More entertaining than the luge

The games have begun. You know—the 2014 Winter Olympics, in Sochi. Hey—it’s been in all the papers…

I’m not really big on winter sports, so I’ll be following at a distance. Especially since NBC is “covering” them for the US audience and that network couldn’t report a ham sandwich without Matt Lauer and Meredith Veiera blathering on and on for eight minutes about the lettuce.

But so far the Russian organizers (if I can actually use that term) have provided lots and lots of entertainment value, especially if you’re on social media. Because as of yesterday, there are lots of questions about whether this whole thing is actually coming, you know, together. In fact, they’re making the run-up to the London games of 2012 look positively streamlined by comparison.

The thing is—while they seem to have got the Olympic Village put up (somewhat Spartan, but at least complete with such amenities as working plumbing and functional doorknobs), as far as the accommodation for journalists goes, uh, not so much.

And we know this because the journos have been tweeting it. For example, Shaun Walker, of the Guardian:

Or Kevin Bishop of the BBC:

But I think my favorite (so far) is Stacy St. Clair, of the Chicago Trib. She has this thing going about the water that is not to be missed.

The Russians got so tired of all the whining about no doorknobs and unsafe face water that Dmitry Kozak, the minister in charge of prep for the games, told a reporter (and I am not making this up) that “We have surveillance video from the hotels that shows people turn on the shower, direct the nozzle at the wall and then leave the room for the whole day.”

Which might be indicative that the plumbing is, in fact, working. And that there’s no problem with connectivity. But a horrified aide to Kozak pulled away the reporter before a follow-up question could be asked about installing cameras in hotel bathrooms.

Later on a spokesperson denied all ideas of surveillance in hotel rooms or bathrooms. But, I dunno; there might be temptations of getting some viral stuff going. We should ask the NSA about this.

Naturally, there is now an @SochiProblems Twitter account. At the time of writing, it had more than 110K followers.

The official Twitter account of the Sochi Olympics has 127K followers.

And there is another parody account, Sochi Problems. All those tweets begin, “C’mon guyz…”

God bless the Internet.