It was rough being an entertainment writer the past two weeks.
Americans haven’t cared much at all about Hollywood.
Instead they’ve been addicted to the 2024 Olympic Games, which have averaged a huge daily viewership of 32 million across NBC and Peacock.
And those who were not glued to around-the-clock coverage of gymnastics, track and swimming were surely reading the nonstop headlines about broken records, personal triumphs, hard losses and, naturally, juicy controversies that enlivened the competition in Paris.
Yes, it’s been a challenging fortnight for an entertainment writer.
And I loved every second of it.
For 16 merciful days, the Olympics replaced vacuous Hollywood in the media, and amazing athletes became the A-listers instead of those bozos out in California.
What a beautiful break it was.
How wonderful that people stopped paying attention to Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez’s annoying supposed breakup, as their marriage deflates more slowly than a forgotten birthday balloon.
Nobody was forced to endure George Clooney, star of “Oceans Thirteen,” trying to alter the course of a national election.
Britney Spears announced a new biopic by the director of “Crazy Rich Asians,” and it was as though a tree fell in a forest.
We didn’t miss them. The Olympics had all of showbiz’s glitz and glamor, only paired with superhuman capabilities and stakes of global proportion. It was riveting.
There were stunningly attractive people — who emerge every four years like sexy cicadas — that the entire world obsessed over.
2024 PARIS OLYMPICS
They won awards. But instead of Oscars, competitors accepted bronze, silver and gold medals that made their countries proud. And we got plenty of meat for the gossip pages: marriage proposals, scandals, spats and sex (200,000 condoms in the Olympic Village this year.)
And, like the best Academy Awards broadcasts, we were inspired.
Twenty-seven-year-old Katie Ledecky was the Games’ Meryl Streep, an athlete so fiercely dominant that her name is synonymous with victory.
The swimmer is now the woman with the most gold medals in the world (she’s tied with Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina, who’s 89) with nine. This time, she took home two gold, one silver and one bronze. An astounding feat.
Simone Biles is close behind. A regular Frances McDormand.
The 27-year-old became the most decorated gymnast in American history after adding three golds and a silver to her already massive haul of seven medals from prior Olympics.
Bringing some drama, Biles also made a historic comeback, like Robert Downey Jr. before her, after a rocky go in Tokyo in 2021.
“I’ve accomplished way more than in my wildest dreams,” Biles said at a press conference. Though she could’ve been onstage at the Dolby Theater wearing Valentino.
And our Daniel Day Lewis was Mijain Lopez, a Cuban wrestler who has the distinction of being the only athlete in modern times to win five consecutive gold medals in the same event, from Beijing 2008 to Paris 2024.
Then, at the peak of his powers, the 41-year-old retired like he had just wrapped “The Phantom Thread.”
But it couldn’t be all tears, camaraderie and overflowing pride. Trashiness abounded too. At times it was practically a Bravo show.
One of the biggest, ahem, stories out of the games concerned French pole vaulter Anthony Ammirati, whose, ahem, genetic advantages caused him to not clear the bar.
“It’s a big disappointment…I’m a bit gutted,” the Frenchman, 21, said with a touch of la mélancolie.
Cheer up, Tony. You didn’t medal, but you went home with 269,000 Instagram followers. As Kim Kardashian well knows, there are many unexpected paths to fame and fortune.
Classy as a Real Housewife was Paraguay’s Luana Alonso, who was allegedly booted from the Olympic Village for wearing revealing outfits that distracted team mates. Hard to imagine what that could mean for a swimmer from the southern hemisphere.
The 20-year-old denied it — nothing more Hollywood than that! — but the head of the Paraguayan Olympic committee said, “Her presence is creating an inappropriate atmosphere within Team Paraguay.”
Alonso reportedly dreams of competing for Team USA. Sounds fun to me!
You see? The Olympics had something for everyone.
Sadly, like Brigadoon, all of that magic disappears into the Parisian fog on Sunday with the closing ceremony (which I pray to God is better than the opener).
Our oasis from mind-numbing stories about Joaquin Phoenix’s off-the-charts selfishness and Justin Bieber screaming at teenagers in a tank top — not to mention the election whiplash — is over.
On Monday, we’ll all be back at our depressing desks, dreaming of the day four years from now when a bunch of synchronized swimmers will come to our rescue yet again.
