Winter Olympics: guns, bikinis, and really cool sunglasses

I was shocked--shocked, I tell you!--last night when my younger son declared that the Biathlon was the least exciting winter Olympics sport to watch.  Considering that my two boys have more airsoft weaponry than most third world countries have actual guns, this declaration woke me up.  (I had fallen asleep, you see, because "ice dancing" was on the TV.)

I figured that anything involving shooting would keep my boys rapt.  Skiing and shooting.  Skating and shooting.  Hot dog eating and shooting.  Lawnmowing and shooting.  What could be more exciting, apart from maybe watching someone strap on skis and fling himself sixty feet skyward in a windmill tornado tumbling exhibition?  (OK, possibly if the skier were in fact doing this jump behind the biathlon shooting targets.)

So my boys eschewed the manliest of winter sports, the one involving the gun.  (By the way, I think women's biathlon should be moved to the summer games, and moved to the beach. It'd be like women's beach volleyball, only with bullets instead of a ball.  Girls, guns, and bikinis.  The IOC is missing a major ratings opportunity here.  But I digress.)

It got me thinking about other Olympic sports, though.

Curling.  OK, I kind of like it in the way I like ping pong and lawn bowling.  All three are well designed for the integration of beer.  But that whole broom thing... kinda girly, doncha think?  I mean, manly men don't do competitive sweeping.  When have you seen a Swiffer ad with a man doing the housework?  All they need is to add a guy at the end to pick up the stone, rinse it off, and put it in a dishwasher.  Emasculation complete.

Ice dancing.  Do we even need to go there?  This is the rhythmic gymnastics of winter.  This is figure skating for men who can't jump, and for women who are too big and fat to be thrown in the air like a high school cheerleader.  They should change this sport to incorporate some of the rules of the dance marathons of the 1930s.  Have all the couples on the ice at the same time.  Instead of sitting off in safety writing down random scores, judges would have to be on the ice, too, and tap the dancers on the shoulder when they've been eliminated.  And it would be a 12 hour marathon; if after 12 hours, more than one couple was still dancing, the judges could award style points to declare the winner.

Doubles luge.  WTF?  I mean, seriously?

I actually do enjoy watching some of the sports, if I've got nothing better to do like pick lint out of my navel or draw lines on the whiskey bottle to make sure the 10 year old isn't mooching.  Somehow I missed the US vs Canada hockey game, which is probably the one thing I would have sat down to watch in its entirety.  The downhill ski races are a bit like NASCAR in that there's almost certainly going to be a spectacular wipeout at some point, and that's OK because NBC in prime time tape delay won't show any actual serious injuries.  Cross country skiing is unfortunately like long distance running--truly an athletic competition, but fundamentally awful television.  I can allow figure skating because there's a manliness to tossing a petite girl into the air while zooming around on miniature swords strapped to your feet.  And speed skating--the one activity in all of humanity where a woman benefits from having enormous thighs.  Plus, as my son who is bored by the biathlon said, they get to wear really cool sunglasses.

So I guess the winter Olympics isn't all bad.  It's got guns, spectacular wipeouts, and really cool sunglasses.  The only thing it's missing is bikinis.