The Olympics stopped meaning much of anything to me, I think, when they first split the winter and summer games into separate years. I know they did this to make travel and training easier for the athletes from poorer countries — it’s not cheap to send that many teams so far, so often — and I’m sure it was the right decision, but it’s hard to get excited about the Olympics now that they’re so common an event. I remember how the 1988 games in Seoul and Calgary seemed huge and important. Maybe that’s just because I was an impressionable eleven-year-old boy who had never seen the games before, but I can’t find any of that same excitement for the Winter Olympics underway right now in Salt Lake City. It’s just a vaguely interesting alternative to all the other programs I don’t watch on NBC. Unless, of course, this turns out to be true. Wil Wheaton, on whose weblog I found this, and who would be in a position to know, so far hasn’t said. It sounds like a joke, but I mean, come on. What is Jonathan Frakes known for if not his ballast?