Friday, July 23, 2021

The COVIDLympics, The Opening Ceremony

  • Greeeeeeeeeeeeat...  Even the NBCOlympics.com feed is going to be NBC...
  • Immediate statement of the state of the world in the opening video.  The normalcy of everything pre- and start of 2020, then shattered with the empty streets due to COVID, but the training goes on, even as the world stops...
  • Fireworks at the stadium, then a single runner on a treadmill...  (A Japanese national-champion women's boxer/first-responder)
  • AH...  #NBC(Olympics.com)Fail #1 -- we're going to get ad-ed to death.  Interrupt the ceremony's first sequence, FIFTEEN MINUTES IN, with at least three ads on the stream, even though you have a number of ads on top of the screen.
  • Many people I'm watching with are likening the early part of the ceremony, up to the rising of the Japanese flag and the Japanese national anthem, to a funeral procession...
  • Memorial moment for not only COVID losses, but the 1972 assassinated Israeli athletes.  Mike Tirico, heading the NBC coverage, notes this is at the insistence of IOC head Thomas Bach, a contemporary of the athletes killed by Black September.
  • A brief cultural performance culminated with a wooden representation of the Olympic rings -- with wood from trees which were planted for the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo.
  • And now, a truncated Parade of Nations...  Starting at 8:39 PM Friday night Japanese time.
  • And Square-Enix gets a nod.  The start of the Parade of Nations gets the opening to Dragon Quest IX -- when the Refugee Olympic Team, second after Greece, shows up, they get the Final Fantasy victory theme!  Yeah, I'm a weeb.  Can it...   (PS:  The apparent entire list of video-game music (in Japanese) for the Parade...)
  • #NBCFail #2 -- interrupting the stream to show the Team USA bus heading to the stadium....  If I wanted that shit, I'd be watching this over the air!!!   
  • Interesting quirk of the Japanese language...  There is no technical alphabetical order.  So it's Greece, then the refugees, then the nations in the order of the number of strokes (lines) in the Japanese representation of the nation's name, Japan going last.
  • 206 nations in the Parade.  Much to NBC's disgust, they have to cover and watch them ALL before Team USA shows up.  Team USA is #204 -- only France separates them from the hosts.
  • And even though it's truncated with fewer athletes, etc...  It still sounds like it's going to take TWO AND A HALF FREAKING HOURS.
  • While on Reddit, I was looking up the list and saw Tonga, with Pita Tautafaloa as the flag-bearer, about #122 of the 206.  When I said that on the Olympic thread, I got "Thank you for your service..."  :)
  • Change in the tradition for the ROC team.  You will be hearing quite a bit of Tchiakovsky's Piano Concerto #1 -- the IOC has approved that for the use as the Russia Olympic Committee Team's "National Anthem", rather than the traditionally-used Olympic Hymn for that case.
  • Of course, per #NBCFail, you could be Channel 7 in Australia, who's literally getting their information on some of the smaller countries from Wikipedia.
  • And the Ceremony on a longer and longer delay, because, unlike #NBCFail and them editing countries out, the ads the Aussies are showing are making the Ceremony LONGER!!
  • There he is!!  Oiled up and looking great as ever...
  • And, once the USA team gets in, we can't take the cameras off of them.  (#NBCFail # at least 3)
  • The island country of Vanuatu got in on the act, as Riilio Rii also came in oiled and shirtless.
  • The abbreviated Parade of Nations clocked in at a solid two hours.
  • And NOW, a cool moment.  After a brief cultural moment on the floor, eyes are turned skyward as hundreds of lit drones perform a light show, eventually morphing into the planet Earth as John Lennon's "Imagine" is performed in Japanese.
  • #NBCFail #4:  Cutting out some of the remarks of the head of the Organizing Committee as the Ceremony itself starts.
  • #IOCFail:  Thomas Bach, that's enough!!!  Good God, I've been known to be verbose...
  • Naomi Osaka gets the honor to light the cauldron.
  • Three hours and 49 minutes.  So let's see how NBC screws up the rest of this...
  • Somebody REALLY got bored.  An athlete from the African nation of Eritrea was seen prostate on the stadium floor about halfway through the Opening Ceremony.  The official Olympic Twitter account had some fun with it...
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