Olympic Games
I don’t know what it is about the Olympics that just gets me all wound up, but I just had to watch the opening ceremonies and the parade of nations. It was such a spectacular thing to see dozens of thousands of the best in the world, all the entertainment (although quite a bit was very very cheesy) and the “pageantry”, which was largely created by specially selected pieces of music and alot of time in an editing room with hundreds of miles of video tape.
Despite the overt commercialism of the Olympic games, I have always loved them. Ever since I can remember, I vowed that someday I would be in the Olympics myself. In 1988, I swore by everything holy that I’d be in the Olympics in Barcelona. In 1992, I watched silently, wishing I could. In 1996, I vowed to pick something to get good at. I am way too old now to even think of such things.
It’s very touching to see possibility and hope and the culmination of training and all that stuff that Bob Costas talks about and NBC shoots little filmlets of, recounting the “story” behind the story. I know it’s all commercial fluff and crass capitalism (particularly when some announcer talks about the “four billion people around the world watching these olympic games”. heh.), but I still love it.
It makes me think I should have done something with myself and that, just maybe, there’s still time.