Dasvidaniya

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with myself now that the Games are over.  It's hard to envision that there are so many hours in a day.  And that they don't all have to be spent in a single chair, staring at a screen.
Life exists.  How about that?!.  But there's this big empty vacuum there.  I guess it'll now just have to be filled.  So be it.  I've been spending the day thus far taking baby steps -- though it's early -- but it looks like things will work out.  But it will take time...

One thing that will help is that once again I can start following the news and sports.  I largely give them up during the Olympics, not from lack of time or interest, but because I don't want any results given away.  That did happen a few of the times I ventured out of the safety zone of Olympic Coverage, but I was able to manage well-enough. 

A few last comments about the Closing Ceremony. 

I thought they were technically and visually spectacular.  And structurally were disjointed and somewhat drawn out and a bit tiresome.  (That's the polite word for "bordering on boring.")  Usually I find myself the forgiving one defending the Closing Ceremonies post-Olympics with friends.  Alas, not this time.

The long ballet was beautiful, but they had a long ballet in the opening.  The part with the ring that wouldn't open was hilarious and great and a gem, but that whole sparkly sequence with people in sparkly costumes running around making abstract formations went on and on.  The section honoring Russian writers was nice to see, but it was basically just more ballet and symphony, since looking at big pictures of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky was something you would do at a Borders book store.  And the last 10-15 minutes was like an unending Country Bear Jamboree at Disneyland with a giant auto-animatronic bear and bunny.  (The bear was very impressive, though the bunny and Wile E. Coyote didn't do much.)

Also, the Closing Ceremony is supposed to be about brotherhood and the mixing of nations.  I don't ever recall a host nation having its Gold Medal winners strut out to celebrate their victories, waving the flag.  I also don't recall the host nation stopping everything to play their national anthem.  (It may have happened, I just don't remember it.)  Also, one of the joys and differences from the Opening Ceremony is that, at the Closing, the athletes usually stroll out all mixed together, with little sense of nations separated.  Here, they marched out by nation and sat by nation.  Often, you would even see guys walking out with girls sitting on their shoulders.  There was none of that this year.  It was all okay, but to me, quite a bit flat.

The technology was spectacular.  Game-changing work.  But ultimately they relied to much on it and forgot about story structure and content.  Sort of like the Olympic version of Avatar.

By the way, I know it's never fair to judge the next Opening Ceremony by what the next host nation is able to cobble together for their brief few minutes at the preceding Close.  And for South Korea, that's fortunate.  Not bad, just nothing that was inspiring to anticipate what's coming.

Still, in the end, there's really only one way to go out --