After one of the roughest-ever rides from vote to games by an Olympic host, the city of beaches, carnival, grinding poverty and sun-kissed wealth celebrated Brazil's can-do spirit, biodiversity and melting pot history.
The crowd roared when Bundchen sashayed from one side of the 78,000-seat arena to the other, as Tom Jobim's grandson, Daniel, played his grandfather's famous song about the Ipanema girl "tall and tan and young and lovely."
In a video preceding the show, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the games "celebrate the best of humanity" and appealed for an Olympic truce, calling on "all warring parties to lay down their weapons" during the two weeks of sporting achievement.
There were times after the International Olympic Committee selected Rio ahead of Chicago, Tokyo and Madrid in 2009 when it seemed that the city of 6.5 million people might not get its act together for the world's greatest sporting mega-event. The spreading health crisis of the mosquito-born Zika virus kept some athletes away. Promises to clean up Rio's filthy waters remained unfulfilled. The heavy bill for the games, at least $12 billion, made them unpopular with many. Heavily armed security stopped a small group of protesters from getting close to the stadium ahead of the ceremony.
9 comments:
The opening ceremony was terrible.
The Sludge Olympics.
Who cares?
I feel pretty bad for the athletes in the Olympics this year. They spent years of dedicated hard work and honed their skills and now they have to suffer through this disease riddled, incompetent, disastrous Olympic games. AND in an area of the world that no SANE person would voluntarily visit.
What a waste. For many of them this may be their last opportunity to really compete, because the shelf life of a gymnast or other athlete is really pretty short. By the time you are in your mid 20's you are almost too old. So they have to go to THIS disaster and hope they don't get killed, mugged, diseased or infected with the sewage that is everywhere.
The Olympics should just pick a spot. Build a nice venue and keep the games in the same place instead of all this wasteful building and rebuilding.
I feel bad for them.
The "socialists" of the world (our own, included) remind me of the old communist party in Russia about 20 years ago.
They forgot what they were formed to do and only worry about the bosses.
And will come to the same, if not worse, end.
Read a rather good summary of the opening at Rio, about halfway stopped dead at "those oblivious to the problem of global warming." How insulting. How presumptuous What's the point in continuing reading a politicized idiot? Why would I proceed for one more word? In real life that is the point where I'd yell at my interlocutor oh for Christ's sake, STFU!
Dropped down to comments and everyone else there felt and thought the same thing. All the comments referred to that one line .
At that point I decided I've had quite enough of the olympics already. A few highlights will be quite enough tyvm. I'm old enough to remember when these things were fun. I felt the excitement of living in an olympic city when I was ten, before they were boycotted for political reasons, before they used to draw attention to Palestinians, before Jewish athletes and coaches were murdered, twice, before all the East European doping became standard, before poor cities went bankrupt hosting them, before IOC was run entirely be fatcats unable to do anything athletic themselves, before Obama's ego and presumption embarrassed the U.S.., and that distant memory is clear as yesterday and it's satisfying enough for lifetime and better than anything now, overshadowed as they are by everything else.
This is what happens when a person ages. We realize what pure shit everything is. Good luck to the young athletes having the time of their lives. See you in highlights.
I have always hated the Olympics. It is sports for people who hate sports. Made up sports for television. Hey first you bike then you swim then you shoot at a target then you bake cupcakes and then you run a marathon.
The proof of how much the Olympics suck is that perhaps the best American Olympian ever is famous for becoming a broad.
Of course I was forced to watch the opening ceremony because the wife loves the pageantry. It actually wasn't that bad. It was a big parade with a lot of politically correct commentary that I was able to tune out as I was listening to Louie Prima on my ipad. But the colors were pretty and the fireworks at the end were pretty cool. I take comfort in the fact that the money they spent on this nonsense did not go to feeding the starving hordes in their ghettos so there is that.
Trooper York said...
The proof of how much the Olympics suck is that perhaps the best American Olympian ever is famous for becoming a broad.
Even that didn't work.
Bruce still has his appurtenances.
The Olympics should just be the original games that Homer wrote about. None of the extra shit.
Why should I watch basketball to root for Black Lives Matters activists like Carmelo Anthony supposedly representing me? He doesn't represent me. He is the reason I have to repudiate a team I rooted for fifty years through thick and thin. I sure ain't gonna watch them now when I won't watch them in the real games.
What a farce.
That is Homer the blind poet guy not the fat fuck on the Simpsons.
Post a Comment