Where’s my dancing socks, cause me and the boys are going for a boogie. Two blogs in one week! How lucky are you guys! I couldn’t miss the opportunity to talk you all through the opening ceremony. With the games now in full flight it was only fitting the team at A Mind of its Own reviewed the tragic events of the night.
Toted to be the best opening ceremony ever to be held in Australia the Commonwealth Games did not disappoint. Ah well it did… Let’s be honest I wasn’t the only person sitting there in the first five minutes ashamed to be an Australian and questioning whether I was watching the opening ceremony or sitting in a year eight geography lesson. That being said it was visually stunning and I hope sitting in the stands at Carrara Stadium that those lucky enough to have $495 to waste on a ticket could see the same thing I watching from the comfort of my home with a cold, full strength beer.
The continuation of cringe worthy incidents that will only further shame the backwards and somewhat Bogan ways of the Gold Coast kept coming throughout the evening. With the Marathon not scheduled for a few days viewers can rest assured they didn’t miss anything too spectacular as they dozed off during the 4 hours of mind numbing and often confusing performances. Ok they did miss a few things.
The opening ceremony was doomed from the start, the first bad omen happened when tickets were printed with the wrong day. Not only were they printed but several hundred were sent out to proud recipients before this error was realised. This was then followed by yet another beautiful blunder in the official program when England was listed as an African nation. I’m sure our once masters would have been please to be placed amongst one of their colonies with which they gathered slave labour before distributing it throughout the world.
But we weren’t done just yet, the opening skit took us to the beautiful beaches of the Gold Coast where 3 surfers questioned whether aliens existed. Like most of the nation and the millions of viewers who had tuned in around the globe this complete and utter rubbish left me scratching my head wondering what in fact it had to do with the games. From there we were transported to our year eight geography class. Only to have Migaloo destroy Australia. And here I was thinking we’d be invaded by China or at least nuked by the North Koreans but no our nation is squashed by a white humpback whale. Safe to say we are not off to a good start and many of us are still shaking our heads and cringing in embarrassment as our nation is showcased around the globe.
Christina Anu comes on next and lip syncs her way through ‘My Island Home’ while getting up her ten thousand steps for the day. Once this is done we finally see some decent performances as the true owners of this land break out the didgeridoo and showcase their culture for our guest. We probably should have started with this traditional performance, half the audience might still be awake at this point. I bet right about now those people in the stands are starting to think there $400 odd dollars were best spent elsewhere. Some poor chick loses her bikini bottoms in the middle of gold coast local Ricki-Lee’s performance and with 100 of towels and performers around her you’d think someone would help the poor girl out. Nope she’s left to fend for herself as investigations are launched into what will now be known as arsegate.
Both verses of the National anthem were sung leaving many to mumble their way through the second verse as a lot of Australian found out for the first time in their lives that our anthem is a lot longer than what they thought. If it wasn’t so late at night I am sure many a child would have rocked up to school this morning questioning their teachers why they hadn’t been taught about the second verse. Oh that’s right it’s Australian to shorten everything. Why didn’t we just sing the usual short version. Then again if we had of done that we wouldn’t of got to see families in the Rydges pool laying on pool noodles or the local tradies down the pub after a hard days yakka.
We finally get to the team’s themselves only for us to realise there are a crap load of nation’s to get through and that Britain was once a powerhouse of this world. Shame they didn’t think of that before Brexit. Scotland enters first and the nation has a good laugh when Channel Seven commentator Tamsyn Lewis says to no one in particular “You always love it when the Scots come out in their kilts, don’t you?”
So we get through all the nation’s and again have a laugh once more laugh when Tonga walks out to ‘I touch myself’ pretty sure they would of had no idea, nor what the song was about. The Aussie finally emerge led by Captain Courageous himself Mark Knowles. He leads from the front for part of a lap before disappearing into the pack to hangout with rest of the athletes as they slow wave to the 35,000 strong crowd in attendance.
I don’t know whether it was before or during the teams coming out that we lost Camilla the duchess of somewhere, let’s just call her Charles’s shag. It didn’t help that after all the team’s were finally in the stadium that the honorable Peter Beattie rabbited on. If I was Camilla’s shoes I would have been reading Ok Magazine as well to see who wore it better between Megan Markle and Kate Middleton.
While all this is going on we are still waiting for the baton to make its way to the ceremony, the somewhat Dyson looking stick has us all wondering how long it will be before Dyson lodge a patent suit against the Commonwealth Games Committee for ripping off one of their products. The relay runner’s might have appreciated it a little more if they had of got the cool air technology functioning before the event. Finally the golden girl of the pool enters the stadium with the Queen’s Dyson in hand, Susie O’Neill then proceeds to do the slowest lap in the history of the commonwealth games of the stadium before handing it over to some giant girl. Oh wait that’s former Australian netball captain Liz Ellis for all those playing at home.
The Queens Dyson is then handed over, where a couple of oldies try to open it while looking for the instruction manual to get Lizzy’s message out only to have a kid pop out of nowhere to show them how it’s done. Again another product that it not user-friendly unless you are a millennial or younger. Not sure why Lizzy couldn’t have just given the message to Charles and Camilla but I guess tradition is tradition and the producer did need to fill another couple of minutes.
By now even the athletes are fading fast, the canteen has run out of beer, hot chips and meat pies and all the spectators are not looking forward to getting back to their cars only to discover some derelict from the back of Nerang has cashed in on all these cars parked in the one place and scores himself a couple of fist fulls of assorted change and you’re having to pay for a new window. The ad almost writes itself for MasterCard, Opening ceremony ticket $495, new car window $400, seeing that poor girls bum live before it’s beamed around the globe = priceless.
Unfortunately folks we are still not done yet, with the games now officially open, we better have some more song and dance and who better than Delta Goodrem to come out fitting in perfect to the gold coast scene as she prance’s around Carrara Stadium without and shoes. We can forgive baton bearer Damien Ryder he was at least running on the beach for most part of his relay but Delta what’s your excuse? We thought you were better than that. Surrounded by big burly blokes for all the ladies out there thinking this is what your typical gold coast male looks like, i hate to be the bearer of bad news those were Delta’s dancers.
Are we done? I think we are finally done, i think we’ve come to an end and the athletes can head back to the village and pump the stilnox, EPO and whatever other performance enhancing drugs they dispose of in the bins around the village. The spectators can jump back on the buses to sit in traffic for hours on end and those of us at home we can retire to our beds to wish it all away as though it was a bad dream.
Safe to say that this was not our best effort and it will be undoubtedly remembered for bare bums, weird skits, geography lessons, lip syncing, no shoes, boring the royals and down right fuck ups. Sportsbet are actually taking bets and I kid you not as to what the next screw up of the games will be.
If you are venturing out to watch some of the events, or sitting in the comfort of your own home with a cold frothy enjoy and until next time. It can only get better from here.
A Mind of Its Own…
A Mind of its Own... 