Retail Olympics

Okay, you understand that the Olympics aren’t just about athletic achievement, right? Aside from badminton teams competing to throw their early matches by playing with all the skill of 11-year-olds, there’s merchandise. Lots of it.

Evidently people are lining up seven across at the main official tschotschke store to buy everything from tea towels to track suits at Olympic-sized prices.

However, I like the competition that’s arisen between non-official tote bag manufacturers. First there was the bag sporting the statement, “I’m Renting My Flat to a Fat American Family”. Back snapped a bag with “Proud American family renting an overpriced London flat from snooty Brits with bad teeth!”

It’ll be interesting to see how this progresses through the various rounds.

Another #NBCFail

Definitely getting a kick out of the reaction of—well, pretty much everyone on the Internet—to how NBC is covering the Olympics.

Because it’s a lot more engaging and immediate than the network’s actual, you know, coverage. If you want a sample, just Google #NBCFail. That hashtag took over from the #ShutUpMattLauer one. Or maybe it subsumed the latter.

It’s not just that they’re not broadcasting anything in real time. Or that they’re spattering commercials throughout like they think this is their last chance to appease advertisers because ad companies are going to shut down in 18 minutes. It’s that they can’t even fully present what they’re showing without inserting spoilers.

The biggest example (so far) is the break before showing the women’s 100-meter backstroke final. NBC ran a promo for yesterday’s Today show interview with the 17-year-old, shrieking, “When you’re 17 years old and win your first gold medal, there’s nobody you’d rather share it with.” And they included a photo of her holding up her gold medal.

I like Andy Borowitz’s take in The New Yorker. Sad thing is—if someone did offer a “NBC-free” stream for $29.95, people would sign up.

As it is, many tech-literate (and even not so literate) folks have hooked into VPNs to be able to watch coverage from other broadcasters. I never thought I’d say this, but I’m really enjoying seeing the BBC’s offerings. Not only are they minus the NBC fatuous commentary, they’re showing sports I’d never have seen courtesy of the broadcaster that’s supposed to be serving the American viewing public.

Olympic mania

I was reading a commentary in The Economist about the opening ceremony at the Olympic games, which was mildly interesting.

But, wherever I can, I also read readers’ comments. And in this instance, here’s where I went straight to hell.

One DeweyV asked, “What? No Benny Hill…?” To which speedface6 replied, “Apparently they’re playing the Benny Hill theme song during the breaks at the beach volleyball.”

And, you know what? Even though I’ve not seen a Benny Hill episode in decades, that manic sax just immediately leapt to my mind and has been dashing madly about between my ears ever since.

Let me share the love:

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?

I declare, these games

The wait is nearly over for the London 2012 Olympics. Opening ceremony kicks it off tonight.

(Well, actually, they’ve already started some of the footie events in Wales. Don’t know how that works—could they not fit two weeks of sporting events into two weeks?)

There’s a lot of speculation as to how the Brits are going to top the spectacle the Chinese put on four years ago. Ceremony director Danny Boyle’s kept a tight lid on it, but everyone’s promising it’ll be, you know, spectacular.

Okay, Britain’s ambassador to the US, Sir Peter Westmacott, is dampening the rumors just a tad. In an interview with Morning Edition’s Renée Montagne, Westmacott urged us not to expect bigger amazingness than Beijing. But different amazingness.

Boyle has promised a festival-of-Britain kind of experience, to include barnyard animals. This has upset animal protection people, and you do have to wonder what the sheep and pigs are going to make of the lights, the deafening noise and James Bond parachuting into the stadium.

I was thinking—perhaps he could swap out the critters for a Saint Trinian’s revue. Or maybe a phalanx of Morris dancers.

Well, maybe not.

One thing I’ve found interesting in the past couple of days was the, er, lively debate going on about whether the games will pay off. You know, economically. They’re costing in the vicinity of $14B and of course the organizers and HM Government are insisting that money will be flowing through the Olympics like spring melt run-off water through sluicegates.

But apparently they’re not quite convinced of this themselves. According to a story via Marketplace Freakonomics, the LOCOG sent out a letter to various academic economists, asking if there was anyone—anyone at all—who could please come up with a gravitas-laden study that would prove definitively that money will be flowing through the Olympics like spring melt run-off water through sluicegates.

Sadly, that same Freakonomics segment quotes an economist from the University of Chicago who’s done a study indicating that there’s no significant difference between an Olympics-hosting city and one nearby in terms of tourism, construction, tax revenues, etc.

On a side note, as though the Brits haven't already had enough tsuris about this, this week Mitt Romney was over there in an attempt to look presidential (and white) and at the same time hobnob with his Anglo-Saxon frères in a way that the current President can't (according to someone in Romney's campaign team). And brother Mitt just couldn't refrain from slagging off the way the LOCOG has been running the Games. Not the way he did, don't you know. Problems; they have problems. He didn't, back in the two years he headed the Salt Lake City games. Not a one.

I don't know about looking presidential, but I bet his mama didn't raise him to show up at a dinner party and diss his host's choices in table settings. It's one thing for Londoners to whinge about the event; it's another for a jumped-up politico to swan in and carp. As Prime Minister David Cameron rightly pointed out, intimating that Romney's experience with a much smaller setup in the west end of nowhere doesn't qualify him to pronounce.

(Although I found it interesting that one of Romney's criticisms was regarding the G4S security fiasco. You'd have thought that he'd have been a violent supporter of the concept of outsourcing and privatizing any public sector function, like security; and would therefore have kept his cavernous mouth shut when it turned out that the private sector screwed up royally and the government had to step in to save the day. But you'd be wrong.)

Well—regardless, I’m looking forward to the games, and definitely going to be on the lookout for the farm animals, because nothing says athletic endeavour like sheep, pigs and BSE cows.

Olympic class

We’re rounding the corner and heading into the multi-ringed circus that calls itself the London 2012 Olympic Games. And as I’ve noted before, we don’t have to wait until tomorrow’s opening ceremony to find drama, danger and just plain dopiness.

First—update on the threatened strike by (amongst others) border control/immigration workers set for today (day before opening ceremony): it’s been called off. Both the union and HM Government are declaring victory, and frankly it’s hard to tell who blinked first. A union spokesman said that the government is adding 1300 new jobs they’ve been wanting; but a ministry spokesman said that the advertised jobs weren’t new but planned replacements.

Whatever—everyone’s assuring us that getting into the country will be a doddle. Which, it must be said, it has been for suspected terrorists in the past couple of weeks. Border officials on passport desks have allegedly let three (or more, depending on your source) persons on the Home Office’s watch list enter Britain at London Heathrow alone.

So, it’s probably a good thing that the LOCOG have called up an additional 1200 troops to supplement the 3500 already in place to work security at the games, after the company contracted to supply a security force of 12,000 screwed the pooch. There are now more squaddies deployed on active duty in the UK than in Afghanistan. Might be a tougher assignment.

But there are some things that the British Army just can’t make right.

For one, this whole thing of corporate sponsorship has entered the realm of, of—well, somewhere that both George Orwell and Salvador Dalì would really have appreciated.

If you think the Olympics are solely about athletic achievement and the brotherhood of man, you should stop reading right now. No one (outside, oh, say, the People’s Republic of China) can afford to put on a consumer experience that tops that of the previous Olympiad without getting it subsidized by business interests, which in turn are taking massive “marketing expense” deductions on their tax returns. Sports facilities, participant dorms, transportation infrastructure, opening ceremonies with sky-diving hippos and ballet-dancing crocodiles, cleaning the toilets—all this costs more money than running the NHS. Or the state of California.

So every Olympic organizing committee shops out exclusive product sponsorship contracts to companies with seriously hefty pocketbooks (and really slick accountants). Given the choice between having McDonald’s or the taxpayer pay for erecting a new stadium, most people would hand off to the corporate clown.

But getting exclusive placement for a variety of products in front of the three billion worldwide viewers has resulted in some bizarre restrictions on what ticket holders can bring or wear, because God forbid the cameras panning the 60,000 raving fans in the stand should spot a couple of Asics logos when Adidas is an official sponsor.

In fact, there’s a whole list of items you can’t wear or bring to an Olympic venue, including:

·         Balls, rackets, Frisbees

·         Large flags and banners

·         Clothing with political statements or commercial signage

·         Oversized hats

·         Large golf-style umbrellas

·         Long-lens cameras and tripods

·         Excessive amounts of food

·         Noisemakers

·         Liquids greater than 100ml

A lot of this I get—personally I’d just haul off and shoot anyone showing up with a vuvuzela. And big hats and umbrellas would block the view of other fans and lead to brawls that could involve the army and a whole lot of stuff.

But how much food is “excessive”? And what constitutes “political statement”? If I showed up with a tee-shirt emblazoned with “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights”—aside from someone having to get really up close and personal to read it, would I be escorted away?

Because they’re saying you won’t be let in if you are a fashion felon.

And what’s the extent of “commercial signage”? If you’re wearing a shirt with a Nike swoosh, would they strip it off you at the gate? Would they do that equally to men and women? Will they charge extra for the broadcast rights to film that? Will they have approved-sponsor logoed swag available for offending attendees to swap out? Or stock bags full of ratty old jackets from the jumble sale to layer over your Corona shirt?

What if it’s a shirt with a little polo pony logo? In pink? (Have they assigned an official sponsor color?)

This is really confusing, and not clarified at all by the pronouncements of Sebastian Coe, the official big cheese of the LOCOG. Coe, made a life peer for his work fronting the games (or maybe for having been a contender back in the day)—well, except that he doesn’t seem to do illegal substances, he reminds me some of Marion Barry. You just never know what he’s going to say next.

Coe is the one who announced authoritatively and publicly that if you show up at a venue wearing a shirt with a Pepsi logo on it, you’ll be chucked out. But, he added, if you’ve got Nikes on your feet you’ll “probably” be allowed in. (I am not making this stuff up.)

LOCOG immediately denounced this as a load of old cobbers. Well, okay, what they said was, “As an individual you are free to wear clothing of your choice.”

So—still not clear as to whether you’ll be let in (as long as you’re not there with 189 of your best buddies also wearing non-sponsor logos or colors, because that would be ambush marketing; or industrial-strength snottiness), denied entry, asked to remove your shirt, or have the offending logo painted over. Watch this space.

However, we can count on Coe (dubbed alternately “Lord Coe of Coca-Colashire” and “Lord of the Rings” by his not-fans) for more entertainment. At a press conference earlier this week, he was quite the hail-fellow-well-met, inviting international journalists to a right old piss-up. (I’m assuming that’s what the NPR reporter was being so coy about.)

Let me just say, from my own personal experience as a reporter for a daily newspaper, you don’t have to whisper “bar’s open” twice to a crowd of journalists.

And we have another day to go before it all officially starts. These are what I really call games.

Spam du jour

Well, the spammers are becoming a bit more sophisticated.

You may recall that a couple of months ago I received a “notice” purportedly from the US Postal Service, informing me that my “parcel” had been undelivered and was DOA in Des Moines. They wanted me to click on their link or be prepared to fork over $14.13 per day in storage storage fees.

Actually, what they said was “for each day of keeping of it”.

Well, a couple of weeks ago I received this:

This time they are using graphics, including the official USPS logo and a bar code. (and instead of threatening a daily storage fee, they want me to print the alleged label.) So it must be legit, no?

Well, no. There’s that awkward sentence with the non-US format of the date. And referring to the month of Juny. Not even our current USPS staff would send something out like that. I hope.

And again, there’s the use of the word “parcel”.

My Nigerian friends are at it again, bless their hearts.

Ride, Sally, Ride

I was shocked and saddened to learn of the death of pioneering astronaut Sally Ride. She succumbed to pancreatic cancer yesterday at the age of 61.

While I relish the knowledge that we don’t have to put the qualifier “female” in front of “astronaut” any more, it was Ride who broke that barrier and first had that title. She did it with unvarying grace, verve and professionalism.

She also made it look easy and like a boatload of fun.

I also like that she started out with a degree in English (albeit paired with one in physics). I like to think that her innate critical thinking abilities were honed in the liberal arts environment and that it helped to shape her fluid and truly engaging communication skills.

Ride flew two shuttle missions and then worked at Stanford and San Diego State University, teaching physics. She attracted students because of her career as an astronaut; she kept them because of her dedication and her ability to teach.

That she held out for 17 months against a vicious, predatory son-of-a-bitch like pancreatic cancer speaks to her courage and raw will.

She never stopped serving the goddess of motivating women to pursue careers in science and technology. Space and science were her deep and abiding passion, which you could tell immediately in even the smallest sound byte; she wanted other women to share the excitement of exploration.

Thirty years of girls and young women looked at Ride and thought, "Well, hmm. I bet I could do that, too..."

Ride expanded the boundaries of inner and outer space her entire career and I can’t help feeling that the world’s a wee bit smaller because she’s no longer with us.

In her honor, I’ll leave you with The Commitments singing “Mustang Sally”. If anyone was ever not going to slow that Mustang down, it was Sally Ride.

Aurora fatalis

I've been pondering the unfolding events at Aurora, Colo., since Friday morning.

But I just have no words.

Olympic fun & games

Hey—I told you that the Olympic Games in London would be entertaining even before they open, didn’t I? And so they are.

First, the actual opening ceremony is creating more drama than three rival high school cliques on a class trip. They’re being put on by filmmaker Danny Boyle, who’s been having run-ins with the official Olympics broadcasters, as well as falling victim to the realities of London public transport.

Boyle is probably looking back fondly on the storyline of his Trainspotting as being a cakewalk in comparison to his current gig. It’s so bad that LOCOG has actually admitted that there are “creative tensions”. When an official body concedes that there’s a slight problem, you know there are rivers of blood flowing.

For one thing, Boyle is fighting with organizers over camera positions for the company he’s hired to film the ceremony (in addition to the official games crews) as a narrative. I’m reminded here of the battles between Leni Riefenstahl and Josef Goebbels over the exact same thing back in 1936. She won and we got Olympia. Wonder what we’ll get out of this squabble?

Whatever it is, it’s going to be shorter than Boyle had planned: he’s had to cut 30 minutes from his extravaganza on account of otherwise no one’s sure people who’ve shelled out a week’s salary or more to attend will be able to get home afterward. That’s because London transport shuts down at 0230—a huge concession from the workforce, a screaming one hour after normal quitting time.

This doesn’t actually surprise me a lot, because British infrastructure workers and institutions aren’t really known for their flexibility. Example: I was on my way to a job interview in London on the Tube, when the train just halted at Edgware Road and stayed there. After some minutes (minutes, I tell you), someone came over the PA system to kindly inform us that the driver of this train had ended his shift and done what he always does, walked away; and the new driver hadn’t shown up yet, so we’d sit there (and every train behind us would sit wherever it was) until the next shift wandered in.

(And don't get me started on the tsuris it takes to open a bank account.)

Several million people coming to your country, paying many times over the odds for food, accommodation and other goods and services? Hey—they can just get stuffed. Sixty thousand revelers trying to get back to their hotels from the opening ceremony? If the job’s not done by quitting time, not your problem. Let 'em walk.

(They cut a whole three to four minutes from the schedule by axing a routine by stunt bikers. They’ll still get paid and get credit, but of course it’s not the same thing.)

But wait—there’s more. Again, as could have been predicted by anyone who’s ever spent more than 23 minutes in the country, those merry folks at HM immigration announced yesterday that they’re going on a 24-hour strike next Thursday, the day before the opening ceremony.

(Now, an interesting facet of this strike is that the PCS union is acting on a vote by their members: 57% of the only 20% of union members who actually returned their ballots voted for the walk-out. That would be basically 11% of their total membership. So 80% couldn't even be bothered. Not exactly what I'd call vox populi, but I guess the leaders feel they have to be seen to be taking action.)

Of course, if HM Government would like to avert the prospect of immigration queues at LHR stretching back to Philadelphia, they can accede to the union’s demands regarding pay, conditions and proposed job cuts.

Well, I’m sure we ain’t seen nothing yet. So stay tuned to the all-games-all-fun channel.