Last night I fell asleep watching Sigourney Weaver try to win the White House, only to spring awake to the wild sight of Annie Lennox riding a skeletal Goth boat across a red-lit Olympic stadium, accompanied by the walking dead. Now, Annie and Sigourney are two of my favorite public women, so this wasn't a terrible Sunday, as Sundays go. Just bizarre. (Very, very bizarre.)
It took a few minutes for me to realize I was in my own bed and it was three a.m. The closing ceremonies for the Olympics was re-running.In actuality, Sigourney was probably asleep and dreaming of another cool film project. Annie was still celebrating with champagne and Advil. The Olympics of 2012 were finito.
And yet, on screen, more wildness emerged.
I kept thinking that it was a mash up of every contemporary British music personality that had some sort of international audience. Then, it shape-shifted into "live- on- the- Yellow Submarine". (I honestly gasped when the head of John Lennon disintegrated into hundreds of puzzle pieces, while white tee-shirted youth knelt and signed "Imagine".)
The costumes kept coming, as did the characters. Peter Max and "Willie Wonka" mixing it up with the reunion of the Spice Girls; motor-cyclists and scooter-riders; Vespa chicks wearing Union Jacks; top eschelon female models walking runways-- after being let loose from truckbeds; beauty queens and lycra- clad men with eight-packs; high- wire guys shaking hands with flaming dolls; Brazilian vocalists (gliding by in skirts constructed of something like giant flower petals piled ten feet high); all the while fireworks and motor cars and psychedelic light shows created alien languages across the Olympic audience.
I thought, briefly, in my stunned stupor : "All that's missing is Eric Idle--I mean, even Freddie Mercury's ghost has appeared long enough to lead the masses in song!"
Suddenly, Eric WAS there. Climbing out of a hundred foot circus cannon; surrounded by every member of British society that one has come to love--including flying nuns on inline skates--some of whom had to be actual linebackers, in drag! All the while, Eric blithely bellowed his favorite tune about looking at the lighter side of life! (Lighter side??!)
When the circus cannon actually shot a performer across the stadium, safely into a net, it was almost anti-climactic. Almost. But it was the stupid, flat looking, wire sculptured "Phoenix" which arose from the dying Olympic torch flames, that seemed to put a lid on things. What should have been the greatest hurrah was a bit of a downer, after all the other antics.
The usual Olympic Committee boys and their "thank all thank God" speeches were the expected buzzkill. (Cameras panned the crowd, showing most of the athletes weren't even listening--nor was the crowd. Who could blame them?) After an exhausting and wilding show of several hours, on top of seventeen days of competition (and whatever travel plans everyone had to deal with), old gray men, however prestigious, will never get our full-attention. (What were they thinking?)
Perhaps that's the key. They weren't thinking. It was a full-blown London acid trip meant to be simply staged and then organically loosed.
(I had come in earlier, from coffee with a friend, to find both parental units watching the closing of the Olympics. I knew they were avid fans, having the games on for twenty-four seven, all seventeen days. This was to be expected. I paid it little mind.) However, upon waking up in the wee hours and experiencing the hoopla in exactly the mindscape that I was, I have to wonder what the hell they thought?
Since 1974, Dad has categorized all music into two branches: Church music (which can also include military, opera, classical, any large chorale group, etc.) and Screaming.
Nothing else exists. I don't think he even has a preference for anything particular in the first group. I know he detests everything in the second. I have no way to decipher the closing of the Olympics of 2012 from his perspective. Perhaps it was simply background to his nodding off after dinner (and a particularly hard family weekend)? Perhaps as they sat through it, both parental units daydreamed about the athletes; their lives; their families; how none of us were ever sporto enough to take that track; how Gardner has never produced an Olympic medalist; how this may be the last Olympiad either of them witnesses...
I should ask, but I won't. It just seems too private, somehow. They get defensive when they get confused and I can't see as how they would not be confused over the spectacle in London, last night.
Entertaining: yes.
Loud and brilliant: yes.
Expected: never.
Perhaps London feels the predictions of 2012 are already in motion.
This IS it.
(But, if the English have any say, we are going out with a bang--NOT a whimper.)
It took a few minutes for me to realize I was in my own bed and it was three a.m. The closing ceremonies for the Olympics was re-running.In actuality, Sigourney was probably asleep and dreaming of another cool film project. Annie was still celebrating with champagne and Advil. The Olympics of 2012 were finito.
And yet, on screen, more wildness emerged.
I kept thinking that it was a mash up of every contemporary British music personality that had some sort of international audience. Then, it shape-shifted into "live- on- the- Yellow Submarine". (I honestly gasped when the head of John Lennon disintegrated into hundreds of puzzle pieces, while white tee-shirted youth knelt and signed "Imagine".)
The costumes kept coming, as did the characters. Peter Max and "Willie Wonka" mixing it up with the reunion of the Spice Girls; motor-cyclists and scooter-riders; Vespa chicks wearing Union Jacks; top eschelon female models walking runways-- after being let loose from truckbeds; beauty queens and lycra- clad men with eight-packs; high- wire guys shaking hands with flaming dolls; Brazilian vocalists (gliding by in skirts constructed of something like giant flower petals piled ten feet high); all the while fireworks and motor cars and psychedelic light shows created alien languages across the Olympic audience.
I thought, briefly, in my stunned stupor : "All that's missing is Eric Idle--I mean, even Freddie Mercury's ghost has appeared long enough to lead the masses in song!"
Suddenly, Eric WAS there. Climbing out of a hundred foot circus cannon; surrounded by every member of British society that one has come to love--including flying nuns on inline skates--some of whom had to be actual linebackers, in drag! All the while, Eric blithely bellowed his favorite tune about looking at the lighter side of life! (Lighter side??!)
When the circus cannon actually shot a performer across the stadium, safely into a net, it was almost anti-climactic. Almost. But it was the stupid, flat looking, wire sculptured "Phoenix" which arose from the dying Olympic torch flames, that seemed to put a lid on things. What should have been the greatest hurrah was a bit of a downer, after all the other antics.
The usual Olympic Committee boys and their "thank all thank God" speeches were the expected buzzkill. (Cameras panned the crowd, showing most of the athletes weren't even listening--nor was the crowd. Who could blame them?) After an exhausting and wilding show of several hours, on top of seventeen days of competition (and whatever travel plans everyone had to deal with), old gray men, however prestigious, will never get our full-attention. (What were they thinking?)
Perhaps that's the key. They weren't thinking. It was a full-blown London acid trip meant to be simply staged and then organically loosed.
(I had come in earlier, from coffee with a friend, to find both parental units watching the closing of the Olympics. I knew they were avid fans, having the games on for twenty-four seven, all seventeen days. This was to be expected. I paid it little mind.) However, upon waking up in the wee hours and experiencing the hoopla in exactly the mindscape that I was, I have to wonder what the hell they thought?
Since 1974, Dad has categorized all music into two branches: Church music (which can also include military, opera, classical, any large chorale group, etc.) and Screaming.
Nothing else exists. I don't think he even has a preference for anything particular in the first group. I know he detests everything in the second. I have no way to decipher the closing of the Olympics of 2012 from his perspective. Perhaps it was simply background to his nodding off after dinner (and a particularly hard family weekend)? Perhaps as they sat through it, both parental units daydreamed about the athletes; their lives; their families; how none of us were ever sporto enough to take that track; how Gardner has never produced an Olympic medalist; how this may be the last Olympiad either of them witnesses...
I should ask, but I won't. It just seems too private, somehow. They get defensive when they get confused and I can't see as how they would not be confused over the spectacle in London, last night.
Entertaining: yes.
Loud and brilliant: yes.
Expected: never.
Perhaps London feels the predictions of 2012 are already in motion.
This IS it.
(But, if the English have any say, we are going out with a bang--NOT a whimper.)
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