Run, moose, RUN...Finding a new appreciation for the Winter Olympics

I seriously didn't expect to watch the Winter Olympics. Millions of Americans spend four anxious years looking forward intently to not caring. A bunch of grown people on toboggans and stuff, right? Like we need to see snow.

But I did find myself enthralled with the late-night replays of the action - which mostly seem to involve Mary Curillo making out with a stuffed moose. It's like a car wreck - I can't look away. Run, moose, run...

It's not so much the big-name events that peak my interest. The U.S. beating Canada at the last thing they are good at besides national pharmaceutical policies was a proud moment indeed, but how excited can you get over our high-paid professional NHL stars beating their high-paid professional NHL stars?

Ice dancing? I'm sure it's lovely, if you're into that sort of thing. Awful lot of sequins, for a sport. Sure would be more interesting, though, if the opposing pairs could hit each other. I'm just sayin.

Compared to the more superstar sports of the summer games, the thing I like about the Winter Olys is that a lot of these people can't be making a living off of biathlon and curling. They gotta be working the window at Taco Bell when they aren't training. In short, they are pretty regular people, and when they are done they won't be getting rich selling kids autographs at card shows.

Kenyan Nordic skier Philip Boit peddled his five cows to finance his training in Finland. An African Nordic skier cow farmer? That's the beauty of it, I guess.

At the other end of the spectrum, can Apolo Ohno BE in any more commercials? You can't watch five minutes without seeing the dude.

Am I the only one who saw the horrible irony in announcers whining about it being too warm for the ski hills - 50 degrees plus - while we watch in minus-seven conditions in Storm Lake? Winter? We got yer winter - right here.

You know what I like? Stuff you never otherwise see. Including a few sports I never knew existed.

You can't really imagine "Monday Night Moguls," can you, or Hank Williams Jr. crooning "Are You Ready for Some Nordic Combined!"?

How about the Canadian women's hockey team smoking and drinking on the ice after beating the U.S.? Nice message for the kiddies, there. Usually you have to go to Minnesota to find intoxicated women with sticks and no teeth... And speed skaters endorsing beer? Really? I wonder how fast you can skate with a big ol' beer gut?

I'm told that 100,000 free condoms have been handed out in the Olympic village. Did they think Tiger Woods qualified?

It's probably a whole lot healthier to stick to kissing Mary's moose, I imagine.

For all the amazing stuff - the snowboarding and skijumping that just seems to defy gravity - what we won't be able to get out of our minds is the Georgian slider who lost his life on the luge practice run.

There has been a lot of talk on whether or not the media should have shown the fatal accident footage.

Of course they will, most of them. It's news and shock value sells . They have no concern for the friends and family of a victim, or the fact that young children are watching.

I'd never suggest censoring the media. But I kind of wish they had thought better of it.

We show death in wars and disasters, and tell ourselves it is to create awareness, in hopes of social change. I'm not sure what the excuse is to run footage of a person losing their life over and over and over, in sport.

At least the young man went out doing what he loved.

And at least they haven't - yet - shown the tape of Brit bobsledder Gillian Cooke splitting her drawers. You'll have to find that one for yourself. Cough*youtube*cough.

The risks these people take are amazing. Hurtling down an open-tube course on a flimsy sled at 95 miles an hour pulling five G's? Stick your head out the car window doing 60 on an interstate curve and see what it feels like. Then imagine going 90, with no traction and very little steering or braking.

If you are at normal, you nearly wet yourself just picturing it. And the Alpine skiers - they fly down a steep icy slope pretty much out of control, and you just know somebody is going to whack something and get torn up like a rag doll in a Whirlpool dryer.

Guts or nuts? Maybe both.

Cross country skiing is like watching toenails grow, but I still don't seem able to take my eyes off it. Drama in slow motion.

I love the speedskating too - especially the women. They are some bad@*! athletes... just swagger to the line, jam a defiant blade sideways in the ice, and go like you're on fire.

At times they make things a bit overly dramatic, of course. There have been days of discussion about whether Dutch speed skating coach Gerard Kemkers will ever be able to show his mug in the grocery store after misdirecting his skater Sven Kramer into the wrong lane. "My world has collapsed," the coach said afterward. "This is the worst thing that has happened in my life."

Seriously? A lane change in skating is the worst thing ever in his whole life? Only in a land of tulips and legal marijuana could you get away with a comment like that.

Curling, of course, is everybody's new fave. Because, I think, it looks like one of us could just roll right off our nest of Dortios crumbs on the sofa, cram ourselves into spandex, and waddle right out there and have a go at it.

I'm sure it's much harder than it looks, but let's face it - we can't even kid ourselves to imagine doing a triple lutz or flying 100 yards on skis, but we can fantacize about winning a curling match, or set, or game, or whatever it is.

I looked it up - curling dates to at least the early 1500s in midieval Scotland. I suspect it coincides with the invention of whiskey. Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed the games as much as I have... and more than that poor moose did.