Hey what do you know? It's a new News & Notes column! How long has it been? Well, like the Olympics it seems like the column comes around once every four years doesn't it? Speaking of the Olympics, that's exactly what I'm here to write about. Greetings from Torino, Italy, well actually greetings from in The Commish's Office where the television set is showing scenes of Torino but you get the picture… So watching the Opening Ceremonies I learn that the Olympic motto is "Citius, Altius, Fortius". Which I think loosely translates from the Latin to something along the lines of "fortify your breath with a citrus Altoids breath mint because you might meet a cute figure skater in the Olympic Village one night and who'd want to hook up with you if you have bad breath". And I also learned that the five Olympic rings are in five different colors and according to this short guy from the Ireland snowboarding team the colors represent pink hearts, orange stars, yellow moons, green clovers, and blue diamonds. Then the guy ran off screaming something in a deep brogue about drug testing and the IOC always being after his Lucky Charms… And ain't that a magically delicious joke! OK on to the events, where to start, where to start?

Well since this is a hockey league I'm writing for, let's begin at the rink shall we? OK, first off women's hockey. I've got a few problems with the female version of this game. No, it's not really the competitive balance that's got me, although I must say the bracket this year was about as competitive as the American League East. No, what's really poor here is the fact that there's no real checking allowed! Come on, some of these girls are going to be, shall we say, "cramping" during the games and how bad do you think they'd like to take out someone along the boards to ease their pain, eh? Two minutes for PMS (and that doesn't stand for Penalty Minutes). While we're on the subject (and I promise not to stay here too long), how about the goalies? Talk about problems, they've got three periods to cover, but only two pads! {insert rim shot here, ba-duh-buh!}…

Over to the men's bracket where the USA is Finnish-ed, having lost in the single elimination round to Finland. And with apologies to Jimmy Buffett, they had Finns to the left, Finns to the right… OK, so Team USA basically sucked icy pond water, going a lousy 1 - 4 - 1, even managing to allow Latvia to tie them. Latvia?! Freakin' Latvia! Isn't that where Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein took place? Hey wasn't there a guy on the Latvian checking line, went by the name of "Frau Blucha!"? {horse neighing sounds in the background}. Sorry, I digress… Hey at least they beat Kazhakstan. Now just watch out for flying fire extinguishers in the Olympic Village! So good thing they broke up that hockey gambling ring right before the Games or else we might have seen Mrs. Wayne Betzky drop about 50 large on the Team Canada not winning the gold medal, eh? I don't know about you, but I think the St. Louis Blues and the Islanders might've done better had they entered the Games instead of the U.S. and Canada…

I'm sure you're all enjoying the "how fast can you ride something down the icy track" events, aren't you? First off, did you see the Mexican bobsled team? Yeah they started up top with two guys and a sled and by the time they made it to the bottom it was 22 guys getting out of a landscaping truck! Then there's this thing they call "skeleton". What's up with this? They should eliminate the so-called "pros" in this one and let everyone in Torino enter by grabbing a lunch tray from the Olympic cafeteria and just jumping on headfirst… And last of these events is this crazy little thing called luge. The single luge, one person at a time? Not so bad, got to steer with your feet and all which is a strange way to drive but it works. Now can we talk about the doubles luge? Or should I just rename this the "Brokeback Luge"? I mean, two guys in tight Lycra suits, laying one on top of the other and sliding "down the mountain" at 80 miles per hour? There's nothing suspicious about this? Even if "nothing happens" at first, you're telling me the prospects of getting a gold medal aren't going to make the guy on the bottom just a tad bit excited? Well you know where I'm going with this so I think I'll just not go all the way there… Ok, well maybe a little further. Come to think of it, I'm actually kind of surprised there are no lugers from Greece…

Next up, ski jumping. Now this is really fun to watch, a guy ramps down a 10,000 foot hill on nothing but a pair of skis and launches himself into the air and down the side of a mountain. Very thrilling to watch a man fly without a cape and a big "S" on his chest but you know what would make this event even more exciting? Randomly placed landmines at the bottom of the hill where they land! Come on, don't give me that, you know this would be "must see TV"! Here comes Miikki Aaeeiioouu from Finland (and Rob Hanratty's hockey team) down the hill, setting up the telemark landing of a nice 135 metre jump and oh wait! He hit a mine and that's gonna give him an extra 30 metres! (For you know in international competition they mark the jump from where the head lands, whether or not it's actually attached to the body). That's gonna put Miiki into the lead, but let's hope that score holds up because unfortunately Miiki's not going to be making his second round attempt…

Biathlon? This is the thing where they ski with guns. But before we address the firearms, how about the fact that someone who participates in the biathlon as his or her chosen sport is a "bi-athlete"? Not that there's anything wrong with that! Or maybe this is what the "Nordic combined" event is all about? Sorry, I'm not well versed in this event. But back to the guns. So what's obvious here? They're skiing in a race against each other and they're carrying rifles, but they're not allowed to use them to shoot the other competitors! Why the hell not? This would make television ratings soar through the roof, no? Serge from Germany's just 100 metres from the his first gold medal but wait, there's an Austrian guy taking aim from the tree line and a Slovenian on the grassy knoll, and there's blood on the snow folks… So who's with me on the "let them use the guns thing"? Come on, I've already got the NRA lined up for a commercial which will double as an "anti hate crime" ad. "Guns don't kill bi-athletes, people do"… Speaking of Austria, did you catch the news of that drug raid on the home where the Austrian cross-country ski team was staying? They found all kinds of things there. Bottles of pills, a bag of used syringes, a blood transfusion machine, and hiding behind the couch; Lance Armstrong! Then two guys named Wolfgang were thrown out of the Games, but don't worry, the team cook, one Wolfgang Puck, he's fine…

Now let's address a couple of the more obscure sports in the Winter Games. Curling, or as it's known in retirement homes across the country, "shuffleboard on ice". But what's up with the brooms? I cannot figure this one out. OK so the large stone with a handle thing goes down the ice and two people in front of it sweep vigorously on either side? And you think after the first throw the ice would be clean enough that they could put the brooms away and just play shuffleboard? Better yet, why are they still using brooms? You're telling me Swiffer doesn't make curling equipment yet? Quick, someone get me the patent office on line one… Aerials? Why don't they just call this what it really is? "Snow diving". You jump high, do some twists and turns then you land. Except in this case you land on top of the water instead of in it… Snowboarding. Just put that in your half-pipe and smoke it. "Dude, I'm absolutely stoked to be representing my country in the Olympics, do you have any Fritos I've got a bad case of the munchies after doing that gnarly 1080 with a lemon twist!"… I've only got one thing to say about Alpine skiing, and I'm going to address it to Bode Miller: "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life son!" Thank you Dean Wormer…

Excuse me a moment while I paraphrase George Carlin: "Short track speed skating is not a sport. Because South Koreans are good at it"… In this sport guys skate around in a really small circle and try not to crash into each other. Sounds like fun, eh? I'm just waiting for one guy in the 3000 meters (which is like 172 laps) to skate in ever diminishing concentric circles until he winds up disappearing up his own a*shole on the bell lap. Talk about your "Oh no"… Come to think of it doesn't this event look a lot like greyhound dog racing? All they need is a little white rabbit on a stick to start the race. "And here comes Rusty"…

Meanwhile, over in the "regular" speed skating, the Dutch are just crazy about this sport (and we know how our own Joe Mastrangelo feels about the Dutch!). They come out in droves and cheer on their team just like Americans do at football games. Probably even tailgate in the parking lot before the races start I bet. Wearing their clogs, belting down some St. Pauli Girls and Amstels and grilling up some linzer tarts and sporting a big orange foam Gouda cheese on their heads… Ok, enough about the Dutch, over on Team USA we've got ourselves a nice little rivalry brewing between Chad Hedrick and Shani Davis. Chad basically called out Shani for not being a team player. For you see Mr. Davis skipped the team relay event (which the U.S. failed to medal in) in favor of resting up for his own individual race where he became the first "athlete of color" to win a Gold Medal in any Winter Olympics. Nice job on that by the way, I bet the Jamaican bobsled guys are super-pissed off right now. Come on boys, this is Torino, not Los Angeles. Why can't we just all get along? Sit down, put on the "Stripes" DVD and let "the black guys help the white guys"…

Finally, we'll wrap this column up with the Shroud of Turin, no wait, sorry, we'll wrap this column up with a few paragraphs on figure skating, which we found out in our league poll a few weeks ago was everyone's favorite Winter Olympic sport. Thank you Tanith Belbin! Is it just me or does she look like a young "Pretty Woman" era Julia Roberts? And no, I meant that seriously, this is not a set-up for a "Richard Gere and a gerbil" joke. We'll get to that when we discuss the pairs skating, or maybe that should've been in the half-pipe section of this column?…

Let's start with ice dancing, an event that was shown last Sunday, on the same day that the Daytona 500 was run. And let me tell you, I think there were more crashes in the ice dancing competition then there were at Daytona! Nothing better than watching some guy toss his female partner halfway across the ice after losing his grip. Well maybe there's one thing better, watching the way the woman stares him down in rage as the scores get announced. And you just know she's thinking "drop me one more time muthaf***er and I'll have you know my skate blade is sharp enough to let me go John Bobbitt on your sequin wearing ass"!

Speaking of sequin wearing men (the real bi-athletes of these games by the way)… The U.S. medal favorite, Johnny Weir (or is that Weird?) apparently missed his bus to the rink on the morning of the long skate and was so flustered after he arrived that it affected his program and he finished out of the top three. Who needs Johnny Weir when they could've had our own Johnny La. Now I'm not really sure I need to see La in sequins and feathers, but I do know he knows how to skate and living in Staten Island you know he definitely has the necessary bus-catching skills to put him in medal contention…

Then there's this Russian girl, goes by the name of Irina Slutskaya. This is her real name? Slut-skaya? So tell me, how did she make it through the Russian equivalent of grammar school with this name? What's next, the Russian pairs team of Dmitri Pimpov and Elena Whoreanova? Come on people, this is network television, we're on a five second delay here! Change these names to something Dick Button can announce. Which brings up another good point here. Perhaps that should be "Richard Button"…?

And with that we've reached the "closing ceremonies" of this column. Hopefully you've made it this far. If so, you get a gold medal of your own. Make it a silver medal if you got past the speed skating paragraphs without tuning out and a bronze medal if you gave up after the Brokeback Mountain luge joke. Speaking of, we'll close with a duet performance from k.d. lang and George Michael (just kidding) and then extinguish the Olympic flame and call it a night. Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed my warped view of the Winter Olympics and I'll see you all again in this space in another four years, or whenever I decide to break out the first hockey column, whichever comes first. 'til next time…