Beijing Opening Ceremonies

[Lavabe]

What?! Didn't you hear the bagpipe music during the march of nations?

Yes, and Madagascar marched in with that music. Why not Weird Al doing a polka?

Fashionwise, the Hungarian women's outfits last night almost gave me a migraine.

Any other fashion faux pas in the opening ceremonies?

Cheers,
Lavabe

[DevilAlumna]

Yes, and Madagascar marched in with that music. Why not Weird Al doing a polka?

Fashionwise, the Hungarian women's outfits last night almost gave me a migraine.

Any other fashion faux pas in the opening ceremonies?

Cheers,
Lavabe

Yeah, the Ukranian women (or was it Sweden?) were wearing yellow skirts and bright baby-blue blazers with yellow trim. Painful.

Picture on this page: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/b...09/183537.aspx

Oh, and the bagpipes also were playing when Yemen entered. (Yemen?...)

[throatybeard]

I don't know whether this is true or not, but I'm reading on some internet boards that NBC altered (edited) the real order of the parade of nations to delay the US until later in the broadcast than the Mandarin logogram system would actually dictate. The argument is that they'd be motivated by keeping US viewers in it later. But the US was at least 2/3 thru the NBC telecast, so wouldn't people be hanging on for the torch anyway? NBCs commercials claim 70M viewers last night.

Last night, as the telecast was winding down, it was close to midnight Eastern anyway. Even when the networks can edit something carte blanche, they still make it far too late on the east coast for 140M TV viewers. And I say that as a CDT dude.

[hc5duke]

I don't know whether this is true or not, but I'm reading on some internet boards that NBC altered (edited) the real order of the parade of nations to delay the US until later in the broadcast than the Mandarin logogram system would actually dictate. The argument is that they'd be motivated by keeping US viewers in it later. But the US was at least 2/3 thru the NBC telecast, so wouldn't people be hanging on for the torch anyway? NBCs commercials claim 70M viewers last night.

Last night, as the telecast was winding down, it was close to midnight Eastern anyway. Even when the networks can edit something carte blanche, they still make it far too late on the east coast for 140M TV viewers. And I say that as a CDT dude.

Here's the wikipedia list, which I think looks the same as the wikianswers page I linked earlier. I think that seems about right (139/204). Forget 140M viewers, they're estimating 1 BILLION people worldwide watched the opening ceremony.

[throatybeard]

Here's the wikipedia list, which I think looks the same as the wikianswers page I linked earlier. I think that seems about right (139/204). Forget 140M viewers, they're estimating 1 BILLION people worldwide watched the opening ceremony.

Right, but NBC is only advertising their own.

[hc5duke]

This may be PPB material, but I have to say that the "No flag for Taiwan (and we're calling Taipie) because the PRC will freak if we let it happen" is one of hte biggest frustrations for me in the Olympics. This is long-standing, not just this year.

I'm not 100% familiar with the situation, but from what I know:
1) Taiwan is not a country, it's an island. The government that resides Taiwan calls itself Republic of China. Someone compared this like, if the US government had been overthrown by the communists and the capitalist gov't was exiled to Hawaii. IIRC the ROC government doesn't like to call itself "Taiwan" anyway, so they probably wanted to go as "Republic of China," and the compromise was that they'll go as "Chinese Taipei"
2) If Taiwan/ROC/Chinese Taipei had a problem with the policy, they could simply boycott the Olympics. It didn't seem like they had a problem, with every athlete waving the alternate flag.