Opening Ceremony Ramblings

Some thoughts collected while watching the Opening Ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympics...

-While I was right in my guess about the person who finally lit the torch, I would have lost major money if you allowed me to bet on things like "Celine Dion will be prominently involved." They must not have been able to afford her... after all, they did only have a $40 million budget.

-I learned that Ethiopia had a ski team. (Well, it's not so much a "team" as it is one guy, but still.) The more shocking part is that this is his second Olympic games and last time around he came in 87th out of 94 skiers. Who the hell lost to the Ethiopian skier last time around? I can guarantee you this, they probably aren't around this time to do it again.

-Macedonia had to march in with the 'F' countries because technically, for Olympic purposes, their full name is "the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia." Because of this literal attention to detail, I get the feeling that members of the IOC are the kind of people who alphabetize their DVD collection very precisely, thus movies like The Godfather and The Fugitive would be found among the Ts.

-I couldn't get over how many countries only sent one athlete, but had 3 people marching with that one person. Apparently if you want to march in the Olympic Opening Ceremonies, instead of a lifetime of training, it would be much easier to be an official for a small country.

-Do you think that when the delegations from countries like Canada and the US, who had 206 athletes each, walk by athletes from countries like Cyprus they have to fight the urge to turn to them and point out that the entirety of what their country spent on a training program probably wouldn't cover what it cost to buy the Ralph Lauren jackets for the US team?

-For my money, Ireland had the cutest flag-bearer.

-I thought the coolest part of the opening ceremony was visual effect of the Orca whales that spouted through the floor. Unfortunately, that means the coolest part was 45 minutes into a 4 hour show.

-I'm not sure if the sound was just off or it was lip-synced, but everyone seemed to be just behind on the singing. I guess that's a good thing. You wouldn't want a singer to be too good at lip-syncing, it would be like a basketball player being a little too good at intentionally missing free throws.

-Speaking of the singers, I never knew Sara McLaughlin was Canadian. I feel like I'm going to spend the next 16 days repeating the phrase: "I never knew that person was Canadian..."

-Not sure which will get their biopic made first, but when it happens either K.D. Lang will play Rob Schneider or Rob Schneider will play K.D. Lang. [My dad's take on K.D. Lang: "She looks like a young Wayne Newton."]

-You know who I can never stand? Beat poets. My opinion was not changed after last night.

-Another thing I'm not a fan of? Those parties where everyone is asked to wear white, like it's some Caribbean wedding. Some of those jackets were very nice and you're covering them up with ponchos for visual effects? Not cool.

-While all the preamble was visually impressive, the simple fact remains everyone only tunes in to see the torch lit. Therefore, perhaps some of the $40 million budget should have been used to make sure the doors would open when they were supposed to. Take $5 out of the budget and get some extra WD-40 so next time Gretzky isn't standing there with nothing to do for 4 minutes.