London™ 2012™ Olympics®

  On 7/28/2012 at 11:50 PM, jefferoo said:

Sincere question.

Did any of you Brits actually feel that this opening ceremony embodied anything of what is is to be "British"?

 

 

Nothing says British more than a giant animated statue of Voldemort.

i haven't seen it, i didn't really see the beijing one.. but obviously the beijing was going to be more of a spectacle... britain is dull as fuck. they should have tried to make it as boring as possible.

  On 7/28/2012 at 11:51 PM, YO303 said:

  On 7/28/2012 at 11:50 PM, jefferoo said:

Sincere question.

Did any of you Brits actually feel that this opening ceremony embodied anything of what is is to be "British"?

 

 

Nothing says British more than a giant animated statue of Voldemort.

 

LOL

  On 7/28/2012 at 11:53 PM, tauboo said:

i haven't seen it, i didn't really see the beijing one.. but obviously the beijing was going to be more of a spectacle... britain is dull as fuck. they should have tried to make it as boring as possible.

 

Just a big video loop of the 60th jubilee regatta.

  On 7/28/2012 at 11:39 PM, dean789 said:

  On 7/28/2012 at 11:00 PM, kakapo said:

I do hope mccartney dies soon though.

Same to you too

 

Reported.

 

  On 7/28/2012 at 11:50 PM, jefferoo said:

Sincere question.

Did any of you Brits actually feel that this opening ceremony embodied anything of what is is to be "British"?

 

 

Yes.

Edited July 29, 2012 by kakapo

I don't know if I can bring myself to watch it.

i'm watching it now. is it 4 hours long?

  On 7/28/2012 at 11:50 PM, jefferoo said:

Sincere question.

Did any of you Brits actually feel that this opening ceremony embodied anything of what is is to be "British"?

 

I honestly enjoyed watching the Olympic countries' procession part the best.

This really made me feel like the Beijing (however surreal and absurd) blew this one away. Tough act to follow, I guess.

yes absolutely. I'm pretty cynical and not very jingoistic but the ceremony was incredible, it blew me away. Captured the very best of Britain - music, literature, multiculturalism, humour, self-deprevation. Also it was a show which very accurately portrayed our history, warts and all. Fantastic

 

Edited July 29, 2012 by tauboo

haven't seen this one, but id imagine it would be hard to top the Beijing opening ceremony

what's the deal with all the athletes wearing oakley's sunglasses? are oakley's fashionable again or is it just a functional thing? i remember i always wanted a pair when i was young but not so much anymore...

can they really protect you against a thermonuclear explosion? i mean, that's a pretty bold claim... and why would you want to preserve just your eyes if the rest of you got vaporized? i dunno, there's something very fishy about oakley.

  On 7/29/2012 at 2:42 AM, yek said:

what's the deal with all the athletes wearing oakley's sunglasses? are oakley's fashionable again or is it just a functional thing? i remember i always wanted a pair when i was young but not so much anymore...

 

sponsorship

wait...dean789 is paul mccartney?

yeah they're payed to wear that shit

 

i dunno if i finished watching the opening ceremony or not.. i don't even remember closing the tab. went outside and got between two dudes beating eachother up. one scarpered and the other told me how that dude had just started on him and was punching him in the face, but apparently he got a few in too. that's got nothing to do with the olympic opening ceremony though

 

  On 7/29/2012 at 3:08 AM, BCM said:

wait...dean789 is paul mccartney?

yeah

Good on you for stopping a fight.

  On 7/28/2012 at 2:57 PM, BCM said:

yeah, i don't get the hate (apart from the usual problem of every cunt being a critic these days and thinking everything is "shit" because it's the thing people believe they are expected to say in today's fucked up world). but anyway, it was the opening ceremony of a worldwide sporting event - of course it was going to be full of clichés and stereotypes! what's so wrong with that? i think it was really well done - dynamic and interesting to watch, funny in places (bond & HM the Q was wicked). i mean, nothing went wrong, it was performed brilliantly by the participants, the crowd appeared to be loving it and having a great time, it was spectacular and full of energy...i could go on.

 

this - I thought the set itself was well-planned out and clever and these things are always inherently silly anyway.

 

  On 7/28/2012 at 4:21 PM, Hoodie said:

  On 7/28/2012 at 7:52 AM, joshuatx said:

 

If they apologize and re-rename themselves the Butt Fuckons, they could win ya'll back, amirite?

 

y'all*

 

you're not a very good texan >:|

 

No, I'm not :/ Or very good at typing. But yeah, no accent here - that said, I do say y'all IRL sometimes. I never got "Yinz" though, [sorry Pennsylvania]

  On 7/29/2012 at 3:14 AM, tauboo said:

yeah they're payed to wear that shit

 

i dunno if i finished watching the opening ceremony or not.. i don't even remember closing the tab. went outside and got between two dudes beating eachother up. one scarpered and the other told me how that dude had just started on him and was punching him in the face, but apparently he got a few in too. that's got nothing to do with the olympic opening ceremony though

 

  On 7/29/2012 at 3:08 AM, BCM said:

wait...dean789 is paul mccartney?

yeah

Yeah and i'm gonna stick around for another thirty plus years just to piss you all off

BTW i'm not a fan of old macca, its just not cool to wish the man to die

I was talking to my friend last night who watched some american coverage of the opening ceremony - he told me that during the country procession, they did the first three or four countries, cut to commercial and then came back to the US. Can anyone confirm that?

Also, could you imagine the shitstorm the US media would throw if a supposed ally decided to ignore a tribute to 9/11?

I love how the Italians wear Armani, the Americans wear Ralph Lauren and the bloody Brits wear Next... smooth move Stella

I love how half the seats are empty at a lot of events. It pissed me off from day one of the proceedings, and apparently everyone else too. Especially the english that couldn't get tickets to events.

 

  Quote

Organizers of the London Olympics have been forced to give free tickets to soldiers as events sold out to the public months ago have rows and rows of empty seats. Bureaucrats and VIPs from the so-called “Olympic family” are blamed.

­The tennis at Wimbledon, the beach volleyball on Horse Guards Parade, and the gymnastics in the North Greenwich Arena, formerly The Dome, where the UK team was considered one of the favorites, remained half-empty – despite no tickets ever being on general sale. Entire blocks of empty seats – almost always those with the best views near the action – have been seen on millions of TV screens during the live broadcasts.

Jeremy Hunt, the Olympics Minister, said the lack of spectators was “very disappointing”, while the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, Locog, has promised a “full review”.

Unhappy families

 

Working out just who is not taking the prime seats, has proved a challenge in itself. Initially, the sponsors, who are given 8 per cent of the seats, were blamed.

"It doesn't obviously appear to be a sponsorship issue at the moment," countered Locog chairman Sebastian Coe.

Instead, the amorphous “Olympic family” has now been fingered as the main suspect. This includes the bureaucrats organizing the games, their guests, the athletes themselves (those not competing in the event) and the media.

In total, these partners receive about a quarter of the seats at most venues, and even more at marquee events such as the opening ceremony, which also seemed to empty out as the teams of athletes entered the stadium, despite being oversubscribed by a factor of ten when tickets originally went on sale.

"There are tens of thousands of people at the moment within the accredited “family” who are trying to figure out what their day looks like," said Coe in defense of the absentees.

 

Army to the rescue

 

Public anger has forced Locog to scramble for solutions. Their answer has been to turn to soldiers and schoolchildren.

“So we were able to move those troops – I'm not quite sure whether they were on a rest period or whether it was a transition from work through to a rest period, but they're sitting there enjoying the gymnastics,” explained Coe.

Children from nearby schools, who were on waiting lists, were also bussed in at short notice to take up the empty seats.

Coe said that tickets from those leaving early will be re-sold at the entrance, and Lord Moynihan of the British Olympic Association has touted the “30-minute rule”. This would mean that if seats are not taken up within half an hour of the start, they are given for free to people queuing outside. Another measure would give fans in the cheap seats an opportunity to move up to the VIP sectors.

It is not clear whether it will be possible to implement these measures halfway through the Games, which have been in preparation for the past seven years, but Lord Coe rejected calls for non-observing officials to be stripped of their free seats.

“Let's not run away with ourselves here,” said Coe.

“It's not for the organizing committee to remove accreditation.”

For many in the UK, the empty seat imbroglio has added insult to injury, after millions lost out in a lottery in which punters often had to make hundreds of pounds worth of bids to have any chance of receiving any tickets at all. There were more than 15 million failed applications for the 6.6 million available tickets.

However, Coe believes the situation will improve as the Olympics move from preliminary heats to the finals, and more and more athletes and officials arrive in London.

 

link

 

That coe is such a twat. Deflecting blame away from sponsors allocated tickets for one. And then making excuses for the 'olympic family' tickets. I mean obviously they'll show up for the finals, that's where the prestige is. But we know where they are now, they'll all out shopping and don't give a toss about sport. Whilst the real Olympic families and the people of britain miss out.

 

twat.

they missed out on including a 'whinging pom' tribute to the opening ceremony

  On 7/29/2012 at 7:58 PM, chenGOD said:

I was talking to my friend last night who watched some american coverage of the opening ceremony - he told me that during the country procession, they did the first three or four countries, cut to commercial and then came back to the US. Can anyone confirm that?

Also, could you imagine the shitstorm the US media would throw if a supposed ally decided to ignore a tribute to 9/11?

This did not happen when I watched it. Did they have a tribute to 9/11? I don't remember one.

 

  On 7/29/2012 at 10:51 PM, gmanyo said:

  On 7/29/2012 at 7:58 PM, chenGOD said:

I was talking to my friend last night who watched some american coverage of the opening ceremony - he told me that during the country procession, they did the first three or four countries, cut to commercial and then came back to the US. Can anyone confirm that?

Also, could you imagine the shitstorm the US media would throw if a supposed ally decided to ignore a tribute to 9/11?

This did not happen when I watched it. Did they have a tribute to 9/11? I don't remember one.

 

There was a tribute to the 7/7 bombing victims or something, bunch of photo's of 'those who could not be with us'.