Opening ceremonies, why do they insist on doing this to us?

[MrCoffee]

It has never been satisfactorily established why major international football tournaments require opening ceremonies. There's a logic behind the organisers of the Olympic Games pre-empting their event with the sort of lavish song-and-dance productions that would put the combined efforts of Rodgers, Hammerstein, Lerner, Loewe, Bernstein, Berlin and the carpenter who used to build the sweeping staircases for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to shame: that flame won't light itself. But there are no such pyromanic administrative requirements in the world of soccer. So why do they insist on doing this to us? What is it that we've done?

The poor bugger whose job it is to churn out press releases for Uefa has, ahead of their existential breakdown upon contemplation of the direction their life is taking, made a brave stab at some sort of explanation. The "concept for the UEFA EURO 2012 opening ceremony" – your corporate prattle detector is already strobing wildly, isn't it – has been designed to "combine heritage and innovation, to bring sport and culture together, and mark the start of a historical event".

But nobody – least of all poor Press Release Man, currently sitting on the floor in the corner of his office, hugging his own knees and crying quite a lot – believes any of that really means anything in particular. Accordingly, the audience at Warsaw's Stadion Narodowy, who just wanted to finish their bottles of Bisongrass vodka in peace and quiet before the game, were forced to look on in impotent glassy-eyed frustration as thousands of children and badly choreographed dancers cavorted around on a large turquoise tarpaulin to homogenised Euromusak that could have been written and recorded anywhere from Gdansk to Gants Hill.

Unlike a best man's speech at a wedding, which all concerned desperately hope will go swimmingly in order to avoid acute embarrassment, the audience at an opening ceremony is praying for the performance to degenerate into a thundering shambles. It's the only hope of extracting any sort of entertainment from such a deep, dark mine of bland, focus-grouped mediocrity.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2012/jun/08/euro-2012-opening-ceremony

Too hilarious

[Ron Obvious]

1. Brilliant!

After reading this, the phrase 'floating weirdos' bubbled up from the depths of my calcified brains to remind me of this description of the opening ceremonies for Euro 2000:

The sculpted dirigibles that paraded around the King Baudouin Stadium on Saturday night were thankfully less obscure than the cast of floating weirdos that preceded France 98, but even so Lynam found the plot hard to fathom. The basic premise seemed to concern a young local boy dreaming about football, and one can only conclude that the lad must have consumed a large platter of powerful Belgian cheese before retiring for the night.

"There are the two teams, um, in blue," Lynam said, as a score of oddly cowled figures processed on to the pitch at the start of the ceremony. "They won't actually be playing football, of course." That was down to the heavily made-up androgynous figure in pyjamas kicking a huge scarlet sphere in the centre circle. "He's still dreaming, of course," Lynam noted, before reading the performer's thoughts: "Two years in acting school, and I get this."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/4747850/Sport-on-TV-Dreamy-Des-wards-off-Belgian-nightmare.html

[Marooned]

2. I loathe opening ceremonies, Olympic's included

The Polish ceremonies were just plain awful. Just bring the teams out, play the anthems and get on with it. At least the match was good, excepting of course the Spanish referee who should never be allowed to use anything colored red or yellow again in his life.

[SwissTony]

3. They are absolutely cringeworthy

But so are mascots. Why is someone dressed up as a duck or a tiger considered added value?

[Rambis]

4. I found the lack of stilts disturbing!

Every opening ceremony cries out for people of stilts.

[MrCoffee]

5. Thank you! I knew they were flaunting convention, but couldn't put my finger on why

Take a lesson from Beijing 2008, people!

[Rambis]

6. LOLZ! (nm)

[crazymana11]

7. Spam deleted by Warren DeMontague (MIR Team)