Opening Ceremonies

As each day passes for these Olympic games there will be new observations of the day before. Last night was the Opening Ceremonies and Day 1 of 17 and here is what I saw.

First, here are some interesting tid bits of information about our goofy but friendly neighbors up North that my public education neglected to inform me. No chance they covered it and I missed it.

- Canada has 10 Provinces and 3 Territories. Why don't they just say 13 states? Okay I knew that but I totally forgot, which is really embarrassing since I used to live there. I went to college in North Dakota, Canada.

- They were in WWII before we were. Interesting... but they didn't make a movie so that's on them.

- Canada is the 2nd largest country in the world yet they only have 34 million people and 90% of their population lives within 100 miles of the United States. You know why, cause it's fucking cold up there.

- In 1947 they recorded -81 degree temperatures not counting wind chill making it the coldest ever recorded temperature, yet for these games Vancouver is the warmest host city in the history of the Winter Olympics at 38 degrees.

- Canada is the largest supplier of oil to the United States. I know! So then why have we not erased Iraq?

- Here's a shocker. The United States is their #1 tourist destination. They like shopping.

- Jim Carrey, Nelly Furtado, John Candy, Michael J. Fox, Neve Campbell, Seth Rogen, Celine Dion and Mike Myers are their celebrity claim to fame. After reading that list cracking a joke here would seem redundant.

All of that was very interesting as it was mentioned but the most impressive thing to me was the spectacular aerial shots showing off the unbelievable Canadian landscapes in my big ass HD LCD television.

Observation #1) The Olympics look fucking amazing in Hi-def. Like football good. That will actually keep me tuned into the Men's ice skating dance crap I hate.

2) The Canadian Mounted Police... I'm not sure if I think they're cool or gay.

3) Some Canadian chick sang their National Anthem, or whatever they call it up there,"God Save the Queen"... which raises two huge questions 1) why the hell did Celine Dion NOT sing it? I thought that was as obvious as the predicting of Wayne Gretzky to light the torch and 2) what the hell did the queen do to get into that kind of pickle anyway?

4) Donald Sutherland narrating was awesome! All I could think of was his character, Ronald, from 'Backdraft' who was so sick and deranged he made your tiny hairs stand up. There was something poetic about him narrating with that sociopathic undertone that came with it.

5) Nelly Furtado and Bryan Adams duet... holy shit was that painful.

6) These Ceremonies cost Canada about 40 million... Beijing was 400 million. Guess who has the smallest penis? Truth is these ceremonies and the projectors were awful in relation to Beijing but I'm not sure we'll ever see better than the Chinese effort. That said, Canada did fine. The projectors made for a very cool look on some of the scenes.

7) Lord of the Dance segment... cool... for a minute.

8) Peter Pan thing was boring... then okay... then weird.

9) The self indulgent Canadian poem reminded of the geek in 'Can't Buy Me Love' when he finally got the balls to stand up for himself after getting walked all over for the whole movie. I didn't realize Canada was so insecure.

10) K.D. Lang. Wow. I'm sure there's a joke there somewhere. He's such an easy target. Is he out of the closet yet by the way. The dude is obviously gay.

11) The Opera singer was painfully hard to listen to at midnight for God sake.

12) The moment of silence for the Georgian Luger that died was amazing. The 60k plus that were in attendance in that stadium held dead silence for a full 60 seconds. It's impossible for that many people to be that silent. Unbelievable and good for them.

13) Finally... the finale. Of course it was Wayne Gretzky... no surprise there. Steve Nash surprised me.

14) The malfunction was awkward for Wayne and Steve and company but they had ear pieces in and were well aware of what was happening. The malfunction probably left Canada feeling embarrassed and horrible about it but they shouldn't. The ceremony was unique, the attempt to light their cauldron indoors and in that fashion was creative and cool and to be honest the malfunction was great. It brought something human to a situation that is so hell bent on being perfect. Who cares? It didn't work, not only was it not a big deal but it actually made the Ceremony extremely memorable since nothing else did and we are not likely to forget the day Wayne Gretzky tried to light the flame but it malfunctions for 21/2 minutes before he could. It just took forever to get to that point and THEN he had to ride in the back of a truck for several blocks (which took forever) to light the real cauldron outdoors for all of Olympic Village and Vancouver to see burn for 17 days. To me it was memorable and that's really all you want.

It seemed to last an hour longer than it needed to but once they got the god damn thin lit it was cool. Don't tell me you didn't think that when Gretzky lit the bottom of the one outside in the rain that when that flame got half way up and flickered that you didn't think it was going to go out. Then it ignited and I could hear Canada exhale... and hiccup.