I went to Olympics.org and they had some links to video clips for each opening ceremony through the years. I didn't watch them so I can't vouch for them.
I'm with you. I love the scale, the innovation, the pageantry. At one point I turned to GD and said "I'm so glad pageantry is still around." You're right, you don't see anything like this anywhere else, and all the symbolism and oddness make it really unique.

I enjoyed nearly every minute. I think the only truly bad part was when Yoko had to READ her "poem" off a piece of paper. For God's sake, she couldn't memorize it? Oh, and she's still a nutter after all these years. Blech.

GD's Peter Gabriel/Vader observation was killing me. Every time they did a close up I was in hysterics.

But everything else was beautiful and amazing. :snap:

Stupidest line from an announcer (other than 90% of what Costas said) so far:

"There have been no upsets so far today [in womens' hockey], and none are expected."

Well, uh, yeah, if they were expected they wouldn't be upsets!

I missed it last night, but managed to watch the beginning at 3am. By 4 am I was ready for sleep. What I did see was ok, nothing really great, just ok. I would have appreciated it more if I had been sitting in the stadium. The one thing I really liked was the music.

Oh hell. Looks like I'm going to have to spend the next two weeks without visiting any news sites as they all have results of stuff yet-to-be-aired right on their front page. Lame.

On another subject...oooh, ski jumping.

I just checked it out...you were one click short. Really bad design, but on the page that shows your local affiliate is a "Finish" button. That brings up the full schedule.

Pavarotti needs to stop coloring his hair. We all know it ain't jet black no more. Tenors! Sheesh.
:D

I thought I'd clicked the button. Maybe they fixed it, I see that now the "Schedule" link on the curling page actually provides the curling schedule now (and not the speed skating schedule).

I missed Ice Dancing????

Damn.

Maybe it was compulsaries - those are boring. But, if it was the short program, damn.

I know Pairs short is on tonight. I'm going to park my non-bubble rush in front of the screen.

Thoughts on the new scoring system in figure skating:

1) I'm baffled. The scandal in 2002 was not becuse the scoring system was broken, it was because a couple judges cheated. So why in god's name was the scoring changed? I mean, I can understand the anonymous/9 of 12 scores at random part. That directly adressed the problem of one or two judges being able to purposely fix a score. But the whole thing about turning it all technical? Bloody pointless.

2) With this amazing new scoring system that's supposed to judge on the technical excellence of each element, then why did the American couple that landed a flawless triple axel throw and were whose synchronization was fairly good score lower than both Chinese couples, one whose synchronizatino sucked start to finish, and one who had a hand down on the very first jump?

Lame. Good skating, but lame.