Turns out that Zhang Yimou used a few “Performance Enhancing” techniques to achieve that dazzling Olympics opening ceremony:
Opening On Steroids: Fake Fireworks, Mimed Singing – Thomas Crampton.
Month: August 2008
Anyone know where Brooks Brothers is in Beijing?
… because I just ruined a nice set of blue Brooks Brothers boxer shorts when our Olympic blogging site went dark for 30 minutes. Story of my life — when the website absolutely positively cannot go down — it will go down. Without fail. Forbes.com alumni will recall the September 1999 disaster when we lost the site for three days during the publication of the annual list of the 400 richest Americans. That was 72 hours of badness.
This one was particularly hairy because the site is our default in our iLounges — internet cafes for athletes and their guests in the Olympic Village. Press is all over it. This site CANNOT fail.
My man Esteban Panzeri was able to get it fixed, but I still need a new pair of these:
Back now, all is well. But now I have the paranoia.
The Media Equation – All of Us, the Arbiters of News – NYTimes.com
This is a very important column by David Carr on the effects the Web 2.0 Games are having on the containment of content by the mainstream media. Very important. This is it ladies and gentlemen. Image of little boys with their fingers in leaking dikes comes to mind. Take 10,500 athletes, give them video cameras, cell phones, whatever, and watch them share what they see with the world.
“On Friday, NBC spent the day trying to plug online leaks of the splashy opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in order to protect its taped prime-time broadcast 12 hours later. There was a profound change in roles here: a network trying to delay broadcasting a live event, more or less TiVo-ing its own content.
Consumers have no issue with time-shifting content — in some younger demographics, at least half the programming is consumed on a time-shifted basis — they just want to be the ones doing the programming. Trying to stop foreign broadcasts and leaked clips from being posted on YouTube — NBC’s game of “whack-a-mole” as my colleague Brian Stelter described it — was doomed to failure because information not only wants to be free, its consumers are cunning, connected and will find a workaround on any defense that can be conceived.
The Media Equation – All of Us, the Arbiters of News – NYTimes.com.
Beijing Day 2
Very little time to blog, but …
Went to the USA House yesterday — the hospitality center in Chaoyang at the Worker’s Stadium (didn’t see many workers) sponsored by the USOC and the US Olympic sponsors — to find the Randt brothers (Clark and Paull) as Paull is blogging for Yale and we hung out at the Wall on Saturday night. He was nowhere to be found, but Rohit Bhargava from Ogilvy scored me an invite to the premier of a documentary sponsored by Kleenex about emotional Olympic moments called “Let It Out.”
The concept was brilliant. Sponsor a film about the more emotional moments in Olympic history to make people cry and use more Kleenex. I’m a weepy guy, I admit. I am in touch with my inner boo-hoo, but the audio wasn’t awesome enough to hear everything but …
I still get all tingly over the 1980 Miracle on Ice. I watched that go down at college, and remember as the US won, and goalie Jim Craig is searching for his recently widowed Dad in the stands with a USA flag on his shoulders 100 drunk and crazy college students singing “God Bless America” because none of them knew the words to the Star Spangled Banner. I cried then.
The documentary was very very good and when it gets on line at letitout.com you should watch it. The trailer is up there now.
The last time I cried was June when I flew back from Tokyo and watched this other documentary , Young At Heart, about a senior citizen’s chorus in Northhampton, Mass.. The scene where the show goes on at a Massachusetts prison after they learn one of their fellow members has passed away, and they sing Dylan’s “Forever Young” to a crowd of tattooed hard-time inmates … and make them cry. Well, I challenge anybody to watch that film and not start leaking.
Anyway, blog site just crashed (Thanks MidPhase!) and I have fires to extinguish!
Blogger: Abhinav Bindra’s Road to Beijing – Post a Comment
Blogger: Abhinav Bindra’s Road to Beijing – Post a Comment.
Over 1100 comments on Abhinav’s blog this morning. Wow. The man is a rockstar in India this morning. So cool he’s got a place for people to reach out and digitally slap him on the back.
Abhinav Bindra’s Road to Beijing
Abhinav Bindra’s Road to Beijing.
Our first athlete blogger to win a gold medal and India’s first gold of the Games. Leave him a cheer on his blog.
A discus, a javelin, and a bikini
When one is invited to attend one’s first Olympic event, I suppose one has a preconception of some archetype, maybe something really classic and Greek like running, hucking a spear or jumping over something really tall and wide. For me, the wannabe medalist, it would have been a rowing race; like watching paint dry for the average person, but I have a serious issue with the popular sports that involve costumes and judging. Gymnastics, figure skating …. the stuff my wife likes. Me? Either one crosses the finish line first, lifts the most weight, or they don’t. Having the French judge give a 6.6 and the Russian a 7.1 seems, well, judgmental.
Anyway, I digress before I even get started: a pregression.
So this morning I go to my first Olympic Event in my first Olympic Games. Beach volleyball. When I awake the sky is its usual white foggy heatsponge, no sunscreen needed for the beach, but when I get to the cab stand I see it is also raining. Raining hard. And because my mission is to sit with a partner of my company, a guy I want to meet because he too is a sculler, I forge on and figure showing up is the least I can do, even if it is all the way on the other side of the city from where I am staying.
On arrival, I clear security – very efficient, very smooth. Get wanded over. Save a guy’s forgotten wallet. And walk into this:
Where I am handed a big plastic poncho which, when donned, turns into a perfect condensation trap and hence makes me an instant loser in the wet t-shirt contest. Sweat-o-matic.
I find my seat, but no business partner (smart man slept in), so I sit down, and see before my very eyes, Lenovo’s Olympic official Champion Athletes, the USA Women’s Beach Volley Team. I had no idea. They were finishing up a clinic they were giving to the Japanese team, so I did not see much of what our President saw when he was at the venue the other day.
(thx to Thos. Crampton for the pointer)
I get to see the final two points. Misty May-Trainor and Kerri Walsh hug in victory, and leave the stadium. It’s raining so bad, my camera is at risk. The lens is fogged up. I’ve got sweat (or is it rain?) rolling down the end of my nose into the camera. “Don’t be a negative dour dickhead,” I tell myself. “You are at the Olympics. So what if it isn’t sunny and they aren’t serving beer? There will always be Fenway.”
Ah, but then it all gets better. First, I didn’t know the Chinese men – who are evidently very good – were playing. That explained the extremely high percentage of boisterous Chinese spectators flapping Chinese flags. Their opponents? Well, put it this way, if you’re from a landlocked country what’s the beach volleyball scene gonna be like? Austria. Poor guys. They put on a valiant effort.
But, it gets better. Bikini girls. This is exactly what Baron Pierre de Coubertin had in mind when he revived the concept of the Olympics in 18-something or other. I understand the Beach Volleyball event at the 1920 post-World War I Paris Games were held out at the Bagatelle Gardens, or was it Versailles? I dunno. There’s a reason why it is such a classic and popular sport. This is why.
So, combine that with the DJ from Club Xenon, playing a techno version of the late John Denver’s “Country Road” and assorted get-psyched-sports-classic-rock-and-roll-riffs every other point, a rain storm, and a crowd of really excited people and well …. Let’s go to video:
I had a very enjoyable morning. The game was well played by great athletes. The dancers made me really respect the bazillion details that went into staging this spectacle. Seriously. Think about it. Someone had to recruit, dress, train, coach, organize, transport, and encourage a dozen young women to dance barefoot in sand. And stock plastic ponchos in case it rained. And hire that DJ from the strip club. The logistics of this whole affair are the real mystery. If there was one person I would not want to be today, it would be the dude in London who has to follow Beijing’s act in 2012.
I submit London’s only play is to go really retro. Like Chariot’s of Fire. Ten events. Everyone competes in wool t-shirts. Rowers use wooden oars. Barefisted boxing. Naked wrestling coated in olive oil. Make it like a Olympic Renaissance Faire.
But keep the bikini girls.
Jane Barrett at USA Today blogs that Beach Volleyball may be the perfect Olympic sport. She may be right.
Josiah Ng on walking into the Opening Ceremonies
Josiah Ng is a Lenovo Athlete blogger and a track cyclist (I sent him a picture of my fixie — the Snotrocket — and he thought that was cool though his fcycle costs about a gazillion dollars and wins Olympic medals and mine is a salvaged garage survivor).
He’s blogging and wrote this post about what it felt like to march in with the Malaysian contingent on Friday night. While the rest of us marveled from the stands and the television, he did it from the track and the floor:
“The most exciting part would be when we first walked out into the stadium in front of a hundred thousand screaming people. I can’t explain the feeling but I had goosebumps all over me. We were the 10th country out of 204 to walk out. The first country was Greece and the last was China. The roar from the crowd was deafening as the Chinese contingent was announced. Towering over everyone was Yao Ming, their flag bearer.
By the end of the night, we had stood for over 5 hours so our feet were screaming pain. On top of that everyone was sweating through their clothes because of the heat and humidity. I’m just glad we didn’t have to wear suits like some of the countries. They were literally drenched in sweat. But at the end it was all worth it.
The experience of attending an opening ceremony as an Olympic athlete is absolutely priceless! I’ll never forget last night. One funny thing that I saw as we were exiting the stadium was an American woman crying. She was weeping of emotion and said this “we’ll never see anything like that ever again.” I guess that should paint a picture of how beautiful the ceremony was!”
How cool is that? What a lucky guy to have that to remember.
Olympic Medal Count Map – Interactive Graphic – NYTimes.com
Olympic Medal Count Map – Interactive Graphic – NYTimes.com.
This is intensely cool.