Coming Up: Olympics.

Just in time for the London 2012 Olympic Games comes a few random reflections on those held way back when in Beijing. Better late than never, I guess? They were topical when I started writing them, so I thought I may as well finish and post the buggers. For posterity. Or whatever.

Coming Up: Inaction Replays
If I die having never seen another super-slow motion montage, I will die a happy man. Even if it means never again seeing the parched runner and his miracle butterfly. In fact, especially if it means never seeing the parched runner and his miracle butterfly. That clip creeps me out. Once the novelty, like the butterfly, flitted away, all you were left with was the faintly erotic scene of a man languidly raising his water bottle to his mouth and gushing its contents all over his face. Um, can we move onto something else, please? Oh great, here's some swimmer's arm moving in super slow-mo. Not an actual swimmer; just an arm. Brilliant.

You know , I thought they might have tired of this toy by the end of the Athens Olympics, but no, here we are, four years later, still watching the same excruciating, poorly-framed shots that cram five minutes of highlights into nearly an hour. I switched to SBS, hoping for some relief, only to discover they were playing the exact same montage. Interestingly though, where Channel 7 felt high-intensity, British alt-rockers Muse to be the perfect aural accompaniment, SBS went with... yep, Andrea Bocelli. A more apt illustration of the difference between the two networks would, I think, be hard to find.

Coming Up: Breakfast
And speaking of soundtracks, to my abject horror Coles latched onto Sia Furler's beautiful song, Breathe Me, for their mawkish tribute to the "unsung heroes" of every Olympics since time began: the mums and their magnificent food preparation skills. Unless the mums bought their food from Safeway, sorry, Woolworths, in which case they're just losers. Like their loser kids who come eighth, or whatever. Losers. Anyway, Breathe Me was put to much better use in the final climactic scene of the brilliant Six Feet Under, a scene so moving and wonderful that every viewing leaves me a teary trembling mess. And then along stomps Coles, muscling into my subconscious and squeezing out my precious associations with early mornings, crunchy apples and Camberwell mums living vicariously. Realising my desperate situation, I got out my Six Feet DVDs and put myself through a rigorous reassociation regime, until once again those first few notes brought nothing to mind but Claire driving away and people keeling over.

Coming Up: Landmarks
Since TV networks began to brand their programming with digital watermarks, they've gradually mutated them from a quiet kid in the corner to an attention-seeking extrovert. Larger, more elaborate, often coloured and at times even animated, watermarks are now mostly so only in name. And then into the ring swaggers Channel 7 with their bold as a dog's bollocks offering for the Olympics. Not only larger than any I've ever seen before, it was also completely opaque. Nothing like Exclusive Rights to bring out the brazenness in a Television Network.

Also brazen was Channel 7's refusal to be constrained by anything as helpful as a timeslot for their televised events. Everything was always "Coming Up..." but you could never be sure when. And to make things even more difficult, the network seemed to have put a bored teenager with a remote control in charge of programming. Ten minutes of water polo, five minutes of rhythmic gymnastics, a little bit of track and field, two shots of men's basketball, aaaand back to the water polo. Liberally spiced with ads, of course. The water polo game clock said there were 10 minutes of boredom to go, so I went and made a cup of tea and checked my email, only to discover upon my return that there were still 10 minutes of boredom to go! Either time had just stood still, or they'd spliced in a chunk of some other event to keep things... I don't know, interesting? No idea what the event was, but as time ground on I eventually realised it must have been the one I'd been waiting for, as suddenly its time was no longer "Coming Up," it was just up.

Coming Up: 1980
The closing ceremony was a real letdown. Course, after the sprightly Joanna Griggs reported the Chinese as saying the spectacle would surpass that of the Opening Ceremony, it never really stood a chance. Doubly so, when the eventual production turned out to be only slightly more spectacular than a high school Rock Eisteddfod. More maniacally grinning, frantically waving people riding bikes? Nooo! Quite why the Chinese went blasting our expectations up into the stratosphere like that, I'll never know. True to form, Channel 7 refused to be locked in to a starting time, and so, after Joanna's 15th assurance that the Closing Ceremony was "coming up," I set the VCR running and went to bed. Thank the Maker and his oil baths that I did, because when I sat down to watch it the next day, there was still a half hour of ads interrupted by the occasional programme break to go. As I tore through the interminable lead-up like a Jamaican down the home straight, I once again gave thanks to my VCR and its blessed day of manufacture.

Coming Up: The Bill
While I marvel at our nation of just over 20 million people placing sixth on the Medal Tally against the whole entire world, when I read that each medal cost us around $17 million in federal grants, I had to wonder if it was worth it? I know you can't put a price on inspiring the next generation of Aussie kids to swim really, really, really, really fast, but still, $782 million is an extraordinary sum. I guess, at least, when we're told (repeatedly) that the athletes are doing it for us, it's actually true?

Coming Up: Smitty!
• And finally (to finish on a positive note amidst all this whining)... Go Smitty! (Surprisingly, the Wikipedia link to Smitty's Hockey Australia profile doesn't work, and I don't know how to fix it (Phil?), so if you want the lowdown on Smitty, go (Smitty) here! Yay!