It looks like I’m part of a trend (link to Dreher’s Crunchy Con).

This gives me a chance to spout off about something: Men wearing open-toed shoes or sandals. The Wife has tried. And tried. And tried to get me to wear sandals, clogs and other loose, open footwear - to no avail. Although I love her, and am where I am today thanks to her, there is absolutely no way she will get me to wear Teva’s, Birkenstocks, or any other kind of loose-fitting, open footwear.

Let’s face it: while some might consider the arch of a woman’s foot attractive no one in their right mind is going to find anything attractive in the average man’s foot. Worse, when I see a man who is wearing open footwear - and not wearing body armor of the type worn by the Spartans at Thermopylae along with it - I can’t help but think that the man is one or all of the following:
1. Unemployed
2. A transvestite
3. A European
4. A wuss.
There’s the old saying that nothing tells you more about a man than his shoes - and I cannot agree with that saying more. For example, if I could I would wear light but tough leather hiking or workboots with steel toes everywhere. Why? Because one minute I might be carrying dry wall up from the basement, and the next moving a sofa. Both tasks require sound footing, and nothing beats a Timberland workboot for keeping you balanced whether you are carrying a sack of compost or a baby.

If I could get away with it, I would wear the things to work. However I must be content with a classic buck or wingtip. Of course the perfect shoe for me is the Dr. Marten. Yes, I still remember my first pair fondly - and even if they have become a cliche and are now made in China, nothing says comfort and utility more than a pair of Docs.

Women change shoes the way a man changes tools. I reach for reciprocating saw in the same way that the Wife reaches for one pair of shoes. Then a few minutes later it’s over to the miter saw, and for her, a switch to the sandals.

Me? I put the shoes on in the morning and prefer not to take them off until it’s time to sleep at night. In the meantime I will walk to work, attend meetings, go to lunch, go back to work, walk back to the car, go grocery shopping, walk the dog, maybe cut the grass, clean the house, write and shower. If I need more than one pair of shoes to do all that, then I’m not being efficient. Even worse, since our home is run Japanese style, we remove our shoes in the genkan, or entry way, and the Wife yells at me if I have more than one pair there! Talk about mixed messages. “I wish I could get you to try on a pair of Birkenstocks,” she says. Yeah right. She may as well say “I wish I could get you to say a nice thing about President Carter.” Fat fucking chance, babe…

Face it: The last men who really need to wear sandals are Buddhist monks because they stand around begging or sit zazen meditating. Neither practice calls for Dr. Martens, although I have met some monks in Japan who wore them for the same reason I do.

As Dr. Seuss once said, “Feet feet feet. Oh how many feet you meet.” Well unless you are reincarnated as a cow and made into Timberlands or Dr. Marten’s, you won’t meet mine. And that’s the way it should be.

What, they aren’t over yet? Are you sure?

Look, I’m not exactly a sports fan - although I really like football, playing soccer and watching baseball. In the past I never missed the Winter Olympics, marking time by learning to pronounce names like Lillehammer, Innsbruck and Nagano.

But something is different this time - because I couldn’t honestly care less about these games. And I’m not alone it seems.

Part of the problem was the hype. I don’t do hype. In fact, if you want to turn me off to something - hype it. I think that my gut tells me if you have to hype something, then there is something wrong with that “something”. Perhaps it’s from growing up in an age when consumption and the marketing that drives it has become something of a pasttime in itself. So I tune it out.

NBC hyped the living crap out of these games. I don’t even watch NBC much anymore. In fact, I don’t even known when the last time was that I actually watched something on that channel. But I do know that NBC planned to carry the games, and that its regularly scheduled programming would disappear for the two weeks while it did so.

So for the past week and a half I haven’t watched NBC. I haven’t seen a single event. I watched a couple of speed skating matches between China and South Korea but then surfed away after a few minutes.

There was even a local boy who was shooting for a medal in ice dancing - a flamboyant, outspoken kid who talked the talk - but ended up not walking the walk. He didn’t medal and so all the hype surrounding him disappeared overnight. No more front page articles for that kid for the next 4 years.

The Olympics have become too much of a spectacle. When you have skaters whizzing around with flames shooting out the back of their heads during the opening ceremonies, one has to wonder what the next opening ceremony must do to top that.

Also, consider the best American Winter Games moment of recent history: the 1980 Miracle on Ice when the US Hockey team won the gold medal. One reason why that moment is so special is because it was unexpected. No one thought the US hockey team to go all the way - and when it did, it became remarkable and damn near legendary.

You can’t have repeats of 1980 every four years. It’s simply not possible, and when the marketers try to manufacture that moment in order to boost ratings for a firm that paid too much for the rights to broadcast the games, they inevitably fail. When the do you have what you have today: a small audience.

The Olympic Committee should reflect on the American lack of interest in these games so that in 2010 people here are interested, perhaps even passionate about the games again. For starters it can start by toning down (and speeding up) the Opening Ceremonies. Here’s a hint: shorten the Opening Ceremonies to Opening Ceremony. You can’t make people marching around a ring behind their flag exciting without doing either of two things: making them do so naked or handing them guns and grenades. Since we are talking the Winter Olympics here, I suppose it’s too cold for the former and the Olympic Spirit of nonviolence unfortunately rules out the latter.

The next broadcaster of the games shouldn’t pay as much for the broadcasting rights in order for it to avoid being compelled to justify the cost by hyping the living daylights out of the games. Let the natural excitement of the sports come through.

Less is more. Simplicity. Core values. These are the attributes of the games that make them special. Then, and only then, will you get viewers like me to care about the games.