Friday, February 17, 2006

Random stuff no one but me cares about!

I know that the Olympics have been going downhill for many years. Heck, they were probably going downhill since the modern Games were reintroduced in 1896 and athletes wore clothes instead of competing in the raw. Certainly they have been in precipitous decline since the introduction of such things as Rhythmic Gymnastics, Mountain Biking, Snowboarding, and Moguls Skiing.

But now things have gone TOO FAR dammit! Tonight on NBC, while waiting for This Old House to get started, I caught some male figure skater performing the beginning of his routine and the music made me gasp in horror. It was some piece of music from The Matrix! The MATRIX, people! This is NOT Olympic-worthy music, okay?!

And if that wasn't bad enough, I later caught the latest extreme sport that has somehow weaseled its way onto the Olympic stage--Snowboard Cross. Imagine four snowboarders racing down a twisting track of jumps and banks and turns, much like motorcycle motocross. (sigh) Pierre de Coubertin is rolling in his grave.

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In other news, and as you read in an earlier post, Sarah's art class is continuing. I haven't posted any of her recent art, but the one she drew last week (and that I saw today) was so good that I had to catch up. Here are her last three drawings, in order:


This one didn't translate that well when scanned. It was a dollar bill design, complete with a cat in the portrait oval at the center. You can barely see, if you squint REALLY hard, the words "Cat Cash." I don't know what the swirl on the right side of the bill signifies, but I am sure that Dan Brown can figure out some mysterious symbolic meaning of it in his next book. As to why it was felt this to be a suitable artistic image, I can only assume that artists are fed up with being starving artists and are now resorting to counterfeiting to keep their families fed. But, hey, we'll be able to renovate the bathroom as soon as Sarah gets rid of the cramps in her fingers.


This, as you might guess, is a snowflake. I confess that I'm not sure why this was selected as an artistic image either. I suppose the pattern encourages spatial planning or drawing in symmetry or something. I just know that I like the way she drew it. I also like that it is drawn in bold black and jumps off the page (and computer screen).


This is the image she brought home today and this is the one that prompted me to get back to these images. The quality of detail in this one blew me away when Sarah showed it to me. I know that she had an image to draw from (the figure is George Washington, by the way), but still . . . I couldn't produce a drawing this well constructed myself. I am really struck by how accurately she proportioned the various physical elements of the figure, the head to the shoulders to the torso, the details of the clothing, everything. It just blows me away!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just had to let everyone know that David watched the snowboard cross finals and appeared to ENJOY watching it! So, do you want to take anything back David?

David said...

I take NOTHING back, do you hear?

I was simply killing time until Smallville came on. What you thought was enjoyment was simply . . . boredom and muscle spasms.

Sven Golly said...

Darn right! I've been noticing for years that alpine skiing in particular is rapidly going downhill. Curling, on the other hand, is going to be the next hot thing in the 'hood. It's only a matter of time before MTV carries hip-hop curling videos with gangstas scooting down the street with their brooms and stones. You heard it here first.

David said...

Sven, knowing as I do that you despise sports reporters that whine about the past, I hope that you are not affronted by my Olympic-sized resistance.

I can only say in my defense that the Olympics have become a branding vehicle more than an examination of athletic achievement, but then, hey . . . welcome to modernity, right? It's not like the Modern Olympics has been anything but a peaceful proxy for nationalistic domination. So, no one wins, right?

I take that back. There are a few winners--those lucky enough to make it on the Wheaties box win for a short time. And then its back to obscurity with the lot of you. Come back in twelve years when we need to make a funny FedEx Olympic commercial.

Sven Golly said...

I'm with you, bud! In fact, I've been silently composing a rant against the disnification of sport, which would go something like this: take a sporting event, put it on TV to advertise products to people who don't go to the event, then change the rules, stage it indoors on a plastic carpet, take periodic timeouts for commercials, and digitally enhance the broadcast image to make it LESS LIKE BEING THERE, adding really tasteless about the athlete's dead asthmatic grandmother so viewers don't have to sit through actual sporting events. On the other hand, Coubertin was a crazy elitist aristocrat anyway.

Sven Golly said...

Hooked on Curling!

http://curlnews.blogspot.com/
http://www.thecurlingnews.com/