Opening Ceremonies: huh?

Why is it that I always get tricked into watching the Opening Ceremonies? They are always very, very strange - and very long. They always start out with some weird, trippy thing - have an extremely long section with all the countries marching in - and end off with a long trippy section before they light the torch.

Torino was no exception. In an attempt to make it even more trippy, they took some pages out of Pink Floyd’s book and used large balloons and girls with gigantic hair. (Unfortunately, they didn’t use lasers or good music.)

Here are the highlights:

• Man beating a flaming anvil.
• Strange dancers.
• inline skaters with rocket packs.
• People dressed as cows.

I think the commentators make up half of what they say about the “symbolism” behind certain things - and the other half is made up by the people putting the show together.

What’s the symbolism of this guy? He looks like he should be the next Spiderman villain.

The flags part of the ceremony was fun for two reasons. First: because NBC had a list of the upcoming countries displayed, so you could try to guess how many athletes the country would be sending Second: Because you could look at all of the outfits and judge how many of them were better than the United State’s. (Answer: All but four or five. Best hats award goes to Australia - for being simple beanies, and best jackets goes to anyone but Canada.)
“An Olympic First”

Michael Scumacher and his pit crew made a cameo appearance, along with his Forumla-1 race car. After showing his team change his tires - he rolled down the ramp and proceeded to do some crazy donuts in the middle of the stage. (How cool would it have been had he been able to make the Olympic rings with tire marks?)

The commentator had only this to say: “I’m pretty sure that’s an Olympics first.”

Outfits
Yes, the US hats look dumb, but man oh man do the Candians look worse. If I can find an image, I’ll post it for you all to see.