As for free events, don't forget the men's and women's marathons.

I was in LA during the '84 Olympics. The place where I was interning gave me a ticket to see the US basketball team wipe the floor with somebody or other at the Fabulous Forum. The only suspense was whether the US would double the other team's score. As I recall, they didn't but were within 5 or 10 points of doing so. I think the opponent was France, but it may have been Spain. Almost doubling up either one would not happen today; the sport has become far too international.

And as for going this time, that's a hard pass. I'm not that big a fan of either LA or the Olympics, and I do not feel like having to sell a kidney or take up highway robbery to pay for it. I'm sure I'll watch some of it on the telly, but only the stuff that is not on a pay-to-play station. If that means that the only thing I can see is the 43 Man Squammish quarter-finals, so be it (and kudos to you Mad Magazine fans if you get the reference). I loved the Olympics as a kid and some of the individual performances were and can still be breath-taking. Footage of Bob Beamon's long jump and Franz Klammer's downhill run can still give me chills. But between the cheating scandals, the political BS and the utter corruption of the IOC, my former love has turned to occasional mild interest increasingly tempered by disgust.