The Olympics are over, and everyone is tired, including me. But what a show, and so colorful! Those Chinese sure like red stuff. I've been drawing athletes in action for the last two weeks trying to capture in my imagination the grace and power and agility I saw on the screen. This Weblog is old enough that longtime readers can recall my effusions about the 2004 Olympics, from the August 2004 archive. I felt much more hopeful then than now that I would ever learn anything mathematical and physics-oriented. Currently I am so busy with other work (at the day job, mostly) that I barely get to contemplate a calculus limit, let alone solve limit problems.

I still am a sucker for excellence. I value excellence, or competence, or achievement, more than anything else in the world. I honor it wherever I see it. I watched the TV and Internet coverage knowing that I was being shamelessly manipulated emotionally and mentally, but I didn't care. I was seeing excellence, or at least striving for excellence, even if the girl fell off the beam or the fencer got struck down or the runner lost at the last few meters. At least they tried.

Later in 2004, I forgot all about the Olympics when the Boston Red Sox won their first World Series in 86 years. I thought that was excellent, too. What about art excellence? I constantly visit the sites of commercial artists who work for games and movies and illustrations. There's a lot of this art and I find it thrilling. It's colorful, too, like the Chinese Olympics with their costumes and fireworks. I am a spectator, not a participant. I'm a consumer, not a producer. By the time I get around to having the opportunity to do something myself, it is already 4 in the morning and I should not be up at this hour at all.

Posted at 4:06 am | link