What do we do now with our evenings and weekends? For two happy, mindless weeks, we have flopped down in front of the TV any spare minute we had, just to get our daily fix of the big show going on in Sydney. Cynicism, the pre-Games attitude du jour, went out the window the second the teams entered the Olympic Stadium the night of Sept. 15. Starting tomorrow, it will inevitably creep back in, which is all to the good. We can't be cheerleaders forever. But life might seem very dull for a while.

Bad Things and Serious Issues -- the lifeblood of cynicism -- have admittedly been happening off to the side these past two weeks, sometimes even grabbing the headlines. Athletes have been stripped of their medals for drug violations. Whole teams have been ejected from the Olympic Village. Sports writers have filed their usual embarrassingly jingoistic stories. And protesters have done their thing throughout on behalf of Aborigines, people who didn't get tickets to the opening ceremony, Sydney's homeless, the world's poor, the environment and assorted other victims. Some, if not all, of these issues and grievances are worth worrying about. But not now. We have to watch the Greco-Roman wrestling final.

The truth is, an Olympics-in-progress is irresistible, which is why the whole monstrous, gaudy bandwagon is bound to roll over its critics yet again -- the Games will go on to Salt Lake City, Athens and beyond, reformed, perhaps, but essentially intact. The Olympic formula is too successful to jettison entirely. Once that flame is lit and the competitions begin, all the troubles and irritations of the preceding years recede. They don't vanish, but for two weeks they remain in suspension, curiously unimportant. We watch events unfold with the uncritical fascination of a child listening to a fairy tale.