Five-ring circus: The Thread of the XXXIII Olympiad

Colin Jost just came on (in his usual timeslot) and has already managed to cut up his foot on a reef. I was hoping he and Maria Taylor would do a joke swap. That said, he does seem to be having an "Al Franken Live Via Satellite" level of misfortune so far.

 

Forget it, Jake. It’s Paristown.

 

My wife and I have taken to calling him Poochie.

It’s something a 65-year-old producer would think draws a younger audience: A 52-year-old rapper more known for being alongside Martha Stewart and taking money to appear at every event than his music, which is 30 years old at this point.

 

Gymnastics center stage:

Spoiler: Spoiler

Biles fighting through injury

 

It's a confounding look. Henchman No. 3 in some bad martial arts movie.

 

Cold take at this point, but I liked lots of the opening ceremony production. What seemed apparent to me - others around me disagreed - is that Tirico and Manning didn't care for it, or even know what to do with it, and Kelly Clarkson had no, well, sophisticated insight. Which, for anyone who's seen an hour of her talk show, wasn't a surprise.

 

Just like Football in the Groin, that works on so many levels.

 

Calling it on day two: once it’s all said and done, Team USA will be considered a disappointment. Even the men’s basketball team might lose. Just hunch, hope I’m wrong.

 

I feel like the break dancers and skateboarders really might let Team USA down.

 

I liked the opening ceremonies a lot, but I also know just enough French language, history and culture that I wasn't totally lost.

I thought Tirico was just OK and that Manning and Clarkson were awful. At least Clarkson kind of disappeared in the second half. Manning was a non-stop flow of irrelevant comparisons to American football and New Orleans and uninsightful anecdotes about visits with particular athletes. In my internal monologue, I kept hearing Walton Goggins as Baby Billy Freeman saying "Go outside nerd. I ain't got time to be distracted by your worthless chime-ins!" every time he talked.

I was particularly annoyed that no attempt was made to explain any of the symbolism of what we were seeing throughout the ceremonies. My memory of the Beijing opening ceremonies, which I think is probably the closest to Paris for the breadth of its ambition and incorporating deep cultural references, is that the broadcast crew did an excellent job of explaining the relevance of various elements.

 

Forget the Last Supper nonsense; the real reason to boycott the Olympics is NBC’s decision to list players heights in meters. Fuck that shit. Murica.

 

Is it NBC or are they just using the Olympic feed and not bothering to "americanize it?"

Thinking about the opening ceremonies some more - they really should have just used Lipinski and Weir. They would have been great.