Two (Dozen) Cents

The internet has a lot of hate for the Vancouver Olympic Opening Ceremonies. Me: I was kind of riveted. Sure, there were a few clunky moments (see: hydraulic malfunction), awkwardness (the whole tap dancing fiddler scene), segments that dragged on for a few minutes too long (most of them), but overall I thought it was pretty... neat. $40M neat? Probably not, but neat nonetheless. Thoughts...

- All the Aboriginal dancers were pretty cool, and a nice touch, but the raising of the totems was kind of... laughably phallic...

- A casual, gum-chomping Jaromir Jagr carried the flag for the Czech Republic...

- How heartbreaking was it seeing the Georgian athletes somberly march into the arena wearing black armbands, their hats off in honour of the luger who died yesterday?

- Ghana, Ethiopia, Caymen Islands: countries you don't expect to see competing at the winter Olympics. The dude from Ghana was my favourite...

- The Chilean outfits were my favourite, and Canada's, and the UK...

- Nelly Furtado and Bryan Adams: awful, simply awful...

- I'm sure the entire east coast was holding its collective breath when a surprisingly heavyset Ashley MacIsaac started performing (I had visions of wardrobe malfunctions and golden showers)...

- That whole segment with the kid flying over they prairies was excruciatingly long, as was the segment where the snowboarders and skiers were dangling from the roof in front of a winter sports montage...

- I found it awfully distracting that you could see the arena exit signs and stairwells in the background of most shots...

- I don't consider myself a k.d. Lang fan, and Hallelujah is the most overplayed song this side of Yesterday, and I thought that song would have died along with Jian Ghomeshi's CBC Canada's Playlist... but she absolutely killed it...

- Romeo Dallaire and Betty Fox and Rick Hansen - nice spine-tingly touches... Anne Murray and Jacques Villeneuve and Donald Sutherland, not so much...

- East coast opera singer with the unpronounceable name - also killed it. Her and k.d. redeemed the entire ceremonies after those silly extended dance sequences...

- Some of the speeches and slam poetry (?!) were a little too in-your-face patriotic and jingoistic for me (Hey world, we're really nice and polite and friendly!)...

- Wayne Gretzky - what a sport...

The next two weeks will be great, unless of course they aren't, but I think they will be. I'll watch regardless.