Vancouver 2010: Lit up

For those of you who missed the opening ceremonies to the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, you have two options. If you’re in Canada, you can just switch on CTV, which is already into its second re-broadcast of the event. If you’re not in Canada and can’t watch the ceremonies on YouTube because they’ve been blocked/taken down, you can basically just watch this instead. And it’ll save you like, three hours:

Yeah.

The ceremony had its moments worth remembering – namely, when the Georgian team entered the stadium, and the moment of silence for 21 year-old Nodar Kumaritashvili, that nation’s luger who tragically died early Friday on a training run. The tribute wasn’t overdone or played upon too much, and due to that it was quite respectful, despite being so depressingly tragic.

If you happen to be from Canada, there was a fleeting moment of something called “patriotism” when the red-clad Canucks entered and blew the roof off B.C. Place. There were also a few cool moments during the cultural part of the event (like some imaginary whales), but those were mostly lost behind a wall of placid, overly-stereotypical, and seemingly endless moments of Canadiana – whatever that is – expressed by way of slam poetry. We even had a new rendition of O Canada, sung this time in the style of a mid-1980’s lite rock song, performed by a girl who nobody’d ever heard of until about a month ago.

But otherwise, it was a lot like the video above, except with more hydraulic problems, fewer U.S-known celebrities, and a lot more footage of Wayne Gretzky standing in the back of a truck in the rain for what seemed like forever until they finally parked at the harbour long enough for him to get out and light the official torch. Then everyone chanted “Gretz-ky! Gretz-ky!” because we love him, by the way.

Oh, and then there were fireworks.

Whatever. When does hockey start?