Thank God for Misty May...

Thank God for Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh.

If you live in a cave and don’t know who they are, they are the gold medal-winning stars of that classic Olympic sport, Micro-Bikini Women’s Beach Volleyball.

Every fourth summer, the youth of the world assemble, the torch is lit and the struggle of Misty’s and Kerri’s gluteii maximii inside their volleyball outfits begins. NBC makes a gallant, even daring, attempt to portray what is going on around them as a sporting event, but what it is in reality is blessed relief from the mundane fare of primetime television.

Misty is the wife of the luckiest catcher in Major League Baseball and is demonstrably one of the most perfect physical specimens at the XXIX Olympics –and that is with tough competition from the Brazilian team—and the Chinese and every other beach volleyball duo. As a group these extraordinarily fit-looking young ladies are eye-popping advertisements for diet and exercise. There are other edifying aspects of the game which, I discovered, is even more enjoyable to watch when it is played in the rain.

The entire spectacle, as it unfolded in Beijing, represents the apex of Chinese civilization since Mao introduced the country (by force) to Glorious Socialism in 1949. The freethinking young intellectuals who were paraded around in dunce caps and mocked during the Great Cultural Revolution of the 1960’s and 1970’s (at least those not actually murdered) run the country now and their gift to the People’s Republic is to bring real bikini volleyball, to the heart of the late Chairman Mao’s domain.

What would Mao have thought, tuning in to Must See TV this week and seeing a line of Chinese models in bikinis doing their cheerleader thing as a couple of tanned and lithe American women prepare to face off against two nubile goddesses from the beach at Ipanima? Knowing his history, which included a gourmet’s (and a gourmand’s) appreciation of women, Madame Mao notwithstanding, the Chairman probably would have put down his Little Red Remote and settled in for a night of quality television.

The Chinese have made sure there is something for everyone at this Olympics, especially pedophiles, it seems, since the Chinese women’s national gymnastics team are only slightly older than actual embryos. Being of a certain age, I had to avert my eyes for most of their part of the competition. Ever since the death of Jon Benet Ramsay I have found the sight of little girls wearing more than an even pound of makeup to be just a smidge unsettling. Doing that, and then putting said eight year old in a leotard for the world to ogle in High Definition is just wrong. Not that staring at actual 16 year olds is right, but it is measurably less creepy.

I forget that these girls, some of whom was missing a baby tooth for the Games, have ironclad proof that they are 16: a certificate from the Chinese government. Why would they lie? Ogle away!

You don’t have to be Humbert Humbert* to enjoy the rest of the games. You don’t even have to like sports –though if you do, the competition alone is worth the watching. There is women’s trampoline, ladies’ platform diving, the women’s 100 meter and 200 meter dashes, ladies’ hurdles, and women’s pole vaulting. If you think you discern a trend here, you are so right.

If only the Olympic Games lasted forever. But soon they will be replaced by such entirely plausible dramas as Life, in which a former detective, sentenced to life in prison, and exonerated after doing time, comes back to the police force and picks right up where he left off. Then there is the series where British nannies cure deeply dysfunctional families and then take off in hot air balloons to challenge the Luftwaffe in the skies over Germany.

Okay, I made that last one up, but I am sending the idea to Program Development at FOX.

And all kidding aside, Misty and Kerry are amazing athletes who actually play better than they look. And they look really good. I can’t wait for the XXX Olympics.

*Literary reference. See Nabokov, Vladimir.