The More Things Change...
So...I watched or listened to pretty much all of the Opening Ceremonies for the Torino Games. Some of it was really cool. Some of it was really weird. It was all pretty moving, especially having been involved with it once before.
But it was both reassuring and annoying that they still have Bob Costas doing some of the stupidest commentary during the Ceremonies. In Salt Lake, it was giving the TV audience an in-depth description of what was going to happen for the next ten minutes of the ceremony, and muse aloud about the meaning or intent of something when it was pretty well explained in the programs.
Tonight, the obnoxious gaffe was mis-identifying the music. One of Torino's 'gimmicks' was playing disco and dance music, a different song for each country (it seemed, I was busy writing email at the time so I wasn't paying too much attention to the correlation between music changes and countries). What got me was how our dear Mr. Costas commented on the 'odd, seemingly random assortment of songs' being played in the background, which he labeled as 'a collection of 80's pop songs.'
Come on, Bob...there were MAYBE four or five songs out of that collection that came from the 80's. The OVERWHELMING majority of them were from the 70's--they were DISCO, fer cryin' out...
Am I being excessively nit-picky? Perhaps. But it seems to me that the network providing coverage of the Games for the nation would want to avoid stupid mistakes like that. I don't know if Bob writes his own copy, or if someone prepares it for him...but there's no excuse for it. I know the Ceremonies are rehearsed, for several nights, before the actual opening. You can't tell me NBC couldn't get someone to research where the music came from, chronologically speaking. It's another one of those things that makes everyone else in the world think all Americans are idiots, and I resent being represented that way.
Now, the single BEST thing that I saw out of the evening (although the Ferrari doing burnouts was pretty cool...I admit it, I'm a closet testosterone junkie) wasn't even on NBC. Jimmy Kimmel's late night show (which I don't watch often enough to even remember the name) was celebrating the Winter Games by having their very own 'Superhero Olympics' (they did the same thing for the Summer Games a couple of years ago). How it works is this--on the street across from Kimmel's studio (whoever actually owns it), there's a group of people who dress up in superhero costumes. So, since they (Kimmel's producers) couldn't get anyone to the Olympics, they made their own--with the neighborhood 'superheroes' as athletes.
Tonight's event--cross-country skiing. Lemme tell ya...nothing looks quite so ludicrous as Superman flying through the air--backwards--and landing on his ass with his skis going every which way. I didn't stick around to see who the final medalist was, but the winners of the heats were Catwoman, Spongebob Squarepants, Robin, and Spiderman.
And just when you thought things were getting too serious in the world...
So...I watched or listened to pretty much all of the Opening Ceremonies for the Torino Games. Some of it was really cool. Some of it was really weird. It was all pretty moving, especially having been involved with it once before.
But it was both reassuring and annoying that they still have Bob Costas doing some of the stupidest commentary during the Ceremonies. In Salt Lake, it was giving the TV audience an in-depth description of what was going to happen for the next ten minutes of the ceremony, and muse aloud about the meaning or intent of something when it was pretty well explained in the programs.
Tonight, the obnoxious gaffe was mis-identifying the music. One of Torino's 'gimmicks' was playing disco and dance music, a different song for each country (it seemed, I was busy writing email at the time so I wasn't paying too much attention to the correlation between music changes and countries). What got me was how our dear Mr. Costas commented on the 'odd, seemingly random assortment of songs' being played in the background, which he labeled as 'a collection of 80's pop songs.'
Come on, Bob...there were MAYBE four or five songs out of that collection that came from the 80's. The OVERWHELMING majority of them were from the 70's--they were DISCO, fer cryin' out...
Am I being excessively nit-picky? Perhaps. But it seems to me that the network providing coverage of the Games for the nation would want to avoid stupid mistakes like that. I don't know if Bob writes his own copy, or if someone prepares it for him...but there's no excuse for it. I know the Ceremonies are rehearsed, for several nights, before the actual opening. You can't tell me NBC couldn't get someone to research where the music came from, chronologically speaking. It's another one of those things that makes everyone else in the world think all Americans are idiots, and I resent being represented that way.
Now, the single BEST thing that I saw out of the evening (although the Ferrari doing burnouts was pretty cool...I admit it, I'm a closet testosterone junkie) wasn't even on NBC. Jimmy Kimmel's late night show (which I don't watch often enough to even remember the name) was celebrating the Winter Games by having their very own 'Superhero Olympics' (they did the same thing for the Summer Games a couple of years ago). How it works is this--on the street across from Kimmel's studio (whoever actually owns it), there's a group of people who dress up in superhero costumes. So, since they (Kimmel's producers) couldn't get anyone to the Olympics, they made their own--with the neighborhood 'superheroes' as athletes.
Tonight's event--cross-country skiing. Lemme tell ya...nothing looks quite so ludicrous as Superman flying through the air--backwards--and landing on his ass with his skis going every which way. I didn't stick around to see who the final medalist was, but the winners of the heats were Catwoman, Spongebob Squarepants, Robin, and Spiderman.
And just when you thought things were getting too serious in the world...
posted by Curtis at 11:09 PM
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