olympics

7:52: The volleyball players are wearing dorkey preppy outfits and are super excited about having met George Bush. I hate them.

7:59: Why do they keep calling H.W. Bush "President Bush's father" when he's also "President Bush"? It's very confusing. Also, why is Matt Lauer such an idiot?

8:00: Finally, the ceremony! Fireworks and thousands of drummers and flashy flashy lights. Ooh. The countdown on the flashing drums is cool. I said to Georg, "why don't they have one of the displays show Roman numbers and the other show Chinese numbers?" and literally five seconds later, they did that. Zhang Yimou, you know where to send my check.

8:11: Fireworks!! The footprint fireworks are amazing. This is why I tuned in.

8:13: "It's not the Opening Ceremonies until people start flying." So says Georg; so say we all.

8:18: Apparently the Chinese hold one arm up, rather than hand over the heart, during their anthem. Also, they all seem to sing along. Well they've got it easy; their anthem isn't impossible to sing like ours.

8:21: The dancing where they create a giant painting with paint-covered mitts was choreographed by Shen Wei. Thanks to S. I got to see his work "Connect Transfer," which this seems to be based on, at ADF a couple of months ago. It was astounding. I am peeved at NBC for cutting away to long shots that render the dancers mere specks.

Here's a minute of "Connect Transfer:"

8:32: Ooh, one of the talking heads speaks Chinese.

8:35: Oh my god! Those synchronized blocks were controlled by people standing up and down! I thought it was computer-controlled hydraulics. Now I am in awe.

8:36: First time I stopped fast-forwarding to watch an ad. Little animated birds building the Bird's Nest stadium out of Coke straws. Okay, that was really cute.

8:41: Ooh, a sea battle! This show has everything.

8:45: Georg points out that they keep talking about Zhang Yimou, but they've never really explained who he is.

8:47: Bob Costas says "Look at the sheer number of costumes he had to create." Well, Zhang probably didn't sew them all himself.

8:48: Georg points out that the art director of the 2012 London Olympics is staring at his telly right now saying "fuck all! where are we going to come up with this kind of money?"

8:49: more fireworks! woo!

(9:15 real time, 8:50 DVR time) Watermelon milkshake time! Back in ten.

8:52: I'm back! That scroll is incredibly beautiful. And this milkshake is incredibly good. Cookout, only until the end of August. Don't miss it.

8:53: The people lit up! Wow. I saw an Amitabh number like this once, except it had a "baum chicka baum baum" soundtrack. I'll try to find it on Youtube. After I finish my milkshake.

9:02: This part with 2008 tai chi masters moving in perfect unison is reminding me of a HK movie about the Shaolin temple. Except on a much grander scale.

9:07: The kids drew a big smiley face on Shen Wei's painting!

9:11: I see we've reached the "what the heck is that?" portion of the program. Also, what the heck is that? Are there people running around sideways on that thing?

9:13: Now it's starting to look like the Carousel on Logan's Run.

9:17: That's what I call fireworks. Also, even the parking lot of that Bird's Nest stadium is cool.

9:21: It's the parade of nations! Or, time for the talking heads to say stupid things about as many countries as possible.

9:23: So the parade of nations isn't in alphabetical order, because the host nation doesn't use the Roman alphabet. It's done in order by the Chinese characters used to represent the country's name. So the countries are sort of grouped by sound, for instance all the countries starting with "ma" are together because they all start with the same character.

9:24: There's GW, bogarting the binoculars. Let Laura have a crack at them!

9:27: Dang, Macedonia has a nice flag.

9:31: First country I never heard of: Eritrea.

9:34: Did they just say that the Prime Minister of Japan is competing in an equestrian event?

9:35: "There are historical tensions between China and Japan, as there are between China and Taiwan." Thank you, Mr. Obvious. Still, it's pretty cool that the Taiwanese team can even go there, even though they aren't allowed to call themselves Taiwan or use the Taiwanese flag. About 10 years ago I was friends with a Chinese woman whose husband was Taiwanese, and she told me they had never met each other's families because travel was so difficult between the two countries.

9:42: Ukraine's blue and yellow jackets: Captain Kangaroo or the snappy new color combination from The Village?

[Georg just dug out a photo. He wins: it was Captain Kangaroo.]

9:49: wait, they're not playing baseball in the next couple of Olympics? I wonder why? Hey, I forgot to post that on Monday night, Georg and I went to an exhibition game by the US and Canadian teams. He did a nice write-up of the game.

9:50 First political ad, and it's that stupid McCain ad. "Obama: better liked!" How exactly is that a good position for McCain to take? Also, I think running this ad during the opening ceremonies is a huge miscalculation. People watching the Olympics are feeling happy. They don't want to see a nasty mudslinging ad. Maybe if we're lucky, they turned the sound off during the ads and they think it was a pro-Obama ad.

??? I just realized I messed up my time shifting. I think I'm off by a half hour. Have to go back and fix the times on a bunch of these entries.

9:53: They just said the Chinese system of sorting the country names is "nonsensical." No, you idiot, it's non-alphabetical. Okay, we're offended again.

9:54: GW and Mrs. Bush look bored. They both looked at their watches, and Laura has a "who farted" look. Don't worry, you won't have to pretend to be interested in other nations for much longer.

9:57: talking head, "you don't get to say boom boom very often." Me: "speak for yourself!"

9:59: Here goes Canada. The country which denied entry to Fred Phelps. Go Canada! Another way in which they have more sense than we do.

10:06: Another asinine remark. The talking head explains that at the 1936 Olympics, Lichtenstein discovered that their flag strongly resembled the Haitian flag, so they changed theirs in 1937. The talking head goes on to opine that way back in 1936, no one from Lichtenstein would have had the opportunity to see the Haitian flag before. Because back in the dark ages, 70 whole years ago, no one could ever do something crazy like travel to another continent. Why, the new world hadn't even been discovered yet!

10:07: Major cheering for the Iraqi team. GW applauds. Was he smirking? Georg says it's just his normal chimp face.

10:09: What the heck are the Hungarian team wearing? Are those flowers, bloodstains, or a crazy red cow print? Closer inspection reveals they were flowers.

10:10: This whole thing is recorded. It happened 12 hours ago. Why are they fast-forwarding through the ones we "missed" on the commercial break? They could edit the whole thing around the breaks if they wanted.

10:16: Georg says that due to their checkerboard uniforms, the Croatian team is like watching Bob's Big Boy play soccer.

10:24: Great Britain has a 14 year old boy competing as a diver. Isn't there a minimum age requirement? Doesn't the training required for competition at this level, like, interfere with adolescent development or something?

10:29: The Poles look like a very large wedding party.

10:34: The flag-bearer for Bulgaria is holding the flag with one hand and not using his body to support the end. Another guy earlier did that too, but the earlier guy was a shot-putter, who you'd expect to have that level of arm strength. This guy is a swimmer. What a bad-ass.

10:34: Who is the Chinese guy sitting two seats down from Putin? He looks really familiar.

10:36: The Syrian flag-bearer is also doing the one-arm thing.

10:37: The US team is up. Oh those stupid hats are their uniform! How sad. They look like prep-school rejects, especially the women with those horrible ascot scarves. Whose idea was that? GW and Laura stood for them, and GW put his jacket back on.

10:39: The talking heads called the hats "berets," which they are not. Georg says they are kangols. If I hear the phrase "redeem team" one more time I will throw something.

10:45: The Thai team have gorgeous shiny suits. GW looks really bored. He's slapping his tiny flag against his leg.

10:51: Talking heads trying hard to describe the Russian invasion of Georgia without ever mentioning that Russia invaded Georgia.

11:02: You know, this thing is endless enough already. Do we have to cut away from the parade every couple of minutes to watch the US team standing around chatting and taking photos of themselves? Apparently we do.

11:17: What the heck is the New Zealand flag-bearer wearing? A bearskin rug?

11:20: Midnight in real time, and I'm tired.

11:24: Yao Ming is the flag bearer, and he has a little boy walking with him who was in the earthquake, escaped from a collapsed building and then went back to rescue two other children. Why? Because he was a hall monitor and he felt responsible. I'm sorry, I don't think I can take any more.

11:36: Did GW leave early? We haven't seen him since the US team walked through. I think if he were there, they would have showed him (looking bored and irritated, I'm sure) during the big speeches at the end.

11:38: More fireworks! Whoa, what the heck is that purple building?

11:42: The purple building turned blue.

11:43: Finally, the torch!

11:48: Talking head praises the fact that the audience were given "hand lanterns" to brighten up the stadium. They look like glow sticks to me.

11:49: I forgot to mention the painting! They took Shen Wei's dance painting and laid it on the ground where the parade of nations would walk over it. And then they put giant multi-colored ink pads on the ground in front of it. So the parade of nations stepped in the ink, walked across the painting and created colored stripes with their footprints. Really cool.

11:50: Wow! The last torch bearer flew up into the air. He's up at the top of the stadium, sort of running around the perimeter. I've heard it's quite painful to maintain a graceful posture in that harness. HK movie stars complain about it. And to make a running motion at the same time, all the way around the stadium. Now that is an athlete.

11:53: The cauldron is up at the top of the stadium. He floated over to it and lit it from up there. It looks really cool.

11:55: Incredible fireworks display.