Hey guys. Let me start off by saying I love the Olympics. Always have, always will.

And tonight I spend 4 hours (yes, really) watching the entire Opening Ceremony, which kind of redefined extravagant. It was ridiculously bright (energy consumption? meh.) and inventive. And, at times, kind of weird.

Here are my thoughts:

Most unexpected celebrity: Confucius. The philosopher inspired much of the content. The boxes-propelled-by-humans-to-symbolize-wind moment? Brilliant.

Biggest winner: LED companies. The giant, cool scroll — all LED, which was kind of difficult to believe because it looked so real. Speaking of lights, everything was sparkly. Every. Thing. Bonus points for the always fluttering crowd-held lanterns. Nice touch.

Best “Wonder what they are talking about?” moment President Bush greeting Vladimir Putin… Hmm, so what’s going on in Georgia these days??

High flying adored So there was a lot of flying. Not entirely unexpected, since the opening performances were created by Chinese director Zhang Yimou, who did “House of Flying Daggers.” But the funniest moment came when the color commentary people (more on them later) were noticing the graceful hand movements of some female flying performers. Someone said, “You see this kind of movement in China, from the teahouses to the McDonalds.” Then Bob Costas goes, “So you order a Big Mac and fries and they give it to you with conspicuous elegance?” Oh, snap! Cat fights in the commentary booth.

Tip-toeing the issue I didn’t expect the whole human-rights violations thing to be addressed, but the commentators kind of strangely danced around it. Someone talked about how the Olympics this year was controversial (the site selection, the censorship, the whole Joey Cheek thing), etc. but that the Ceremony was spectacular.
One of my roommates, watching with me, had this to say: “So basically what they just said was, ‘You can’t argue with the human-rights violations, but they put on one hell of a show.’” Yeah, pretty much.

Geography bee I liked how the parade of nations turned into one big trivia fest from Matt Lauer. “The president of Turkemenistan approved the outfits himself… Marshall Islands is what inspired ‘South Pacific’ — now on Broadway!!” Seriously, Lauer. Give it a rest.

USA fashion Was it me, or did the Ralph Lauren-designed Team USA outfits kind of make everyone look like flight attendants? Even LeBrown James’ diamond stud didn’t help.

Cop out of the night Michael Phelps not marching with the team because of his early event the next morning. Lame.

Best star Not Yao Ming, but his tiny friend Lin Hao, a 9-year-old who escaped the rubble after the Chinese earthquake and went back into the school to save his classmates. If only they gave gold medals for that.

What did you all think?

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