WELP, ANOTHER OLYMPICS HAS COME AND GONE. It’s certainly been an eventful one, spawning memes by the truckload, from everyone’s favorite Pommel Horse Hero to the Turkish silver-medal sharpshooter to the pole vaulter with the troublesome…pole. But let’s begin at the beginning.

paris

What can you really say about the City of Light? It’s a haven for hunchbacks and phantoms and sad singing revolutionaries. The Seine is dirty because it’s filled with cigarettes and ennui. Everyone’s just…eating cheese and…wearing stripes. Bein’ snooty. Noshin’ baguette.

The Opening Ceremonies received mixed reviews, but I suspect that’s partly due to cultural differences. Ze French are more…well, French than we are. You know what I mean. You know.

Now, I didn’t see the Contentious Drag Queen Display because I was Distracted by the Fashion and the Boats and the Mysterious Parkour Person. But even later, when I saw pictures of Papa Smurf slung over a banquet table, I wasn’t bothered. It was weird, but it’s art. And artists trying to be edgy are fueled by the public’s outrage. So if you don’t like what they’re doing, just ignore them. It is the cruelest revenge to the soul of a poor iconoclast.

What really ghasted my flabbers, however, was the video with the three people book-flirting (THE MOST POTENT FORM OF FLIRTING!) in a library before flitting off to un appartement si chic for a bit of…how you say…rrrromping. I wasn’t upset because it was a ménage à trois—after all, by Parisian standards, isn’t that considered a bit tame?—but because it was a ménage à trois arranged in a library. We here in the States have suffered too much library-related drama already. Now if people get it into their heads that public libraries are a breeding ground for…well, breeding…. I shudder to think what the Concerned Mothers Groups are already plotting after that display. Will they try to ban all French books? Install chaperones to make sure no one’s getting too handsy in the stacks? Seize the dictionaries to censor terms like “double entendre” and “amuse-bouche”? France, what are you trying to do to us?!

Despite the objectionable bits, there was so much to enjoy about this spectacle. The athletes riding on boats. The headless Maries Antoinette singing with a French heavy metal band. Kelly Clarkson gushing about the rainy ambience and getting choked up over Celine Dion’s appearance. The hot-air balloon Olympic cauldron that floated over Paris before settling in the Jardin des Tuileries. It was all very dramatic.

But NONE of that is what the OLYMPICS are aBOUT. They’re about SPORT! So let’s get to it.

[NOTE: I already commented on many of my favorite events during the last Olympics; if you care to read about those, you can find that post HERE.]

TABLE TENNIS

Watching this sport was stressful. Possibly because they showed four games at once.

Of course, I didn’t help things. In my determination to watch as many events as I physically could, I frequently found myself streaming up to a dozen different games, matches, battles, and rounds at a time. To be honest, it started to feel like a job. Or—no, more like an internship. I definitely wasn’t getting paid, but I could potentially make it sound like valuable experience on a resume.

Anyway.

As the finals neared and they started showing only one match-up at a time, we really got to see the players in action: standing five feet back from the table in front of a silent crowd and whipping the ball back and forth—I could not begin to keep track of it as it moved, but I found the clicky-clack of its movement very soothing. Also the players liked to bob on their toes between rallies like happy little ducklings, which added some much-needed levity to a tense competition.

One fun little factoid I learned about table tennis is that the person serving has to show the ball to their opponent before they serve. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the moment they reveal it there on their palm, like a precious little egg over which they’ve been brooding so carefully. Right before they SLAM it with a paddle.

SURFING

Despite growing up in Southern California, a mere half-hour from the beach, I never learned to surf. I don’t know why. It honestly never occurred to me.

But I do love the ocean, and watching surfers bob on their boards off the coast of Tahiti was wonderfully relaxing. I learned all about the “spit” and the “rail” and “carving a line.” And, while watching German surfer Tim Elter, I learned one other thing:

If you’re going to surf, and especially if your surfing will be recorded for broadcast around the world, you should make sure that your swimsuit is secure.

RACE-WALKING

I was really just in awe of the choices at play here. First, these men and women chose to participate in a sport that we would be justified, I feel, in describing as competitive hastening. Second, some of the men chose to wear these little swishy shorts? For a style of movement that already emphasizes the hips? Just delightful. Overall there was the sense that everyone had just exited the metro and was anxiously hurrying home for tea and cakes.

It’s a good thing I wasn’t watching this event in person. If I’d been on the sidelines, I’d have made trouble by shouting, “That guy’s running! I saw him! Both feet were off the ground at the same time—judges!!” I mean, obviously I still shouted that, from my couch across the Atlantic, but the officials take that sort of complaint much less seriously.

Additional footage of the race-walkers:

ARCHERY

At first I was afraid the smoosh-faces wouldn’t be as good as they were last time. But I needn’t have feared. If anything, the faces this year were even smooshier than in Tokyo.

I love the variety of smoosh-faces on display in this sport: the focused, the wry, the inexplicably puckered. The American man had this way of twitching his moustache each time he prepared a shot that sent me into fits of delighted giggles. This sport is nothing short of an absolute treat.

You may have noticed, however, that the last man in the slideshow does not in fact have a smoosh-face. So why, you might ask, is he included in a compilation of Olympic smoosh-faces when he shoots with the strong jaw and even features of Apollo the Archer himself come down to Earth? Well, simply put, I think this arrow-wielding Adonis deserves some recognition for his ability to shoot so handsomely. He’s like a dang Disney character. He’s Li Shang come to life. And I think that deserves our respect.

Speaking of respect…

BREAKING

New to the Olympics this year, breaking was met with both skepticism and excitement. I tried to reserve judgment, but I quickly became disillusioned when I saw the two deejays:

“Oh, boy,” I said. “This is…this is happening.” And I remembered that there would be b-girls and b-boys from all over the world competing. Eastern Europeans. Scandinavians. The French. I fully admit to my hasty judgment, and I stand by it. There’s a reason breaking will not be included in the 2028 Olympics. Aside from the Afghan refugee with the cape who was eliminated in a pre-competition round, and Jeffro—a charming American b-boy who was CHEATED OUT OF A PODIUM SPOT, YOU CAN FIGHT ME ABOUT IT—I MAY NOT KNOW MUCH ABOUT BREAKING BUT I KNOW STAR QUALITY WHEN I SEE IT AND BOY DID THIS KID HAVE THE OL’ JE NE SAIS QUOI—this felt like a social experiment wherein we, the viewers, were competing to see how much we could watch without dying of second-hand embarrassment.

(Am I being too harsh? I don’t mean to be harsh. The athleticism was truly impressive. I said “whoa” out loud several times. My husband compared it to earlier Games when athletes competed in poetry. It seems reasonable to suppose that a lot of those poems were probably pretty cringy, too. Expressing oneself, unfortunately, often is.)

To kick things off, Snoop Dogg Crip Walked out to perform the coup de baton, which made me feel a bit better. If Snoop gave his blessing, how bad could it be? I would have liked a picture-in-picture of his reactions during each of the battles, but he left after only a few of the women’s qualifying rounds, off to grace another event with his presence, that busy little…pupp.

Anyway. I think more sports should be judged based on vibes. It adds some nice chaos to what can be an otherwise rigid process.

B-boy Ronnie and Kid David tried to explain the elements of breaking (uprock, downrock, freezes, floorwork, transitions, etc.), but mostly they pointed out when someone was “really listening to the music” and talked about how important it is to show your “voCABulary” of moves.

NOW. By this point, I’m sure you have all seen the clips of Rachael “Raygun” Gunn’s creative approach to breaking. First off, let’s all just admit that she was bestowed with a perfect name to make into some sort of nickname. She had two choices in life: become a superhero or a b-girl. And clearly she said, “Porque no los dos?” (Except she would’ve said it with an Australian accent, which is hard to imagine but I have to assume it’s something like, “Paurquiy naur laurs daurs?”)

Because what could be a better cover for a superhero than a 36-year-old university professor whose doctoral thesis explored deterritorializing the gender dynamics of the Australian breaking scene? Ask yourself: Why did she perform so bizarrely compared to the other b-girls? Much like the Turkish assass—er, sharpshooter, she could not reveal her true abilities. If anyone found out she was capable of hypnotizing evil-doers with her floorwork, that would be the end of Raygun’s quest to rid the continent of crime.

“But Carrie,” you might be saying, “if she wants to keep her identity a secret, why would she use the same name for breaking and superheroing? Isn’t that a bit of a giveaway?”

Well, maybe I’m wrong and she just made some odd choices. Or maybe it’s like my husband said, and the athletes from the Southern Hemisphere were at a disadvantage because their breaking spins in the opposite direction down there (like their toilets) and they had to adjust to an entirely different rotation for the competition. Regardless, can you even imagine the strength of character it takes to come out on stage and perform like that in front of God and everyone? In front of Snoop Dogg? No one knows for sure what was going through the woman’s head, what her aims were, but how many of us could do even as much as she did? (I couldn’t. I know. I tried it immediately. The fact that she can perform the Kangaroo at age 36 is impressive in itself.)

In truth, Raygun has done nothing to deserve our scorn. Are not the Olympic Games meant to instill a sense of compassion and understanding across lines of nationality? Furthermore, how can we expect Oceanic breaking to compare in any way with the rest of the world’s when their hip-hop scene is dominated by the legendary Hiphopopotamus and the mother-flippin’ Rhymenoceros? It’s a different beast entirely.

Now watch Raygun’s routine again. Think of yourself and what you would do if you were rocking in the middle of a circle of street youths and the rapper suddenly hit you with this line: “They call me the Hiphopopotamus, my lyrics are bottomless”—followed by several bars of silence! How does one transmute that type of existential horror through their body without turning to surrealist pantomime?

I guess what I’m saying is, put yourself in Raygun’s shoes. Her bright white trainers. Put on her cap. Tuck your polo shirt into her pants. See what it feels like to slide a mile on her head. You’ve had hurt feelings before, haven’t you? You know what it’s like. Give the woman a break.

Let’s put some respect on Raygun’s name. And as the Hiphopopotamus says, “Be more constructive with your feedback…please.”

THIS GUY

The Cap Catcher performed his task admirably, with unparalleled style and panache. 10/10. No notes.

LOOKING AHEAD

Before we know it, a year and a half will have passed and we’ll be in Italy for the Winter Olympics. And then it’ll be off to LA in the summer of 2028. The Closing Ceremonies offered a little taste—an amuse-bouche, if it’s not to risque to say—of what that will be like, with performances by Snoop, Billie Eilish, and, of course, the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

While we can’t know what the organizers will dream up over the coming four years, I get the sense it’s gonna be, like, a super chill hang. We’re gonna surf some gnarly waves, play some beach v-ball, and sit in the 405 parking lot to eat some In-N-Out as the sun sets over the City of Angels.

The gymnastics will be suuuuper rad.

Everyone goes home with a free seagull.

That Norwegian swimmer gets obsessed with a roadside taquería.

A California grizzly bear carries the Olympic torch to light the cauldron.

Ah—how am I not already on the planning committee?! Absurd.