Comments

It’s over but it hasn’t started yet — 37 Comments

  1. I don’t like watching sport – any sport! When my husband left sport of any sort ceased to be allowed on my TV. Consequently I don’t watch TV much! Thank God I have my music!

  2. ah but Wimbledon’s great, asides from the Williams sisters, the machines description you made there is purely for them isn’t it?

  3. At least with the Olympics you can have a bit of fun playing ‘spot the junkie’ with your family and friends. It usually provides more drama than Inspector Morse.

  4. I’m just waiting for the Olympics to add a unlimited division where the competitors can use any type of drug or other enhancement. It may be a while look how long it took them to admit that most of the athletes were not “amateur” any more.

  5. What is all this racket about a few posho sportsmen? You must be a little highly-strung today, Grandad, to be making these sorts of verbal volleys. Hopefully, though, lovers of tennis will rally to the defence of their sport!

    My own view of Wimbledon is that any event that promotes the nectar of the gods that is Robinson’s Lemon Barley Water has got to be considered as ace!

    Now can someone serve me some strawberries and cream please? They’re smashing!

  6. Kate – … and books. That is what annoyed me – I don’t watch much television, but when I do, I like my programme to be on as scheduled.

    BB – No. All of them. Bring back the amateurs.

    Keiron – Interesting concept? Underbog photography?

    TBA – 😆 I don’t know where you got that from. NOT Songs of Praise.

    Dave – Spot the junkie? There are more drugs in an Olympic Stadium than you’d find in all of Dublin. I agree with Jim – let them use all the drugs they like. It would be fun watching a bloke run a one hour marathon and exploding on the finishing line.

    Longman – Don’t start. I’m not in the mood.

  7. Was reading this morning about the crowning of the new Chess Boxing world champion this weekend.

    Basically chess table set up in a boxing ring, play a bit of chess, then clear the table out and box for a 3 minute round, then back to the chess. You win by check mating your opponent or knocking him out.

    This needs to be in the Olympics as soon as possible.

  8. I like the sound of that one. They could apply it to tennis – if the game isn’t decided at the end of an hour, they have a duel?

  9. Ah yes – books…… and when I dare to take one outside to my garden on a nice day – my neighbours, who have had outdoor speakers fitted, shatter the sky with the loudest tirade of….. you guessed it….. football or cricket or tennis….. Grrrrr!!!!!

  10. A bit miserable today are we? Despite not being a fan of tennis I watched and enjoyed it. The Olympics on the other hand is pointless and a waste of airtime. There are plenty of channels available for the anti-sport brigade, I even hear Saga has it’s own channel, perfect for yourself.

  11. Oh yes, a colleague of mine has a friend who’s very into it… I’ve watched a few videos on youtube and I’m quite tempted to go and watch!

    However, by all accounts these bog meetings (not sure what the correct term might be!) take place in cold, miserable bogs somewhere in the depth of the Welsh Valleys!

    Now if they were somewhere hot, with a nice cold beer I’d be tempted (purely as a spectator you understand).

  12. Kate – Simple answer… get yourself bigger speakers and a selection of Queen/Status Quo/Dire Straits. Works for me every time.

    King Bob – I’m always miserable. I’m not anti-sport. People can play sports if they like. It just pisses me off when it dominates the schedules and then fucks up later programmes when there is an overrun. And you can keep Saga, thanks.

    Keiron – Podge and Rodge are big fans of bog diving. Apparently it’s held in Mayo or some other Godforsaken place. I can’t really see the point myself, but then I doubt the competitors can either, bog water being what it is?

  13. Good plan, got all the music – but no point in retaliating… its just not me (and they’d probably get worse) – I sometimes use the aforementioned ‘bull-shit protectors’ but they play havoc with my hairdo!!!!

  14. Dave you cracked me up this morning! Kate, I used to have a george thorogood song “you talk to much” that I used to play for this crazy bitch that lived in the apartment next door. she bitched constantly at her poor husband…when she wasn’t f**king his brains out…their bedroom was right above ours. this went on until the wee hours. so we would get up at 5 am to get ready for work and blast the song for them right up at the ceiling where we knew they were sleeping…it’s a great song. i think i have it on my blues page somewhere if you want to go have a listen. it’s also on youtube. grandad I agree with you whole heartedly…there are already 57 channels for sports why can’t one of them be used for whatever sport is on. i’m taking it easy this summer because i know football is just around the bend and then it will be a living, breathing part of our household and I will even have to cook chili for it weekly so the scores will come out right 🙂

  15. I’m looking forward to the Olympics this year. I want to see what sort of rubbish the Chinese government gets up to. I’m imagining a few imprisonments for mentioning Tibet (are they competing this year?), maybe a few hangings or shootings for daring to raise a flag which was not Chinese.

    Scrap that actually – I’m waiting for Chess Boxing to hit the tv screen (and I’m not talking about the old kung fu film of that name).

  16. Baseball runs until October.
    Football (real Football not soccer) starts in late August.
    Hockey now runs from October until June.
    NASCAR goes from February through November.
    Golf is as much a sport as toe nail clipping.
    I feel about Basketball exactly as you do of Tennis.
    As a kid we had Wilt ‘The Stilt’ Chamberlin, Willis Reed, Bob Cousy, Bill Russell, Oscer Robertson, Walt Fraizer, John Havlicek and Billy Cunningham.
    Today we have the “Portland Trail-Gangsters”.
    I miss ABC’s Wide World of Sport.
    They would highlight things like Bog Snorkling, Cherry Pit Spitting, Hammer Throw or Curling.
    Hammer Throw was always won by some guy whose last name had 37 vowels in it and I think Curling is an Olympic sport just so Iceland has a chance at getting a medal.
    Why isn’t “Noodling” an Olympic sport, huh? How many Missouri or Arkansas hillbillies have a chance at Olympic Gold?
    Tennis…pfft!
    It always was a game played by over-paid, rich, white kids then Arthur Ashe changed the rules.

  17. The only interesting thing that will happen at the Olympic this year will be on the news anyway, so I have no intention of watching. I don’t see the point in watching people running around in circles..

    The only sport I ever enjoyed watching was wrestling on ITV at 4.30 on Saturday afternoons. Les Kellett was class. Of course that was before the bloody Americans ruined it and turned it into a kid’s floor show….

  18. I do know what you mean by big sporting events like this taking up space on the mainstream TV channels.

    I don’t mind the odd sport show every couple of weeks or so (e.g Formula 1) – but if I really wanted to watch it then I’d go pay for the sports package!

    Although now all we need is an ESPN Europe, and have them show the Indy Racing League and NASCAR over here…

  19. Wrestling on ITV was great, can only really remember Giant Haystacks and Big Daddy.

    I used to love telly on Saturdays you had Saint and Greavsie (just watched them and not the football) , wrestling and Airwolf was on in there as well. Then tuck into chips,eggs and beans at tea time while watching the A-Team.

    Fantastic! Takes me back…

  20. what programme did you want? As if BBC NI has good programmes – unless you were watching tg4 – BEO! I was too emotional after guinness and the munster final to care.

  21. Grandad, you are a man after my own heart! I sometimes feel like a mad woman when I hear the football season is over and then something else decides to bombard our screens.

    I have to say though I was quite surprised at how foolish RTÉ were during Euro 2008. It’s one thing putting the ladies out with zombified partners, husbands, sons, brothers (not forgetting the female fans), but taking primetime Neighbours away meant that the yelps of glee from the living room as some football player managed to put the ball into the net became less bearable in the knowledge that Karl, Susan and the gang were going on with their lives and you were missing out!

    Unfortunately change is unlikely to occur in the near future, families will continue to argue over the remote control and we will never get those missed moments with our regular viewing back.

  22. Dave – Les Kellett was around the time of Giant Haystacks and Big Daddy, or maybe a little before. I can just hear Kent Walton now!!

    Kerry – TG4? Never watched it. Ever. Just as I never watch TV3.

    Welcome, Little Miss!! 🙂 I haven’t seen Neighbours since Madge, Harold, and Charleen [or whatever her name was] were in it. I don’t mind sport anywhere on television provided it stays within its schedule. It’s when something overruns and they seem to feel the have a Devine Right to upset everything else.

    Roll on the day when football is canceled because the Antiques Roadshow has overrun. Then see how you like it!!!!!!!!

  23. Soulless machines? Did you see the men’s final?

    To be fair, the men’s game got a bit boring with Ivanisevic and Sampras serving ace after ace, but they’ve evened that out now and yesterday’s rallies were incredible and skillful and great fun to watch.

    I wouldn’t say they were soulless machines. They hunger for it with a very intense human desire and, as Blanche Dubois said in A Streetcar Named Desire, the opposite of death is desire. Machines don’t desire stuff but humans do. The tennis players highly train their bodies, sure, but that, to me anyway, speaks of a hungry soul making huge sacrifices for something they really want. I don’t get the degree to which they want to win, but it’s as sure as oeuffs is oeuffs a very human thing.

    I’m tuning in for the drama of the thing as much as anything.

  24. BB – Haha!! Chance would be a fine thing. 🙂

    Sam – I watched a bit of it [hoping in vain that it was nearly over] and they were incredibly skillful. But that’s just it – they are honed to perfection, so there is no longer the feel of a game but of one training regime against another.

    I admire their dedication, but I would love to see the job description of a professional tennis player: He hits the ball at me and I hit it back. 😉

  25. “I like my programme to be on as scheduled.”

    It WAS Songs of Praise, wasn’t it? Did you not see the message on the bottom of the screen saying they’d switched it to BBC 2?

    Honestly, the only other male blogger I know of who’d write a post giving out about all the sport on TV is Darren. You’re not gonna start wearing a man bag now, are you Grandad?

  26. Andrew – It was NOT Songs of Praise. It was a drama that was supposed to be on at nine, and has now been deferred until next week.

    If you are going to start this macho thing that if I don’t like sport I can’t be a man, then you are aiming for a punch-up. I had enough of that at school. I am as male as the rest of ’em and I hate sport. I find it boring. Most of all, I hate the assumption that everyone loves sport.

  27. Isn’t shooting a sport?
    I understand people who aren’t bothered with sport on TV, but to not have interset insport at all is just odd. You obviously do have an interest though, cos you’re well aware of all the classic tennis players.

  28. I quit watching the Olympics with the fall of the Soviet bloc. It just didn’t seem to be as much fun thereafter. As for football, it’s called that for a reason. You kick the ball with your feet. Our American football should more properly be refered to as toss and catch. Which is why the rest of the world plays soccer.

  29. Andrew – Shooting is a mans sport. It doesn’t involve poncing around a field chasing a ball, or running around in circles. And I don’t oblige people to watch. In fact, you could say that I actively discourage it.
    I’m aware of the tennis players because in those days, it was a sport and not a business that was played by amateurs. Also, I used to stay with my uncle, most summers and he had a television where I didn’t, so there may have been a novelty element? 😉

    TT – Good point. Grandad’s First Sporting Law – “Interest in sport is inversely proportional to the pronounceability of the player’s name”

  30. I’m not a fan of the tennis but fortunately Wimbledon is on late at night here so not too intrusive. NRL football on the other hand is on about 3 channels all weekend which really irks me and the news (I use the term loosely) is 15 minutes of world affairs and 15 minutes of sport, usually tribunals where some simeon thug is being court martialled for spear tackling or causing a brawl in a nightclub . . . as for the olympics . . have you seen the algae bloom on their sailing course? Now that’s bog sailing if ever I’ve seen it!

    http://www.smh.com.au/news/beijing2008/10000-to-clean-up-algae-at-beijing-olympics-venue/2008/07/01/1214677989844.html

  31. At least the athletes have really good bodies, so I can drift into a sports coma with a smile on my face.

  32. The Olympics will be a total nightmare. I’d normally watch the boxing, but this year two of the five Irish lads to qualify are called John Joe. I couldn’t give a shite what the Chinese do to Tibet but the fact that 40% of Irish boxers taking part are called John Joe is enough to warrant a boycott of the whole thing in my view.

  33. Baino – I saw that on the BBC. It cheered me up, as at least I have the sailing to look forward to!

    Flirty – All the bodies look alike though – the men and the women. I think it must be the steroids or something?

    Welcome Carrier! Of all sports, boxing must be the worst. I suppose it is better for the John Joes to beat each other’s brains out there than in the local pub?

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