The Opening Ceremony

Ok, I wasn’t there. Tickets were scarce and I don’t do well in heat and humidity. Still, as spectacles go, in the full Pink Floyd, Superbowl Half-time wardrobe malfunction sense of the term, this was over the top and impressive from a couple points of view.

I wonder if anyone watched it live in the States given its a work day and this all went down from 8 to noon. Beijing pretty much shut down for the event and I watched it on CCTV in Chinese. Which was a hoot, especially given the loving closeups of the Chinese officials sweating it out in their dark suits. Lots of paper fans were fluttering and there was one shot of Nidal looking like he had just stepped out of the Sweat Hut. At least George W. put his jacket back on when he stood to hail the American athletes. Looking good Mr. President and I heard his speech and his father’s speech at the dedication of the new US Embassy this morning was very good and heartfelt.

I’ll boil down the ceremony to the fireworks. The Chinese invented fireworks. They are the Picassos of pyrotechnics. right now the streets to and from the Olympic Green are exploding in chrysthanemums of color. As fireworks displays goes — this is the mother of them all.

The entertainment was good. Some great freakiness in the Bird Nest, with a condensed cultural history of China emphasizing the point that they;ve been inventing stuff like paper and calligraphy and fireworks while my Celtic/Teutonic ancestors were picking headlice off each other. Obligatory cute little kids in knapsacks getting smart. I’m not a big fan of children’s choral music — and the divas that were belting out the anthems were unrecognizable to my pop culture retardation.

Step-sister Dede went, so she will give me the full report tomorrow. But from the vantage of my bed, watching the #080808 tweets and our Lenovo2008 twittering delivering the blow by blow, I had a dang good time and about to hit the rack rather than sweat it out looking for a bus somewhere out there to get me back to be before 2 am.

Tomorrow. I move into the city with my sis. Deal with some athlete blogger issues, help plan a big blogger meetup in Sanlitun, and then go to a big party out at the wal with my sis and brother in law. Too hectic to think, so I try to keep my mouth shut.

And hey, WW team that made this all happen. Couple pieces of news

1. When CCTV films athletes in the iLounges the athletes are invarialbly looking at the Voices of the Summere Games page.

2. The USA Today article nails it — this blogger program was exactly the play we needed to support. And it’s only going to get better. Now to start meeting these fine people and helping them really kick it. 30 new posts today alone. People are talkiing. Be proud. This is working better than expected.