First blog, and the last ever about swimming

Let me preface by saying I hate the word blog. Seriously, who thought of it and what does it mean? I think I would've started doing this sooner if there was a different word for it. Unfortunately, as an unemployed college graduate, I've been reduced to this, but hopefully at least a few people will enjoy it. Will mostly (probably only) be about sports, predictions, witty commentary, etc.

So for my first post, I'm gonna talk about...swimming. I swear it'll be the last time, unless I decide to make a last minute career change to Olympic swimmer.

Obviously the name synonymous with swimming right now is Michael Phelps. I guess winning 9083 gold medals will do that for a guy. Now, I have all the respect in the world for Phelps as an athlete; how could you not?

I'm not sure what proper blog etiquette is, but I'll just say this: my general impression of Phelps as a person is that he somewhat of something that rhymes with "frouchebag". Again, he might be the nicest guy in the world and I'm just an idiot. I suppose when you're the best in the world at what you do, you have to carry a natural cockiness along with you (see: Woods, Tiger).

Phelps just gives off the wrong vibe whenever I see him. Maybe it was that over the top celebration the US team had after they beat France in that relay race at the Olympics. I understand it was an exciting race, and I understand it's France, but that celebration took over the top, and went over that, as can be seen in above photo.

Then there's the whole bong thing. Listen, if Mikey wants to smoke it up, then go for it. But let's think for a second. You're Michael Phelps, currently one of the top 5 most famous athletes in the world. If you show up at a party, do you think some people might notice you? Do you think everyone is going to take a million pictures of you? Do you think if you hit a bong, someone might be taking a picture of it and it'll end up on the front page of everything? To quote the Barr, nice one genius.

Anyway, I got the idea for this because I watched some of the World Championships today. Before the relay race, the commentators said something astounding to me: "the US will most likely break a world record here". Is this just strange to anyone else? Has that ever been said before the start of any athletic competition? And it was just said so matter of factly, like not doing the best that has EVER been done in that race would have been a failure.

Can you imagine this in any other sport? "Ryan Howard will most likely hit 5 home runs in this game" or "LeBron getting 101 points is pretty much a guarantee here". It's just dumbfounding to me.

By the way, of course they broke the record, as did the second and third place teams. I'm pretty sure every swimming world record gets broken in every race nowadays. I think there's probably something inherently wrong with this, but I've spent enough words on swimming.