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Hay’s Daze: Is watching the Olympics 18 hours a day too much?

It’s different now. Take the Olympics for example. I can remember when the bobsleds and the skiis were made of wood and the curling brooms were made of straw and the speed skates didn’t even clap.
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It’s different now. Take the Olympics for example. I can remember when the bobsleds and the skiis were made of wood and the curling brooms were made of straw and the speed skates didn’t even clap.

This was before space age voodoo carbon fibre, second-skin Spandex suits, and 100,000s of a second GPS tracking timing devices.

This was back when we fans can fondly remember a time when the Ice Dance judges were crooked, the Russian hockey team actually won medals, and the only dope involved in the Games was the head of the International Olympic Committee.

But times change, and now we have bat-spit crazy events like Ski Cross where four or five pathologically fearless athletes careen down a mountain racing each other all at once, flying off jumps at the speed of a car on a highway and crashing into the fences, gates, and each other.

Back then hippie snowboarders had full pipes instead of Half Pipes, there wasn’t even something called “Short Track Insanity” which is an extremely exciting race in a hockey rink that involves long razor sharp blades, sharp elbows to the face and not-so-sharp judging that eliminates most of the skaters every single heat.

And who would have thought that something called “Big Air” would be an actual event? I guess that’s not surprising when they still have “Skeleton” and perhaps the scariest sport of all (in more ways than one) called “Two Man Luge” in the Olympics.

And for those of you who prefer, say, PGA to MMA there’s always Curling.

For some people curling is akin to watching paint dry, or more to the point – watching ice melt. I for one enjoy watching a good game of rocks and rings on TV, but some less couch-potato-y folks have complained that about 85.3 per cent of the Olympic coverage on the boob tube is curling, curling and more curling. And, there, as they say — is the rub. (Curling humor).

And how we watch the Olympics has seriously changed. Some people (certainly not me) admit to remembering watching the Games in black and white on television – that is, when the coverage actually happened to be on one of the two channels on the big box RCA.

Then there were the many challenging years of suffering when the TV “remote control” consisted of someone (me) having to get up off the couch, walk to the actual TV set and physically change the channel! I know, hard to believe, but we made it through somehow until remote control x-ray laser beams were invented.

And then, thank goodness, came video recording devices. This meant you could tape important programs like the Olympics on “VHS” and sit down at your leisure later, put in the tape and find out you set the VCR wrong and you just recorded four hours of Lawrence Welk (look it up, kids!).

And then came PVRs which are pure black magic that allow you to record, rewind, freeze frame, and tap dance all at the same time. I believe it can also order your groceries and change the oil in your car.

But even that’s not enough anymore. I kept missing my favorite Olympic events in spite of 200 channels and two PVRs. My Rotten Kid had the answer. “Nobody watches TV anymore, Dad,” she said. “Just Google ‘Olympic Games’ and you can watch anything any time on your computer!” So now that I’ve gone down that rabbit hole, I have two questions: Is watching the Olympic Games 18 hours a day too much? And: Why is there two of everything?

Harley Hay is a Red Deer writer and filmmaker.