In case you were wondering, snowboard cross became an Olympic sport in the Torino Olympics games in 2006. Snowboard cross involved snowboarders literally throwing themselves down a 9 ft mini-cliff, and going over bumps and stuff. Also, they tend to knock each other over, so the last man standing wins.
Because I am not yet a real adult who owns a TV or have a cable, I used my parent’s log-in info to stream the Olympics live on NBC.com. Living that parentally-subsidized life yo. And yes, I know the Winter Olympics finished a week ago, and the most recent culturally-relevant event is the Oscars, so that’s what this post should really be about, but you know what, I no longer have a college newspaper editor to harass me about getting things in before the deadline, I can be a week behind in popular culture if I want to. And I had to write a brief, and also the ballast water paper is still hanging around, so without the ministrations of the very intense people who run college newspapers 700-900 words about the relatable foibles of a twenty-something were not going to happen. Also, some of the Winter Olympians showed up at the Oscars, so its still kind of relevant.
This might be a hot take, but I have to say, the Winter Olympics were much more fun to watch than the Summer Olympics. The only entertaining things in the Summer Olympics are gymnastics, track and field, and possibly whitewater canoeing.
Winter Olympics, on the other hand, has people sliding very fast down steep slopes, on ice, and doing flips and things in the air. Also, figure skating. Have you ever watched aerial skiing? These people throw themsleves off jumps and do like a bazillion flips and spins headfirst before somehow landing on their skis and not dying. It’s like the vault in gymnastics except 1000% times more badass because you’re doing it with 5 ft planks of fiberglass strapped to your feet. Plus, there are so many fun and ridiculous sports–wtf is skeleton? Who thought it was a good idea to go headfirst down an icy rink at speeds approaching 85 mph? Crazy winter Olympians, that’s who! Also, I just learned that the Finnish Winter Olympic team is knitting in their downtime. The Winter Olympics are also nice because you can kind of half-watch them, and suffer no detriment. It’s not like there are a lot of complicated rules. Pretty much every event just requires you to just be the first one over the line or do a bunch of flips and twists and shit. Except maybe curling, because who actually knows how curling works?
And figure skating. Figure skating is better than gymnastics. There are better costumes and music. (One guy even did his routine to the Game of Thrones theme, wearing gold lamé armor, because figure skating is actually a ridiculous sport. And if you’re going to be balancing your entire body weight on one leg on very thin metal blades, you might as well pick some badass music and a sweet costume. None of this Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninoff nonsense.)
Because I am the type of person to get very invested in some random knowledge while I should be doing other things, I decided to learn all the differences between figure skating jumps. The biggest difference is the toe jumps, which let you use your toe pick, and the other ones, where you jump off just one leg. Why are Salchows easier than loops? Because you land on the opposite foot you took off of (no toe pick though). Why are Axels so hard? Because you enter from the front and land backwards, forcing you to complete an extra half rotation. Flips and Lutzs look the same to me, because there’s only so much expertise you can gain on Youtube in the two hours you should have spent learning about the Commerce Clause.
While the Winter Olympics are vastly more entertaining than the summer ones, I am seriously glad the I live in a climate where it doesn’t snow. Because snow, even it gives you an opportunity to go sliding down it very fast, is actually terrible. So I will gladly watch snow sports from the comfort of my living room, and complain about it being 50 degrees.
In Case You Were Wondering. . . 
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