As I sit here on a blah Monday evening, breathlessly awaiting the season finale of OZ (we'll get to that later), I can't kick my post Olympics hangover. I am an Olympics nut. I get mad when people insult them. I take it personally. I fall prey to all the corny hype and pseudo magic of the whole event. Even with the world in shambles, which it always seems to be whether its Hitler, the cold war, or Afghanistan (1980 and 2002), I am duped with the "world is a global village" and that through sport we can find common ground. Anyone who knows me out there in Balgavyland knows I am a cynical bastard with a low tolerance for sap.

I will be honest, before they started this year I wasn't as excited as usual, maybe it was my intense distrust and dislike of Mormons, maybe it was that it hasn't gotten below 50 degrees here in Brooklyn all winter, who knows but I was lukewarm on the whole business. But goddamn if this wasn't a bang up Winter Games that again had me ignoring every other aspect of my life to watch cross country skiing and figure skating.

And lets get to figure skating. What a farce. I am not going to rehash the whole soap opera (which at times almost took on a Tonya/Nancy vibe, one report had the lovable Canadian government contemplating military action against the Ruskies) and for NBC it was instrumental in kicking their ratings into high gear. But as much of a feel good moment it was to give Sale and Pelletier their golds it was an ugly precedent that was already evidenced in the amount of protests during the second week of competition and now reopens every Olympic case going back a hundred years. I can envision now the made for TV event: Medal Ceremony of the Century! Accepting medals: The 1976 Men's Basketball Team, Roy Jones Jr. and the descendants of Jim Thorpe.

I really can't talk anymore with authority on skating other than to say this: John Hammond kicks John Tesh in the nuts as a sensitive play by play man. Tesh handles Gymnastics with as much skill as he performs music. He wasn't even good on Entertainment Tonight. Steve Kmetko could go Oz on his ass. I also love how my boy Hammond took the Gold medalists in Ice Dancing to task for skating to a remix of Martin Luther King Jr's "I Have a Dream Speech." These French morons (Did you see her orange hair and his bouffant Bee Gees quaff? What assholes) had some idiotic routine where he represented man oppressed and she was the hope of freedom. It was insulting to all the people who have sacrificed for equality and took those words as more than trite jingoism. Why don't these frogs find some French leader's political speech to skate to? …oh yeah there hasn't been a credible French leader or thinker since Charlemagne.

I also miss long time ABC figure skating commentator and former Gold medallist Dick Button calling these catfights. He always brought color and panache to the evening and never strayed from letting his honesty fly. His chemistry with Peggy Flemming was always a treat and they brought an old world grace that was lacking this time. Scott Hamilton, while very knowledgeable and likable, tramples over his own words with regularity and that Canadian choreographer woman is annoying. Sure they were outraged and reacted off the cuff when the Sale and Pelletier scores were posted but it was easy to react off that circus. Dick would have bitched slapped that French judge so hard she wouldn't have had time to change her story five times.

One thing I can speak with some authority on is those cheating no good cry baby Russians. I got one word to answer for why Russia sucked these Olympics, KARMA. Yeah that's right. For fifty plus years these jerks lied, cheated, doctored and bullied their way to Olympic dominance. Think how good the US would be if we held Canada and Mexico by tank point to be on our team like they did to the eastern block countries. Half of their athletes now play for their true homelands of Slovenia, Belarus, The Ukraine etc.

Like some pathetic middle age man holding on to his high school football championship, these guys are living in some red haze of yesteryear. They don't even have legitimate cases to bitch. On every disputed call or accusation of abuse the evidence, common sense and our own eyes rule against these fallen superpowers. They get caught blood doping - it's someone else's fault, they get caught fixing results - its someone else's fault, they get a hooking call - it's a conspiracy of North Americans' referee's fault. Vyacheslav Fetisov, coach of the Russian hockey team and former red army team star, complained the tournament was rigged to set up the USA vs. Canada showdown. He may be right. My theory has us North Americans luring the great Soviet players, with Fetisov leading the way, to the NHL ten years ago so we could get them rich, fat, happy and lazy. In this Dream Tournament the Russians were the team that looked like it couldn't wait to return to the NHL and their lives of ordering coke spoons from room service and banging Russian tennis pros.

These Olympics also showed the ever-widening gender gap, which us thirtysomethings straddle. The baby boom farts are choking on their own fogeyism. They loved to hate snowboarding and aerial skiing and anything else threatening to their 1950's childhood nostalgia values. "That's Not a Sport" they bellow like a mantra and immediately begin commentating on the athletes' hair length or attraction to dope. Is there anything more ridiculous than a child of the sixties complaining about pot use and hair length? On my sports radio stations, in the sports pages nothing but knee jerk criticism by a generation who was supposed to represent new ideals and gave birth to youth culture. Pathetic.

I don't pretend to be thrash king of the mountain and in fact only ever snowboarded on our Playstation 2, but I loved watching these new fangled winter sports. After my endless (and I mean bloodshot eyes, lost hours, and calloused hands - my god man, Blink!) play of the snowboarding game SSX Tricky I could name every move in the half pipe. Tailgrabs, fakeys, stalefishes and McTwists don't threaten me!

But at the same I definitely feel older than these extreme sports kids and do find a certain elders humor in the whole business but not the blind condemnation of the boomers. And don't tell me that our record medal count was bloated by these American dominated X-sports! Does anyone bitch because Finland is the only place on earth where ski jumping is popular or that Austrians ski everywhere from the age of 2 on, or how about how only the English and Canadians Curl? No. They don't, so shut up already. In this generational war I'm siding (or sliding!) with the kids.

Let's get to some media analysis. That is, after all, what these rants are supposed to look at. Balgavy.com movie list maker extraordinaire Dan Ralphy-smell thought my virgin outing was too typically "media TV writer guy" (like Tom Shales writes about strangling Moms with piano wire) so I hesitate to give my Mass Com 310 breakdown of what NBC did right and how they got lucky.

A funny aside about Dan, we chatted about the possible impending doom of Undeclared (Obit to come when appropriate, they better be working on the DVD right now!!!!!!!!!!!!!) last weekend at the fabled O'Connors. He was lamenting the short attention span of network executives (as futile as complaining about the Grammy's) and informed me that Seinfeld was the lowest rated show the night it debuted (an episode I recently saw at the Museum of TV and Radio with my Parents and little brother. We were cold and tired so we were glad to sit and watch the boob tube. It was funny, lots more stand up sketches by Jerry than would eventually be on the show. Kramer was originally an agoraphobic and no Elaine. Is there any doubt that Larry David was the genius behind that show?). "Um," I said "Dan you read that fact in my mundane and typical LAST COLUMN!" he quickly backpedaled and then I bought him his second wild Turkey shot.

Back to NBC (what a rambling opus this is turning out to be). Costas is great. No doubt the right man for the chair. He might jump ship to ABC with its baseball/basketball future and if so it will be a sad day for Olympic coverage. I read one writer mention that Jimmy Rogers is poised to take over the head if Costas bolts. GROSS. I hope not, he is a smug little shit bag who reminds me of the Scud Stud. I say hand it over to Hannah Storm. She is professional, smart and sexy without being obnoxious. She has worn that cute bob hairdo for years and I think her calm demeanor fits the Olympics well. Jim Lampley, who has bugged since my dad used to bash him when I was a kid, is like a bloated drunk. Half the time he was making inside jokes and stabs at the broadcasters and crew and he always acted half in the bag. His jowls are monstrous and often he looked like he was staring off into space.

NBC finally got the Triple Cast right, rotating and showcasing events on MSNBC and CNBC well. This was great for daytime coverage and for showing hockey games in their entirety. I watched so much great hockey that it made me thirst for my days on the street hockey circuit. The NHL should take notice on the international game and make some adjustments to the pros, which is getting dangerously mundane. My first edict if I was commissioner of the puck would be to nix the red line, without the two line pass the game opened up and created fast paced rushes. I am thinking of watching Slapshot again soon, if only to relive the two reasons I love the sport, USA Hockey and the Charleston Chiefs.

The final episode of OZ was a let down. After my previous tirade against some suspect storylines the show had settled into a nice pace of rape, deceit, full frontal male nudity, the usual fare. This seasons finale felt like a good middle episode, not the big cliffhanger. The stories were allowed to dangle with little development and lots of actor face time. How many close ups on Rebadow do we need? Certainly not like other finales with riots, explosions and the death of Adebisi.

The big shocker was the killing of Augustus, the wheel chair Greek chorus dude. Not only was this not climactic - it was stupid. With so much potential fireworks a shanking gone wrong to everybody's favorite cripple is a cop out. He must have needed out of his contract or wanted more money. Maybe he didn't like traveling all the way to Jersey and the new soundstage. Whatever the excuse this sucked as a cliffhanger. Does that mean no more narration and philosophical ramblings? What a shame. That was a great feature of the show and I am pissed that he went out on a lame impotence theme. Another problem is the season is so short. I felt like I was just beginning to settle back and get into the groove of the show and its done - leaving us faithful to wait another year before continuing many open ended stories.

HBO seems to be teasing us with its marquee shows, utilizing hit and run seasons and lots of repeats. HBO is owned by the Hydra like AOL-Time Warner, don't they have enough money to produce more shows? By the time The Sopranos is on again will anyone care? We will have bought all the DVDs, watched all the season rebroadcasts and read every magazine article on the rack. No one loves the show more than I do but this two year gap between seasons is retarded, capice? It's a television show not the Sistine Chapel! Luckily a disappointing season of OZ can be wiped away with the second season of Six Feet Under. The mortuary family drama is like a welcome salve to football and Olympics withdrawals.