.  And you can’t argue with the fact that short track is about to become boring again.

When I first saw Apolo skate in the Olympics, I was  three months pregnant with our first child.  That was when she was still a boy and dangerously close to being named Apolo, though we would have honored the Greeks with a correct spelling.  (We could have name her Apolla, I suppose.  Apolla Antonia Ohnoyoudidn’t Koenigin.)   I was on Winter Break from my job as a high school teacher, and in a lasting bout of pregnancy nausea, I endured the hours of the week on the couch that felt much more like a boat.  Apolo eased my pain.

Well since that time, our baby Apolla has grown to be seven years old.  My child can be used as a unit of measurement for Apolo’s career.  Judging by her height and her ability to sing harmony, Apolo’s done well for himself in Olympic racing.  Perhaps that’s why I find his decline or exit so sad.  When I became a mom, he became an Olympian.  I suppose it’s good that he’s retiring.  I don’t want to have a fourth child at the age of 42, though it’s certainly possible…hmmmmnn.

Though in the end, we must all kiss certain things good-bye.  Our youth, our reproductive years, the ability to unload groceries without saying ‘ouch’.  And there is a very fleeting period of perfection in the pieces of our lives.  Perfection that is so easy, delicate, sumptuous.  Like the time during which our children are old enough to watch Sponge Bob so we can sleep in, but young enough to still want hugs all the time.  Or when you are young enough to look good, but old enough to not be so dumb.  Or when you directed that wonderful high school theater production, with that magic minute-and-a-half where the meaning of the play flooded the audience with inspiration and emotion.  And your mother-in-law was there watching.  And now she isn’t anywhere.

That’s not to say old people don’t have fun.  When Apolo is 58 he’s going to be happily drinking margaritas and eating chips and salsa with Kate Hudson, and he will be much happier than he was when he was courting the ice.  Talk about cold.  Lifeless.  Just lays there.  But those moments of brilliance or triumph can’t be canned, jarred, preserved or even tape-delayed.  Unless you’re a visual artist, but they dress weird.  And even then, the triumph is not on the canvas that hangs in wanna-be permanence before the crowds that don’t get it.  Or think it’s nice or love it.  The triumph is in the moment that the tube of ochre screamed to be squirted on the otherwise cool palette, and threatened to destroy the comfort of blue fading to gray, and did and was.  perfect.  Those moments can’t be frozen in canvas or on ice or in archives.  Those moments exist for a fractions of minutes of our days.

At the risk of sounding more Ohno-centric this Olympics, I would like to thank Apolo for enlivening our spirits for the past eight years.  I wish him well as he begins the next phase of his life.  And I wish all of us well as we find a new hero or heroine on which our hopes can hitch a ride.  Lindsey Vonn has crashed way too many times for this honor.  It’s scary riding in her fannypack.  And if I cry with her about any more of her victories, I won’t be able to respect myself.

Here’s looking at you, kid.

Image via Wikipedia

South Korea’s astonishingly graceful and precise Kim Yu-Na won gold in women’s figure skating, scoring a world-record breaking 228.56, thus smashing, kicking, and insulting the previous record by 18 points.  The record held by Kim Yu-Na.  What does this mean?  Never in the history of Olympic skating have all the judges been in such a good mood.  JUST KIDDING.  Yu-Na earned every hundredth of a point of that score by quite literally flying above the competition, like a rotating swan, injected with helium, and maneuvered by a pre-programmed weight counterbalance system switched to the ‘on’ position by her coach, Canadian silver-medal Olympian, Brian Orser.  He was that other Brian, who in a fierce battle of blading Brians in the 1988 Winter Games,  lost to the very tall, thin one named Boitano, who took gold and went on to be lovingly satirized by the South Park creators, famous for their revolutionary, cinematic triumphs:  pooing and vomiting puppets.  Brian O. said that the loss only haunted him for about…10 years.  Whoa.  Is it inappropriate to ask what would Brian Boitano have done?

But now Brian O. can take some credit for helping Yu-Na usher in the gold that he narrowly missed.  Now if you are feeling the temptation to say, “Those who can’t do, teach,” I will quickly reply, “Those who can’t do and can’t teach say, ‘Those who can’t do, teach,’” so please don’t say that.  It’s simplistic, and it’s not nice.  And it’s okay to be the second best in THE WORLD.  That doesn’t put you in the “can’t do” category.  It just puts you in the won’t quite be Scott Hamilton category.  Or Nadia Comenici.  Even she couldn’t be Scott Hamilton in the 1980 Olympics.  Did you see her decline?  In the end, she really wanted to be Bart Conner anyway, which is why she married him and had his baby.  If you can’t be them, replicate them.  I’m sure Yoko Ono felt the same.

But back to the superstar, please.  Yu-Na brings in eight-million dollars a year and, according to the media, has had enormous pressure to earn gold in order to keep her sponsors, her biggest being Nike, Kookmin Bank, and Hyundai.  Really?  Drop Kim Yu-Na, who threatens even Scott Hamilton’s place on the podium in the event called Olympic cuteness? This just goes to show you that winning a silver medal is far more reprehensible than telling your wife that you’re getting ice cream, but really you’re dining out from a menu of cocktail waitresses, porn stars, and gold diggers.  (Nike did not dump Tiger Woods, for the record.)

So South Korea has one more reason to smile, even wider.  Add that to the fact that they have a train that can travel 217 mph.  At least the US still gets to keep Apolo Anton Ohno, even though his first name has only one ‘l’.  And unfortunately, Dancing With The Stars isn’t going anywhere either.

Visit Saving Private Mommy tomorrow for more Olympic coverage and, quite possibly, another irrelevant mention of Apolo Anto Ohno.

And your Babble vote wouldn’t hurt either.  Thanks for reading this far.  You are an Olympic reader.

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Image via Wikipedia

1.  Lindsey Vonn broke her pinkie after another day of crashing into the mountain side at 60 miles an hour.  There were whiteout conditions on Whistler Mountain, but with all these injuries, it might be time for her to consider that, maybe, skiing just isn’t her thing.  I quit the PTA over much less.

2.  Lindsey Vonn and Julia Mancuso have been described as “frenemies.”  Why does this surprise anyone?  When a blond and a brunette spend a lot of time together, no matter what the arena, the brunette is going to be resentful at some point.

3.  South Korea was disqualified in the women’s 1500 meter relay, and yielded the gold to China, the silver to Canada, and the bronzy spot on the podium to the US team who looked like they also thought they were a joke.  Why do I think Apolo is going to have to pay for this in the 500 meter sprint?

4.  I’m completely stressed out for Dutch coach Gerard Kempkers who, in the 10,000 meter speedskating race, directed his would-be gold medal skater, Sven Kramer, to change lanes which DISQUALIFIED HIM.  I can’t imagine the level of guilt that poor coach feels.  Ruining someone’s life is not a great thing for a coach to do.  I felt the same way when I was a high school drama teacher and I would post the cast list.  I can be credited with giving the world a few more surgeons.  You’re welcome, world.

5.  My husband indirectly stated that the women on the bobsled teams have nice butts.  I asked him how he noticed since I was so busy worrying about how they were surviving riding the track upside down with their helmets carving the ice and being EJECTED from the bobsled onto the frozen chute.  He said that it was SO EASY TO SEE what their butts look like, and he reenacted the departure where they push the bobsled back and fourth to get momentum and their butts bob up and down.  Click here to see this action with a wardrobe malfunction bonus.  My husband tried to make up for this remark by saying that he wanted me to be an Olympic bobsledder for Halloween.  There really are so many ways to say, I love you.

6.  I would like to give a shout out to the real heroes of the Olympics: the unsung champions of the biathlon and curling.  It’s true, these athletes are uncelebrated  because no one watches them.  They conquer in obscurity.  You could run into a three-time gold medal biathlete at Safeway and never even know it.  It’s one thing to fail in private, it’s another to be the best in the world IN PRIVATE.  You could die from the irony alone.  And it sort of defeats the purpose of conquering the world if no one knows about it.  And while we are in the safety of our living rooms or having a pleasant experience buying dishes at Target, they are having the (race?  what do you call it?) of their lives.  And we don’t even KNOW we’re missing it.  We just shop away while they ski, breathe heavily, and shoot things.  Or push things while lunging as their teammates sweep ice, quite furiously.  On the other hand, Apolo Anton Ohno eats a burrito and we all know about it.  It’s on the news at 5, 11 and it continues to be replayed into the wee hours of the morning.  Yes, he’s good at what he does, but it’s the unsung heroes of the sports we don’t even try to like who are the truest champions.

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Canadian Olympic skater Joannie Rochette lost her mother to a heart attack early Sunday morning.  Her mother was her number one fan.  On Tuesday, she skated through pain and stifled tears to achieve the greatest performance of her career.

The Canadian brotherhood present in the rink extended palpable warmth and support through their claps and cheers.  When the universe seems unfathomably cruel, it is nice to know that we can answer back in stunning grace, skill and style.  Mlle. Rochette, you did just that, and our hearts are with you.

Commentator Scott Hamilton gave a very quiet show of support:  silence.  Rochette skated her entire short program without any comment by Hamilton or his colleagues on all the elements that suddenly seemed so pointless in a time of such loss:  jumps, landings, turns, artistry.  Perhaps the choice to be silent was obvious, but the lack of discussion was so pronounced and unusual that it RESOUNDED on the airwaves.  Sometimes it’s not what we do, but what we don’t do that is the strongest action.

Here’s to a mother’s love.  RIP Therese Rochette.

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Monday, Canada had its day to squat on a patch of the Olympic hosting country’s mantra:  own the podium.  Ice dancers Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue won the gold medal in an elegant bloodbath of ice, sequins, lifts, and chiffon against dueling diva pairs from the United States and Russia.  Who could not love Canada as the crowd sang ‘Oh Canada‘ in Canada for Canada?  And we Americans all thought NO ONE knew the words to that song, except maybe Celine Dion and the people who hear her take showers.

Canada is like that girl who runs in the second tier of popularity in school.  She’s kind (the one who shares her health care with you), and visible (everyone puts maple syrup of their waffles), yet not too impressive or intimidating to resent (no one fears a Canadian invasion).  She’s the dark horse in the race for Homecoming Queen.  And in the endgame of popularity, Canada is a ferocious competitor and earns the tiara right off our ostentatious American head.

This leads me to another sleeper, shocker or even wolf in sheep’s clothing:  Olympic ice dancing.  Many, including me, have insisted that ice dancing is not a sport.  As a former sixth grade basketball player and runner of a twelve-minute mile, I say with confidence, even indignation, that those fluffy, giddy, sparkly DANCERS who claim to be Olympians are kidding themselves.  My husband disagrees with me citing strenuous pose after lift after jump after drag after fall after jazz hands as indisputable evidence of their athleticism.  While I admit that even my dreams are too flabby and unmotivated to perform these stunts, I still wouldn’t call an event in which you dress like a phoenix or an Aborigne to be a sport.  There is one thing, though, that turns me into a believer.  Their game on the podium.

That’s right.  In a week of tears and lip biting and emotion over one’s own victory, the Canadian ice dancing duo proved themselves to be the true warriors of the medal ceremony.  The duo won gold at their first Olympics.  They danced like pixies and they dressed like divas, but they listened to their national anthem like champions.  Not a grimace or drop of the head to hide emotion.  They were happy like Olympic winners should be.

Then there’s the Russian couple who probably felt that gold was stolen from them.  The couple mastered the stance of the non-verbal “You are fools.  Ull ov you!  Vaht ez Canada?  Not evahn a Sputnik to your name!  Blah! “  Oksana Domnina managed to eke out a trace of a smile for the kind lackey who awarded her that wretched disc of bronze.  This is one tough Baltic beauty.  If I were lost in a dark alley, I would chose to run into Lindsey Vonn over this ice swan.

Canadians and ice dancers provide a good lesson in not judging books by their covers.  Just because someone exhibits grace and softness, does not mean they won’t icefish their way to world dominance.

Chose Greta for your alternative Olympic coverage.  Check back tomorrow!

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On Saturday, Bode Miller won gold.  It makes sense to discuss him on this post, and surely my peers at the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Christian Science Monitor have done so.  However, here at Saving Private Mommy, I was planning on devoting today’s post to him anyway.  Does that make me a prophet?  No, but it sure makes me sound like one.

My familiarity with Bode Miller happened via commercials just before the 2006 Torino games.  It was either Nike or some beer that asked me to Join Bode.  I missed his 2002 Salt Lake Olympics performance, during which he won two silver medals, a reputation for partying and ‘not caring’, along with the sponsorship of various companies marketing his brand of athletic cool.

The level of hype made me nervous.  Footage of him looking detached, pans to products, understated narration, and the famous call to Join the dude who doesn’t change his facial expression dominated the television.  It all seemed too well-crafted, contrived and, yeah, HYPED.  Footage of him skiing, fine, but making him a movement?  That’s a lot of pre-Olympic pressure.

When he failed to medal race after race, I felt really bad for him and feared that his indifferent persona would be catapulted into a permanent, unresponsive, apathetic stupor (when cool can’t get cooler).  It’s okay to finish sixth in downhill skiing at the Olympic games, but not if Bud Light has been flooding the minds of the world with your image as a champion.

Bode went unloved by the media for his honor-free showing and his aloofness in Torino.  He told interviewers that he enjoyed ‘partying like an Olympian,’ and even the charismatically vague Bob Costas responded with angry words for Bode, a If he doesn’t care, neither will others type of sentiment.  Was this because Bode didn’t tell of his 28 minutes of Cardio and eating Wheaties and Luna Bars?  Was it because he didn’t say, “Bob, I really didn’t live up to the hype.  I made a good appearance, but was kind of unmemorable, much like you will be until the summer games two years from now, when Americans see you again and say, Oh, yeah, Bob Costas exists, doesn’t he?”

I maintain that Bode was doing what he needed to do to survive.  He is a skier.  A fast one.  A finely-tuned Olympic machine that must perform at an optimum level all the way down the slope.  For some people, pressure is debilitating.  To achieve success, this requires a bit of not caring and the willingness to forgo a Luna Bar in exchange for bong rip.   (I am not a stoner.  I just understand them.)  Unfortunately, the media needs golden boys and girls who wear gold, eat gold, think gold, and excrete gold.  Had Bode talked only of Luna Bars, he would have been okay, but unmemorable.  Since he alluded to beer, he became notorious.

My analysis of Bode, and my approval of his rebel tactics, is straight out of the Innner Game Of Tennis by Tim Galleway, who found that his original style of instruction taught his students a “command and control self-dialogue” which was impeding their real, focused attention.  He then found ways to help his students focus on “non-judgmental observation.”  This improved their performance and enjoyment of the process.

I get this because I am pretty much just like Bode Miller and Andre Agassi, save the talent, fearlessness, and being attracted to leggy, German women.  You see, I was in a community theater production after years of having only directed high school theater.  My return to the stage was fraught with nervousness about lines, staging, performance, and my lack of ability to focus.  It sounds strange since this was only a community theater production, but, in fact, a Podunk production provides far greater opportunity for embarrassment since, at any moment, one or more of your behaviors will liken you to a character in a Christopher Guest movie.  Waiting For Guffman, anyone?

I went to see my favorite guru on theater, Carla Zilbersmith, of Carla’s Calendars fame.  She assured me that any theater that is too planned, locked-in, or controlled is dead.  She reminded me of the importance of “being in the moment” and letting the relationship or the scene unfold.  She urged me not to be afraid of failing and to let myself be open, inspired, and, possibly, brilliant.  Inspiration does not live in shackles.  But if it did, it would wear leather and ask you to call it Dieter.  That’s Madonna’s fantasy, not mine.  Anyone remember Erotica?

This very simple, but often elusive, idea for people who want things desperately, was the key to my being able to perform in a way that not only felt better, but was more effective.  Irony!  Once I no longer used success as the word on my post-it notes stuck to my bathroom mirror, I could focus on what I needed to, to let it happen.

I think Bodie’s gold medal performance is just like community theater acting.  In fact, it might be exactly like community theater acting.  Different personalities respond to the pressure differently.  Just because Apolo Twitters about winning doesn’t mean Bode has to eat Luna bars.  And just because Bode has to look like the guy in your Algebra class doesn’t mean Apolo needs to shave his soul-patch.  The mental game matters, and our minds work differently.  Thankfully.  Otherwise parties would be really boring.

Now Bodie’s won gold, so, of course, the media has attributed this to Bode’s ‘growing up.’ Bode did deny any ‘new him’ scenario in an interview with Time, saying it’s all media perception, that is, how the media ‘wants to position itself.’ Funny, now that there’s gold around his neck, there is media around Bode.

So let’s take a lesson from Bode.  Ski for fun.  Chill out.  Relax and let it happen, and you may lose in Torino, but you just might dominate in Vancouver.

Stay tuned for more sporadic, irrelevant, incomplete, yet highly important Olympic coverage here at Saving Private Mommy. 

And please vote for Greta on Babble.com for Best Mommy Blogger. Saving Private Mommy is currently ranked 83, and Greta would like to ascend to the Top 5o.  As Ryan Seacrest would say, “Vote as many times as you like.”  Thank you for your help and, as always, your reading eyes.

Apolo Anton Ohno does special "I took your record" wave to Bonnie Blair

I’m going to switch my bait here a bit.  I hope you don’t mind.  I’m going to put the Bode Basics that I promised yesterday, aside for a while because I’m exhausted.  You see, I just finished an Olympic event.  Just now.  Competed, medaled, and am processing it all a bit before I put it behind me.  What race? you ask of this 38-year-old mother of three.  Well, naturally it was the men’s 1000-meter short track, at the Olympics in Vancouver.  2010.  You don’t believe me?  Ask my heart which was in it.  My pulse was accelerated.  There were knots in my stomach.  My breathing became shallow.  Fortunately, Apolo Anton Ohno was yawning as he stretched himself into a relaxed state before the event.  Thankfully, one of us is a trained professional.

It’s not just me.  My husband was skating, too.  I came home late, after a performance, and was surprised to see him half-awake on the couch since he is scheduled to sing for Episcopalians early in the morning.  The first thing he said to me, in a strained grogginess, was Apolo is going to skate soon.  As I picked up the toys scattered in the living room, and prepared myself for the biggest race of my life, I realized something about my husband.  He was not waiting up for me, his wife of eight years, whom he’s barely seen the past the three days.  No, he was waiting for Apolo.  As was Michael Phelps who was present in the rink in Vancouver.  I imagine Tiger Woods was also racing with Apolo, as was Barack Obama and Jennifer Aniston.

So we raced after the shot fired.  And we did our usual middle position, sandwiched between two Canadian brothers and two South Koreans.  Well, Apolo and the rest of us tried to do our signature, dramatic, mid-race pass, the kind that gives you a fun shot of natural adrenaline, but we all slipped and lost speed and ended up in last place.  Perhaps it was the hope of having Barack Obama with us in the race, but we pressed on with unbridled force to pass those Canadian brothers and fly to the bronze with South Korean ass in our faces, a metaphor they might appreciate given our tumultuous history on ice.

It was a great race.  We got our seventh medal, albeit bronze, breaking Bonnie Blair’s record as being the most decorated winter Olympian.  Not hard to do when Apolo is already quite decorated even without precious medals hanging from his neck.  Add my husband, the president, and Jennifer Aniston to the mix, and we’ve got one pretty Team America.

Wait, I’m sorry.  I keep forgetting it was not our race, but Ohno’s.  I always forget that detail.  That this is an individual’s race and not a validation of everything USA including education, Cadillacs, mac n’ cheese, and musical theater, though the event might remind me a bit of Cats.

I guess I stressed out for nothing.  And I guess I probably shouldn’t be holding up seven fingers for seven medals in the traffic circle at the kids’ school on Monday.  I’ll let Apolo do that.  In fact, he did and I didn’t stop him.  And I’ll let him go on any reality show he wants, because despite our loss of silver and gold, he displayed GREAT sportsmanship in his very bronze interview with NBC.  Now if we can just get him and South Korea to make up.

Perhaps the greatest triumph was that Lindsey Vonn won silver in the Super Giant Slalom.  And didn’t cry.  Why would she?  Even being the first or second best in the world gets old.  And boring.

Check back tomorrow for more irrelevant, incomplete, yet highly necessary Olympic coverage.

Image via Wikipedia

Correction:  According to an SPM source, Shani Davis‘ gold medal race WAS broadcast during prime time.  Greta apologizes for this misstatement based on an incomplete knowledge of the facts.  Now she really feels like the New York Times.

In a time when the judges’ scoring system is everything, Tiger Woods entered the competition with a public apology made before the fiercest panel of evaluators in Olympic history:  the general public.  Here is how he scored.

First of all, discussing publicly the reprehensible aspects of one’s personal life is highly difficult, and if handled well with no mistakes, he can come away with high marks and possibly a gold medal.  In this respect, he landed each combination perfectly, taking full responsibility for his transgressions. However, the fact that the ‘mistakes’ he kept referring to where vagina dialogues with numerous attractive 19-year-olds when his wife and children were at home reading Goodnight Moon cost him huge point deductions.  Tiger, however, is a smart competitor and upon his realization of this, he re-focused his game on getting a spot on the podium.  So he won’t hear his national anthem, but he will get a medal and a bouquet.

Perhaps the most costly part of his skate on the razor thin ice of these XXX Games, was when he assured everyone that he was seeking help for his problems in therapy.  Fixing being a philanderer in therapy just makes his mom look bad, and the hippy notion of attending Assholes Anonymous in hopes of being able to walk past the irresistible Hotties of Bar Night Future will never fly with some judges like Hedwig Pimelwasser, of the former GDR or East Germany.  Someone who stood in line for toilet paper and went to church in secret has no tolerance for someone who gets to learn how to be a good husband while crying on a comfortable Ethan Allen couch next to a box of anti-bacterial Kleenex in an office that is tastefully adorned in varying shades of calming green.

Tiger did attempt some difficult combinations.  He urged the paparazzi to stay away from his wife and child who had ‘nothing to do with his mistakes.’  While I agree that a two-year-old doesn’t need to be followed by cameras all the way to preschool, Tiger’s desire for privacy should have been checked at the first tee of the PGA Tour or the door of the Playboy Mansion, whichever came first.  And if he really wanted anonymity for his wife, he should not have chosen one whose face could sink 1000 ships, and who is so adored by every camera that ever had the honor of transforming her image into pixels, and who is MORE SEARCHED ON GOOGLE THAN TIGER WOODS IS.  EVEN BEFORE THE SCANDAL.  Oh, and whose entire career is built on taking really good photos for the salivary pleasure of mankind.  Dave Letterman had a high profile affair, too.  Can anyone remember what his wife looked like?  Unfortunately, this was quite a leap for Tiger, on which he double-footed the landing.  Automatic 2.0 deduction.

In the end, there were some strong elements to his program.  He apologized in a way that Bill Clinton never did.  He was Oedipus Rex experiencing a reversal of fortune and he gouged his eyes before the world in hopes that the receptionist at Nike.com gets to keep his job, despite lost revenue from the now not-so-sellable Tiger Woods line of shoes.  The ones with quiet soles that help you sneak home at 4 AM.

Tiger earned himself a 5.29 mostly for the difficulty of his program, some of which he carried out effectively, but in the end sex scandals are a hard sell and lacking any artistic merit, which is important in the eyes of the judges.   A spot on the podium evaded him, but I think society can perhaps now let him carry on to reconcile with his wife in private.  I think Scott Hamilton would say, “He’s got to be happy with that.”  And perhaps, through Asshole Anonymous, Tiger can learn that in life, unlike in golf, lowness does not count high.

Coming tomorrow:  Bode Basics.  On Bodie and the monkey that’s mostly off of his back.  And the media’s dislike of him.  And why Greta disagrees.  And Shani Davis and why he snubs the media and Greta agrees with that.  And, hopefully, another gold from Apolo Anton Ohno, which may provide us an opportunity to forgive him for Dancing With The Stars.

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The Torch: Vancouver Style, Olympics 2010

I feel the need to talk about the elephant in the room even if it contrasts with our ordinarily light-hearted tone here at Saving Private Mommy:  the horrific accident that killed Georgian Olympic luger Nodar Kumaritashvili.  The tragedy occurred on the THE FASTEST TRACK IN THE HISTORY OF THE GAMES.  According to NBC, this $110-million track was built to be the world’s fastest.  Speed equals danger.  Why would any country, least of all Canada, aspire to DANGER?  While there may be technological advances that make this kind of threat to existence possible, and while human beings may be better trained now than ever before, they have not become any less vulnerable to impact at high speeds.  Unlike the new Ford Taurus, they are not equipped with anti-lock brakes and cranial air curtains, so why are the tracks becoming FASTER AND MORE DANGEROUS?  And did you see how many women fell on the downhill competition?  These falls were severe, where skiers slid seemingly endlessly in a fast, violent tangle of equipment and limbs.  The LA Times reported Canada’s Emily Brydon, who finished 16th, as saying, “I was not skiing the course — the course was skiing me.”

The tragedy on the luge should not have happened.  One death in the name of what used to be amateur worldwide competition is one too many.  I can’t imagine the unspeakable pain Kumaritashvili’s family, friends, and teammates must feel.

The ugly shadow upon luge and upon the Vancouver Olympics is here to stay.  Even Lindsey Vonn and all her tears of golden joy can’t wash away this sorrow.  Neither can the winning race of Shani Davis especially since IT WASN’T TELEVISED.

Why would it be when we have 18 minutes of Lindsey Vonn crying?  (Not your fault Lindsey.  I cried for you, too, but after a while it just got embarrassing.  For both of us.)  Perhaps it was the media getting back at Davis for refusing a role in the US relay in 2006 and justifying it by saying, “I’m a solo entity.  I don’t skate for US Speed skating and I have no obligation to them.  I felt they were putting pressure on me to be a part of their organization.”  While that doesn’t make for a cute Olympics TV profile, it’s a man’s right to kill his stamina and tear his ligaments in the race of his choice.

So did they do an all-media snub and aren’t willing to talk about it?  Why would you snub anyone and not TELL THE WHOLE WORLD that you were snubbing them, why you were snubbing them, and to what extent you were snubbing them.  If I recall correctly from my days in eighth grade, high school, and last month, snubbing is to be publicized if it is to be effective, yet not a peep on Google.  Have I gone crazy?  Am I the only one who noticed this?

And speaking of going unnoticed, did Queen Elizabeth II or Prince Chaz or even Camilla Parker Bowles know there were Olympics going on in land of Canucks that makes up the flannel-clad, lumberjack arm of the all-to-Commonwealth?  Perhaps they don’t want to be connected to anything called a Canuck, but surely those down-to-earth lads of that Buckingham house, Will and Harry, might want to shake hands with a flying tomato (who looks no more like a flying tomato than Lindsey Vonn looks like a tumbling banana or an exploding lemon drop.)  Why even have a queen or a Crown to serve if all she provides for you is Royal Assent when you want to change the smoking laws and you use her name for a few of your hospitals.  I don’t think she’s good for Canada’s self-esteem.

It seems like Canada is the Rodney Dangerfield of North America.  They can’t afford, in any way, to host a tarnished Olympics, with malfunctioning torches to boot.  (Oh, the symbolism.)  Since I am a Canadian native, I ache over this.  I don’t want to say Blame Canada, but I might say…Oh, Canada.

Come back tomorrow for more of Saving Private Mommy Olympic Coverage.  Eat your heart out, NBC.  (Okay, I’m getting carried away, but still…)  And speaking of too big for my britches, Greta has inched to the 89th position on Babble.com’s Top Mommy Bloggers.  She’s dying to get on the podium.  Help her own it, and watch her cry through interviews.  (I swear I do love you, Lindsey Vonn, even though you’re really too pretty to truly like.)  Click and vote, vote, vote (I’m on page 2) and tell your friends.  I want to be dubbed the Ascending Helmet.  Is that too much to ask in a world of snowboarding fruit?

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