I Believe

I love the Olympics - especially the winter Olympics (or, Olympic Winter Games) because Canada actually has a chance to win something.  (more on that later).

Anyway, here's my take on the opening ceremonies in Vancouver - my own colour commentary, if you will.

First off - the light show was amazing - especially the orcas swimming along and spouting water - they almost looked real.

Boo-urns to Nelly Furtado and Brian Adams for lip-synching.  Seriously?  But then again, they showed Miss Furtado singing after the medal ceremony one night and it sounded TERRIBLE.  So maybe lip-synching wasn't that bad of a thing after all.  But really - she's not a chubby person, but her dress also looked TERRIBLE on her.  Ditto on her dance moves.  Also, what's the deal with all these Olympic songs having to be really sucky easy rock songs.  I'm sure the Hip could have done something better.  Heck, even the Bare Naked Ladies could have come up with something better than the drum-banging anthem.

Moving on.

Sarah M was divine.  k d lang (notice the case) was amazing.  A couple of comments on kd:  1)  From Emily:  "Why does that man keep pulling the microphone wire?"  Kathryn's answer:  "Well, first off, that's a girl".   2)  Song choice?  Not sure what the song had to do with the Olympics (or Canada for that matter).  Still, (s)he did an awesome job.

Then I got to thinking - what do people from other countries learn about Canada from these ceremonies?

A)  The prairies are boring, and Peter Pan lives there.  Then, when the prairies aren't boring, there are lightning storms and blizzards.  Also, in this section, could they have gotten a more stupid-looking close-up than they did of Patrick Chan's face?

B)  If you live on the east coast, you wear leather with kilts, have your hair in a mohawk, play the fiddle and make deals with the devil.

C)  VANOC doesn't care about French People.  (don't get me started on this)

D)  Our Governor General likes to sleep

Also, what was with that opera singer's hair?  She looked like a muppet.  Also, her singing was great for the first 10 seconds - then it went on for too long - and all at the same level of intensity.  Also also, the token Quebecois singer (and p.s., who calls themsevles by only one name?) was something I could have done without.

I did enjoy the return of Brian Williams and his outragedness.  I think he started on a tirade about the Russian drug cheats.  I really hope that there's a controversy in these Olympics that he can go on rants about.

I'm not going to talk about the failed hydraulics (though, I wonder if Bombardier had anything to do with them) - but I will comment that it was LAME LAME LAME that #99 had to get in a truck and drive for 20 minutes to light another cauldron.  Overall, the cauldron lighting was completely anti-climactic.  And why wasn't there any security keeping the rowdies away from the truck?

Speaking of the flame's truck ride - my favourite part of the ceremonies was watching dude crouched down behind Gretzky poking the torch up and lighting another one for him, and then hearing Brian Williams go on and on about how special that torch must be since it hasn't gone out yet.  I'm sure Lloyd (pronounced L-Loyd) was kicking him under the desk.

And on to the games themselves.  Really, the only thing I want to say is that I wonder how long it will be until they drive a proper zamboni in to the Richmond Oval to replace the crappy environmentally friendly one.  It must be enviro-friendly because it never works, so it never spits out greenhouse gasses.

Now, on to CTV.  I am not really enjoying CTVs coverage.  Especially the daytime coverage.  It's all too ETalk Daily-ish for me.  I also abhor their website - it's too cluttered, too slow, and too terrible to use.  But what I really miss from the CBC is the Olympic anthem - so I've included it here.  Feel free to click on it at every commercial break so you can pretend you're watching CBC.

News banter

One thing that annoys me is news anchor banter to fill up the dead air at the end of a broadcast. Actually, I find it funny, especially if you watch it while thinking that the anchors hate eachother, but are forced to be nice on camera.

Anyway, last night, we caught the end of the CBC Edmonton news, and their feel-good story was about some people in Sweeden who made a life-size statue of Jesus out of Lego. At the end of the story, one of the anchors says "I'm sure that Jesus would love it".

I almost fell out of bed laughing....

On that vein, I wasted some time on youtube today watching news bloopers. Here are two of my favourites:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0eINGyJHz8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6IvsSyhCaM

Does the horse get the medal?

Ok, so I am basically addicted to the Olympics. All of our copious TV watching in the past week has been basically all Olympics all the time. Which is OK, since CBC has pre-empted Coronation Street. (maybe Corrie will be the subject of a future post).

Anyway - there are a few things that I've thought about a lot while watching... and they are (in no particular order):

I am amazed and surprised that Galen Weston can speak French. We were watching Radio-Canada since the French channel often has better coverage than the English CBC. Along came the standard President's Choice commercial, and there was Mr. President (of brand-name fame) giving his speal about organic foods all in French. Kudos to you Mr. Weston. Which leads to a small digression - why is the No-Name brand at Superstore trademarked?

Speaking of French - what will happen in 2010 when CTV takes over the Olympic coverage? Last time I checked, there was no CTV-affiliated French channel - at least not on the grainy, no-cable TV that we get. At least the English coverage will have Brian Williams - I've missed his rants about the judging. Ian Hanomansowhatshisname is just not as entertaining.

And more on commercials - the Tostadas "recipe" (notice the quotes) commercials are lame. Here's a recipe - open the bag of chips, pour them in a bowl. Open the dip. Whoopeee!


What is up with Show Jumping? It appears to me that the horse does all the hard work. Case in point - the Canadian silver medal-winning team has a competitor in his ninth (yes ninth!) Olympics! To boot, he qualified for 10 games, but because of the '84 boycott, he didn't attend. Also, he might have missed one because of the Great Depression. In my mind, any event in which a septuagenarian can compete is not a real Olympic sport.

Along the same lines - what's the deal with BMX? (Or, as my friends on Radio-Canada put it, "le p'tit bicycle") This is like "the totally rad, super-awesome, X-Olympics games". Why not also include Ultimate Frisbee, or hackeysack? There's a good crowd of scofflaw ultimate players who play on the field by my house... next time I see them, I'll ask if they're gunning for London in 2012.

Other Olympic sports that bug me:

Modern Pentathlon - which is based on what a modern soldier needs to do behind enemy lines - sword fighting, pistol shooting, running, swimming and (yes, this event is doubly-cursed) - horse riding.

Base/Softball - I am sooo glad that they're dropping this after 2008. I have other issues with baseball as a major-league sport anyway - what kind of sport encourages chewing tobacco while playing???

Beach volleyball - one of the major reasons why we watch the French channel so often. It seems that the CBC looooves beach volleyball - considering that it is ALWAYS ON!

And my most favourite Olympic sport? It has to be the steeplechase. This is like horse jumping redeemed. Take the horse course, and remove the horse - wackiness ensues!