Winning Ugly

Famed print hatchet man Matt Taibbi describes in excruciating detail the ugliest athletes out there, starting with our very own Greek God of Walks. Bonus points for including all-time all-ugly team superstar Don Mossi.

The end of these Games: Liveblog

8:20 It ends as it started: not with a whimper, but with an almighty buh-bang. The Bird's Nest still stands.

8:21 What the hell is that hat? What are these people wearing??

8:22 Aaaand ... ad break. Fabulous.

8:27 Thousands of Chinese Bjorks are invading the stadium! And a man banging a giant flying wheel of Gouda! No, wait: two men!

8:30 Cirque de Soleil has gone waaay too far this time. The Bjorks, covered in bells and singing, are making giant vulva shapes, which then split apart and come back together, while drummers in bike helments go crazy.

8:32 There's a definite bike theme, which makes sense in China. But if I ever see one of these dudes on the inverted neon penny-farthings on Mass Ave, I shall punch him.

8:35 And now everyone is bouncing! On pogo stilts! That's what the hippies will be sporting in Davis Square next summer. Awesome.

8:37 Oh goody, Chevy advertises the car that doesn't exist yet! It runs on unicorn droppings and its exhaust is rainbows! In the meantime, buy our ugly unreliable cars, please.

8:41 All the athletes start running into the stadium at random, waving their flags and wearing their medals (except Puerto Rico, of course) and mingle and hang out and embrace each other. And now we get to see those 100,000 condoms in use ... no? Oh well.

8:45 Ah, the US team, who immediately start chanting "USA! USA!" like good Nazis American patriots. And Shawn Johnson is three feet tall.

8:50 I'll be so glad when we don't have to watch NBC any more and I can stop seeing those terrible John McCain ads. And the Nissan Maxima ads. And the Manningses football ad. And the milky minutes ad.

9:00 The medal ceremony for the marathon. You can tell the guys are having a really tough time climbing on the podium, what with their knees being shot and all.

9:03 Apparently, Ennio Morricone composed the Kenyan National Anthem.

9:06 The Chinese Pete Wentz presents representives of the million-plus volunteers with flowers. And a reminder that the Wal*Mart factory opens at 5:30 am sharp.

9:13 El raises an interesting question: With the exception of the French one, do all national anthems suck?

9:15 The Mayor of Beijing delivers the traditional "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here" address.

9:16 Okay, the Games are officially closed. That's it. We can go to bed now.

9:21 But wait ... something else is happening. What could it be? Oh, it's a very pretty version of God Save the Queen (the non-Pistols version). How nice!

9:26 Boris Johnson is WALKING! He's evidently drunk, standing with his hands in his pockets on the podium, grinning and waving at people. Great.

9:28 El observes that middle-aged men are crap at waving flags. And that, in the movie version, Johnson will be played by whoever is Chris Farley at the time.

9:35 A BUS! A big red double-decker! And people waiting at a bus stop with brollies. And cyclists. And "Greensleeves." And a zebra crossing, with belisha beacons and a lollipop lady. Oh, wait--the people are all zombies! A little girl walks over the zombies and gets on the bus. And then the top deck of the bus unfolds over the sides while the zombies do the robot. Out of the bus rises flavor-of-the-month Leona Lewis, who perches on a tall pedestal and goes "Looo-lloooo-loooo!" which scares off the zombies. And then a white-haired old lady comes out and plays a Led Zep song. And Willie Dixon still doesn't get paid.

9:41 The old lady plays some hot guitar licks. And just how appropriate is it for the London Olympics to be introduced by a cock-rock anthem about --- OH MY GOD IT'S BECKHAM!!

9:42 The brollies become neon and the bus departs. You know, it wasn't as awesome as I'd been led to believe.

9:46 The moment approaches: athletes walk up a long staircase into the light, kinda like at the end of Close Encounters. Yao Ming is hoisted up to piss on the flame, extinguishing it for good.

9:48 No, wait ... no. Sad, powerful music plays while White Man Group, up on a tower, makes shapes with their naked bodies.

9:51 Aaaand ... we're done. No, wait--now the hundreds of people who had been clinging desperately to the outside of the tower for twenty minutes are flailing around. They look like bees in a hive. They're leaning off the sides and acting like they're not 60 feet up, attached only by cables made in Chi-- never mind.

9:57 That final routine was spectacular, and was basically John Emo's way of saying, "Yeah, London you go ahead and do that thing with the double decker bus and the old lady. No, it's good, really. No, I mean it." London's only real chance is that there's a global virus that gives the world's entire population amnesia, and no one remembers how much China kicks tail in the epic visual presentation department.

10:02 We all sing the pop classic "Beijing, Beijing, We All Love Beijing." I wish I was kidding. El assumes this is Chinese ABBA (or CHABBA, pronounced in the Jewish manner).

10:06 El refuses to use the name McDonald's and now refers to it as "the Scottish restaurant."

10:08 People on cables are flying around the stadium in impressive fashion, but from the musical selections it's clear the party has reached that stage at which the host starts playing real crap songs in the hope it will encourage everyone to leave. Seems the Chinese are just like us: they have horrible pop music, too.

10:16 It's Jackie Chan! Singing! He should really go seek out the Taekwondo gold medallist, roundhouse-kick him in the head and take his frickin' bauble.

10:20 The music is getting faster, the fireworks are brighter and bangier, the acrobats are freaking out, the mascots are foaming at the mouth!!! It makes the Polyphonic Spree look like a barbershop quartet.

So the torch is out, These Games have become Those Games, and Mary Weinberg is heading back to Home Depot, wondering whether she got the early lunch break and if she has to restock the lightbulbs. And after Zhang Yimou's insane display of Chinese superiority, what have we got to look forward to in 2012?

Probably a choreographed gang of ASBO hoodies twocking white vans, while thousands of closed-circuit cameras descend from the rafters, just too late to capture footage of a toddler being kidnapped by a guy in a canoe made from Amy Winehouse.

Of course, we already know what really happens: everyone in the stadium vanishes.

Things I've Learned from These Olympic Games

Here are some random observations from hours of watching these Olympic Games:

• Bela Karolyi should be confined to the balcony of an old theater. Preferably with Andy Rooney.
• The key to Michael Phelps winning any given race is to swim faster than all of his competitors. It is important that he swim faster than all of them because only by swimming faster than all of them will he be able to win the race and claim the gold medal. If you can repeat this type of commentary eight times, you too can be an announcer at these Olympic Games.
• Team handball is a totally awesome sport.
• China totally faked that opening ceremony. Why is anybody worked up about that when there's about a hundred other worse things their government does as a matter of course?
• It is important for sprinters to think strategically and not "leave themselves too much work to do on the final stretch." I hadn't realized that hauling ass for ten or twenty seconds required this much thought.
• I love reading message board comments about how the 6' 5" Usain Bolt should totally try out for the NFL. Yeah, he should give up traveling around the world to track meets for guaranteed money so that he can get decapitated running back punts for the Arizona Cardinals. I wish people would realize that nobody cares about the NFL except Americans.
• If men's basketball was a judged sport the Chinese team would have gotten 9s and 10s while the US got 7s.
• Puerto Rico's streak of not winning gold will continue. My people may suck at Olympic stuff but at least they figured out that stand-up embalming process that will soon sweep the world.
• Bob Costas is still short and he still sucks.

Well, it was educational.

The carrot at the end of the tunnel

Never mind taking the fork in the road, or whether half the game is 90 percent mental, or whether anyone slud anywhere. When it comes to athletes saying dumb stuff, European soccer players cover the field.

Of course, these are nothing compared with the work of Alan Partridge.

Anyone for Spunkball?

The Guardian, always happy to fill web space with lists, has come up with 15 fictional sports that we could (or should, or then again shouldn't) expect to see on ESPN at some future time.

This thirst for sports novelty pervades the zeitgeist; which is why every single comedian in Christendom is currently doing gags about how the global game of put-out-the-Olympic-flame (aka pigs vs hippies) is a new sport just screaming to be born. And they're right. With its multiple teams - running cops, rollerblading cops, the 6ft 3in-plus phalanx of paramilitary Chinese thug cops, bemused past-their-sell-by-date athletes, "the-torch-ceremony-was-invented-by-Hitler" factoid-spewing sports hacks, and the hand-knitted woollen flag-waving, mung-bean curry-munching Western Buddhist demonstrators - it makes American football look safe, sane and uncomplicated (especially with the totally awesome introduction in Paris of a new team of cops on jet-skis).

And before you ask, yes, Rollerball is on the list.