That poor little girl that was actually doing the singing…
Anyone else see a paralell between Nazi Germany and Communist China?
Berlin 1936 and Beijing 2008?
Atrocious track records with minorities: Jews and Tibetans
Nazis and Chinese Communist both using visual effects for propaganda and deceipt.
Hasn’t history taught us enough about rapidly expanding superpowers?
Once again the West is sleeping.
Russia better watch your back? Your natural resources look yummy.
I pray that history doesn’t repeat it self, but if it must I hope that Beijing Olympics do to China, what Sarajevo Olympics did to Yugoslavia.
Peace,
[quote]Renton wrote:
AlteredState wrote:
We thought they could get loads of antisocial yoofs in and do a confetti parade with all their ASBOs.
Joyriders doing arty handbrake turns and shit in subarus and fiestas.
Some sort of pageant featuring underage drinkers stomping some middle aged bloke to death on his front doorstep whilst his family watches from an upstairs window.
Paedophiles circling a mock playgound.
And the highlight of the event: A ‘keystone cops’ type affair, showing the diligence and effectiveness of the police and the CPS. All the serious offenders walk free and the petty crims go down. All done to the Benny Hill theme music of course. Hilarious.
EDIT: I nearly forgot a critical aspect of UK culture…
A pantomime featuring our two leading political parties. OK so it won’t be much more than two bloated, ugly, incompetent, power-hungry fatcats sitting in overstuffed armchairs, resting their feet on the backs of poor, downtrodden, working class ‘footstools’, shouting “Oh yes you did!, Oh no I didn’t! Oh yes you did! Oh no I didn’t!” at each others fat red faces. Oh and they have to be spending taxpayers money on inappropriate things and hiding the reciepts so as to keep it all secret. Cunts.
LMAO - Somebody a little sore at the legal system? 
What about a pile of pissed up Essex girls giving free blow jobs to the croud?*
*Mind you that’ll happen anyway near enough.[/quote]
I’m not even sure what a “pissed up Essex girl” is, but I think I get the gist.
Anyways, I think the obvious answer to top it is graphics card upgrades for the guys doing the CGI. HAH!
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
I’m not even sure what a “pissed up Essex girl” is, but I think I get the gist.[/quote]
Yep - drunk girls from Essex (notoriously easy women).
[quote]Anyways, I think the obvious answer to top it is graphics card upgrades for the guys doing the CGI. HAH!
[/quote]
Not sure about the graphics card upgrades - What can we get that fits in an ISA slot?
[quote]RSGZ wrote:
You’ll need at least 5000 footballers, from the Millwall area.[/quote]
Oh yeah! Going up against the GSE.
[quote]Renton wrote:
DoubleDuce wrote:
I’m not even sure what a “pissed up Essex girl” is, but I think I get the gist.
Yep - drunk girls from Essex (notoriously easy women).
Anyways, I think the obvious answer to top it is graphics card upgrades for the guys doing the CGI. HAH!
Not sure about the graphics card upgrades - What can we get that fits in an ISA slot?
[/quote]
First we need to upgrade the ISA slots to some from the early 2000’s - PCI might to the trick.
CGI fireworks and lip-synching. I think the UK can top that pretty easily.
Let Terry Gilliam plan and design the opening ceremony.
[quote]hel320 wrote:
Opening ceremony trivia. 1908 Olympics, London. Martin Sheridan, American team captain, Shot Put and Discus thrower, Irish immigrant. Refused to tip the US flag during the opening ceremony. Explained that “This flag dips to no earthly king.” Despite international customs that encourage dipping the flag in respect to heads of state the US flag bearers haven’t done so since.
[/quote]
Well that’s an unbelievably arrogant tradition if I’ve ever seen one.
Tell me, when Americans are visiting in a host’s home, do they track mud all over the rugs, or do they take off their shoes like a respectful guest?
“These boots are removed for no earthly carpet!”
When you are a guest in another’s home you don’t strut around like you own the place, and put your feet on the coffee table.
When the American Olympic Team is visiting in another nation, they are not on American soil and should just man-up and perform this simple act of respect to the host nation.
It’s quite infantile, really. Toddler-level reasoning. “YOU CAN’T MAKE ME SO I’M NOT GONNA!”
Need to be careful. An attitude like that could accumulate over time and ruin a country’s international reputation.
Hmm…
ElbowStrike
The young girl that was singing, wasn’t singing. Lip sync to the ugly girl singing backstage. The Chinese government said the lip sync’er was the perfect face for China. End of story according to the Chinese.
We’re going to top it in two years!
[quote]ElbowStrike wrote:
hel320 wrote:
Opening ceremony trivia. 1908 Olympics, London. Martin Sheridan, American team captain, Shot Put and Discus thrower, Irish immigrant. Refused to tip the US flag during the opening ceremony. Explained that “This flag dips to no earthly king.” Despite international customs that encourage dipping the flag in respect to heads of state the US flag bearers haven’t done so since.
Well that’s an unbelievably arrogant tradition if I’ve ever seen one.
Tell me, when Americans are visiting in a host’s home, do they track mud all over the rugs, or do they take off their shoes like a respectful guest?
“These boots are removed for no earthly carpet!”
When you are a guest in another’s home you don’t strut around like you own the place, and put your feet on the coffee table.
When the American Olympic Team is visiting in another nation, they are not on American soil and should just man-up and perform this simple act of respect to the host nation.
It’s quite infantile, really. Toddler-level reasoning. “YOU CAN’T MAKE ME SO I’M NOT GONNA!”
Need to be careful. An attitude like that could accumulate over time and ruin a country’s international reputation.
Hmm…
ElbowStrike[/quote]
We aren’t the only country that doesn’t dip the flag, but even if we were it’s our tradition and I’m good with it. I am sure there are some Americans that think we should dip out of respect, some Americans that don’t care, and some like me that hold with not dipping the flag.
You don’t get it, this is America, no matter what we do someone will find a reason to criticize.
I think we can withstand your opinion.
Here’s an expanded post on the history of U.S. flag dipping/not dipping
Different motives sustained US flag-dipping refusal at Olympics, historian says
The 2008 Beijing Olympics will mark the centennial of the American legend of “This flag dips for no earthly king,” although the tradition of the U.S. flag-bearer’s refusal to dip the flag before host country’s leaders, has evolved for different reasons and has not been carried out consistently, despite public claims, according to a Penn State sports historian.
“When NBC covers the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics Aug. 8, the U.S. team will march into the new stadium and will likely refuse to dip its flag to China’s leaders,” said Mark Dyreson, associate professor of kinesiology and history. "NBC’s commentators will explain that the U.S. is following a tradition began in 1908, but the TV people will be wrong about the history of this particularly important display of American nationalism at the Olympics.
“While the U.S. team did in fact refuse to dip its flag in 1908 at the first-ever parade of nations, the U.S. team dipped the Stars and Stripes in 1912, 1924 and 1932. Indeed, a consistent ‘tradition’ of not dipping the flag at Olympic opening ceremonies did not develop until 1936 when at both the winter and summer games. The U.S. refused to lower its national banner to Adolph Hitler,” he added.
Dyreson has written a series of essays on American nationalism in the Olympics for a new book, “Crafting Patriotism for Global Domination: America at the Olympics” (Routledge Press, London). The essays also were published in a recent issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.
“The motives for the original refusal, the identity of the flag-bearer and the truth behind the quotation and other issues remain much murkier in the historical record than legend-tellers portray,” said Dyreson, a faculty member in the College of Health and Human Development. “The evolution of this flag mythology reveals a great deal about the complex strains of early 20th century American nationalism.”
Irish nationalism probably played greater part than American patriotism in the original 1908 protest, according to two essays focused on the American myth of flag-dipping. Also, Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s brief stint as the commandant of the 1928 American Olympic team laid the initial foundation for making the flag-dipping refusal an official tradition.
“However, in 1936, the American team’s refusal was unquestionably a referendum on Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany,” Dyreson explained.
“Most of the athletics and much of the American public agreed that they would engage the Third Reich in athletic contests, but would not dip the flag to Hitler nor embrace the Nazi regime.”
“After 1936, the United States would never again dip the Stars and Stripes at an Olympic games,” he added. “As the Cold War emerged from the debris of the Second World War, the idea became so strong that even opponent Avery Brundage, who eventually moved through the U.S. Olympic Committee to became president of the International Olympic Committee, could not change the tradition.”
The 1952 Helinski games brought in the Soviet Union which followed the American custom and refused to dip their hammer-and-sickle banner to Finnish leaders, joined later by Czechoslovakia in 1956.
Over the years, a diverse group of athletes, sports administrators, politicians and social critics has criticized the tradition and the American press condemned other nations for their tradition of refusal, according to the essays.
By 1976, the American Bicentennial, the American refusal to dip the flag had become such a standard part of Olympic ritual, prompting jokes about it. In the early 1990s, the Soviet Union collapsed, but flag-dipping remained a controversy.
In the 1992 Albertville Winter Olympics, most of the other nations adopted the American style of flag-dipping. Of the 64 flag-bearers parading past the French president, 60 refused to dip their flags.
Ironically, U.S. cross-country skier Bill Koch nearly ended the American tradition, announcing in advance, “We want to be good world citizens. A dip demonstrates a little humility.” But after some controversy, he stuck to the tradition following the athletes’ wishes, according to Dyreson.
His other essays cover how Americans have used the Olympics to debate the role of immigration in U.S. society, how the Olympics have shaped racial concepts in American culture, and how the U.S. has used the Olympics in projects to Americanize the rest of the world.
“In 2008, China plans to use the Olympic Games to remake its national identity in the global marketplace. In so doing China treads the path blazed by the United States,” Dyreson said. “For more than a century the U.S. has used the Olympic Games to construct national identity, create communal memory and craft patriotic mythology. In the process a host of myths about American superiority in global encounters has emerged through the Olympics. In memorializing and mythologizing their Olympic teams Americans have revealed the contours of the racial, gender, and class dynamics that animate their peculiar nationhood. These essays explore the history of expressions of American national identity in Olympic arenas.”
[quote]Renton wrote:
I think we should go for what we are known for.
My opening ceremony would start with 3000 football hooligans fighting to the death whilst a host of 14 year old mums parade round the perimeter with their babies in their arms, drinking lambrini and smoking L&B’s[/quote]
Three thousand chavs in track suits wrestling in black pudding surrounded by giant golden cauldrons of curry. Eight thousand red and white balloons with the distorted faces of the royals on every one of them, a childrens choir that sings matchstalk men and matchstalk cats and dogs …from the front steps of a recreation of the tower of London made completely of biscuits.
For starters.
[quote]Molotov_Coktease wrote:
Renton wrote:
I think we should go for what we are known for.
My opening ceremony would start with 3000 football hooligans fighting to the death whilst a host of 14 year old mums parade round the perimeter with their babies in their arms, drinking lambrini and smoking L&B’s
Three thousand chavs in track suits wrestling in black pudding surrounded by giant golden cauldrons of curry. Eight thousand red and white balloons with the distorted faces of the royals on every one of them, a childrens choir that sings matchstalk men and matchstalk cats and dogs …from the front steps of a recreation of the tower of London made completely of biscuits.
For starters.[/quote]
wait… shouldn’t it be blood pudding, kippers and beans on toast?
I hope they have jousting as a blood sport, that would be awesome
whoops… . and I forgot, ale-slinging wenches
[quote]OctoberGirl wrote:
Molotov_Coktease wrote:
Renton wrote:
I think we should go for what we are known for.
My opening ceremony would start with 3000 football hooligans fighting to the death whilst a host of 14 year old mums parade round the perimeter with their babies in their arms, drinking lambrini and smoking L&B’s
Three thousand chavs in track suits wrestling in black pudding surrounded by giant golden cauldrons of curry. Eight thousand red and white balloons with the distorted faces of the royals on every one of them, a childrens choir that sings matchstalk men and matchstalk cats and dogs …from the front steps of a recreation of the tower of London made completely of biscuits.
For starters.
wait… shouldn’t it be blood pudding, kippers and beans on toast?
I hope they have jousting as a blood sport, that would be awesome
whoops… . and I forgot, ale-slinging wenches
[/quote]
Black pudding = Blood pudding.
They will have a jousting ceremony with four thousand knighted midgets on Shetland ponies, the losers will be lined up for the kipper slapping …by the toothless ale slinging wenches dressed as Princes Diana’s …while the Queen eats beans and toast and farts with delight.
[quote]hel320 wrote:
Opening ceremony trivia. 1908 Olympics, London. Martin Sheridan, American team captain, Shot Put and Discus thrower, Irish immigrant. Refused to tip the US flag during the opening ceremony. Explained that “This flag dips to no earthly king.” Despite international customs that encourage dipping the flag in respect to heads of state the US flag bearers haven’t done so since.
[/quote]
I like that.
[quote]AlteredState wrote:
Molotov_Coktease wrote:
Renton wrote:
I think we should go for what we are known for.
My opening ceremony would start with 3000 football hooligans fighting to the death whilst a host of 14 year old mums parade round the perimeter with their babies in their arms, drinking lambrini and smoking L&B’s
Three thousand chavs in track suits wrestling in black pudding surrounded by giant golden cauldrons of curry. Eight thousand red and white balloons with the distorted faces of the royals on every one of them, a childrens choir that sings matchstalk men and matchstalk cats and dogs …from the front steps of a recreation of the tower of London made completely of biscuits.
For starters.
I see you have a handle on our culture.
Though it’s matchstick, not stalk from what I understand ;)[/quote]
It is a song by Brian and Michael, and they use Matchstalk in the title.
This is the song …
How about playing the Beckhams sex tape and serving popcorn?
I dont know if there is one so some one needs to get on that