QUOTE(Tintin @ Aug 25 2008, 06:58 PM)
The worst thing saw over the weekend was the handover to the Brits at the Olympics.
You too, eh?
It was excruciating, wasn't it? For me the entire affair was summed up by the events when the Olympic flag was handed over to Boris Johnson. As it was brought on to the podium the flag wrapped itself round the head of the flag bearer, then tangled itself round its own pole, and I thought "There we go. The moment Britain gets involved in the proceedings it all goes to pot."
QUOTE
Anyone who does not know London could be forgiven for not being aware that the city has some of the world's finest museums and galleries, theatre, dance, opera and symphony orchestras. What did we get? An 8 minute horror show, with too much of it spent on an unknown and rather dull pop singer in a hideous outfit designed for her to be on stilts, it appears, accompanied by a noisy guitarist from way back when. Surrounding them were some oddly dressed individuals jumping up and down, as well as a young girl who was voted by viewers of Blue Peter (for no apparent reason I could make out). Much of this nonsense took place on and around a replica of a London bus which arrived on time for a change, and opened up to become an extremely ugly float with David Beckham, who kicked a football out into the crowds. Great artistry there! And as for Boris, the less said the better. What a clumsy buffoon he appeared alongside the elegant Chinese and Belgian representatives.
I thought it was rather appropriate that London was represented by a bus that fell to pieces. And Boris Johnson standing there intermittently waving at the audience like someone who'd wandered in by mistake and wasn't quite sure what to do will be one of the enduring images of 2008.
In a way I rather hope we do make something of a mess of it. From the comments made by someone at the IOC I get the impression that for all that they say "it's about the sport" it seems to be more about an expensive three-week jolly for the IOC dignitaries. I'd like to see the whole thing cheapened a bit: not in terms of the sport, but in terms of the spectacle. As things stand the prospect of staging the Olympics is way out of reach of many of the less wealthy countries whose athletes have done so much to make the Games exciting. We need to get back to basics.
And Britain is just the place to bring it about!
I love Britain, but there's a kind of all-pervasive wankiness about the country. Everything we do is touched by a slight ineptness. Even our mediocrity is mediocre. Like the Millennium celebrations that included a fizzled-out river of light, an uncrossable bridge and a dome that nobody visited, the London Olympics will stand as a monument to bare adequacy. It'll be a sixteen day celebration of suck.
