Happy days are here again… almost. The Olympics are finished, and, as you know, that pleases me to no end. No longer will I have to deal with watching athletes see their "lifelong" dreams shattered due to an inglorious fall. No longer will I have to hear people complain loudly — and do nothing — about China's human rights violations. No longer will my television be occupied with hours and hours of Olympics coverage (I think it may have been possible to watch more Olympics than there are hours in the day, and yet never the events I wanted and even if I caught a glimpse of the event I wanted to see it was never shown in full).

Instead, for the next two weeks my attention is going to be completely focused on the Democratic and Republican National Conventions (even if the networks aren't focused on it, I think my TV will be). Now, like the Olympics, I'm going to acknowledge the importance of the events – it's critical that we understand our world and what is taking place in it, if we can never really understand anything. It's just that it's all so heavily choreographed and that nothing real will actually be discussed (kind of like elections as a whole).

Plus, all the while, some guy in a room somewhere is yelling something like, "You drop those balloons when I tell you to drop those balloons or there'll be hell to pay. I swear to you if I see one piece of confetti drop before I tell you to drop that confetti, I'm going to turn you into confetti. Don't test me. Don't you test me. I will end you. I will end you." If they showed that guy and not the speeches, I'd be absolutely glued to the set. Probably it's the choreographed nature of the event and the lack of that guy in the room having a camera on him why the networks don't show that much coverage of the convention, why you have to go to PBS or a cable news network to see wall-to-wall coverage.