We have a full slate of Olympics coverage to get to. No time to waste. Heroes, villains, heels and Butt Fuchs.

Let’s hit it!

But first, a word from our sponsors:

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The roundup:

RIO DAY 2:

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We kick off our prime time coverage with taped coverage of women’s gymnastics qualifying – which took place in the afternoon, as all gymnastics contests will this year – and 41-year-old Uzbekistanian gymnast Oksana Chusovitina, whose last name sounds like something Italian women might do to decorate to their lady parts. Si! Chusovitina! Ciao Bella!!!

I can’t tell if Italian Vajazzler is awesome – this is her seventh Olympic games – or completely batshit crazy and frightening in her determination to jump around on trampolines with girls who could literally be her daughter– she competed against Nastia Lukin’s dad! I suppose in Uzbekistan, and the handful of other confusing countries Chusovitina has compete for, that hanging out at the pole vault is akin to a mom letting her kids’ friends drink in the basement. She’s so cool until things get weird and she comes downstairs drinking a glass of wine and wearing a leotard. Maybe it’s best to just move on… which we will.

https://youtu.be/3qCLs_9LNPo

Before we can head over to the pool, we’re treated to a Proctor and Gamble commercial featuring a female gymnast who looks like Simone BilesGabby Douglas watching her house get destroyed by… a tornado(?)…  and then winning gold in the Olympics. P&G sponsors women’s gymnastics and I guess couldn’t decide which gold medal candidate to spotlight, so they just split the difference and picked a generic stand-in that could serve as either Biles or Douglas. Spoiler alert: They should’ve picked Biles, as we’ll learn three hours later when NBC allows to watch an event that took place two hours earlier. Gabby didn’t make the cut for women’s all around despite finishing third overall (Biles and Aly Raisman finished first and second, and only two people from each country are allowed to advance, probably so the world can prevent America from taking ALL OF THE MEDALS).

Now we head over to the aquatic center, where Michael Phelps is OH MY GOD WHAT HAPPENED TO MICHAEL PHELPS?

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No. As it turns out, Phelps, like many other athletes in Rio, is taking part in the ancient Chinese tradition of cupping, which requires you to place a hand over your balls a ritual that uses heated suction cups to pull the skin and stimulate blood flow, seen here in an Under Armour spot featuring Phelps:

https://youtu.be/Xh9jAD1ofm4?t=42s

Yeah I’m not OK with this. Maybe it’s flashbacks to wall ball in seventh grade, or maybe I just don’t like my athletes to look like they just came from a hyper aggressive make out session with an elephant. But I feel like one day researchers are going to find out that, no, that’s not good for you, and actually those are blood clots and you’re going to die.

Phelps would be up later, however, as NBC was just teasing his appearance to keep you hooked in for, oh, the next two hours or so.

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Right now, it’s the semifinals of the women’s 100m breaststroke and Bond temptress Russian swimmer Yulia Efimova, who doesn’t need any ancient Chinese sucking ritual because she has drugs. Lots of them. She just found out on Saturday that she would be allowed to compete as she was one of seven – SEVEN! – Russian swimmers caught up in a doping scandal and was found to have elevated levels of Meldonium in her system. It also believed that she spontaneously sprouted a dorsal fin, but those reports have yet to be confirmed.

She won her event and left a green trail in her wake that vaporized her competitors. American swimmer hero and Dikembe Mutombo enthusiast Lilly King, Efimova’s hegemonic binary, didn’t like it and single handedly reignited Cold War tensions with a wag of the finger:

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King would win her semifinal group and afterward threw shade at Efimova*, setting up A CLASH OF WORLD SUPERPOWERS TONIGHT IN THE POOL:

If King wins tonight and doesn’t wag her finger in that mutant’s face, very disappointed, I will be.

*Lost in all of this is the fact that Efimova is HOT**:

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I mean, sure, she might have fish parts and a half-life, but the Russians are doing remarkable work in biogenetics these days.

**And yes, I’m fully aware that this is exactly how Bond falls into a trap every time.

The surprisingly lengthy swimming coverage – isn’t it great when events are live and NBC just can’t selectively cut to anticlimactic clips? – continues with American favorite Katie Ledecky, who, let’s be honest, has a baby head on an adult human body. NBC introduces her with a forced narrative about perseverance, and reveals that she once lined up to meet Phelps, officially entering Phelps into the “teammates used to get his autograph” stage of his career.

After a British guy named Peaty makes quick work of his competition in the 100m breaststroke – setting a World Record – and then is co-opted by America as one of our own as Michelle Tafoya is presumably told in her ear, “yeah, get him, we can market this guy,” and American Cody Miller becomes the most enthused Bronze medalist ever…

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… it’s Ledecky’s turn.

She swam fast.

Ledecky destroyed her competition and tormented this poor yellow line, which looked like it was running out of gas trying to keep up with her:

Ledecky won by so much that she was celebrating before other competitors even finished:

https://twitter.com/WorldofIsaac/status/762471387315392513

She swam so fast, you could almost say she…

Oh no.

Predictably, the scores of overly PC zealots on Twitter chimed in:

That’s a wholly ridiculous response to an admittedly somewhat awkward comparison. Men are bigger, stronger, and faster. It’s human anatomy. Take for example the gymnastics rings event, which men compete in, but women don’t. Why? Because men have more upper body strength. Men and women, though feminists refuse to admit it, have different bodies. To say Ledecky swims like a man is not an insult, but a compliment remarking just how damn good she is.

And comparing her to a man is way better than comparing her to, say, a horse:

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Darren Rovell’s creepiness knows no bounds.

We step away from coverage for the most annoying ad of the games, even more annoying than that “NO I CAN’T STOP…” Coke ad on all the streams– the Google Photos storage is full ad:

https://youtu.be/Fi2MUL0hNNs

If that commercial didn’t set off panic in your house as you furiously searched for the device that was freaking out… well, then you deserve a medal.

HERE COMES THE KING. Michael Phelps entering the pool for the men’s relay and Boomer cam is ready to go. Wife, mother, Boomer, whom I convinced may actually be a fake baby for publicity sake, because there’s no way a three-month-old baby sleeps that soundly, for that long, with that sort of commotion around him. I think Boomer is in a hotel room somewhere with a family member and the baby his wife is wearing is a fake. That’s my theory. PROVE ME WRONG, FAKE BOOMER. PROVE ME WRONG!

The US men won, because Michael Phelps makes the best turns in the history of the planet, and God this never gets old:

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“Boomer.”

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Photo credit: Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports

After this, NBC cut back to taped women’s gymnastics so Al Trautwig, who loves his job just a little too much, could walk us through six-hour old highlights of selectively edited women’s gymnastics things, the best of which was Aly Raisman’s parents doing theirs:

Raisman’s parents are in the early lead for US family members of the games. Raw emotion right there. Aly advanced to the women’s all-around, beating out Gabby Douglas. Biles and Raisman will get the chance to spin and twirl for tape-delayed Gold.

Meanwhile, this poor, poor British girl has had better days:

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Photo credit: Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports

While this was being shown, Katie Ledecky, Michael Phelps and the other men he swam with (does it really matter?) were getting their medals. NBC, of course, concluded coverage with the ceremony:

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USA! USA!

Idle thoughts and more:

Nastia Lukin is hot, but terrible. She is a terrible broadcaster and adds literally nothing.

Tara Lipinski and Jonny Weir, on the other hand, continue to be fantastic. I don’t even know what they’re covering at the games, since they’re both figure skaters, but they’re great:

?????????? @taralipinski @johnnygweir @nbcolympics

A video posted by TARA & JOHNNY (@taraandjohnny) on

Good to see Lipinski still has her A-game:

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Team Ireland killing it:

Sad!

https://twitter.com/CJBForHeisman/status/762445049674117120

Biles is small:

COCK SMASH!

https://twitter.com/needsi9/status/762488331565346821

The chief of Olympics secured was robbed at knife point on Friday.

Best of luck to the German men’s field hockey team of Butt and Fuchs:

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We look forward to the wonderful conclusion of their event.

 

Getting Worms:

Frank Reich is excited to use the Eagles’ tight ends as high-volume receivers. Philly.com:

“We feel like Zach has a great feel in route running,” Reich said. “He just knows how to create leverage; he knows how to use his body; he has a big catch radius. Trey is like a wide receiver out there, and you get him out there and he’s got the speed, he’s got natural instinctive moves for a tight end. The one that surprises me though has been Brent. I came in here thinking, ‘Hey, Brent is our blocking tight end.’ But the guy knows how to run routes. He’s a really smart route runner, and I have a lot of confidence in him, and I know the quarterbacks do as well. So, that’s a really good thing for us.”

Brent Celek has no plans of ever playing anywhere else. CSN:

“With how this organization has taken care of me, with how this city has taken care of me, I don’t want to go anywhere else,” he said after practice Monday. “This is my home now. I’m not going back to Cincinnati. I love it for what it’s done for me in my life, but this is my home now, and I don’t want to play for any other team. I think guys that have committed to make one place their home, there’s no point in going to another town and playing for somebody when your heart is here.”

Reich also knows Ryan Mathews is going to get banged upPhilly.com:

“He’s a physical runner. Running backs are gonna get banged up. You can’t predict it. I don’t know what the answer is there. You can’t change who you are. You can’t say, ‘Hey, run out of bounds, or do this or do that.’ You’ve gotta play it out. If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be. You’ve gotta prepare the best you can, run the way you know how. There’s no other way to do it.”

Nelson Agholor isn’t concerned with getting the most receptionsPhilly.com:

But doesn’t he want to be the guy?”I want to be a great team player that wins football games. It’s not just one guy. That’s for somebody else. That’s not for me. That’s not what I want to do,” Agholor said. “Even when I was in college, yeah, maybe it was about me being the headliner, but I was part of great units.”

The Eagles’ live hitting in practice has brought both praise and scorn. Philly Voice:

For the most part, the players and coaches — especially on the defensive side — are happy to see live hitting back at practice. As are the fans, who don’t want a repeat of the poor tackling that plagued this team under Kelly. But as soon as a player goes down holding his knee or ankle, they blame it on a rookie who is fighting for a job or the level of physicality Pederson has returned to practice.

You can’t have it both ways. And the Eagles coaches, to a man, know that. They’ve been asked about the hitting as much as they’ve been asked about the progress of rookie quarterback Carson Wentz. And when you hear their answers, it’s hard to disagree with their methods.

Jim Schwartz has a “lot of respect” for his former player Stephen TullochPhilly Mag:

“I got a lot of background with Steve,” Schwartz said. “I was with Tennessee when we drafted him; [he] ended up being starting middle linebacker for us there. When I was head coach in Detroit, we brought him up there. I have a lot of respect for that guy and his production. But last week, when you guys asked me similar questions, I said the same thing: Howie [Roseman] and Joe [Douglas], those guys — all the scouts — are always looking for ways to improve our team.

Ron Brooks is getting comfortable in the nickel position. NJ.com:

“Well, in a case like Ron, again, here’s a guy that’s had a lot of snaps in the National Football League as you know,” Eagles head coach Doug Pederson said of Brooks recently. “He’s a guy that we feel very comfortable as a staff and particularly on defense that he can transition in there very well. That inside corner nickel spot is a — it’s a different animal, obviously, than being on the outside on the perimeter. There’s a lot more – the physical nature of that spot, as well, being able to tackle and take on blockers. He’s done a nice job there. We’ll continue to watch it, monitor that, get as many reps as we can in there. But all the confidence in the world with him being able to transition inside and out.”

There’s one kicker. The Intelligencer:

“I think we’re going to make each other better,” Sturgis said. “All you can focus on is how you’re kicking yourself. Right now I’m just working on things.” Parkey agrees. “I’m not too worried about him,” he said, following Saturday’s two-hour, 10-10-10 practice session at the NovaCare Complex. “Caleb is a phenomenal kicker. I can’t say enough good things about him. But at the end of the day, I’m just worrying about myself. So whether he goes 80-for-80, I’m not worried about him. I’m worried about myself and getting myself better and getting ready for the season.

 

That Dario block gave Bill Simmons a spasm:

 

Dario’s also out here inventing new sayings:

 

And Al Trautwig got all huffy about Simon Biles’ parents. It’s been a very strange games for commentators.

 

Randy Moss is so ready for the football season to start he’s already firing off scorching hot takes.

 

“Tiger Hoods”

 

Phillies fans have permission to be salty about A-Rod juicing his way through the 2009 World Series forever.

 

This summer’s worst job belongs to Washington and Oregon DNC interns, who have to pick up those fiberglass donkey’s we have around town:

Since the cost of shipping the donkeys would have been upwards of $2,000, staffers from Oregon, Washington and other western states are putting together what’s being called a “donkey caravan.”

The plan is to have interns drive the donkeys across the country by U-Haul this winter and deliver them to their respective states

 

Jahlil Okafor, super psyched to habe a TMZ camera in his face:

 

The Phillies turned the first Triple Play in Petco Park history, and it was good:

Podcast:

Crossing Streams with John Gonzalez:

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The Stepover Episode 4 on the block:

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