Olympic peeves
So, like brazilians of other people, I watched the opening ceremonies of the olympics last night. To preface it, as I was getting ready for work yesterday morning, about 8am, I heard on NPR that the ceremony was just starting, and some of the themes that were being used. So last night Wife and I watched it. NBC. Of course it's on a tape delay, since, our time, it started in the morning. After the first commercial break, they come back and tell us briefly what me missed of the spectacular theatre production while they were in commercial break. It wasn't until after the second or third break that they did this that I realize, "Hey! Wait a f*in' minute! Why did we miss anything, it's on a TAPE! Couldn't they just pause the damn tape while they go to commercial?" Why do they try to persist in the fallacy that the coverage is "Live"?
And more importantly, why did it take me that long to realize it?
I was impressed with the drumming and the lite up drums. That was pretty cool. I was visually blown away by the rippling boxes effect. Though with modern computer control of stage effects, it wasn't especially surprising. Then I thought I saw a pair of feet from under a box. Then a closer look showed what looked like metal support work, so I said to Wife, "I'd actually be impressed if that wasn't computer controlled, if it was all man-powered and synched." and sure enough. It was!
Ya know that we couldn't do that here, the workers would demand lots of money, lots of coffee breaks, and would lose interest after 10 minutes of not being able to watch the action.
Then the parade of athletes. Very respectful and ceremonial... until the Americans hit the track. Wild antics, mugging for cameras, general asshattery (yes, it's a word, pay no attention to the spell-checker). And of course, we only have three teams, the volleyballers with Misti May (porn name!), Whatsisname Phelps the swimmer, and the Basketballers. At least those are the only ones who got any air time last night (cause God knows Lebron James and Kobe Bryant never get any recognition over HERE).
And finally the Chinese athletes.
Led by Yao Ming, and a little boy who survived the earthquake that collapsed his school, and then went back in to rescue two of his friends, "because he was a hall monitor and was supposed to." So Yao, who's nine feet tall and this kid who's about 3'. But then I notice, Yao's got the big flag, but the kid, like ALL the rest of the athletes, has a little handheld flag-on-a-stick. But the boy's is UPSIDE DOWN. No, he was holding it right, it was mounted on the stick wrong. And nobody gave this kid, who everybody in the whole world is watching, a correct flag.
My favorite was the painting that everybody walked over. Each of the teams walked over a square of colored chalk dust, and onto a large parchment drawing done earlier in the night, as they proceeded to their holding pen in the center of the arena. This created bands of color across the painting done by all the feet. Cool concept.
So now I get to watch as much of the lesser sports as I can. NBC never airs any of the lesser sports, 'cause they tell us that nobody watches them. Fencing. Archery. Some of the Track and Field events. I love Track and Field, but they only show Track. No field. I'd love to see some Javelin, or Shot Put, or Discus. But NO, they have the 20m sprint, the 24m sprint, the 30m sprint, the 32.5m walk, the 1500m lollygag, and don't get me started on the relay and hurdle variants of each of them...
I'll catch up with y'all after the olympics.
And more importantly, why did it take me that long to realize it?
I was impressed with the drumming and the lite up drums. That was pretty cool. I was visually blown away by the rippling boxes effect. Though with modern computer control of stage effects, it wasn't especially surprising. Then I thought I saw a pair of feet from under a box. Then a closer look showed what looked like metal support work, so I said to Wife, "I'd actually be impressed if that wasn't computer controlled, if it was all man-powered and synched." and sure enough. It was!
Ya know that we couldn't do that here, the workers would demand lots of money, lots of coffee breaks, and would lose interest after 10 minutes of not being able to watch the action.
Then the parade of athletes. Very respectful and ceremonial... until the Americans hit the track. Wild antics, mugging for cameras, general asshattery (yes, it's a word, pay no attention to the spell-checker). And of course, we only have three teams, the volleyballers with Misti May (porn name!), Whatsisname Phelps the swimmer, and the Basketballers. At least those are the only ones who got any air time last night (cause God knows Lebron James and Kobe Bryant never get any recognition over HERE).
And finally the Chinese athletes.
Led by Yao Ming, and a little boy who survived the earthquake that collapsed his school, and then went back in to rescue two of his friends, "because he was a hall monitor and was supposed to." So Yao, who's nine feet tall and this kid who's about 3'. But then I notice, Yao's got the big flag, but the kid, like ALL the rest of the athletes, has a little handheld flag-on-a-stick. But the boy's is UPSIDE DOWN. No, he was holding it right, it was mounted on the stick wrong. And nobody gave this kid, who everybody in the whole world is watching, a correct flag. My favorite was the painting that everybody walked over. Each of the teams walked over a square of colored chalk dust, and onto a large parchment drawing done earlier in the night, as they proceeded to their holding pen in the center of the arena. This created bands of color across the painting done by all the feet. Cool concept.
So now I get to watch as much of the lesser sports as I can. NBC never airs any of the lesser sports, 'cause they tell us that nobody watches them. Fencing. Archery. Some of the Track and Field events. I love Track and Field, but they only show Track. No field. I'd love to see some Javelin, or Shot Put, or Discus. But NO, they have the 20m sprint, the 24m sprint, the 30m sprint, the 32.5m walk, the 1500m lollygag, and don't get me started on the relay and hurdle variants of each of them...
I'll catch up with y'all after the olympics.
posted by Intothelight4now at 11:40 AM
1 Comments:
I haven't seen much of anything so far. And my sport is pretty much NEVER shown unless there is a crash or someone dies. Which this year, isn't unlikely.
The only thing I saw so far was one heck of a finish in the mens road bicycle race. I don't know how for they go but the finish was great! The announcer had to call it like a horse race, 5 people all across the track and the lead kept changing right til the end, it was a pretty cool race.
Then they showed swimming. Which is marginally interesting when filmed from the bottom of the pool but otherwise, blah. I used to get all excited about the olympics, not so much anymore.
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