Opening Ceremony

It caught me by surprise. I didn't think the whole extravaganza thing would crank up so quickly. No ponderous speechifying to dull the senses properly before overload.

So, after a bit of dinner, I turn on the telly and get an underground sweatshop pumping chimneys into a Dickensian sky as bloated and top-hatted industrialists gloat at their rape of the environment and oppression of the proletariat. The imagery momentarily takes precedence over the message.

Then it's Bond, James Bond, fetching Her Majesty to the whirley-pearley for a leap into the stadium. Queen Liz looks a bit bedazed by the whole thing.

Then a commercial break, which based on the whole premise of the opening People's Congress for Welfare Statism, seems incongruous. When we return there are hundreds of white coated folks pushing hospital beds into the stadium as Lauer and Vieira coo about there being real doctors and nurses pushing those beds, not hired fantasia characters. And describing the great pride of the British people in their state-run healthcare system.

I'm sorry folks. That's where I called it quits. There was a great and classic Bond movie running: You Only Live Twice, which was absolutely boffo for cheap special effects and totally incorrect sexist comments throughout.

By time Bond was in the raft with his fawning teelok and Blofeld's island was self-destructing, the Olympics had gotten to the march-on. As Bob Costas droned about Macedonia entering among the alphabetical "F" group as "Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia", I remembered there was a Rangers game on.

Got there in time to see Yu Darvish serve up a biscuit and let the White Sox get the upper hand.

At this point I've got very little interest in catching much more of the Olympics. If it is going to be a propaganda extravaganza then I'm going to be hitting up Netflix quite a bit for the next couple of weeks.