Well, opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics of 2008 was last night, and can I say the commentary was almost always at inappropriate times? They talked during the good music and didn't talk when there was er... auditory entertainment that wasn't exactly something the Western culture has much of.
Anyway, the loli at the start was most obviously a Nikki Webster, Mark II. Young female? Check. In a dress? Check. Singing a song? Check. Hanging by wires later? Check. Not much of an improvement on the original, but hey, Webster wasn't that bad at the Sydney Olympics.
The whole printing press thing was very impressive. Australia had this performance where all these little brats had those giant sunshades you put in cars, and they waved them around like it was supposed to look like the ocean. It looked nothing like an ocean. With this one, it was well choreographed and looked so well done I can understand why they had everyone poke their head out at the end - even though you could see their legs down the bottom when they lifted the boxes to their 'maximum' height, a lot of people still thought it was machine run!
And talking about 'maximum' height - not all the performers were the same height. They may have been roughly similar, but man, that must've taken some training to ensure nobody lifted just a bit too much! XD
The song with the British lady was awful. Absolutely awful. Ugly guy and far too extreme for the woman.
What the hell was with the loli with the piano guy? She's grinning like mad at the start, and when we cut to her later, she's slumped over and looks bored as anything.
Regardless, the Opening Ceremony was quite a good watch (SMILE! BE HAPPY! :) :) :) :) SMILE FOR THE CAMERAS!! :) :) :) )... and then came the entrance of the athletes and their groupies.
It. Took. So. Long.
I feel so sorry for all the cheerleaders... what was funny was at the start, they were jumping and waving their arms above their heads. By the time the first fifty or so countries had passed, all were just moving from side to side and clapping their hands, sometimes waving. The ones that were furthest from the entrance barely moved more than clapping! Anyway, the ones closest to the entrance had the most television coverage... and I suppose that's why the organisers put the best looking ones there? Those were also the ones that kept moving the most, but there was a particular lazy one that was sort of doing it half-heartedly... XD
The formation of most teams was horrid, particularly that of the larger groups. You could see that the front two rows were about the width of the track, but then it tapered off at the back to gather at the edge of the track. In the case of the USA, practically all of them shoved off to the edge of the track, extending the length of their procession and slowing down to a snail's crawl as all of them fought to be caught on camera...
Many other countries exhibited this camera whore behaviour, but America was the most obvious, what with having such a large group and because almost all of them were engaging in this behaviour.
Australia came in 3rd last, as there are 15 strokes in the first character of the Chinese version of the name (the last country has 16), and it was rather odd to not see them in the official Australian colours of green and gold. Rudd, when did we become Finland?
And finally, China came in, with a shota at the forehead and a long block of athletes that did not break formation.
Anyway. Somebody upload the ceremony in HD already. Preferably with subtitles.
