Olympics Catch Up: Day One

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2010, albania, arnold schwarzenegger, austria, azerbaijan, bahamas, bbc, bermuda shorts, blazer, canada, cauldron, cauldron malfuntion, ceremony, condoms, davie street, dennys, first nations, flame, francophone, french, games, garou, germany, hallelujah, hitler, intro, jo-ann, kd lang, language, olympic, olympic village, olympics, opening, quebec, queue, relay, robson square, sex on legs, sexy, slam, slamwich, speakeasy, stanley park, the money note, torch, vancouver, winter, wolf man, zip line, ziptrek

Think back if you will to three weeks ago when the Vancouver Olympics had yet to officially open and the world was waiting with bated breath as the city laid it’s final preparations for the greatest party it had ever held. That morning you could find Arnold Schwarzenegger running an Olympic torch through Stanley Park and Jo-Ann and I rushing out of the house as not to miss the torch running up the street past my apartment.

Needless to say we were not disappointed. The flame passed us approximately 30 minutes before we were stuffing our faces at Denny’s up the road and was actually – despite my breakfast-related mocking – quite a lovely and touching experience. This flame travelled across this great land of ours, passed from person to person, touching Canadians from coast to coast. Despite it’s dodgy origins – aka Hitler – it really is a fantastic tradition.

So after our delicious breakfast – I had a Scrambler, not as you might be expecting, a SLAM or SLAMwich – I was itching to get over the zip line and we had thought, rather naively, that the queue on the first day wouldn’t be that bad. Upon arriving at Robson Square we discovered a line 5 hours long to heave our bodies across downtown.

QUICK SIDENOTE: Our first experience of the zip line had been wandering up Robson Street towards the square the night before. I had questioned at the time, “where’s the zip-line?” at which point, right no cue, we heard screaming a someone went flying right through our field of vision on the zip line. AMAZING!

Obviously, we decided to stay in the line and six hours, many panics, and a life-affirming hug later, we were safe and sound on the ground at the other side. I’ve attached a video below to demonstrate the sheer AMAZINGness of the zip line.

AMAZING!

Anyway, our feet now firmly on the ground it was obviously time to find a bar! We headed to The Speakeasy on Davie (a regular theme of the forthcoming Olympics posts) and proceeded to drink a lot while enjoying what was perhaps the most entertaining Opening Ceremonies the world has ever seen – cauldron malfunction aside.

The beginning of the show was all about the hotness of First Nation Wolf Man who was SEX ON LEGS.

After we’d stopped drooling we got down to the important business of judging the countries on their relative attractiveness and fashion sense. It all started quite well with Albania.

But then all went tits up quite quickly with Austria and Bahamas, respectively.

They were awful but worst dressed was easily Germany whose athletes had these disastrous blue and pink vests that just said TEAM across the chest. Crap. The whole parade got an A for hotness though. It was like the countries were trying to out-hot eachother. No wonder the Olympic Village ran out of condoms!

Best dressed by a mile was Azerbaijan with this killer emsemble of multi-coloured pants and rocking hat. I WANT THIS OUTFIT.

After all that the cultural portion was actually entertaining for once – another record for Canada to go along with those 14 gold medals – including the words-cannot-describe-the-level-of-amazingness-this-reached-she-hit-the-money-note performance by KD Land which was, in case it isn’t already smack-you-round-the-face-with-a-dead-cat obvious, AMAZING beyond reproach.

There are no words.

Obviously except AMAZING.

Apparently Qubecers complained that the ceremony wasn’t French-Canadian enough.

SAY QUOI?

BITCH S’IL VOUS PLAIS! It was plenty French. Stop fucking complaining French people. There was some Quebec stuff in the cultural portion, lots of French speaking – even rather regrettably by John Furlong, – and French performers including Garou. QUEBEC IS ONLY ONE PROVINCE NOT HALF OF THE COUNTRY’S CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE. I’m all for the protection of French culture but not at the expense of the rest of the country.

Anyway, it was a near perfect ceremony, aside from the rather obvious cauldron malfunction. Jo-Ann and I loved it and so did the crowd at our new favourite bar, The Speakeasy.

Our Olympics was off to a flying start.

Quick sidenote #2: The image at the top of this post is from the AMAZING Olympics intro used by the BBC for their Vancouver coverage and I implore you to check it out here if you haven’t already had the pleasure. DO IT.