Olympicus Interruptus

Corporate coitus and its earthly delights

Nothing compares to watching the Olympics in the US. Where else in the world, for weeks on end, do you have the privilege of enjoying round-the-clock broadcasting of such a spectacular array of commercials with limited athletic interruptions?

The American broadcasting format is ideal for the advertising enthusiast. During those limited breaks of athletic competition, one has just enough time to slip off to the kitchen for a bowl of snacks (support an NBC sponsor if you can!) and return in time for the next bout of back-to-back commercials. And don’t you worry about overdoing the processed foods. Remember you can always mitigate the effects of industrial seed oils by jabbing yourself with tirzepatide. If it’s good enough for a Simone Biles to endorse, it’s good enough for you to inject.

Please keep in mind that Mounjaro is not a weight loss drug (although you sure can lose A LOT of weight on it 💃😜)

And don’t panic if you have a low tolerance for needles. Just pop a handful of any number of those other pharmaceutical options you’ve been educated on and inspired by over the last few weeks of commercial viewing.*

* [to be read at high speed] Side effects may include nausea, headache, dizziness, and drooling. In rare cases, more serious side effects may occur, such as addiction, mounting health care costs, and permanent credit card debt. If you experience any of these symptoms, leave the United States immediately.

The Aim of the Games

Of course, there is now, alas, a blurring of the broadcasting landscape where it’s hard to tell anymore where athletics end and commercials begin. Is that an Olympian’s backstory or a consumer mating call for Dick’s Sporting Goods? You may, consequently, be tricked into watching more sports than you’d like: No, that isn’t the Track and Field segment of the Paralympics, it’s the Toyota portion — thank god! So sit back down and enjoy the uplifting message about how you can “Start Your Impossible” by buying a new car.

Ads will set you free.

Forget Napoleon Hill and Dale Carnegie and Tony Robbins. Our self-help now comes courtesy of Google Gemini AI, which will write you a fan letter to your favorite athlete. Not only do you not have to write the letter yourself, you don’t even have to know about or watch the athlete to write it. Which means you can spend your free time watching more ads. It’s a win-win, which even improves upon Olympic competition, which is always win-lose.

Don’t think you’re the only beneficiary of this corporate largesse. It’s not just the armchair spectators who are lavished in the lush swaddle of commercialese. I learned this firsthand after spending time at a Team USA building at the London Olympics. I wrote about it in Chasing Water:

The next day I was at the P&G US Family Home, a vast, many-leveled Procter & Gamble utopia where US athletes and their families could hang out to watch the Games, gorge on free buffet and beer, have American flags painted on their fingernails, launder clothes at the 24-hour Tide booth, change infants into Team USA diapers in the Pampers room, freshen up at a private sink in the Crest & Oral-B zone, get a makeover in the CoverGirl area, and score a shave from a hot, overly made-up hairdresser in a Gillette lounge unironically called the “man-cave.” Even their press release was a nugget of heartfelt commercialese: “P&G Family Home is ‘Home away from Home,’ Featuring Services from Leading Brands including Pampers®, Tide®, Pantene®, Crest®, Duracell®, and Gillette®.” The metal detectors and X-ray machines you first had to get through and the security guards stationed around the perimeter only added to the weirdly dystopian corporate Shangri-La feel of the place.

I’m sure that upon reading this, you too, like me, have found yourself spontaneously pumping your fists and chanting, “U-S-A! U-S-A! P-&-G! P-&-G!”

That’s the spirit! The louder the better. That way you can drown out that little voice gnawing inside you, saying, Wait, was this post about the Olympics really just a book ad?

You may now return to your regularly scheduled commercials.