Praise
the Lord of the Rings that the LONDON LYMPICS is over, gone and
hopefully we will forget all about. But as this rag doesn’t ever
let anything die peacefully we thought maybe a few comments about the
Opening Ceremony would be appropriate. Never mind the games it’s
the opening that matters.
Here
I was thinking that Maxine’s Funeral was one of the most elaborate
and pointless exercise ever conceived.
We
can pass quickly over the fact that the cost of putting on the show
is born 10% by the Sponsors who make a profit and 90% by the Taxpayer
who will most likely end up still paying for it ten years down the
line. Sydney, despite all the hype and hoopla is still saddled with a
under-utilised sports complex (the Royal Easter Show is its principal
attraction)and still counting the real cost and Athens helped throw
Greece into the chaos of today. We will never know how Bejing fared
because of the paranoid secrecy of that one party state pretending to
be Communist but we do know there is a huge complex of weed-infested
concrete structures where the games used to be. Tourism never has and
never will recover the cost despite all that is said and done. They
might boast billions in revenue but that isn’t profit is it? What
about the interest on loans and the ongoing maintenance?
Lets
face it the Lympics are no longer a sporting event but a corporate
money making publicity machine organised by the O.I.C which could
only be described as a bunch of geriatric executives who have lied,
cheated, bull-shitted and conned their way to the top and some of
them are not even competent enough to have a quiet root. Not even the
athletes are really representative of their country (at least for the
Western World) as they usually hail from upper-middle class families
who can afford the time and money including all the overseas trips to
watch little Jack or Jill ski down the hill.
Did
anyone watch the bloody thing anyway. It might just be my social
circle or should I say line of stools along the bar in Linton but I
have yet to speak to anyone who saw it. It’s lucky I recorded the
event as I spent most of the time rolling on the floor with
uncontrollable giggles and had to keep rewinding to ensure I was not
having those strange visions again.
For
those who did not dare watch it and suffered yet again through
re-runs of Hogan’s Heroes I will attempt to (seriously) describe
the scene as it splattered across the front of my T.V.
The
London Lympics Opening was in a nutshell an attempt to recreate the
unleashing of the Industrial Revolution and the potential of chaos
and poverty. From Georgian country splendour with Maypoles and
Shepherds to a Victorian plunder-party ripping the earth apart and
being pillaged by filthy-folk with shovels and picks spewing forth
from a mine shaft like a volcano erupting.
To
be fair, which is hard for me, at least the Arena was filled with a
sea of multi-coloured Britains. All the faces and colours of the
world which is what the Lympics is supposed to be and not the sea of
yellow on a field of red that was Bejing.
I
did notice that about 500 ticket-holders were given stranding room
only on the field itself presumably having given up their seats to
the children’s choir in coloured T-shirts.
After
the initial explosion of the new civilization we heard the words of
Kingdom Brunel who used more bricks, mortar, timber and steel than
B.H.P-Billiton paving over Britain with progress. He celebrated the
golden past to a sea of exploited workers milling around between four
huge phallic chimneys spewing pollution into the atmosphere. Sydney
was the green games and what I saw here was a coal dust spectacular.
Sydney had clothes hoists, mowers and shearers clipping cardboard
boxes, London was a display of a past era that had profited from a
lucrative slave trade and Queen Vic who was the worlds biggest drug
dealer.
It
was mentioned that the two most popular historical figures in Britain
were Winston Churchill #1 and Kingdom Brunel #2. The first spent the
war years in a drunken haze and the other was the first version of
Alan Bond. Where were William Shakespeare and Margaret Thatcher in
this gigantic celebration of mutual masturbation.
The
athletic field was alternatively filled with groups of rambling
Abraham Lincolns, the Beatles and Multi-cultured migrants that make
up the central theme of ‘Old Blighty’. Even Chelsea Pensioners
and a bloody big group of Cockny Pearly’s braved the grime and
steel mills replicas that surrounded them and appearing to have a
right old knees up. But they were forced to do that to get around all
the shit that was falling down around them.
In
just the first quarter of the event we had been transported from the
Britain of green and pleasant lands through its profitable
exploitative era and on, hopefully, into some sort of decadent
future. Her industrial might was symbolized by a rain of fire and
presumably brimstone falling onto the participants below like a scene
from Dante’s Inferno or maybe a homage to the Lord of the Rings.
About the time that I realised hundreds of drummers were trying to
bash holes into the bottom of buckets I thought I might see some
blokes with four-cornered hankies tied to their scones and pants
rolled up to their knees to wander on with a load deck-chairs, but
what we got was a mass of beds, nurses and children representing,
god-forbid, the National Health Service. Supposedly a representation
of Mary Poppins the nurses pranced, the children jumped up and down
on the mattresses and being bothered by black-shaped monsters
prancing around like paedophiles ready to carry the children off to
their ‘special wonderland’.
Between
scene changes we were entertained by old has-beens and even older
movies. And that was the cue for James Bond to collect the Queen from
Buck House and helicopter her to the Lympic Stadium. As they strode
the hall I couldn’t help but think that Odd Job might appear from
nowhere and take the heads off a couple of right royal statues.
As
they flew past Big Ben a gigantic licorice Churchill doffed his
homberg and bowed in recognition. It’s a pity he didn’t recognise
the blunder of Gallipoli. Then, Oh! God, then, I couldn’t believe
my eyes when 007 threw Her Majesty out of the helicopter. Robert
Mugabeand a host of other ex-Colonial rebels could be here cheering
at this point. By now I had to rewind several times lest my eyes
deceived me yet again. I have to admit that the Brits are the best in
the world at comedy and this was the biggest and best performance I
have seen since ‘The Plank’ and the only comic genius not on the
field was John Cleese.
In
his stead we got Rowan Atkinson and a little band conducted by Simon
Rattle. Even though it was an homage to Jacques Violleret as the
pissed-off drummer in Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ he managed to make it
uniquely Mr. Bean and even the great Simon got a bit rattled at the
end.
What
we heard next was the never-ending Tubular Bells of Mike Oldfield and
they tingled and dingled and donged on and on for mind-numbing hours.
Another annoying aspect of the Lympics is if they can drop certain
games and sports why they can’t drop this Francophile rubbish? Why
do they have to abuse our ears with French as well as English. Why
cannot the games be spoken only in the language of the Host Nation
and let the world, which most do now anyway, televise, translate and
commentate in their own native tongues to their own audiences. Even
now we still have to put up with this charade between the French and
the British and ask the world to make the language of diplomacy
Chinese, it soon will be anyway or maybe to be accurate and true then
everything should be spoken in ancient Greek as some spectators don't
understand either language anyway.
Finally
on the field modern Britain came to the surface with a thousand
dancers and lengths of irradiated spaghetti. Modern technology has
invaded the games and I worry that we will never again see parades of
Sheep, Cattle, Dogs and a lot of Bull.
As
we began to come closer to the proper business at hand, that of
packing the stadium with as many athletes as possible, as with
telephone boxes or volkswagons, we begin to see the modern era
emerging from the coal-dust still permeating the air of the stadium.
This
has been a long slog to read, I know, but then the Opening was a long
slog to sit through too. You’re unlucky if you missed the greatest
laugh ever so I thought I’d just bring you the highlights.
A
tribute to British music inspired hordes of dancing lampshades to
wheel around the arena and speaking of wheels I noticed a token
wheelchair dancer doing her thing and typically ignored by those
around her. While we are on the subject of wheels wheels out rolled a
parade of tired old geriatric pop and rock stars to represent British
Exports and who still believe that Britains greatest exports were
David Beckham and the Spice Girls. Even Malcolm Mc.Laren’s Mock
Group ‘Sex Pistols’ were evident but I did note that they
refrained from playing their special version of God Save The Queen.
They apparently represented gullible Britain.
Lo
and behold an inexplicable parade of black spermatozoa invaded the
ground bouncing up and down like African Masai Warriors. I think they
were meant to represent a very licentious and profitable Slave
Trading Britain. Then they try to give us technology savvy Britain by
displaying Sir Tim Berners-Lee as the inventor of the World Wide Web
and we really know that it was Clinton’s Vice-president Al Gore
that really lay claim to that. But maybe it was Global Warming?
Two
or three times the commentators mentioned the heat wave they were
experiencing probably caused by all the hot air surrounding the
Lympics but they neglected to say whether that it was Fahrenheit or
Centrigrade.
Lo
and behold if it can’t get even more confusing they have a lengthy
memorial to those who bought tickets but died before they could take
their seats, This might explain the poor attendance at some events.
They had all kicked that same bucket being bashed about earlier. When
the world is in a celebratory mood, at least within a kilometer of
this event, an event more appropriate to a closing ceremony puts a
damper on the celebrations. Was this another skit where I couldn’t
get the point?
But
we did get to the point in the end and I will be as brief as possible
because this parade of nations was as boring as all shit. First in of
course were the Greeks. Was this to be held in order of Debtor
Nations where the most broke come first out of the starting gate like
a handicapping system? It could explain why Zimbabwe came at the end
as they don’t owe anything due to the fact that nobody will lend
them anything in the first place.
When
Australia ‘strolled’ past we were greeted by the comment that we
were the strongest and greatest nation in the Lympic Games. OK we
have been at every one of them but with 449 medals in total we are a
long way behind the 2,449 of the United States. Maybe he should have
said pound for pound we were the best.
Patriotic
clichés kept in the cupboard for four years waiting for a decent
government were rolled out to be thrown around like ‘gold,
gold….gold for Australia’. Well whoopee doo. Hundreds of millions
spent for a lump of cheap gold plating sponsored by Rio Tinto. For
what we have spent on this increasingly corporate charade we could
have given every Ozzie a gold medal and cried ‘Oye! Oye! Oye!
instead.
Her
Majesty appeared serene, even bored by all this, she certainly was
not amused and looked more like she was missing her crochet needles
most of the time.
Speeches
were given but not from the light on the hill but from a podium at
the bottom of it. A good use I thought for the unfinished bit of
arena covered up with realistic enough grass. There was a lot of
security around this ‘grassy knoll’.
The
Lympic flag bearing was a moving sight but not what appeared to be an
embalmed Mohammed Ali being jossled forward to touch the flag. Why
can’t they let this great man sink away in dignity and it is beyond
my comprehension as to why he was even there to do it. Maybe some
nation should immortalize him as a Lympic Torch with flames coming
out of his noggin. He looked less life-like than Wilma.
At
the end we had visions of that giant bell, which was only rung once I
think. But I realised that like the J.Arthur Rank Gong it was but a
fake prop and an appropriate sound effect. It tolled me everything I
needed to know. That the whole Lympic movement has turned into a fake
prop for corporate gred and gullible governments. The news that
Melbourne might bid again makes me shudder at the thought. We
survived Melbourne in 56 and Sydney in 2000 but the way things are
going with costs for the games I doubt that we should offer to
bankrupt our nation for the sake of a cheap hamburger and a sugary
drink.
