Play-by-Play: Beijing Olympics Opening Night

We here at Jobseekers of America believe in recycling, this was funny in September and it still is…

1. Crowd Reactions: You always wonder if the crowd is going to go off on perceived “enemy” nations, but it seemed like the Chinese went out of their way to be gracious hosts, and cheered particularly loudly for countries they don’t get along with. France–big cheers. U.S.–big cheers. Japan–big cheers. Both Koreas–big cheers. Hell, even Taiwan got a huge ovation. The only country where you could notice the booing was Iran, but that just goes to show that you shouldn’t refer to every major power on the planet as “The Great Satan.”

2. If there were a drinking game in which the players had to take a shot every time someone yelled at Bob Costas through the TV to shut up (due to poking fun at athletes, poking fun at other countries, poking fun at minor sports, and/or showing off how awesome he thinks he is), every single participant would die of acute alcohol poisoning. Probably with at least an hour left in the ceremonies.

3. The Parade of Athletes: I love me a good parade of nations, and this one didn’t disappoint. a) The cameramen at the Olympic parades have some kind of gift for finding the most attractive female athletes in each national delegation. I’ll now be rooting for Canada, Poland, Sweden, Croatia and Mexico in addition to the U.S. I’ll also be wondering why I was born with Syrian background (no female athletes) instead of Jordanian (only three women, but they more than made up for it in quality). b) The background music for the parade of athletes is always bizarre. This year they had mariachi music in the rotation. In China. c) It’s fun to see which countries are going to be the 24-hour party people of the Olympics. I may hate Hugo Chavez, but I’d love to hang out with the Venezuelan athletes, who were clearly having the most fun. Honorable mention to the Germans and the Aussies. d) It’s interesting to see which athletes get to carry the flag for each nation. Three or four NBA guys were flag-bearers. I tried to guess the sports for the flag-bearers I didn’t recognize before the graphics for them came up; aside from the track athletes and the wrestlers, I didn’t have much success. Strangely, an inordinate number of canoe/kayakers got to carry the flag for their nations. Those countries must have been listening to Celine Dion: http://takcd.ytmnd.com/

4. It Should Be A Big Deal When The Games Officially Start: There’s always a moment in the opening ceremony when a dignitary from the host country gets to declare the Games officially open. For some inexplicable reason, this moment is almost always rushed, blown over and shoved aside. Not this time–when the Chinese PM made the announcement, it was greeted with a minute of fireworks and a bigass trumpet fanfare. Can’t wait to see what they’ve got planned for the closing ceremony.

5. Lighting the Torch and Kung-Fu Masters: The Big Moment in an opening ceremony is always the lighting of the torch, and this ceremony didn’t disappoint. They put a former gold-medal winning gymnast in a harness, flew him around the edge of Olympic Stadium, and had him light the torch. I dug it, but one of my buddies at work probably hated it; he didn’t like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon because he just couldn’t grasp the concept that in movie world, all kung fu masters can fly. . . .