GRATINGLY CHARMING . . .

So I was watching the end of a tight race for the gold medal in the women's all-around gymnastics competition on television. And of course, like a dolt, I simultaneously pulled Bob onto my lap, opened my Internet browser and read, as my home page came up on the screen, that Carly Patterson had won the gold medal, the first American woman's all-around gold medal in twenty years (remember Mary Lou Retton?). Sigh. I'm a dolt.

And then I read an article about Svetlana "Pissy-Pants" Khorkina, deprived of gold and relegated to silver in her last Olympic all-around competition. What a b*tch.

And then I watched Carly sing along to "The Star-Spangled Banner" (which, incidentally, is about a FLAG and that is just crazy to me. Would not "America the Beautiful" or "God Bless America" be more appropriate as a national anthem?), and realized: neither she nor other American winners really know the words to our national anthem. Me, I go to enough baseball games to know all the words. But I don't HAVE to -- my face isn't plastered by a zoom lens on every NBC channel during a medal ceremony. Carly et al., it's "and the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air." At one point, Carly even looked into the television camera trained on her face, as if to bashfully acknowledge that she was fudging her lip-synching. Sigh.

(Michael Phelps is standing on the gold medal podium now. He's not even trying. His lips are completely sealed together. That's a shame because if I had just won a gold medal for my country, I'd be shouting my anthem loud and proud, but I think I prefer he not sing it than that he sing it incorrectly. On television.)

And THEN. I listened to Carly's post-medal-ceremony interview. Not only is she monotone, but she (1) is extremely high-pitched, and (2) inserted "like" every third word. Alright, she's only sixteen, and it was strangely charming to see a pumped up little robot like her be a real teenager. But the high-pitched thing drives me nuts. COACHES, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let your athletes experience puberty! It's just better that way!

Okey-dokey. Enough Greek dramedy for tonight. Tomorrow is another time-delayed day.

(But wait! Bob Costas is interviewing Carly now! It's like a car wreck: I simply have to look and cringe.)