So, Did You See The Olympic Opening Ceremony - What Did You Think?

WOW - I felt a bit baffled by the whole thing!  Our neighbor came down to eat a supper with us and then with a glass of homemade blueberry wine in hand we retired to the living room to watch the Olympic XXX Opening Ceremony. We missed probably the first fifteen minutes, and we started to watch as thousands of performers dressed in very drab/dreary period costume looked miserable as they rolled up turf, smoke stacks emerged from the floor, and depressed looking women kept pulling on large handles attached to some sort of cog wheel.  In the meantime a strange looking woman with long flowing locks played music with a look of extreme concentration on her face. No one appeared to be having a very good time. There was so much going on at all times it just looked confusing and murky. We found a bit boring, then it looked like Sgt. Pepper's Army marched through the middle of things, and another large trail of women suffragettes were marching around all that was going on. One gentleman in a top hat and tails with a cigar in his mouth kept appearing on camera as he stood around with a dozen or so other men similarly attired, but who he was I not sure. All of this was performed on a created grassy hill with a large tree at the top, we started referring to it as the giant compost hill! Once we moved through the working mans point of view of history through the industrial revolution we moved on to the next segment of the ceremony; a strange, nonsensical tribute to the NHS ( National Health Service), this included hundreds of giant hospital beds with supposedly ill children leaping up and down as if on a trampoline, and nurses dressed in period costume dancing around, the children then all settled down to sleep and close up shots showed loving nurses reading stories to the little dears. Then out of no where monsters appeared, enormous puppet monsters lurching all around, and then an ginormous baby appeared in the middle of the arena, and we are talking ginormous, way bigger than a school bus! Can you say BIZARRE.

Now for the parts that I really enjoyed, and that truly made up for the absurd parts described above. There was a great parody of the movie Chariots of Fire with Mr. Bean, it was funny and well done. Mr. Bean would have stolen the show, except for an even better stunt. A short film started to play starting off at Buckingham Palace, James Bond arrives to pick up the Queen, we get to see a few of her Corgi's running around (they kind of stole the moment they were so cute).  James Bond and the Queen fly off in the royal helicopter, we are treated to some magnificent aerial views of London, and then they are hovering over the Olympic Arena.  The classic James Bond music is booming away and suddenly it appears that the dear Queen is parachuting into the arena, we LOVED IT!!, and it appeared everyone there LOVED IT. The next shot was of the Queen with slightly windblown hair arriving with Prince Philip to sit in the royal box! I also really enjoyed all of the Mary Poppinses floating down over the hospital beds it was quite a vision to behold.
This was followed by a montage of British pop culture, it was enjoyable, clips of favorite pop music were played along with a montage video, included in the music, Queen, David Bowie, Eric Clapton, and many more, a little later a portion of Sweet Dreams by Annie Lennox, then a tribute to 80's rap music, (thankfully this was short and sweet).

After all of this came the parade of athletes from all over the world, they moved at a fast pace and were accompanied with continual drumming by hundreds of drummers lining the track. At this point the giant compost hill came into it's own, as each team ended their walk they planted their flag into the hill, by the end of the parade the hill was covered in flags from countries all over the world and it was a fantastic way to display them all. Once all the athletes were gathered in the center of the arena we were treated to Sir. Paul McCartney at the piano playing/singing Hey Jude. It was great, there were many shots of the athletes standing arm in arm swaying to the music and singing along, and Sir. Paul really seemed to be enjoying himself, it was a wonderful, warm, fuzzy, way to end the parade of athletes.

The lighting of the Olympic torches was spectacular as 200 lit torches all soared upwards to form the cauldron, it was an amazing spectacle.  Then came the fireworks, they were breathtakingly wonderful, truly a feat of design and implementation, AWESOME, AMAZING, and HUGELY ENJOYABLE.

So did I like the ceremonies or hate them? Overall I really enjoyed the show,  some of it was weird, even a tad incomprehensible, but for the most part it was a lot of fun and did not take itself too seriously, and I think it will be one of the most memorable openings for many years to come.

!!!LET THE GAMES BEGIN!!!