The opening ceremony: President Bush walked across the base of a large open field in the middle of the stadium about twenty yards away from the nearest person. I'm sure the Secret Service was thrilled with that. If you haven't seen The Lion King in NYC or London, the animals looked just like the bison, bear, and birds shown during the opening ceremonies.

The area Salt Lake City is in looks really cool.

At the first medals ceremony it looked like a Cirque du Soleil thing was going on to precede the actual awarding of medals. I like Cirque du Soleil. Bob Costas, the NBC emcee, did not. It was obvious that he was really upset that they were showing more artistic stuff instead of showing who won the medals. "What's this crap?" I'm sure he was thinking.

I missed the biathalon, which is my favorite weird sport. Skiing and sharpshooting. What an odd combination. Why not skiing and, oh, juggling? You'd see cross-country skiers swish around with three bowling pins strapped to their backs rush into the first station where three flaming olympic torches await them. Then you could do team biathalon -- two skiers from the same nation must arrive at the stations and do juggling passes between each other. At the last station they'd get a volunteer from the stands and throw flaming torches around them, just like at RenFair.

The bobsled (bobsleigh) event fascinates me. Everyone but the driver contributes nothing but weight to the team. Heck, I could win an olympic medal. The athletes train in expensive facilities, all sorts of research is done to create the fastest runners, the lightest and most aerodynamic sled, to determine the fastest line to take in the course. Then they steer by pulling on a rope. The high-tech/low-tech dichotomy makes me laugh.

Luge used to be the coolest sporting event at the olympics, but it's been surpassed by Skeleton. The only way luge could be cooler is if they put a pole right in the middle of the track somewhere past the finish line. You've got to luge fast enough to win, but be able to stop before you rack yourself.

Skeleton looked so cool. I want to go to one of the nations that didn't send any athletes to the winter games (like Freedonia) and be their skeleton entrant. If I was about 24, I'd say something here about how hot Tristan Gale is, but I'm not, so I won't. Anyway, it's about time they reintroduced sledding to the olympics. I mean, they've had "ice dancing" for how many years? Yeah, right. Like that's a sport. Anyway again, the only way skeleton could be even cooler is if the athletes were on fire. Or they had ramps and had to shoot through hoops. While they were on fire. Then it would be cooler than Rack'em Luge.

The best part about speed skating was when Australia's Stephen Bradbury won the gold medal for being the only one who didn't fall down. That was great! The only reason he qualified for the medal round was he didn't fall down in the earlier race, despite being five laps behind everyone else. Technically, he should have finished twelfth. That guy was fanastic. Australia should make a statue of that guy.

Never was it more evident that Second Place is really a nice way of saying First Loser than in the hockey competitions. Every other sport, when the silver medalists won, they were all "Yippee!" and "Yay!". Not in hockey. It's got to be because this was the only sport where two -- and only two -- sides were competing against each other. Every other sport had multiple athletes competing against a clock or were judged by people ranking things like "technical merit", "performance", and "air". Despite being from south of the border, I was glad to see Canada win the gold in both women's and men's ice hockey. Heck, I just happy to see Modano and Hull play for the same team again.

The closing ceremonies were pretty good except we should band together as a world and kill the NBC commentators. Hey, there's Savion Glover, the world's preeminent tap dancer. He's not actually singing, so let's talk over what he's doing. What the heck was going through the commentators' heads? "Millions of people have tuned into tonight's coverage of the closing ceremony for some reason. They must've tuned in to hear me talk. Yeah, that's it." Pinheads.

For those of you who watched the closing ceremony, did everyone else fall out of their seats when KISS came out? Man, that was the funniest thing I've seen in a long time. Gene Simmon's body armor covering that huge gut. Then he knocked over his microphone. Hilarious.

-FP