Posts Tagged ‘Zeus’

When Olympic Spirit Meets The Major Leagues Posted by Brian Filipiak in Boston Red Sox August 28th, 2008

Like most Americans, I watched in sheer amazement as Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou and tens of thousands of his fellow countrymen and women transformed the Bird’s Nest into the world’s most colossal IMAX Theater, where Cirque du Soleil met the millennial history of China … well, Tibet and Tiananmen Square excluded.

Anyway, politics aside, the opening ceremony of the 29th Olympiad was truly something to behold. And like any good lead, the presentation just grabbed me hook, line, and sinker. I mean, a giant, LED scroll-thingy? It really doesn’t get any better than that.

Sure, I could nit-pick over post-production cartoon fireworks or a computer generated Chinese girl lip-synching “Ode to the Motherland” (or something like that). But let’s face it, this opening ceremony was pretty akin to baseball over the past 20 years: artificially enhanced.

Hell, even the weather was unnaturally altered. A few hours prior to the opening ceremony, the Chinese fired over one thousand rain dispersal rockets into the ominous sky in order to fend off some pesky rain clouds.

Speaking of which, can you imagine Bud Selig launching an air strike against a threatening stack of nimbus clouds hovering about Fenway Park minutes before the first pitch? All I know is that the result probably would end in a tie.

But I’m way off course, here. The point is, you—the 2008 Summer Olympics—wowed me, and I was your humble, mindless viewing servant until August 24. Read more