Me too! Went out for a cigarrete break twice, and guess what? Missed the Queen/James Bond segment (and John's video doesn't play for me). We could hear the kids laughing so hard about it.
My favorite were also Mr. Bean and the party in the hosue. I also liked that pop culture songs were present throughout the ceremony, the Brits paraded to Bowie's "Heroes" and so on.
And only the Brits would include humor in such a way into what is often a too forcedly solemn, and thus boring, event.
I also love to see the athletes parading, Jeff! And I'm proud to say that the Germans' costumes were not the most ugly ones this time 'round! Still horrendous colors, but hey, I've seen worse.
We always cheered when a country marched in where we knew people living there. That was fun! My kids have friends from Morocco and Brazil, and I got to cheer most often, with so many Brokies around the globe! Canada, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, US, UK from the top of my head.
Alas, the channel showing the opening ceremonies here in the US only showed a few countries, and skipped most.
I did enjoy the Queen's scene - I especially liked how she made "James Bond" wait when he entered the room. Ah, it's good to be Queen.
And of course, I did like David Beckham's introduction. Dang, but that guy is hot.
Any idea why Muhammad Ali is still part of the ceremony?
I understand the need to be humorous, but that scene from Chariots of Fire is one of my favorites and represents something really positive and inspiring and the skit I saw was going to ruin it for me so I switched off for that.
And torch lighting was a let-down.
On another note, it's 50 degrees at night, so I'm glad to see the female volleyball players are actually wearing reasonable shirts and leggings and not still wearing those stupid bikinis they have to dig out of their asses every few minutes.
I find it funny to see that the swimmers are starting to wear more and more clothing IN the water than gymnasts are wearing out of it.
Speaking of gymnasts, it strikes me every time I see the gymnastic competitions how sexist it still is. Either BOTH male and female athletes need 'artistic' gymnastic events and BOTH male and female athletes need music for their floor routines or they shouldn't. Otherwise it fosters the idea that only the women are there to 'dance' and entertain, while the men are just athletes.