The Opening Ceremonies

As many of you know, I’m cynical about the Olympics as a whole. I see a massive cash grab somewhat disguised in fake nationalism and pride. The whole exercise tends towards being a farce. Despite all of that, I found myself watching the Opening Ceremonies tonight…my sister Pam and newest niece Lillian are visiting, and they were there, so I was FORCED BY CIRCUMSTANCE! Yeah, that’s it!

The Good

-Is it just me or are there a really high number of smokin’ hot female athletes? Goddamn!

-The respect shown to the members of the Georgian team after their teammate was killed during a training run earlier in the day. Very nice to see. Even a bastard like me thought that was great.

-The entire section that was a salute to a lot of native mythology and beliefs was fantastic, with some pretty neat lighting effects.

-Who the Hell knew that fiddlers and tap dancers could be that fucking cool?! Seriously, who the fuck knew?! Never would I have thought that people playing fiddles and tap dancing could be described as anything close to bad ass, but they fit the bill.

-The ‘who will light the final flame?’ question coming down to 5 people as a group was a nice touch.

-I cannot stand K.D. Lang. She did a great version of Hallelujah, though, so my hat’s off to her.

The Bad

-Steven Harper is awkward to the point of not quite registering as human. He spent the whole evening with that weird sort of excuse for a smile that he uses, coming off about as natural and lifelike as your average Roomba. And then he tried waving when Team Canada walked in. Never before has a wave seemed so forced…it’s like the guy had never done it before. He ended up looking like the goddamn Lost in Space robot.

“Danger, Steven, Danger! You’re dangerously close to expressing an emotion! Danger!”

-That stupid fucking Olympic theme song. So many hackneyed cliches, so little time. So much sappy BLECH packed in to a couple of minutes. Apparently it’s called I Believe by someone named Nikki Yanofsky. Because I’m an asshole, I’m going to share it…you’re welcome! Try not to choke on the saccharine.

Jesus, I had never seen the video before. It actually makes that song worse. That’s actually impressive.

-The goddamn lighting ceremony at the end basically broke. How embarrassing is that? The five ‘mystery lighters’…Rick Hansen, Catrina le may Doan, Nancy Greene, Steve Nash and Gretz…are just standing there looking awkwardly around the place because a bunch of hydraulic arms don’t raise up. They finally do…well, most of them. One didn’t, so one of the lighters got to clap a lot while everyone else lit the stupid fire. Face palmingly lame.

-Okay, so then Gretzky gets driven down to the waterfront to light another bowl up out there (Wayne…lighting up two bowls in one night in Vancouver…mofo’s hardcore!). It takes a good ten minutes…and man, was THAT ten minutes of scintillating airtime!

-Announcers…SHUT THE FUCK UP. “Well, they believe they have a chance to win.” No shit, genius, that’s why they’re all there! And I don’t need every goddamn thing explained to me! Lloyd Robertson running his mouth about how ‘the flickering above the surface is meant to resemble the Northern Lights.’ Lloyd, just slap me in the face and tell me that you think I’m too fucking stupid to get it…at least then you’d resemble a man. Fuck.

-Speeches. REALLY? REALLY? Who wanted to listen to this shit! Two monotone droners rambling on and on about ‘Olympic ideals’ and ‘living up to the dream’ and ‘winning one for the Gipper’ and on and on. Who wanted this!? Even the athletes were cracking jokes and rolling their eyes! SHUT UP! Nobody cares about the old white fuckers making all the money behind the scenes! If that was popular, Bernie Madoff would not be in prison, he’d be the commissioner of the All American Pyramid Scheme League!

The Embarrassing

-On behalf of Canada to the rest of the world, we are just as confused as all of you no doubt are by that duet by Nelly Furtado and Bryan Adams. BRYAN ADAMS?! Seriously? What crypt did they dig him up out of! Was the flat bed truck that would have been required to ship Rita McNeil to the event too expensive? And that song! Go watch that above video again. Now imagine something EVEN WORSE. The song was called Bang a Drum…it basically consisted of some blathering bullshit about ‘Bang a Drum loud until the world hears’. I am assuming that it was written by a special education class somewhere who won the chance to be song writers in a contest. If a legitimate songwriter came up with that, I would hope they’ve had the common decency to commit seppuku by now.

And as if the song wasn’t shitty enough, their lip syncing was some of the worst that I have ever seen. Just atrocious. I spent the interminable period in which this performance occurred seriously considering changing my citizenship.

The Disturbing

-Okay, the Georgian luge guy dies during a training run…fine. You mention it to explain the ovation given to his teammates when they walk in…fine. You mention it to explain why they’re wearing the black armbands. Fine.

WHY IN THE FUCK DOES NBC SHOW THE GODDAMN VIDEO?!

Seriously, this is one where I am not exaggerating the anger, because this was just sick. Nobody needs to see a human being go flying off a luge sled at 145 km/h and slam in to a metal pole before falling on to the concrete surface. This was completely unnecessary. To describe it as distasteful doesn’t even begin to cover how reprehensible a decision this fuckup was. And it didn’t even end there! No, we get to look at his body lying still and twisted while people are running over to him and weeping.

The decision to show this video was inexcusable, and whoever decided it was a good idea to do so should be heavily beaten by the rest of the Georgian team.