Vancouver Opening Cere... zzzzzzz

Last night was the Opening Ceremony for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. I'm going to be quite honest with you, I was pumped up. I remember in 2002 watching the Opening Ceremony with R. Kelly singing "I'm the World's Greatest" and thinking "this is something special." That became a really weird and uncomfortable memory when all the R Kelly shiz went down, but nonetheless it's the OLYMPICS! It only happens every 4 years. You gotta love it.

But alas, the ceremony, while adequate, was a bit lackluster. I mean, you can't really compare it to Beijing, where the budget was somewhere between $300-400 million, while this one only had a budget of $30-40 mill. But you can't help comparing it to the crazy over the top Beijing Ceremony, and it does fall quite short.

There were some kind of cool parts, like when the WHALES SUDDENLY SWAM ACROSS THE BOTTOM OF THE FLOOR! But for a lack of a better way to put this... it seemed... a little ... boring. Who am I kidding? I stopped watching and started playing Rummy 500 halfway through. Then I drank a vodka rocks, called my grandchildren, and called it a night.

You gotta give it up to all the Canadian superstars who were there though, including Sarah Mclachlan, K.D. Lang, Bryan Adams, Nelly Furtado, Opera Singing Lady, and Beat Poet Guy who talked for about 5 minutes too long. They supplemented the tap dancing fiddle players very well for a nice well rounded night of weird entertainment.

The March of Nations was one the better parts of the night I thought. At least for me, because I got to comment on who all the athletes looked like - "hey! A Jonas brother!", judge the attire of all the Olympic teams (please give me the US Team's outfits minus the chunky turtlenecks), and we got to see really funny named people from other countries carrying flags - Björgvin Björgvinsson anyone?

When it came down to it, the most touching part of the night was the minute of silent that was shared for 21-year-old Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, who died Friday morning after an accident during a practice run. This was a real tragedy, and you could it see on the faces of the Georgian team when they did the March of Nations and it brought the crowd to a standing ovation.

This is the thing about the Olympics. Through triumphs and tragedies, it brings the world together.