Unless you were living under a rock this weekend, I'm sure you saw or heard that Michael Phelps is the greatest Olympic Champion of all time. NBC's already hawking products with his new title. Its almost as tempting as a late-night infomercial to order one, and I can't even figure out if it is going to be a video or book. Though I'm thinking that whatever it is it will be in DVD format. No one likes to read, right? So in honor of Phelps's eight gold medals in one Olympics, I decided he's worthy of his very own post instead of being lumped in with the rest of the weekend's adventures. Aside from the nail-biting races, here's what I thought was cool:

Tags: michael phelps, olympics, olympics 2008

Don't get me wrong, I have not been following the Olympics closely like some people (ahem, cough cough, Angel) around here. Like Mindy, I've been all but boycotting them. I find sports in general to be boring and self congratulatory, and except for ogling the hot bods of the men's swimming team, the Olympics interest me only insofar as they are cause for the Animal Planet to create the Puppy Games. But I found myself, through no fault of my own, stuck watching a snippet of the women's beach volleyball match last night. Can I tell you what I learned?

Tags: Kobe Bryant, Michael Phelps, olympics 2008, Serena Williams

That crazy old broad Babs Walters is at it again with her Ten Most Fascinating People of 2008 thingy. This year's lineup is fairly predictable, and I'm gonna go ahead and agree with roughly half of her choices, those being:

Tags: 10 Most Fascinating People of 2008, Barbara Walters, Michael Phelps, Tina Fey

Awesome news. Just when I'd run out of excuses to keep writing about the Olympics. Michael Phelps swoops in and saves the day. (Thank you, Michael!) Hot off of his record-breaking performance at the Olympics, swimmer Phelps has been tapped to host the season opener of Saturday Night Live. I'm thinking I might need to find some excuse to work in the office (here at 30 Rock) on Saturday, September 13th so that I can stalk catch a glimpse of the golden boy. Personally, I love when sports stars host SNL. I don't expect them to be funny, so I'm always pleasantly surprised if they are. Plus, its nice seeing the athletes, who are usually so dead serious during their competitions, loosen up a little bit.

Tags: Michael Phelps, olympics, saturday night live

Trying to have a life and watch as much Olympics primetime coverage as possible don't really work together. Last night I attempted to see a Broadway show and be social with a friend and then go home and watch the Olympics. Let's just say this didn't exactly work out. Not just because I was up until two o'clock in the morning trying to watch the entire primetime broadcast. Not just because I had to skip over a qualifying round of men's beach volleyball in order to finish at a "reasonable" time. But because by the time I got to the end of the airing that I had DVR'd, I discovered that it ran over and into the time slotted for the "news" and I didn't get to watch the Chinese or American Women's Gymnastics team compete in the majority of the floor exercises. TiVo cut off right after Alicia Sacramone fell on her butt, and when I switched to live TV the Team USA girls were all being interviewed about their Olympic silver medal win. Sigh. I try so hard to avoid Olympic "spoilers."

Tags: michael phelps, olympics

The Olympics have pretty much been unavoidable -- they're all over the internet, TV, and the news, and some of it has been thrilling, some scandalous and some just disappointing. It's been the big topic of conversation around the water cooler and, frankly, it's exhausting to try and keep up with it all and sound intelligent, especially if you had to watch an average of about, say, 10 hours of coverage a day so you could write a daily blog. (Just as an example...) So while we've enjoyed the hype and the fun, we're glad this only comes around every four years (or two, if you count winter, and really, do we need to start counting that?) because we're just looking forward to getting back to our regularly scheduled programming. And that thing... what's it called again? Oh yeah, a life.

Tags: Bob Costas, Michael Phelps, Nastia, Olympics, TWoP 10