Michael Phelps, You Are Cordially Invited To A Party...

In my pants. Said party commences immediately, now that you have some time and energy after swimming one of the most grueling programs in the history of the Olympics, winning more gold medals than any Olympian EVER, winning more gold medals in a single Olympics than anyone EVER, and breaking SEVEN world records in the process.

Also encouraged to attend the party in my pants are your eight gold medals, your seven world records, and all of your relay teammates, ESPECIALLY one Mr. Jason Hotass Lezak. You're pretty fucking awesome, Phelps, but we all know this wouldn't have been possible without that other lightning fast hotness.

Required attire: Nothing but swim caps, baby. Actually, Phelps is the only one required to wear the cap. For my own personal reason.

The shindig should look like this, but with less clothing:



Oooooh.

I can't even, like, form a coherent thought when I look at that group of manflesh. I wish there were a way for me to be the meat in that quadruple decker sammich. Perhaps I can work something out with the magic of Photoshop? I dunno.

It's been a long seven days of suspense, people, so let's just sit back and look at that bod, think nasty thoughts, and then look at the bod again:



Speedo, I do believe I owe you some royalties for the appearances these trunks make in my dreams. But just a very small percentage, since they're not on for long.



Oh, to be the person attached to that hand (without the artificial nails, of course). Or even that granola bar. Hell, at this point I'll take what I can get.



Um......

Phelps, I love you so much I don't even care that you cup your left breast during the National Anthem. You know that's not where your heart is, right? Well, you're a superhuman, so perhaps that IS where your heart is located...



Not only is this fine gold medal winning machine an excellent athlete AND easy on the eyes, HE'S ALSO TRYING TO SAVE ELLIS ISLAND:



AAAAAAAND I'M SPENT

The Prem is back, baby; Samson no longer.

After waking up to watch my broken Gooners at a godforsaken hour, I've managed to accomplish exactly nothing today save sitting on my ass with my feet in my husband's lap while we both watch soccer.

We've made it through Arsenal's win (far, far closer than I would have liked, so if my team could be something other than injured soon, that would be awesome) and Blackburn's completely crazy topping of Everton. (Nothing says Prem League heart attack like a 94th minute goal to win the match. By which I mean 'HOLY SHIT I CANNOT BELIEVE THAT EVEN HAPPENED.)

Really, though, I'm taking one major thing away from today.

Thank fuck Fernando Torres cut his hair.

People, we went from this monstrosity:



to this:



It's not perfect, but it's better. Of course, the fact that he looks like he's about eight in that picture makes me feel kind of gross, but whatever. He cut his hair, he scored the winning goal. It's Fernando Torres' world, y'all. We're just living in it.

For the record, in the 12 minutes it has taken me to find a properly terrible picture of 'Nando's old hair and write out this post, West Ham has managed to hang two on Wigan. That's just sad.

I hate you, Comcast Cable

We have Olympics Fever here at Bitchball. After an Opening Ceremony that would cause even a casual Luddite to go running for the hills (seriously, can we talk about the gigantic tablet PC, more or less, that was the floor of that stadium last night? Or the fact that Lisa and I, more than once, sent each other messages over AIM that simply read 'WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE I DON'T UNDERSTAND HOLY GOD THIS IS AMAZING' since, obviously, one does not need punctiation or lower case letters when one is having ones mind blown by a bunch of Communists and trying to avoid thinking about China's shittastic human rights record. Bonus points for not flinging things at the TV every time Bush or, even worse [today] Putin showed up on screen. Who starts a god damn war the day the Olympics start? Who?), the games are in full swing, and I am already fully prepared to choke a bitch.

You see, NBC did the US a favor and created a whole channel dedicated to men's and women's soccer (WHEE), and men's and women's basketball (bleh) because, well, there are a lot of games, and some people (*coughcoughme*) want to see all of them. It's a smart move, and it really frees them up to air some of the events that otherwise wouldn't see the light of day. As I am a huge Olympics whore, I wholeheartedly approve of the fact that I actually got to see the women's fencing medal event (WHAT UP, US SWEEP) because NBC could put the US/Japan women's match on the soccer channel.

There's just one problem. Not everyone gets the soccer channel or the basketball channel. In fact, not even all customers of a given cable provider get the channels. I? Do not get these channels, as a subscriber of Comcast of Philadelphia. Comcast of New Jersey? Gets the channels. Comcast of Delaware? Gets them. Comcast Philadelphia, the HOME GODDAMN MARKET of Comcast Cable, site of the massive Comcast Building, CAN'T GET THE GOD DAMN SOCCER CHANNEL?! So...basically, I'm going to get exactly no soccer the entire Games? Great.

Here's the thing: I know I'm going to get to see some games, and I know that I'll get to see all or most of the US men's and women's games. (I have not so much faith in the men's team, but whatever, we'll see.) That's fine. But I want to see more. I want to see the Brazil matches, because I want to see how Ronaldinho's leg holds up. I want to know if the Dutch team is as good as they look on paper. Shit, I want to see how the Ivory Coast holds up in their first Olympic Games. (For men's soccer, anyway.) But no. Because Comcast Philadelphia isn't carrying the channels. Instead, I get Fox Reality Channel airing shit like 'The World's Trashiest Weddings.'

A pox on you, Comcast Philadelphia. Give me my damn soccer. Whatever. I'm going to go watch Michael Phelps beat the shit out of the rest of the world. Homina. (For the record, I'm thirteen years old and swimming delights me solely because the announcers keep talking about the quality of various strokes.)

But hey: the Prem starts in a week. Sing it with me, people: FUCK. CHELSEA.

Take a look at the US Men's Team, would you? They're all about fourteen years old. The Olympics make me feel like a pervy old lady.

NBC already sucks

The day has arrived! It’s officially 8.8.08, which means the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing have started! (Yes, I know soccer technically started earlier this week. Cut me some slack.) In fact, Day 1 is already over…and herein lies the problem.

Instead of broadcasting LIVE from the opening ceremony, NBC showed The Today Show, choosing to “save” the ceremony for primetime. In fact, the cast of Today show spoke about the ceremony as if wouldn't be happening for another 12 hours, despite the dark sky in the background. Because Americans are too stupid to notice that and don’t understand time zones, anyway, right?

Really? NBC couldn’t preempt Today for live Olympic coverage? I mean, it’s once every two years. Or maybe show the ceremony on one of the other (many) NBC channels? CNBC, maybe? OK, the stock market’s open today, so that’s out. What about MSNBC? All that's being shown there is news, anyway. Or USA? Reruns of Monk, for Christ’s sake. Or that weird Universal channel? I didn’t catch what was running this morning (NOT the Olympics), but I’ll bet it was some B-movie with Jean-Claude Van Damme.

But, fine. NBC wants to keep the ceremony in primetime, attempting to boost ad revenue and gaining a larger audience. I get it (sort of). Personally, I don’t think showing the live ceremony would cut into the primetime audience that much. Lots of people are at work right now and will wait until primetime, anyway. Plus, in the age of DVR, who watches commercials?

Honestly, I didn’t really expect this year to be an exception for NBC. This is typical of American programming, but it still makes me angry. All I can hope is that most of the events are shown live. Given NBC's track record, I know I'm delusional. But at the very least, NBC, tell us the truth about when things are happening in Beijing. Some of us aren’t as dumb as you think.

[This post has been brought to you by my Olympic boyfriend, Andreas Thorkildsen.]