If I remember correctly, it began with British actor Daniel Craig (as secret agent 007, James Bond) on his way to Buckingham Palace in order to escort Queen Elizabeth to the opening ceremony. There were two little dogs running around, I didn't get the point of that, and she seemed to ignore his presence the entire time. Upon arriving to Olympic stadium by helicopter the pair then proceeded to parachute to (around the backside) of the stadium, where the queen suddenly appeared INSIDE the stadium and was escorted to her seat. She did not seem to be excited to be there. Where did James Bond go? Back to MI6 I suppose. What happened next seems to me like an LSD fueled nightmare of the sorts.
There was a tree on a hilltop. The tree uprooted and smoke came out, reminding me of the Delorian from Back to the Future, and dirty people came out of the hole and began disassembling the set. The set was supposed to be the English countryside. They simply disassemble fences and houses, haul off squares of wheat fields, and just roll up the ground as if it were carpet. The thing with the ground was that it was real sod. Why would you use real sod? I think about all the man hours that were spent laying the sod just for these dirty people to come out of the tree hole to roll it up and cart it off. It would have been cheaper, easier, lighter, and just as effective to use AstroTurf.
Now, while the disassembly of the countryside is taking place there appears to be a group of Abraham Lincoln men either surveying, supervising, or debating. I call them Abraham Lincoln men due to their resemblance to President Abraham Lincoln, with the coats and top hats. I won't call them a "gang" as to not conjure up images of Daniel Day-Lewis as Bill the Butcher and his bunch of colorfully clad henchmen in Gangs of New York. While the Abraham Lincoln men ran around doing vogue giant smokestacks rose out of the ground, molten metal began to pour, and they started casting iron in the middle of the arena. I'm thinking "What...in the...hell?!" There was a slew of different costumed characters representing certain times and events in Britain's history, everything from what appeared to be actual British soldiers from the American Revolution, to Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It think I even saw some people from Mardi Gras mixed in there.
By this time a majority of the sod had been removed to reveal what commentators remarked as a map of London complete with the river Thames, represented my the molten metal, flowing through the center of the city. The blacksmith then began to "shape" the metal into a giant ring through somewhat synchronized hammer blows. Upon completion the ring then rose into the sky where there were already four similar rings, all glowing red hot, apparently descended from the heavens where people on cables then began to weld them all together, thus forming the Olympic rings. O...k... I say to myself...
As a palate cleanser children and young looking adults dressed in pajamas sang "God Save the Queen" Queen Elizabeth did not seem excited to be there. I think "My Country 'Tis of Thee" sounds much better, but then again, I'm an American.
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| An extremely excited Queen Elizabeth |
Up next nurses and doctors began rolling in beds full of what I think were supposed to be sick children? I believe this part was supposed to pay homage to their healthcare system, as they began spelling out abbreviations of things with these beds that glowed like the squares of sidewalk the late great Michael Jackson activated with his footsteps in the video for his unforgettable classic "Billie Jean". The nurses and doctors began doing the jitterbug and I can't help but to wonder who is holding down the fort at the hospitals while a majority of the staff is cutting a rug at the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony. Not a good time for mass casualties anywhere else outside of the stadium.
There was this guy doing some sick damage on a guitar while J.K. Rowling stood there reading from a book. Mad props to J.K. Rowling, going from living into your car, to writing the best selling book series in history. Anyway though as she read the book some of the beds turned into giant storybook puppet villains, the Queen of Hearts, Captain Hook, and Voldemort from the Harry Potter books, indicating nightmares. The Voldemort puppet was from what I heard, 100 feet tall. That one was pretty cool. The others were kind of corny and looked as if they were falling apart by the way the "baddies" (people dressed in some sort of black frills kinda like if you were to completely unwind a cassette tape, whom chased off the kids) were struggling to keep things together.
| Giant Voldemort with hospital staff (bottom right) and kids in light-up Michael Jackson "Billie Jean" beds. |
Then there was, "Look, in the sky!" "It's a bird!" "It's a plane!" "NO! It's a... flock of Mary...Poppins?!" Yes, as do paratroopers have done and still do from the night sky descended an army of Mary Poppins, umbrella in one hand, bag in the other. For a country that averages about 30 inches of rainfall per year, people falling from the sky must have been quite an amusing sight.
The 2012th Mary Poppins Airborne managed to banish the nightmare puppets and get the kids calm and back under the covers. I don't know how those kids managed to fall asleep so quickly after that, and in a bed glowing brighter than Vice President Joe Biden's pearly whites, but they did. And to cap weird us out even more was something that looked like a giant sleeping baby. A commentator for NBC said it best: "I don't know if that is cute, or creepy!" At this point I assumed the queen has had enough and taken her leave, cameras panning to her look to me that Queen Elizabeth is not excited to be there. Okay maybe whatever they were planning next would pique the interest the rest of the world outside of the UK.
As if to prolong an already agonizing death. The ceremony continue with this story about some teenagers and a cellphone. There was this house on the stage that served as a projector screen on which bits of movies, television shows, and music videos were shown. All the while what looked like a few hundred people were dancing and doing costume changes whilst an anthology of British popular hits over the past few decades played. The combination of the music and story didn't fit to well together although I was slightly interested to see if they would actually play the lyrics to "Smack my Bitch Up", but was sadly disappointed. I guess according to the story the girl lost her phone, the boy found it. They planned to meet up to return the phone, met, threw a house party and the two danced in a cramped attic while the party raged on below. This part was way too long with the music and the story was weak. Thank goodness there was Rowan Atkinson to save the day.
I watched Mr. Bean when I was younger, so to see Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean participating in the ceremony was a breath of fresh air... until they began playing the theme song from Chariots of Fire. The song although powerful is getting tired and the clip of Rowan running on the beach was not really original or funny. It seemed as if he was used as a last minute filler. As before Queen Elizabeth did not look excited to be there.
There was a brief moment when I saw U.S. Soccer star David Beckham at the wheel of a speedboat tearing down the Thames, a poor young woman clenching to the Olympic Torch for dear life, struggling to maintain a smile as the wind whipped at her face, was seated in front of him. At this point believing that there was no possible way for them to up the level of awesomeness shown thus far, I like a majority of the rest of the world, changed the channel.
Apparently the opening ceremony was a "U.K. thing", for we definitely could not understand it. Next time, if there is a next time, try to make the focus less on yourselves, and for goodness sake, blow something up!
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