I’ve watched more TV in the last three days than I’ve watched in a long, long time. I’ve been avidly following the Olympics: on Friday night, Matt and I watched the opening ceremonies, and over the last two nights I’ve watched several hours of swimming and gymnastics and even a little weightlifting. All these amazing feats of physicality have turned me into a slothful couch potato.

Here’s a question: swimmers or gymnasts? The swimmers wear less clothing, of course, and they have great chests and backs. And they’re fun to watch as they warm up; because they’re so tall, their long arms get all floppy when they shake them out. It’s cute. Tall, floppy-armed, broad-chested swimmers.

As for me, though, I prefer the gymnasts. They have those nice, built, compact bodies and the clean-cut haircuts, and anyway, I just love watching gymnastics in general, male or female. I’m in awe of what they do. It’s interesting that the men and the women perform on different equipment: the pommel horse for the men vs. the balance beam for the women, the high bar for the men vs. the uneven parallel bars for the women. And the men have the rings, of course. Mmmm… I love watching the men on the rings.

I’ve also seen certain commercials (or, rather, fast-forwarded through them on TiVo) more times than I can count. There’s the one where the strange woman walks down the street, passing out open bottles of Coke to random people while singing. (Matt told me to beware those types of people on the street.) Then there’s the Michael Phelps cellphone commercial (where exactly is he pulling that cellphone from?). And there are a couple of funny Expedia commercials, including the one in which the wife suggests to the husband that they try to see “Magique” while in New York and the husband gets nightmares about it in his head.

It’s so unlike me to (1) watch so much TV and (2) be so interested in athletics. I guess the Olympics draw me in in a way that other, more “masculine” sports, such as football and basketball, don’t. I’ve never felt I belonged to the cult of straight American manhood, but anyone’s allowed to watch the Olympics.

Even me.

[Addendum: And the divers. How could I forget the divers?]