Going for the gold in Olympics couch potatoing

You can check out newspaper front pages every day at the Newseum.org. Here is today’s Times of London, one of the papers featured today by Poynter.

We cancelled our cable almost a year ago and hardly ever watch TV. This isn’t some intellectual snobbery. We don’t brag about not having cable. We just don’t have time.

Our kids are very young – far too young to watch anything that might appear during the evening hours – and we found that we were going two and three weeks at a time without turning on the TV. (And sadly, we don’t have the sort of children who climb into bed at 7:30 and sleep for 12 hours. I hate those parents). So no cable for us.

But we do have one of those digital antenna thingies. So we get the networks and some really strange weather radar channels through that.

And thank God.

Because it’s the Olympics, the one television event that I LOVE with unrestricted, patriotic, cheeseball abandon. I could quite happily sit on the couch for the whole Olympics, rooting for the Americans and people from all sorts of other countries. I love the emotionally manipulative features. I love watching all of the athletes march into the opening ceremonies. I love the swimming, even though I have no idea why it’s so exciting to watch, and I loathe swimming laps myself. There is something fantastic and inspiring about people who push themselves to their physical and emotional limits. Plus, we get the Queen, the Sex Pistols, Mary Poppins, J.K. Rowling and Paul McCartney in one evening.

So what am I loving reading this week? All things Olympics related.

  • Texas Longhorns swimmer and Churchill High School grad Jimmy Feigen is one that all of us in San Antonio are watching. And hooray, he’s doing an Olympic diary with the Express-News. Today he let us know that he’s not “a beret person” and gave us this gem: “There’s unlimited free McDonald’s in the village, but I can’t eat it until after  we race. On the first day we were here, I showed up to the table with a  chocolate milkshake. (Michael) Phelps and Brendan  Hansen almost went insane.”

Really, you should check out this diary. I thought it was great.

  • Buck Harvey has a nice column about a former UTSA coach who has made it to the Olympics as an assistant track and field coach. Very cool to hear about someone realizing their Olympic dreams on the coaching side. (Even though she didn’t get to walk in for the opening ceremonies as she had hoped).
  • Tanji Patton has a nice, mouth-watering feature about Olympian-worthy meals on her blog. Because we know from Feigen that they’re not really eating McDonald’s in the athlete’s village.
  • Poynter looks at the front pages that announce the start of the Olympics.
  • I think it kicks ass that Saudi Arabia and Qatar are sending female athletes to the Olympics for the first time. (Not everyone feels the same, according to this story). Can someone cover these amazing ladies more? Please?

– Jen


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