Scoreboard-Watching

I have just found another way to add "excitement" (but really stress) into my life - watch scoreboards for gymnastics! I was watching the scores of Sasha and J-Ho for the Men's Visa Championships in Houston (USA men's artistic gymnastics) and I was freaking out, especially with the 14.2 or so on floor for Sasha. His score for floor looked like he completely messed up something - a low B score and a deduction. And his high bar score made it look like he fell on that. J-Ho's B score also suggests a fall; stop doing that! But he did well to come back and tie for first with David Sender (not bad at all)! Sasha is at 6th and he better stay there or else... If Paul Hamm had competed, he would have creamed the competition. Seriously, it's competitive but it's not. The one thing is that I WILL catch gymnastics on TV this time. I will find a way...

I also finished up the Champions' League final (it took forever) and it had quite nice drama. The play deteriorated after regular time, but the slap was hilarious. I mean, it wouldn't be hilarious for them but it was hilarious for its ridiculousness. And penalties had DRAMA. Well, if you somehow cared about the result and didn't know it by now, too bad. It was overall a good match and all, but I feel like I watched it just because it was the last club match of the year, and because it is Champions' League, which I have followed for the whole season. Otherwise, even despite the international cast, it was still 2 English Premiership clubs going against each other and for some reason it meant that I didn't care as much. Seriously the gap between teams in the top four of the English Premiership and the rest is way too big. That's why the LIverpool drama was awesome at the beginning, because perhaps some other team would qualify. The title race being down to the wire at least made things interesting at the end. It was like having playoffs but not really. Champions League is more like playoffs and is more interesting in that sense. But I feel like this is a bad trend to keep having 3 out of the 4 semifinalists as English teams. Real Madrid needs to seiously do something in the Champions League. Atletico de Madrid will be there next year, but I'm not sure how well they will do; it's not like they tore up the UEFA cup or something.

Anyway, back to scoreboard ranting. Though you can't control any of the scores you watch, I think soccer scores are the hardest to watch. I basically will try my very best to distract myself with something else if I somehow can't watch that particular match live. Otherwise gymnastics scores are much more stressful than tennis ones. Tennis ones update so much faster because it is scored at a quicker pace; you also have some idea what happened because they'll at least tell you unforced error or winner or whatever, so you may have a feeling that something's bad before the crash happens. Volleyball scores get pretty tight/stressful towards the ends of sets; like tennis, they change quickly. But I would still rank tennis score-watching as rougher than volleyball's simply because I care more for tennis. Yeah, I am biased. Whatever.