From Russia With Love

Okay, I said I'd have Winter Olympics commentary starting around Tuesday, but as noted Chrysler spokesman Bob Dylan might say, things have changed.

I turned on my television set Friday night late in order to see the opening ceremony of the Sochi Winter Games, and I found myself in the middle of the athletes' flag-waving parade.  After twenty minutes, I shrugged, switched off the TV, and went back to reading my book.  As it turned out, I tuned in too late and tuned out too soon to see any of the spectacle Olympic opening ceremonies are known for.  I have since seen the reply of the Sochi opening ceremony online.

Okay, I gotta admit, it was pretty impressive.  The organizers presented Russian history and culture through the dream of a small girl, who got to float around over the various spectacles and entertainments.  With the help of computer-programmed lights, the ceremony took people through an explanation of how the old Muscovite and Slavic dominions built themselves into the Russian state, showed how Peter the Great modernized Russia by introducing new ideas from the West and building St. Petersburg out of nothing and making it a center of Russian intellectual and cultural life - it was the capital of Russia until the Bolshevik revolution.  (We Americans built Washington out of a swamp just like St. Petersburg was, but our national capital is neither a center of intellectual life nor of cultural life, as Congress so often proves.)  

The ballet performances were inspiring, and the light shows were good (too bad about that snowflake that didn't turn into an Olympic ring, though another set of snowflakes turning into Olympic rings that were shown on the floor of the stadium worked), but of course the the romanticization of the Soviet era as an era of progress and solidarity was more of a nostalgia trip for oldsters who remember their first Lada cars and Young Pioneers rural retreats than an acknowledgment of a harsh past.  In short, Russians overdo sixties nostalgia just like we do.  (And who am I, as an American, to judge the Russians?  In the United States, where we're in the middle of celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Beatles' arrival in America as I type, we think of the 1960s as the good old days despite political assassinations, the Vietnam War, and the fact that we almost lost Detroit in 1966 and did lose it in 1967.)  Overall, the ceremony was good, and maybe I should have gotten my nose out of my book when it was on TV Friday night.  Books are good, but sometimes parading - with flags - is better. ;-)

Now, to the actual sports.  I've been watching team figure skating, a new spin on an old event, which I'm convinced was created out of the idea  that what the world needs are more figure skating events.  But I'm relieved to see that many of the women's figure skating competitors appear to be women, not girls.  Tonight? Bode Miller makes his Sochi debut on the ski slopes. 

(The Beatles tribute from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences tonight on CBS? I'll likely record it and save it for after the Games.  The Beatles convention this weekend was fun, thank you. :-) )