I watched the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics last night, and after two weeks of nightly coverage, I was sad to see it all end. But I gotta say NBC did a great job of covering all the events. Bob Costas is really good at what he does, and he’s been covering the Olympics for years.

I really enjoyed the great view from Vancouver too, man the mountains were beautiful. Some of the point-of-view camera shots were amazing. I don’t remember those high-tech cameras being worn by the athletes before, but to ride along with the skiers whizzing down the side of Whistler mountain at 70 MPH was a real treat to the senses!

Speaking of high-tech, the Twitter streams were really buzzing too. The snowboarders and skiers were tweeting away, and sometimes provided more insight into their Olympic experience.

Man there was a lot of drama during these Winter Games, huh? You would have thought it was a national tragedy when Team U.S.A. beat Canada in Hockey during the prelims. They almost got beat at their own game; if only we had scored a couple more points Team U.S.A. would have broken the all time record by winning the gold medal for hockey. It would have been an Olympic first!

But the drama was truly international, Plushenko was pretty mouthy about losing to Lysacek, but Evan had the better performance. Complain all you want, but it’s the judges decision, and they were getting pretty strict with the rules near the end of competition. Hey you carried home precious medal from your last Olympic Games, so go home proud, not loud.

Look at Apolo Ohno, he got disqualified and it really wasn’t his fault the guy went down. Ohno almost got caught in the final crash before the finish anyway, but managed to cross the finish line and finish the race. Plus he was graceful with the press afterward, and made us all proud he won more Olympic medals than any other Winter Games athlete.

Lindsey Vonn and her German pal Maria, they both suffered losses but kept going. So did Joannie Rochette, but she showed the courage to go out on the ice and perform anyway. Lindsey and Julia Mancuso, what was that feud about? Oh, I can’t believe Lindsey ran right over that gate on her last run! Too much drama and not enough focus? The cameras don’t lie. But it made for great television, and the networks loved it!

Bode Miller, what a comeback after Torino. That was awesome, but I can do without the rock star attitude. That seemed to work better for Shaun White, but the dude was cool about it.

Team USA did great, they brought home the most Olympic medals than any other nation, AND broke some new records too! Just amazing performances in the Four-Man Bobsled, Alpine Skiing, Hockey, Snowboarding, and even the Nordic events!

Alpine Skiing: Bode Miller won Bronze Silver & Gold in the Men’s Downhill, Super-G and Super-Combined. Julia Mancuso, Silvers in both Women’s Downhill and Super-Combined. Lindsey Vonn, Gold in Women’s Downhill and Bronze in Women’s Super-G. Let’s not forget Hannah Kearney, she won the first U.S. gold medal in Women’s Moguls in Freestyle Skiing. More medals than ever before in the Nordic Ski events, way to go Team U.S.A!!

And how about Steve Holcomb breaking the sixty-year-losing-streak for the Four-Man Bobsled, and his team winning Gold in that “rocket sled” called The Night Train. The guy that helped build it won Daytona in the eighties.

So yeah I really enjoyed watching these Olympic games, especially with the new POV point-of-view cameras. It brought the action, the speed and the thrill of the Nordic sports right into my living room. I can hardly wait for the London games.

www.nbcolympics.com

www.vancouver2010.com

The app opens to a landing page with top stories, featured videos, medal count, photos, and Team USA’s Twitter stream. @ApoloOhno has been pretty active with early Tweets.

The Social category also shows Tweets to the athletes in a Search Stream, like Shaun White, Apolo Ohno and Lindsey Vonn.

You can scroll through the current listings for top stories, videos and photos from Catagories: Now, Sports, Favorites, Social and Schedules.

All in all, pretty cool way to keep up with Olympic current events and winners, while waiting for the TV coverage.

More Olympic coverage on www.nbcolympics.com

McCain even did a cameo on Weekend Update and poked fun at his campaign shortcomings.  “A true maverick is like a Republican without money.”  That’s what I call a healthy sense of humor, something we all could use to get through some of these really hard times.

I wonder if these NBC appearances on Saturday Night Live by John McCain and Sarah Palin in the past few weeks might give the GOP more media mileage than Obama’s 30 minute infomercial?

Note: I had an embedded video from nbc.com in here, but the code really screwed up this WordPress theme.  In fact, it pushed the entire sidebar down to the very bottom of the page!  So here’s the LINK TO MCCAIN VIDEO on NBC.COM.

The best show was last Saturday when Sarah Palin appeared in person and participated in skits with Alec Baldwin and sat-in on Weekend Update as Amy Poehler did an “Alaska Rap” routine.  Funny stuff!  It’s great to see politicians with a sense of humor.

Thanks to NBC, we can still see the video.  “You Betcha!”