Opening class (high & low)

Okay, Danny Boyle did a bang-up job with the opening ceremony of the London Olympic games on Friday. It wasn’t what you’d call universal or inclusive in terms of the brotherhood of man, but it told a heck of a tale about the United Kingdom.

He didn’t go as far back as James A. Michener usually did with his novels—no primordial ooze. But we got a history-lesson-in-a-stadium starting with bucolic Britain, through the dark days of the Industrial Revolution, the wars of the 20^th century, NHS nightmares and the digital age. And it was massively entertaining.

Frankly, even though it didn’t seem to be part of the narrative, Boyle had me at the schtick with James Bond and HM the Queen. No, no—not the two of them going on a mission and parachuting into the stadium; the part with the corgis. That was all class.

I also enjoyed the percussion exercise, led by Evelyn Glennie. They could box that and I’d buy it.

The bit with Mr. Bean channeling Chariots of Fire was so British. I wonder if I was the only person remembering the incident involving Zola Bud and Mary Decker at the 1984 Olympic games?

The big downer of the whole evening was NBC’s “coverage”. Meredith Veiera and Matt Lauer expanded the concept of cringeworthiness exponentially. Their ignorance was embarrassing, and they just could not stop bashing on about it. They could have gone down onto the stadium floor during the rural sequence and stood in for the village idiots.

I joined thousands of tweeters in yelling, “Shut up, you two! For the love of God, just shut up!” They got their own hashtag: #ShutUpMattLauer. Actually, there's another, #NBCfail, but that wouldn't be Olympics-specific.

And, since NBC (to which we used to refer as the Nothing But Crap network when I freelanced there) delayed their broadcast hours and hours, they had plenty of time to clean up their hosts’ blather, I do not get why they didn’t do some basic editing. Were none of their execs listening to the show? Or, God help us, did they think it was witty?

For the first couple of hours the network was cutting to commercials about every nine to ten minutes. But when the parade of athletes started, commercials came on at three minute intervals. Not even basic cable channels have the chutzpah to pull that. (Thank God for DVR.)

And, in another demonstration of NBC’s crass jingoism (which has marked their coverage ever since they got the contract years ago), the network swapped a taped interview with Michael Phelps for a sequence at the ceremony honoring victims of the 07/07 London terror attack. (If you want to see it, go here.) Seriously? What were you thinking, NBC? So you could edit, but just not for the better?

(Well, if they had shown the tribute, Veiera and Lauer would just have yammered right through it.)

Another question—why, in this Digital Age, can I not find some coverage online that’s not bleeding NBC?