This week on From the Cheap Seats, Michelle and Becca bid farewell to the Olympics with a recap of the most important gold medal games. Then the spotlight shifts from handball, soccer and softball to basketball as they hail the returning heroes and preview the return of the WNBA.

U.S. Women’s Basketball Team

Farewell Olympics, and welcome back WNBA teams!

This is a vlog by fans for fans, so please leave plenty of comments, questions, rants and raves, or anything else that comes to mind. And check back next weekend for another episode!

17 days, 958 medals, 43 world records, hundreds of thousands of fireworks and countless tears. Never has a sporting event held the world at rapt attention like the games of the 29th Olympiad.

Oh, there were controversies to be sure: Fake fireworks, lip-synching children, age fabrication and the ever-present issue of Chinese censorship were all murmured about with varying degrees of intensity. For the most part, however, Beijing did nothing but charm us over the last two weeks — placing itself as the backdrop to a breathtaking stage of athletics.

Beijing gave us stories of gold: Lisa Leslie took home her fourth consecutive gold medal with the U.S. women’s basketball team in what will be her last Olympics; Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor added volleyball gold to the medals they won in 2004 before they both leave the sport to have children; and U.S. women’s soccer coach Pia Sundhage’s team won the first gold medal victory she’s had as an international head coach.

"When I was six years old, I thought I was the only girl in the whole world who played soccer. I wasn't allowed to play because I was a girl," Sundhage said. "Back then, I could never imagine to be a professional player or a professional coach. Now I'm sitting with a great player, Christie Rampone, and looking at her gold medal. I am so proud."

Beijing gave us stories of silver: The U.S. softball team lost their first game since 2000, falling to Japan in the gold medal match up, and the U.S. women's volleyball team came in second behind Brazil in their final game. … continue reading

This week, Michelle and Becca are happy to bring you another Olympics-themed episode of From the Cheap Seats. Tennis, softball and football (otherwise known as soccer) are added to this week's mix, as well as some grumbling from Becca about the gymnastics judging and some belated raving from Michelle on handball.

Norway’s Women's National Handball Team

And as the Olympics draw to an end, Becca and Michelle begin counting the days until the WNBA resumes play.

This is a vlog by fans for fans, so please leave plenty of comments, questions, rants and raves, or anything else that comes to mind. And check back next weekend for another episode!

Over the last 20 odd years, the Olympics have been pretty predictable when it comes to controversy. You can expect that a handful of athletes will get accused of doping, that a gymnastics judge or two will make some really bad calls and that at least one bizarre scandal will surface and leave you scratching your head. For the Beijing games, that special controversy was the lip-syncing debacle involving two little girls.

If you haven’t heard by now, here’s the gist: A representative of the Chinese government didn’t like the look of the 7-year-old girl (Yang Peiyi) chosen to sing at the opening ceremony, so he had a “cuter” substitute, 9-year-old Lin Miaoke, installed to lip-sync along to Yang’s voice (wow, China has the gold for “Biggest A-Hole Move” in the bag). If you’re wondering just how hideous this poor Yang is, check out her photo.

Where’s the gross deformity? The eye-patch? The horns? You can stop looking — she’s your typical 7-year-old cutie pie. And her show-stopping replacement?

Yeah, she’s cute, too. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by the lack of sensitivity, given the country’s stellar human rights’ record, especially when it comes to girls. But you’d think the host nation would have more important things to do than swapping cute for cute like, oh, I don’t know, adding fake CGI fireworks into the ceremony broadcast, stacking their women’s gymnastics team with 14-year-old ringers (allegedly) or hiding all their gold from Michael Phelps. So, what gives? … continue reading

Last week, Dana and Helen of Mombian.com talked about Olympic athletes who are mothers. This week, they turn to the mothers of athletes, bringing you some of their favorite stories of supportive parents at the Beijing Games. They add an LGBT twist by revealing which character from an LGBT-themed show Michael Phelps' mom reminded them of, and pointing out an unintended double entendre about beach volleyball players Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh.

Breaking news from the New York Times: Women across America have stopped darning socks and canning tomatoes long enough to really get into this little thing called the Olympics.

Check out this startling report:

There are millions of Ms. Simpsons and Ms. Williamses around the country, watching the Olympics on the networks and Web sites of the NBC Universal division of General Electric. They are also watching commercials from more than 100 advertisers, which are spending more than $1 billion to sponsor the coverage of the 2008 Games in Beijing.

How weird is that? I mean, the Olympics are, like, sports, and women are, like, watching it on television — some of them with their friends. It boggles the mind, I'm telling you.

The article goes on to say:

The large female viewership for the Olympics and the spate of spots intended for women are anomalies in TV sports. Most coverage of athletics is watched by men, which means that most commercials during sports programs like football, baseball, basketball and hockey are aimed at male viewers.

I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that most athletics coverage is of men's sporting events. I wonder if there's correlation between the majority of WNBA viewers being women, and the majority of NBA viewers being men. I wonder if more women would watch athletics in the Olympic off-season if there were more women's sporting events televised. Nah, probably not. … continue reading

Just as the Olympic machine was revving up, swimmer Amanda Beard and beach volleyball player Kerri Walsh released PSAs for two different non-profit organizations. Beard bared all for the animal rights group PETA, and Walsh struck that pose every single one of you have come to love for UNTIL, an AIDS awareness organization.

Beard launched her PETA anti-fur campaign inside the athletes' village in Beijing, causing quite a stir. Of China's fur industry, she said:

I have seen a lot of the videos, and [it] brings me to tears. What [some people] think is pretty is actually something that's very gruesome and gross.

Unfortunately for Beard, that was the only noise she was able to make in the 2008 Beijing Games. She came in 18th in the 200m breast stroke, failing to make it past the preliminary rounds. … continue reading

This weekend, 41-year-old Dara Torres became the oldest swimmer to win an Olympic silver medal (she missed out on the gold in the Women's 50m Freestyle by 1/100th of a second), ultimately departing China with three silver medals to tie her with Jenny Thompson as the most decorated female U.S. Olympian in history, with 12 medals total.

But medals, records, and inspiration aside, I found myself captivated by Dara throughout the race because of the sense of fun she brought to the games.

It seemed like every time I turned on the TV, there she was — smiling, cheering on teammates, chatting and laughing with competitors, even holding off the start of a race to let a competitor fix a ripped bathing suit.

The NBC TV commentators didn't know what to make of her. They frequently referred to her as "Chatty Cathy" because she was constantly breaking the unwritten rules of Serious Competition by chatting happily with competitors moments before the whistle with a big smile on her face — then kicking (almost) everyone's ass in the water. … continue reading

This week's episode of From the Cheap Seats is absolute chaos as Michelle and Becca try to fit a week's worth of Olympics into a short time frame. Michelle admits a new obsession with gymnastics while Becca thanks Gro for bringing her to handball.

U.S. Women’s Gymnastics Team

Other updates include women's basketball (of course), swimming and soccer.

This is a vlog by fans for fans, so please leave plenty of comments, questions, rants and raves, or anything else that comes to mind. And check back next weekend for another episode!

I can't believe I'm going to say this — it goes against almost everything that I hold dear — but, my friends, there comes a point when too much of a good thing becomes too much of a bad thing. So here it goes: Hey, Olympic photographers, stop taking pictures of women's butts.

Wow, that was a hard one to get out. I mean, who doesn't like a finely formed derrière? And before an angry mob of badonkadonk-loving gay women chase me down the street with torches for suggesting Olympians show a little less skin, let me explain. While perusing photos from the Olympics this week I got (inexplicably) distracted by the women's beach volleyball shots. Sand. Bikinis. Abs. Sweaty... I'm back, I'm back.

But the more I looked, the more I realized that while there were more than a dozen tightly-cropped, close-up shots of women players' backsides, there was nary a single similar shot of the male players. This is as close to as it came with the fellas. … continue reading

Dara Torres isn't the only older mom competing in the Olympics, and this week Dana and Helen of Mombian.com tell you about some more of them. Several are previous medalists and two managed to have three kids each in between Olympic appearances.

In a heartbreaking story, one mother even needed to keep competing in order to raise money for her son's leukemia treatments. Another took a five-year break because of an injury and to have a family, but got back into training and made the 2008 team. An inspiration? Yes, but what if her politics make her less than supportive of LGBT families? Dana and Helen discuss.

The U.S. women's basketball team scored their 29th straight Olympic victory today. Lisa Leslie went a perfect 7-7 from the field as the Team USA trounced Mali 97-41. They've also routed China and the Czech Republic, winning by an average of 47 points in each of their victories so far in the Beijing Olympics.

Leslie's perfect performance set a new Olympic record. When a reporter mentioned this to her, she simply said, "Another record? Oh well, records are meant to be broken. It feels good, but we just wanted to get the win. We wanted to come out and perform well."

When Mali started out with a quick lead, head coach Jose Ruiz turned to his assistant and said, "Maybe the lights will go out now and it could be over." … continue reading