Nagano a No-Go

Maybe I'm just a Philistine. Growing up in Houston meant that the Winter Olympics were nice, but they never meant anything to me.

So it's possible to blame my upbringing for my inability to appreciate the Nagano Games. While I'm sure that the Finns and Swiss care, I don't.

Of course, it can't all be me, right? Everybody outside Scandinavia regards the Winter Games as the bastard child, the quadrennial contest dwelling in the shadow of its elder sibling, the Summer Olympics.

There are reasons, after all.

Exhibit A, as a lawyer would say: curling. I can't believe this is an Olympic sport. I know that the Canadians love the stuff, but it's just so...not athletic.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, you slide a stone down the ice, and people skate ahead of it and use brooms and sticks to guide the stone onto a target. I think I speak for 99.9 percent of the world's population when I say: whoopee.

Other events I don't get include the luge and bobsled. Actually, I feel that way about pretty much anything involving men in spandex.

Perhaps the most confusing event for me was the "Super G." When I first saw it, I though it was another tribute album to Notorious B.I.G., but it turns out to be a type of ski race--the super giant slalom.

Super giant? What kind of a stupid name for an event is that? Like giant's not big enough?

But as stupid as that name is, it can't possibly be as stupid as another event--the biathlon.

OK, let me get this straight. This event combines cross-country skiing with...shooting a rifle? There really isn't too much you can say about it. It's pretty self-evident, right?

I mean, how many times have you said to yourself while skiing: this experience is great, but you know what it could really use? A gun.

Of course, you could probably say that about most experiences. Still, I don't understand how skiing to a place, stop-ping, whipping out your gat and then destroying some stationary targets tests athleticism.

We knew this was coming, though.

There was plenty of warning that the Nagano Games were cursed.

When the Olympic flame arrived in Japan, it went out three times in one day. You can hear the ominous music in the background.

Then some psycho launches rockets at the Tokyo airport. The music crescendos.

It reaches a deafening climax as they have to delay much of the skiing because of--snow? It seems to me that you want snow for a skiing contest to work properly.

And when someone does win a medal--Canadian snowboarder Ross Rebagliati--he loses it for allegedly having marijuana in his bloodstream, only to get it back because the International Olympic Committee hadn't made its drug policy clear.

Rebagliati claims he tested positive because he got second-hand smoke from his friends and that, despite the incident, he would still hang out with them.

Gee, what a loyal pal.

Then another snowboarder, Austrian Martin Freinademetz, trashes his hotel room and ruins a switchboard by spilling beer on it.

Not just beer. Beer from a three-liter can. Do you realize how big a three-liter can of beer is? You practically need a tap.

This guy, however, got tossed from the Olympics. Let's follow the logic: allegedly smoking marijuana is Okay. Allegedly getting really hosed is not.

Willie Nelson can only be feeling vindication right now.

It's not hopeless, however. I can think of some ways to make the Winter Olympics interesting.

Ski jumping? Have two guys face each other and go at the same time.

The luge and bobsled? Eliminate them.

Figure skating? Okay, well this one can't be salvaged. Remember when Surya Bonaly did a backflip during warmups and almost decapitated a competitor? That was cool.

She got in trouble for it, of course. She wouldn't have if she had just admitted--it was the pot.