London Calling

Well, I saw the opening ceremony for the London Olympics, and I was quite impressed.  The organizers used what American producer David Wolper might have called "good glitz and glitter" - a lot of presentations celebrating everything wonderful about the United Kingdom.  Specifically, they celebrated their agricultural heritage, their industrial heritage, their literature and music, and even their wonderful health care system.  Is is really wonderful? Well, it's better than ours, at any rate.  So, in fact, was this opening ceremony in comparison to Atlanta in 1996.  

But how about Her Majesty, eh? The idea of the Queen going along with a pre-filmed skit playing herself  opposite Daniel Craig as James Bond, in which Bond escorts Elizabeth II to the ceremony, sounded ridiculous - heck, it seemed ridiculous even as I was watching it!  It took me awhile before I realized that it wasn't a commercial for something.  (Wait, I thought, was that really the Queen?)  And no, Her Majesty didn't actually jump out of that helicopter with a parachute!  But, apart from Paul McCartney's performance in . . . the end, the best moment was probably Lord Sebastian Coe, the president of the London organizing committee, who lauded the Games and the spirit of international brotherhood through sport.  Lord Coe should know; he was part of the 1980 U.K. Olympic team that defied Margaret Thatcher's call to support U.S. President Jimmy Carter's boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

But enough about the past.  What's going on right now? Well, as I type, NBC is showing tape-delayed coverage of the women's beach volleyball competition.  The good news is that Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh - who has since gotten married and is now Kerri Walsh-Jennings, going by a hyphenated double surname like her teammate and many of their British hosts -  are on.  The bad news is that the cool English weather forced them to wear tops over their regular outfits, which show off their impressive bods.  Before you ladies insist I wax misogynistic, I need only remind you of your obsession with "Sexi Alexei" Nemov at the men's gymnastics competition in Atlanta.  (Okay, maybe I need to refer to the past every once in awhile. . ..)

The U.S. women's volleyball team had to work at it to win their first match, getting tough competition from the South Koreans.  The Yanks are favored for the gold medal in that sport.  So were the Brits in the road race in men's cycling, but a Kazakh cyclist who had been banned for two years for doping - Alexander Vinokourov - redeemed itself by winning the gold medal.  At 38, Vinokourov, who had retired briefly, is retiring permanently and quitting while he's ahead.  Someone should have told track star Lolo Jones to do the same after she started tweeting.  Seems Ms. Jones, disappointed that the Americans didn't win the gold medal in men's archery, expressed optimism that they should do well in the shooting competition.  When Jones  realized that she sounded insensitive only a week after the Aurora shootings, she explained that she was impressed with the marksmanship of American hunters, suggesting that the Aurora shootings hadn't crossed  her mind . . . and suggesting that she should stop going on Twitter and start going on CNN.com.