Michael Phelps swam the first swim "like it was the last."

"Like he has swum it one too many times. Like he was swimming out of obligation, rather than inspiration...."

"[T]hree fried-egg sandwiches, three chocolate chip pancakes, a five-egg omelette, three sugar-coated slices of French toast, and a bowl of grits..."

Breakfast for Michael Phelps. Come on. It's not easy scarfing down 12,000 calories a day.

Phelps...

... phlops.

"He was drinking straight from a bottle of Grey Goose..."

"... and when the deejay started playing M.I.A.'s 'Paper Planes,' he got up, started dancing like a loon and kept on yelling, 'Shots!'"

Aw, leave Michael Phelps alone! What's wrong with drinking in a club? If you go out dancing, why not dance like "a loon"? Let him drink from a bottle of Grey Loon and dance like a goose if he wants. What business is it of yours?

[T]he athlete skeeved out onlookers when he persisted in PDA-ing with his girlfriend, cocktail waitress Caroline (Caz) Pal.

"They wouldn't stop making out! They were literally sucking face, and not caring that anyone was watching," says our snitch, who added that Phelps danced up such a storm that he briefly went shirtless, changing out of his T-shirt in the club and putting on a zip-up hoodie with nothing underneath.

Literally sucking face, eh? Who are these people who go to clubs and are nevertheless susceptible to the skeeves?

You know my position on public display of affection:



So just yell — good-naturedly — "Get a room!" and go find a love of your own. Or sublimate usefully.

IN THE COMMENTS: Mr. Forward has a poem:

Swims like a fish
Dances like a loon
Drinks Grey Goose
Sings off tune
Affection in Public
Isn't so wrong
At least he wasn't
Kissing his bong.

So, Phelps photographed with a bong? A problem for endorsements? I have an idea.

Poor Mikey. But: crisis = opportunity. Think of the possibilities. Cheetos. Fruity Pebbles. Funyins... Be creative! Bring back Screaming Yellow Zonkers.

"Phelps's exceptionally long and hairless torso seems to go on and on until the photo is abruptly, thankfully cropped."

"Instinctively, you know your eyes shouldn't slide any lower, but all warning signs have been waxed away."

Robin Givhan scrutinizes "the supremely unflattering Sports Illustrated cover" of Michael Phelps. What's so bad about it? Click over. First impression: He's wearing a weird spangly halter top. Second: Oh... those are his medals. Ha ha. Third: Get those crappy Chinese tapestries off him and let me see the torso.

Givhan compares the Phelps photo to the iconic Mark Spitz photo, where the medals hung on chains that remind Givhan of a whole 70s picture:

Spitz's medals are hanging from thin metal chains, a detail that gives the photo a kind of 1970s cool. You could imagine him in some fern bar wearing those medals with a pair of bell-bottoms and a polyester shirt with a collar the size of elephant ears. The photograph captures a particular '70s sexy aesthetic a la Burt Reynolds in the Playgirl centerfold.

And all the gay guys in Greenwich Village back then! (I lived there 1976-1981.)

Givhan also frets about Phelps's lack of "the kind of pumped up, six-pack Hollywood torso typically found on the cover of Men's Fitness and that has come to define today's sexy man." She calls the Phelps torso "a 1970s torso" and says: "To understand its power, it needs to be seen in action barreling through the water like a torpedo."

As long as we're developing our understanding, why don't we look at those Men's Fitness models and rethink whether they represent power? Their muscles come not from doing something admirable and powerful, but from doing what they've figured out will make them look like that. Shouldn't function underlie power? Their function is to model. Phelps's body is what real power looks like.