I won’t be back til 2012. Welcome back to your real life.

It seems like we wait so long for the Olympics to start (and by “we” I mean me, and NBC, and about ten thousand impossibly ripped and dedicated Americans who didn’t avoid going to the gym tonight by whingeing about missing headphones) and now, in a blur of 27-hour days, about a million lengths of the Water Cube, endless vitriolic arguments about the Code of Points (SHE LANDED ON HER KNEES), and 30 minutes of nail-biting overtime, the end is here.

Now all the gold medals have been handed out, most of them to the Chinese. Michael Phelps has achieved a feat many (including myself) thought no human being could achieve, with Natalie Coughlin quietly pulling off a similar, yet unheralded, accomplishment, and the American softball dynasty has come to an end. Three young women swept the sabre medals, and one of them went directly from the podium to freshman orientation (and if that isn’t the best way to introduce yourself during the Name Game, I don’t know what is. “Hi, I’m Becca, and I’m the third best in the world with this big old sword.”). Soccer goalie Hope Solo has been redeemed, Misty and Kerri are ready to go get knocked up, and a flock of freakishly talented people born in 1987 blazed to unexpected medals and records (seriously, look at that marathon finish!).

I was listening to “Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me” a couple of days ago, as I do, and my dearest love Peter Sagal called the Olympics an entirely irony-free zone, a temporary cure for our increasing feelings of national impotence. I think that’s why I like watching the Olympics so much, even though I’ve been moaning to everyone who will listen how sleepy I am and how I wish MSNBC wouldn’t show, like, handball all day, and why the hell is rhythmic gymnastics a sport? It’s just stretching with props. Consuming as much media as I do means I also take in more snark, studied nonchalance, and thinly veiled—largely unmotivated—rage than any person really needs. The Olympics, despite the IOC’s propensity toward corruption and spinelessness (okay, if the gymnastics inquiry turns out to validate what we’ve all been saying for the past three weeks, I take it all back), are an oasis from all that. NBC’s coverage has been literally flag-waving (who is handing those flags to the runners to wrap themselves in? Their moms? The camera operators?) and jingoistic, but it’s also been refreshingly old-fashioned.

Where else can you find people so well-intentioned, clear-eyed, and optimistic? Obviously the pursuit of Olympic-level greatness is usually a solitary pursuit, one most often motivated by a yearning for personal glory, financial reward (why else would Shawn Johnson’s parents have mortgaged their house twice?), and the satisfaction of being the World’s Greatest, at least at this one obscure, inapplicable-to-real-life thing. Of course, most athletes, even most Olympians, won’t be the best and won’t get rich, but I have to assume no ten-year-old picks up an épée and says “I’m going to do this for America.” Nationalistic pride isn’t something we, as Americans, trade in so loudly anymore except at this one time, and while I think most of the competitors are motivated by those three things, most of them have mentioned how honored and pleased they feel to represent the United States, and honestly that’s kind of a difficult thing to say these days, even if you are wearing a uniform.

So these two weeks have been a glorious mental vacation of sorts. It’s been nice to ignore the presidential race, the tanking economy, the wars, and, frankly, everything else I find unpleasant: The Hills, the Yankees, the aftermath of the writers’ strike, doing dishes. I was palpably angry when Obama’s VP announcement broke into Friday night’s decathlon coverage, because it was not time to worry about that yet. I have thoroughly enjoyed losing myself in endless hours of volleyball, diving, and soccer; you just try and concentrate on off-shore drilling when Kerri Walsh hurls that impossibly long body of hers up in the air and shoves a spike down some poor Chinese girl’s throat.

And now that we’ve seen Coach K transform, at least temporarily, a pack of marginally cooperative millionaires into a free throw–shooting, teammate-supporting gang of stars and stripes–clad solid citizens, and seen Zhang Yimou blow our minds all over again, with a little assist from David Beckham at the closing ceremony, it is all over. The inflatable Fuwa are packed away (or hopefully mass-produced; I want a stuffed Jingjing), the women’s gymnastics teams returned to third-period geometry, and the London organizing committee sweating bullets. NBC will secure Bob Costas in his cryogenic chamber until Vancouver; a professional mediation team will forcibly separate Tiki and Jenna before there can be any more bloodshed; and my new favorite anchor, Jim Lampley, will hopefully get some sleep. And we’ll all be back to crass, callous media where there isn’t a pair of gawky young men from Baltimore or Jamaica moving faster than anyone has before, where no impeccable pommel horse routine can snatch a bronze medal for a team of backups and also-rans, where the closest thing to BMX is watching delivery guys try not to get sideswiped by the M23.

In other words, we’ll have to watch the DNC. Ugh. I can’t wait for football season.

I’ve spent the last half hour trying to figure out how to grab five minutes from Monday night’s broadcast from my DVR and put it here on the website (a Tifaux-to-Tifaux transfer, if you will) but, well, I can’t. And it seems no one has done it for me. So this will have to do.

Did anyone else see Bob Costas’ and Cris Collinsworth’s sassy little up-yours to an exhausted American viewing audience the other night? A little before midnight, Bob finished talking about pole vaulting (how much of a dick was the silver medalist’s coach?!) to turn earnestly to us and proclaim that he, Bob, felt our pain at staying up half the damn night for a week and half, and proceeded to offer some helpful suggestions, such as staying hydrated, wearing sunglasses, and skipping work. Thanks, guys. I actually found this kind of funny last night, but having found out what happened in the beam final from no fewer than four sources Tuesday morning, I’m kind of pissed at NBC. I wouldn’t mind the sleep deprivation quite so much if they’d shown just a few of the gymnastics event finals live in primetime so I wouldn’t have found out who won every single one by the time I finished my breakfast.

Further proof that Bob is as tired as we are: During Tuesday’s broadcast he introduced a puff piece on sprinter Sanya Richards and her fiancé, football player Aaron Ross, by crediting Ross as the “Super Bowl–winning quarterback of the New York Giants.” Bob? Honey?

Eli Manning, as your channel has been reminding us every two minutes (remember him, brother of Peyton, recent first-time toucher of a naked lady?) is the Giants’ quarterback. Ross is a defensive back. Maybe you should pop some No-Doz, Bobby; it’s only Day 12.

Here on Day 6 of the Olympics, I am exhausted, saddened by how badly the American women have been swimming, and disappointed by the blatant cheating on the part of the Chinese. But my fervor for the Games has now extended to the commercials of the games.

My current favorite is this Coca-Cola spot not featuring Yao Ming or LeBron James; it’s the one in which Morgan Freeman someone who is not Morgan Freeman solemnly intones that if you’ve drunk a Coke in the past 80 years, you, personally, right there on your couch, have placed a gold medal around the neck of a Special Olympian. Since I consider myself a humanitarian and I really enjoyed Murderball*, I love this commercial. It makes me cry a little and then my roommate ridicules me.

A close second in the awesome sweepstakes is the series that NBC has built around Michael Phelps for the past few years. Even before he became The Greatest Olympian Of All Time, Forever and Ever, Amen, this commercial delighted me. Here’s one with his adorable bulldog, Herman:

In other Olympian news, Gillette has been flogging their Champions series for a few years now. Only one of the fellas in this commercial is an Olympian (that would be the poorly-enunciating Roger Federer) and none of them can act his way out of a wet paper bag that’s open at both ends. But I kind of like it.

Federer totally sounds like a Bond villain, doesn’t he? Like Blofeld. I’m sorry that he lost, or I would be if I cared about tennis.

NBC’s hegemony extends to endless promos for their shows, of course, and while I could stand never to see another clip about Chuck, I’m totally digging the smack-Dwight-in-the-face promo for The Office.

I miss Jim with a passion that Leatherheads could not nearly satisfy. Not even the delightful Craig Robinson in Pineapple Express helped.

Finally, a real Morgan Freeman–narrated commercial that I love:

Yes, it’s melodramatic and stentorian and sepia-toned, for God’s sake, but that vault is one of my most vivid TV-sport-crossover memories, and it’s wonderful. In addition, the spot with Derek Redmond is one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever seen. DAMN YOU, VISA!

Do you have a favorite Olympic commercial, or do you just want Chuck to die a quick and painful death?

*Yes, I know the quad rugby players in Murderball are Paralympians. It was a joke. I kid because I love.

Okay, you guys, can we talk about the commentators at these Olympics? You know I love Bob Costas, to the point that I want a keychain of him, and I’m really enjoying the screaming from Rowdy Gaines at the Water Cube. But the gymnastics team is KILLING ME. If you haven’t been keeping up with the crazy, the booth team for both men’s and women’s gymnastics is made up of Al Trautwig, Tim Daggett, and Elfi Schlegel. Al is notable for actually looking like a trout, and for repeating himself, à la Willard Scott. Tim was a member of the gold medal–winning U.S. gymnastics team in Los Angeles, and Elfi is Canadian.

And the three of them are a pack of shrieking idiots. Let’s start with Sunday’s broadcast, the women’s team qualifying competition, when Tim compared Chellsie Memmel’s and Samantha Peszek’s sprained ankles on the eve of competition to “a tear in your wedding dress as you’re just about to walk down the aisle.” Yes, because a catastrophic (and by the way, extremely painful) injury at the climax of a decade of training and discipline and self-deprivation that keeps you from competing to your fullest potential at the single Olympic games you’re likely to qualify for, is JUST LIKE something that can be fixed with a little seam tape and a hot glue gun.

That’s just so sexist and meaningless and stupid I don’t know where to start with it. So let’s move on to how mean they’ve been to the Romanians. On Sunday, NBC’s cameras cut to Nadia Comaneci, the first woman to achieve a perfect 10 in gymnastics, who was looking vaguely European and bored, inspiring Elfi to comment on how the Romanians at this Olympics were talking to each other rather than, like, purging. And when a girl fell off the beam and her coach had the temerity to hug her, Tim commented that you’d NEVER have seen that in the old, gold medal–winning Romanian gymnast factory. The gold medal–winning gymnast factory that saw their greatest athlete defect because she wanted to eat carbs and maybe make out with a boy rather than sleep on a four-inch-wide balance beam.

This is Jonathan Horton. He’s adorable.

Monday night the team was even more vapid, if that’s possible. From NBC’s coverage, you’d think only China and the U.S. were competing in the men’s team event, even though the French were in second place after a few rounds. As one of the American men approached the high bar, which is a seriously scary apparatus, Tim, rather than telling us something relevant about great past performances on the bar or what the Americans needed to do to stay in medal contention, simply breathed reverently, “The first thing you do in high bar is, you grab the bar. You grab. The bar.”

I am so glad this ziphead is getting paid and getting a free trip to China to say something my friend’s eighteen-month-old can say (although when he yells “ba” he means “bus”).

I’m also disappointed that we’re not hearing more discussion from these announcers about the quality of the judging. They have bitched about some substantial delays, and about the instant replay the judges are allowed to watch that would seem to offer a greater degree of scrutiny than, say, the diving judges are allowed. But on Sunday the Chinese women fell off apparatus, took big steps on their landings, and otherwise faulted, and it wasn’t reflected in their scores; in fact, regardless of what they did they got higher scores than the Americans. Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin had particularly spectacular vaults, and their scores came in lower than similarly difficult vaults performed by Chinese athletes with less perfect landings. I’m not enough of an authority on the technical aspects, but I’m calling bullshit. I would really kill to hear John Madden call these events for the next couple of days. Or Charles Barkley.

Water polo: That’s what I’m talking about.

People watch the Olympics to participate in the universal phenomenon. It’s a rare show of international cooperation — a tradition that is like no other in its scale and grandeur.

Me, I watch it for the hot softcore action.

And don’t pretend you don’t either, judgey. Even people who are really interested in displays of patriotism or athleticism can’t deny that the buffness on the men and women of the Olympics is highly distracting (and, if you must know, somewhat shaming).

As such, here is a quick round-up of the absolute hottest Olympians. I’ve rated them on a scale of one to five pecs. I’m including mens sports and womens sports, although I’m just taking my best guess on the ladies. Straight guys and lesbians should feel free to pipe up and correct me or make alternate suggestions.

Men’s gymnastics - Mens gymnastics is notable for psychotic upper body strength. However, I have to take minor deductions because of the floor routines which are, frankly, not hot. (Four pecs)

Men’s water polo - My new obsession. The problem with water polo is that the players are mostly obscured by water. However, when they’re sitting on the bench (damn, that sport must be exhausting) they are probably the hottest Olympians of them all. The fact that they have to wear their silly swim caps while being otherwise almost nude only serves to make them more humble about it. (Five pecs)

Men’s rowing - Plenty hot, but infinitely boring. (Three pecs)

Women’s beach volleyball - Admittedly, you should consider the source, but I found the womens beach volleyball team way hotter than the mens. I think it might be something about how tough they are — the grit of the sand, the bare midriffs, etc. (Five pecs)

Women’s softball - If for no other reason than Jennie Finch, right? (Three pecs)

[Ed. Note: Please welcome Friend of the Faux Sara who's here to talk to us about things we know little about. Namely, sport. The Olympics. They're happening, did you hear?]

In honor of Friday’s opening ceremonies, here’s a look back at some notable moments from the past four summer Games, starting with the one that got me stuck. (For thoughts on the Winter Olympics, check this space in 2010, when we will discuss Kristi Yamaguchi and her enormous influence on my concept of womanhood.)