I wish that I cared more about the Olympics.

I really do, but the truth is I have watched a grand total of about 15 minutes of Summer Games coverage so far, and that was while I was eating a slice of pizza last Monday, waiting for a prescription to be filled. It was going to take around 30 minutes to complete the script, so I went to a good NY pizza-by-the-slice spot I knew near the pharmacy, and there it was: Olympic boxing.

Of all sports to be on, I was treated to what looked like lightweights, one from Cuba and one from Thailand, duke it out as I ate my slice. It was not so bad, as the other guy sitting in the restaurant and one of the employees also were watching and we were all making comments, and that did remind me that often sports is much more fun to watch in a crowd.

But, as usual, I digress. For some reason I was no more interested in the Olympics as I am the presidential election, let alone the conventions. What is odd is in the past I loved watching this stuff.

But now there seems so much pandering, and such huge sums of money involved; the essence of the event has been overshadowed by the spectacle of the event. For me that smacks of style over substance, and I am never interested in that.

Not that I won't vote, or don't hope American athletes perform well. But I want everyone to perform well, and I think about Obama and McCain raising $75 million a month collectively and I shudder.

That is because I think of all the real use that $75 million that will be used largely for advertising and propaganda could be put to, and all I can think is waste.

Or that for some reason instead of the the United States against the Soviets, now it is the United States against China, and I wonder why anything has to be so against anything else (not that the Chinese are not just as complicit in this as we are, as their use of an underage gymnast sort of suggests).

Can I not root for Michael Phelps because he is a great swimmer, and not because he is an American, without being taken to task?

Surely it is fine to watch the best, but I got just as much of a kick watching Eddy "The Eagle" Eagleton a bunch of years back, or the Jamacian bobsled team.

Plus, and I hate to harp on the money factor, but there are those dreaded commercials in which we have to know that Viagra is the official erectile dysfunction corrective prescription of these very Olympics games. The constant barrage of such advertising flotsam is oppressive, and it has been coming just about as long as the dreck from the presidential campaigns.

Just to be clear, too, I am not knocking money or capitalism. I am lucky to live here and make enough money to live a more than comfortable (dare I say privileged?) life. And, remembering that my parents came here fleeing the Holocaust, I appreciate what I have, and how I got it.

But somehow enough has become enough for some things, and the Olympics, masquerading to me as something substantive, but in actuality being more like a glorified Miss Universe contest, is just not how I am interested in spending my time.

I realize that with age we change and become generally somewhat more intransigent. I also laugh sometimes, thinking I am ever so close to becoming that cranky old man who screams "You kids get outta my yard!"

I hope that does not happen. I want to be engaged and interested in people and life till my final breath. Like I said, I wish I cared more about the Olympics. We all have the capacity to change for all our lives--both me, and the folks who run the Olympics.