no toilet paper

can't decide which is my favorite

Not seen much but caught some in the kitchen at work where my work colleagues and I were cheering on an Iranian sniper.

Also, the closing ceremony should be all 6 billion people on Earth each punching Stuart Pearce once in the face.

He's a professional broadcaster, that's what. So he's got as much to do with the Olympics as any other professional broadcaster.

He's also quite familiar with the cruise joints and what Ryan Lochte "wants" if ya get my drift.

So, being somewhat local, I burned out on Olympics news well before the opening ceremonies, so it's taken me a while to get back into it. I liked the opening ceremonies a lot (had at least three friends in it), and I'm casually following the medal counts. There are enough unsold tickets to go around, but I'm not sure I want to put up with the commute and loads of people. ATL crew: what was your experience of '96 like in comparison?

Badminton scandals aside, China's performance doesn't surprise me at all. Their medals-per-capita is always going to suck though. I thought Kazahkstan's would be higher and am anxiously awaiting Sasha Baron Cohen to show up as Borat somewhere.

I sold useless beads and trinkets by the side of the road. We had one of those booths that sold pins and water and various other soon to break piece of shit souvenirs. Then that dude set off a bomb, and all of our shit got looted, and I went back to Athens. But since the boss had insurance, he actually paid us for a week of 10 hour days we didn't have to work - which was pretty damn cool.

In Atlanta, I mostly just saw traffic. Never went to an event there. One night I took off from some shitty party and was going to drive an hour and a half back to Athens, and was like "I should at least go down there and check shit out, it's only 2 miles away." Got halfway there, got tired of traffic, it was late, and I bailed out and headed for athens. Listening to radio coverage as I got onto the interstate, the bomb went off. So the traffic would've been a fuckload worse had I braved it and gone down there.

But in Athens we went to several events. Not everything would fit in Atlanta, so they had shit like womens soccer in athens. Got to sit behind one of the goals for the silver and gold matches, and it was incredible.

I also saw the Gold Medal baseball game (Jim Abbott pitching) in Seoul in 1988.

Olympic giffage

best yet

Disappointing lack of people almost dying during the women's marathon.

seriously? i've never seen Shalane finish a race like that, by crossing the line and collapsing. what more did you want to see, defibrillator paddles?

looked like a rough day out there. I need to review the course.

Well, yeah. I'm sort of anti-marathon so I want people collapsing and lot's of...carnage if you will.

That course was pretty insane and the weather blew. Tough day for sure.

I was just reading the write-up on the race. Yeesh. Wasn't paying too much attention to the women's marathon, but heard Shalane had put a sliver of hope in the US's mind. Her training partner Goucher said she was experiencing pain as horrible as when she gave birth. Wow.

Guess we'll see how Ryan Hall fares next Sunday.

I have a completely (sort of) different recollection of traffic. I remember the ramp up to start of the games there was a massive PR campaign to get people to take public transportation and MARTA. It almost seemed like a fear campaign. Like, estimates of "if you drive, you'll be sitting on I-75 for 5 hours" type of stuff. Prime example, my cousin works at the main office for Coke near downtown and lives in Woodstock, GA (terrible commute even by normal standards) and they put him up in a hotel room near the office for 2 weeks due to these fears of 4 hour commutes.

In the end, all reports were it never manifested at all. Traffic was no worse than a normal Friday afternoon in Atlanta. Hell, the one day I went down there, we drove straight to a parking deck easily. Saw no events, just drank my weight in beer at Bud World in Olympic Park.

Could it be the commute times remained low due to precautions taken?

(Not accusing; just, spitballing.)

meanwhile, in Australia

Probably. I will say that the Olympics were the tipping point for Atlanta traffic. In 1995, I could leave Athens and drive straight through the city to my parents house in the middle of the afternoon with no major issues. By 1997, it was Clusterfuck Junction.