Two words: stunt-queen.
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28 responses to “Obligatory London2012 Thread”
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Stuntqueen was awesome! I’m loving it that the opening ceremony is celebrating things like children’s literature and universal healthcare. And now I want to be a child in PJs bouncing on a bed at the ceremony. How much fun does that look like?
So far I’ve only seen a few highlights on news channels – I’m recording the repeat broadcast on cable though, and will enjoy watching it all tomorrow!
Missed the lot so far, but what I have read on Twitter sounds like fun.
I’ve got a bizarre split on my twitter feed between people excited about the Olympics, and people concerned about the arrested cyclists from Critical Mass. It’s looking almost certain that police used unnecessary force – there’s one video of what looks like a police officer attempting to assault a man in a wheel chair and being held back by a medic.
I really cannot get enthusiastic about the Olympics while it’s being used as an excuse to limit civil liberties.
I’m divided on that myself, Kirstente. I do like the shiny Olympics things, but the underbelly is pretty damn grubby.
Having said that, I do have to admit that stuntqueen was , and I wouldn’t want to criticise other people for getting enthusiastic.
YES.
I, and some of my friends, wondered whether the universal healthcare motif, along side industrial Britain with it’s explicit showing of steelworks was a bit of a subversive dig at the Tory govt, who are currently making massive cuts to the NHS and in their last term of power closed down the steel industry in the UK. That ‘myth-history’ of what made Britain great chose some particularly painful memories for our ruling party, and interestingly situated our ‘greatness’ very much in the past.
I also like the facebook meme that’s going about just now of the Queen at the opening ceremony where she looks very grumpy. It reads ‘Look at all those countries I used to own’.
On a mailing list full of my oldest invisible
threadsfriends, it has been speculated that since the Opening Ceremony was so very much focussed on the past, that the Closing Ceremony might well be focussed on the future, in which case I expect TARDISes to be bouncing about all over the shop.Apparently in the USA, NBC is using London Calling as the theme song for its Olympics Coverage. That’s right up there with dancing to Every Breath You Take at your wedding.
The NBC coverage is awful. It’s extremely focused on the US athletes in very specific sports (more so on either count than the Aussie coverage) and will spend twenty minutes on a boring interview while not even giving a thirty second update on non-major events happening. Bleh. Also they keep on showing volleyball when medals are actually being awarded elsewhere.
Also I find it amusing that the two ads with on high rotation are using shots of mainly US athletes with ACDC and the Rolling Stones as the soundtrack :)
Slightly boggled by corporate sponsors not filling up their seats in their sponsor boxes in the main stadium. Isn’t it PR101 to just run some competitions for their customers if they can’t fill up the seats from in-house? Why didn’t they have that sorted out weeks ago?
OMG,not safe for some workplaces because of beefcake overload and likely to kill dial-up connections dead: http://olympicsexualfrustration.tumblr.com/
I was very excited that they showed some of the equestrian on TV last night.
I saw a few minutes of gymnastics highlights this morning after days of excited anticipation. Honestly, Channel Nine, there are sports besides swimming and rowing. Very disappointing coverage.
Oh, fuck Channel Nine. We just watched men’s cycling time trials while the Opals were playing an exciting final quarter of basketball against Brazil.
Chally – we saw lots of gymnastics earlier in the week while the Aussie team was trying to qualify, but I think coverage has fallen off since then.
Yeah, I was happy to catch Joshua Jefferis just now, though. And Japan’s Uchimura is something amazing to watch…!
Woke up in the wee hours and decided to watch the cable coverage of the women’s gymnastics that I recorded earlier: what a wonderfully close competition for the medals. It all came down to a few balance-checks in the end. Gorgeous routines.
Congratulations to Gabrielle Douglas for the individual all-round gold. Love that smile!
Tigtog, I’m the American, I get to brag about Gabrielle! Hehe
What I really like about her winning a gold is that it’s another big break through for the African American community in an area of sports that has been mostly dominated by whites.
And, it also happened in the same term when the first African American president was elected.
US coverage is irritating – I so agree. It’s a bit over the top with smug, self congratulation and definitely US centric. Surprise, surprise.
I assume you are supporting the OZ team for soccer? I’m still debating whether to choose Germany or Vietnam. (I’m half German and half Vietnamese)
I’m liking the cool names of some of the athletes. My favourite so far is Johnson-Thomson (women’s heptathlon).
Also trampolining is an Olympic sport. I did not know that.
TAK, elite trampolining is pretty spectacular, isn’t it?
maiforpeace, not to take anything away from Gabby (heh – only just found out her nickname is “The Flying Squirrel”), but I did feel bad for the Russian who took silver in the all-round,t Victoria Komova. If she’d nailed her vault then she would have won. But that’s kinda the point, isn’t it?
Looking forward to seeing Gabby in the uneven bars competition next week. (Gymnasts get more chances than most other athletes for medals, don’t they?)
By the way everyone, feel free to call me by my real name, Mai – as in Mai-tai.
Amazing Kim, Johnson Thompson is cute. How about Destiny Hooker? From the US women’ volleyball team. Hubby and I couldn’t stop laughing every time her name was announced.
Tigtog, that pains me too, especially when you consider the small degree of separation that makes a gold or silver.
At Mai Olympics, everyone should get a gold!
Perhaps that would shut the damn Australian press up.
With apologies to my many ocean swimming friends: your sport is not making for great visuals tonight.
It was a bit horrible watching the heats of the 200m: so many false starts, and as in swimming, a single false start is a disqualification now. Ouch. Then tonight in the 4x400m heats Vincent Killu collided with Ofentse Mogawane, and Mogawane was to pass the baton to Oscar Pistorius, so Pistorius didn’t get to run. In the following heat Jermaine Gonzales also had to pull up due to injury, so Jamaica was out too. I’ve never paid much attention to track before, it seems like the chances of completing the race you came to run can be pretty slim!
For the gymnastics fans, do you enjoy the commentator Channel Nine uses? I find her very critical in a way that I am sure is appropriate in judging (since gymnastics is one of those sports where the scoring is largely subtracting points for each fault) but is not awfully entertaining to me.
Also, I had no idea how interesting sports can be to little kids. My son is so excited by “people! running around!” (he watched the men’s hurdles) that he ran something like 700m the next day unprompted. He is really into it, to the point where occasionally watching “people! running around” and “JUMP inna pool!” (diving) is requested even before Thomas the Tank Engine episodes.
After reading your post I just switched over to the rhythmic gymnastics on cable – it’s a while since I’ve watched the sport – I’m slightly shocked by how sparkly everything has become.
My 3 and 5 year olds love it! They’ve been getting into it more and more. They’ve decided at various times that they will be gymnasts, horse riders and even referees. The little one loves the one eyed mascot especially.
Yeah, I could do without the sparkles in gymnastics. While the women are getting older the get up is getting more princessy. Actually, it’s awesome watching a grown woman do amazing gymnastics, after all those years of everyone being convinced that anyone over 16 is over the hill.
The World Today radio show had a segment today about gender testing for athletes. The testing is horrible, but the radio segment was truly awful. It used “hermaphrodite” all the way through, and had some nong talking about how intersex athletes are all scheming liars and shouldn’t be allowed to compete. Am seething.