August 27th, 2008
I find myself torn between patriotic pride at the crapness of the London 2012 performance at the Beijing Olympics handover ceremony, and shame at the crapness of the English performance at the Beijing Olympics handover ceremony. But I actually feel more pride, and it’s the Chinese I have to thank.
Looking at it, it was never going to be possible to match the spectacle of the Chinese presentation, with thousands of performers moving in perfect unison, amazing costumes, towering towers, fireworks bigger than exploding Death Stars and everything else. It looked every billion of the however many billion dollars the Chinese spent on it. But it was weird. The CGI fireworks. The little girl who mimed the song because the girl that actually sang wasn’t pretty enough. The great big huge, cheesy, completely artificial grins on the faces of many of the performers. It was somewhere beyond stage-managed perfection and into Stepford Wives territory. It occasionally felt they like they should have done it all in CGI for the amount of ‘heart’ you felt in it.
Then the red double decker bus came trundling on when the flag was handed to Boris Johnson. Never mind that Boris looked like the head boy being given the flag to wave for his house at a swimming competition.
The girl who was selected by Blue Peter viewers to appear walked over the backs of, presumeably, some illegal immigrants. Why? Leona Lewis, perched like a budgie on a tiny plinth like David Blaine started singing ‘Gonna give you my love’. Eh? Someone was playing a violin next to David Beckham when he booted the football into the crowd. Whaaat? All this confused the hell out of the Chinese. And me. And then the Chinese press wrote about it as reported in the Independent, and it all made sense.
The Titan Sports Daily contrasted the “neatness” of the Chinese performers with the “outrageous outfits” worn by the Britons. Unlike the Chinese custom which tends not to reveal their weakness to the outsiders, “the British seem to like to laugh about their stupidity in a funny way”, it said.
Yep. Got us there.
“During the performance, when the London bus pulled over, all the passengers waiting for the bus rushed into the door at the same time, which truly damaged the British image,” it added.
I thought there were so many worse things damaging the British image, but this made me giggle.
It also complained that Lewis and Page were not A-list celebrities. “Unfortunately, the singer and Jimmy Page are absolutely not famous enough to be known or recognised by millions of the Chinese audiences. As for David Beckham, he was supposed to kick the football towards the red circle in the centre of the ‘Bird’s Nest’. In the end, just like any of his penalties at a football match, he totally missed it. He kicked the ball to the left and dropped in the crowd, then was picked up by a lucky Chinese volunteer who would not let go of the ball.”
I was under the impression that David Beckham’s penalty kicks were quite good. The Chinese may have been watching an imposter with a similarly uncharismatic wife.
And this is it. Someone organising the London 2012 presentation must have said at some point “We aren’t going to top anything the Chinese have done, so let’s embrace the crapness. Do you think we’d get away with a bus that’s a Transformer except it transforms into a privet hedge?”.
So I really hope the theme for London 2012 is comedy. One of the best suggestions I have heard so far is from my mother who reckons a winning number would be Boris Johnson tapdancing at the opening ceremony. Charlie Brooker’s got some great ideas including Bernie Clifton on his ostrich. Peter Kay could be hired to shout ‘wha-hey!’ every time a hurdler goes over a hurdle. Chas and Dave could sit in the middle of the stadium singing ‘yack yack rabbit rabbit yack yack rabbit rabbit’ while Will Young dodges javelins. The marathon should be a fun run. Let’s see how fast that Kenyan fellow moves dressed as a gigantic pirate.
London 2012 could be the greatest, richest vein yet of comedy gold. Gold I tells you.
I had a job interview yesterday for a job I really, really want, and as has been the case on several occasions before, thinking back, I can hardly remember a word I said. What does however worry me is that I think I might have come across as an eight-year old with ADD who just sucked a triple espresso through a whole packet of Tim Tams. I’m really hoping I didn’t arse it up but I really have no idea. I’m mainly just wishing I had a hard drive in my brain so I could wind back and check my answers because on vague recollection some of them might have been cobblers. I can do this job, I know I can, but I’m like Homer Simpson asking my brain not to screw it up for me.
Quite Random is the blog of Nathan Nelson, a human male who lives in the UK and is not entirely sure what he's going to do when he grows up but is interested in international development, photography, secularism, technology, music and movies and other things anyone of his age would be.
