Look at 'im go! Whee!

See, I could have covered Olympic events.

Okay, maybe not. But my family and I did watch quite a bit of the tv coverage of the games. A few things I noticed, more or less in order:

The opening ceremonies...I wonder how they coordinated turning the lights on the costumes on and off. And all the big screens around the top of the "bird's nest" stadium, above the spectators. Once I noticed it was all images of birds in flight. There's always been pagentry associated with the Olympics, but the technology keeps getting more interesting. I can just imagine what if you could go back in time several decades and pluck out one of the old timers and deposit him in the stadium in Beijing. What in the world would he make of all that?

And as the participants from each country walked in, I noticed a lot of the small countries sent only four or five people. You could tell they were proud to be there. I was impressed with their dedication, especially considering the small odds of winning a medal for most of them. My wife mentioned she'd heard commentary on that very thing, that for many of those athletes just qualifying to be there and walking in the ceremony with their flag was a big deal.

The competition...I'm no athlete, and aside from some interest in baseball, I don't follow team sports all that closely. That said, I couldn't help but be impressed by the performances (especially since I do have some interest in individual sports):

Michael Phelps, eight gold medals. Amazing.

Another technology note, it's pretty cool that they can use computers to show the green line indicating the world record time moving across the Olympic pool. I really noticed on one of the womens' events - relay, I think - one of the women on the Australian team just obliterated the world record.

Synchronized diving...that must be new. Either that or I never noticed it before.

Lots of swimming and gymnastics for the first several days. Maybe it was the way things were scheduled, but I suppose the bulk of the tv coverage was ratings driven (what to people here want to see...which events do we have a chance at). For a while I wondered when we'd see any track events. If I had a gripe it would be that I suspected that there were a lot of other events going on the first few days, and it would have been nice to see a little bit of that during prime time.

And like almost everyone else, I noticed how young the Chinese gymnasts were. That can't all be right.

Beach volleyball - a good occasion to cheer for the team. USA! USA!

The closing ceremonies...I saw most of that. Very colorful and creative. There were people flying through the air on cables beating gigantic drums. Also people riding odd illuminated big wheel unicycles, with the rider in the center of the wheel. And some kind of contrivance with another big drum...weird looking, sort of like a giant ant on wheels. It all reminded us of the opening ceremonies of the winter olympics several years ago in France. Like something out of Dr. Seuss.

I'm not sure what all of that has to do with the athletic events. But if the IOC or NBC don't offer DVD's of the ceremonies, they're missing a bet. Those would sell.

And finally, during part of the Olympics, we had family in from California. My wife made her USA flag cake for the occasion...