Hello, everybody. Well...is the United States kicking butt in Beijing so far or what? The big story coming out of the first weekend of the Olympics so far was Michael Phelps continuing on his quest for eight golds and breaking Mark Spitz' record by shattering his own world record Saturday in the 400-meter individual medley; tonight, it continued with the 4x100-meter freestyle relay. In the women's relay, Natalie Coughlin, 42-year-old Dara Torres, and others got silver, which is a very nice start so far the the latter.

Another story was the men's basketball team (the "Redeem Team") on a roll, trouncing host country China and Yao Ming 101-70. The U.S. still maintains their medal count lead with 10; but in terms of golds, China leads with six followed by Korea with three. And Great Britain got their first golds in these games with the Women's 400-meter freestyle and the Women's Cycling road race.

Now Phelps' second gold came just a few hours ago, despite the 15-hour time gap between Beijing and Alaska. In fact, almost all the marquee events like swimming and track and field are happening in the morning in Beijing and aired live in primetime back in the States...which is either making NBC happy of irate viewers flocking across the border for better coverage of the games.

Over the years on the "Allen Report" and on this blog, I have bitched and moaned about how so many of us who were tired of NBC's bias and are living in border cities like Seattle, Detroit, and Vancouver have been the luckiest souls on Earth by tuning out Bob Costas and company and tuning in the CBC for their Olympic fix. The Beijing games are CBC's last, because the Canadian Olympic broadcasting rights after this one will be handed over to rival CTV in time for the 2010 Winter games in Vancouver. NBC's rights end after 2012 in London, and ABC/ESPN is about to hatch a game plan to get the rights back and hopefully reclaim their Olympic legacy left behind by the late Jim McKay. Of course, we would be seeing ultimate coverage on not just ABC, but ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Classic, ESPN Deportes, ESPN360.com, and maybe ABC Family.

CBS and Fox don't have enough outlets, but when CBS had the Winter Olympics from 1992 to 1998, they shared their coverage with TNT. It's all about a "wait and see" approach to find out who'll make their move.

And last but not least, more sad news: A day after Bernie Mac's passing came Isaac Hayes', who died today at 65 in his Memphis home from natural causes. Ironically enough, he and Mac have recently finished shooting the movie "Soul Men."

Hayes may have been best known for his Oscar-winning theme to "Shaft", but he earned a new generation of fans thanks to his Chef character on "South Park." Now two great black entertainers are gone, but their legacies will remain for all times. So long and stay strong.