I got called out for an incident, so I missed a lot of tonight's Olympic coverage. Returned home just in time for ice dancing finals. Woo.

Tom Hammond was going on about how the French pair that eventually won use clips from Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech in their program, and he didn't think it was appropriate. The way I see it, if it's appropriate to have a bunch of football coaches read the Declaration of Independence during the Super Bowl pre-game, pretty much everything's up for grabs. My greater concern was how do you dance to speech quotes? There was music, but it was odd. The whole performance was of the sort that just solidified whatever stereotype people have of the French.

Two couples fell during their dances, which seems really funny given that these skaters should be the most graceful.

Earlier in the day I did catch some hockey, but did not see the final of the Canada-Czech Rep. game. See now that it was a 3-3 tie, and that Canada will play Finland next. For some reason that's seen as a good thing by the Canadians, but I think the Finns are playing sharper than the Russians, evidenced not in the least by Finland's win over them earlier today. In a lot of ways the Russians are having the same problems as the Canadians in terms of playing to their level of talent.

Even so, the Canadians are the major disappointment so far in men's hockey. Tie the Czechs, get pasted by the Swedes. And the Germans? Glauben Sie an Wunder? Nein. The Germans stormed back from a 3-0 deficit only to lose 3-2. In the post-game, the German coach said he'd rather play the Americans next anyway. He apparently didn't think about:

1. The US being undefeated on US soil in Olympic ice hockey, and
2. The 8-1 throttling the US put on Belarus, the other qualifyer, a team with better talent than Germany. Of course, that game hadn't been played yet, so I'll cut him some slack there.

How do you say "bust out the whuppin' stick" in German? Oh.

Büste aus dem whuppin ' Stock.

Idiot reporter note: while talking to Katie Couric on Today this morning, some reporter gleefully noted she was going to the US game against Bulgaria. Why did I not shoot for a job in TV journalism again? Oh yeah, my teeth aren't big enough.

Speaking of big teeth and stupid reporting, Rick Reilly is apparently going off the deep end. His latest column on the back page of Sports Illustrated is about polygamy in Utah among some fringe Mormons. Check it out yourself here. I have two questions regarding this column:

1. What does it have to do with sports, other than these people live in Utah during an Olympics being held there, and

2. Is Reilly enough of a butt-munch to think that most guys want more than one wife? Seems like most guys think one wife is plenty. Of course, there's always the Homer Simpson take on things.

Reilly mystifies me, given that one week he writes something that's great, and the next week it's like his dura's got a slow leak.

More curling props, this time to the US women, who crushed Norway 11-2 through 7 ends (that's when Norway packed it in). Among the many things I like about curling is the ability to concede, as it saves a whole lot of time. I would like to see this in other sports. The Carolina Panthers could have started conceding sometime around September 20th and not put their fans through 15 straight losses, for example.

Finally, curse count is up to 23. Dropped one during an argument tonight. * Sigh *