I haven't laughed that hard in...

We've been watching the Olympics every night for the past week. Well, almost anyway.

Some of my favorite parts of the Olympics:

- Watching Michael Phelps win the Gold in swimming the 100m butterfly by 0.01 seconds. If you missed it, or even if you didn't miss it, you should check out this photo sequence on the SI website. Absolutely amazing!

- Watching Shawn Johnson win the Gold on the gymnastics balance beam. No offense to Nastia, but Nastia just never looks like she's having fun. Shawn on the other hand with her big, white, toothy grin is fun to watch because you can tell she's actually enjoying it.

- Watching Jonathan Horton win the Silver on the gymnastics high-bar. That was absolutely stellar and worthy of a Gold medal.

I recently saw an ad on TV from AIG that said laughter can add 8 years to your life. Well, the most recent episode of Monk just added about 16 years to my life. LW and I normally watch Monk together off the DVR, but with the Olympics on we totally forgot and didn't even notice the DVR had recorded a new episode of Monk. It wasn't until my mom emailed and asked if I had seen the episode about Monk getting stuck on board a Navy submarine at sea that we hit pause on the Olympics and switched over to watch Monk.

Aside: In case you've never seen the show before, it's about a police detective named Monk who has obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Naturally, he is extremely uncomfortable with even setting foot on a submarine much less getting stuck on one for five days at sea.

The ENTIRE episode is TOTALLY preposterous. They clearly did not consult ANYBODY who has EVER set FOOT on a submarine before they filmed it. It was SO bad it was absolutely comical.

I mean, yeah, the officers wear summer whites on board the submarine all the time, right? We always submerge right next to the pier without so much as a moment's notice. It doesn't take any time to prepare the ship to get underway and we certainly don't make sure we have an accurate count of who is on board before the crane takes the brow off. Oh wait, we just submerge by the pier, we don't actually have a crane take the brow off - we just let that fall in the water behind us, right? Why yes, the COB is qualified OOD, and he can just relieve the Captain of the Conn anytime he feels like it.

I'm barely scratching the surface of their technical errors here, but the thing that really made me lose it was when they're sitting in the crew's mess eating a meal. The boat suddenly starts to violently shake as if they were in a California earthquake. Monk was wigging out about it, but all the crew members just sat and quietly ate their meals. One of the sailors turned to Monk and said, "Don't worry, it's just a little underwater turbulence."

Maybe you have to see it and hear it on the TV to really get the humor from it, but I erupted in a fit of laughter. I had tears streaming down my face and my abs seriously hurt from laughing so hard. LW thought I was going to pass out from hyperventilation. I just couldn't control myself for several minutes after that.

For you guys at prototype and sub school reading my blog, I know you've probably heard stories about the salty experienced guys on the boat playing jokes on the new guys, but rest assured there are NO doors that go into the ballast tanks. I don't want to spoil any more of it if you want to actually watch it and have a good laugh yourself.

If you missed it, you will be able to watch it on the USA website here. It's episode #705, and as I write this they have up to episode #704 posted to the website.