I'm kinda glad I did, to save the sniffles until now.

Oh, I've been blinky-eyed off and on through the whole thing.

I loved the drumming, and the printing press bit. and the Tai Chi folks running in circles. On rewind, I could see the earphones, which at least begin to explain how they were so perfectly in unison.

Pretty awesome.

I also loved the Ghana-an outfits. Whereas the Hungarians --was it the Hungarians with the red flowers all over the women's outfits? -- ought to be ashamed.

Also, the American hats were dorky. Esp since the broadcasters kept calling them "berets". They're driving caps, doofuses. Sheesh.

Still, that was... pretty damned remarkable. Except that it was clear a ton of those people weren't actually athletes, so now I don't know whether the Iraqi woman is competing, or is just a friend/assistant/coach/whatever.

Dude, in Australia an archer lit it from hundreds of feet away.

No, that was Barcelona. If Australia went that route, we probably would've had someone cracking a tinnie, finishing it, stuffing the torch inside and bowling it overarm into a giant wheelie bin.

Most of those pictures seemed to say "Welcome to China. We have a fuckton plus of people. Just so you know."

Wallybee approves of this message.

I fell asleep last nightbefore the athletes. Yay Tivo.

The globe and the dancers/acrobats were extremely cool. There were so many time when it looked like gravity did not exist.

I"m now doing my own watch and post. The athletes always get my so almost teary. I know it is idealistic, but I see all this hope and pride in who you are.

No Tivo here, but Peter was up at 5:30 and they were replaying on NBC, so we saw the flying man and the torch!

They have dancers between semis and finals. Needless to say, we don't get that at normal tournaments, and if we did they'd probably suck.

Morning camera angles better for pretty teevee, worse for seeing.

Becca bronze

mariel gold, sada silver. Holy crap they swept. Fantastic final, but sada tried to win playing mariel's kind of game.