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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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