The Amazing Olympic Opening Ceremony Idea

I won't lie, I'm a little worried...

There's been a lot of pontification about the Olympics in London lately. Oh, I'm sorry, haven't you heard? The Olympics are taking place in London next year, and there's been a large outcry over the semi-bullshit methods of ticket distribution (Men's Basketball tickets FTW). I feel this has been distracting from the bigger issue, the one that's secretly weighing on a city's (and a nations's) mind - how stupid the Olympic ceremony will be.

I just have this horrible feeling that it's going to be some stupid attempt at being 'representative', 'artistic' and all those other superfluous buzzwords that ruin it for everyone. Basically, it's going to be a misguided attempt at being a 'worthy' spectacle, which is exactly what happened with the Millennium Dome saga. Look, we all saw the Beijing Olympic ceremonies, and they were pretty damn spectacular:

Why would we even try to compete with that? There's no way it turns out as impressive. No way in hell. For a start, the reasons to be skeptical made themselves known at the very end of the Beijing Closing Ceremony, when London made a little cameo. You may remember that we got this:

Leona Lewis out of the top of a collapsible double-deck bus. Wonderful. How representative. How tasteful. How awe-inspiring. No doubt the Chinese felt shown up on their own doorstep by this display of Britishness. Or not.

Look, we can't match the manpower or dedication of the Chinese, so why even bother trying? It's just going to look like a low-rent version of what's gone before, and that doesn't do anyone's image any good. I bet Danny Boyle, the Creative Director for the Opening Ceremony, knows this.

What we need is a different approach.

Now after the Closing Ceremony in 2008, my Dad actually had quite a good idea, inspired by Lewis' little-known backing guitarist that day, one Mr Jimmy Page: what if the Opening Ceremony was a Led Zeppelin reunion concert? You have to admit, that would be showing the world: look, we've provided the planet with a disproportionate number of the most kickass rock bands in history. Bow down before us! Alas, I don't think the Zep would be up for it, and we'd have to either blow a large portion of the budget on resurrection technology or find a replacement for John Bonham (no, his son is not acceptable. This is the Olympics, damnit!) . However, this idea did get me thinking about what could work, and eventually led me to a solution which is 100% foolproof:

THE 2012 LONDON OLYMPICS OPENING CEREMONY SHOULD BE A MASSIVE GRIME CONCERT

Bo Burnham - Shepherds Bush Empire (18/6/2011)

If you're reading this, chances are you're on the internet, and if you're on the internet chances are that you've heard of Bo Burnham. He's the prodigy of the comedy world, a 20 year old whose internet videos have won him worldwide acclaim and popularity. After a well-received run in Edinburgh last year, Burnham undertook his first UK tour, and I was lucky enough to be at the tour's final stop in London. 

Looking down at the crowd from my seat up in the rafters, I thought back to an interview I'd read with Burnham about his audiences in the UK, which he said would be more likely to consist of older patrons. Well, not this crowd - I definitely felt like an old man in this crowd, and I'm in my mid-20s. It seemed to be full of teenagers using their smartphones and their twitters right up to the start of the show (some even taking in the start of the show - thank you, YouTube).

And what a start it is - Bo's opening segment is a sprawling seven minute opus, starting off with an epic drone as Bo sets the faux-serious epic tone that he quickly dismantles as he hurtles into comedy lightspeed, taking in a tour of audience abuse (in an endearing way), bathetic undercutting of the intensely dramatic backing-track, and a tour of a fantasy-land with Bo proceeds to desecrate and and cut down, before ending in good-old innuendo. It's an opening that showcases two things that become recurring themes throughout the evening - the relentless pace with which he goes about working the stage, and the wide-reaching, quick-jumping approach he has to his material. 

Bo's songs tend to employ either clever wordplay or quick undercutting of tone, and a few of his songs end on abrupt punch-lines into staccato, just as they seem to be started. The storytelling within the musical element of the show is an interesting comparison with the stand-up part of his show, which consists mostly of quick-fire one-liners, which indicate a rather scattershot approach to his his comedy. He can seem like a demented ADD sufferer at times, simply unable to focus on one thing. It almost feels like he feels that he has to fill the space between the songs with whatever comes into his head.

The reason Bo has such a devoted following is his positioning himself as the mainstream outsider. He often refers to people not liking him and his not liking people. People feel that they can relate to his troubles and travails. In this context, his final piece, 'Nerds', is surprisingly moving - a thoughtful, restrained rap about being a nerd and the abuse that he received for it. It helps that he's a competent enough rapper, but it's delivered with a raw emotional conviction that makes it seem far more personal than the rest of his material, which since it tends to take a more attacking tone has to lie hidden behind the veil of persona. 

I think my highlight of the night actually preceded 'Nerds', when Bo quickly slipped off the mask of his stage persona and started to espouse his love of the UK comedy scene, namechecking people like Tim Key and Tim Vine, before waving his arms at the sky and screaming "WHY STEW, WHY??? WE COULD'VE BEEN FRIENDS!!!", a reference to the seeming discontent he appears to have drawn from UK comedy hero Stewart Lee (Lee had an article in the Financial Times on Friday feeling sorry for Burnham for being compared to him in the previous week's Guardian). I've always got the impression that Lee is more opposed to the idea of Burnham than anything else,

I took a friend to see Bo as a birthday present, and when we left the Empire we walked past the alley leading to the Stage Door. A crowd of  youngsters had already started forming, no doubt hoping to catch an autograph of the internet's biggest crossover star. I saw my friend looking down that alleyway, and could see that she was considering joining them, even though she had nearly a decade on the rest of the group, before evidently feeling I was guilting her into feeling too mature to stoop to that. I could see where she was coming from: Bo's an incredibly likable presence which allows him to get away with pushing pretty far into scathing attack. I think the kid's gonna do alright. 

Hip Hop Hubris: 'Empire State of Mind' by Jay-Z ft. Alicia Keys

me i gotta plug Special Ed and i got it made,
If Jesus payin LeBron, I’m paying Dwyane Wade
 -Jay-Z, 'Empire State of Mind' 

Now this was quite a bold claim by Jay-Z when he first made it in 2009. I assume his meaning at the time was supposed to be that he was only slightly behind Jesus in terms of importance and ability to compensate NBA stars for their ability.

Then LeBron James decided to move to Miami and play with Dwyane Wade. Then they made the NBA Finals and Wade played significantly better than LeBron, who had an implosion on a scale rarely seen and rarely dissected by such media scrutiny (which admittedly was self-inflicted), and everybody had to re-evaluate the LeBron-Wade relationship. As Bill Simmons wrote on Grantland:

If you watched Games 3 and 4 in person, you knew Miami belonged to Dwyane Wade. That was the hardest thing to shake. We made so much fuss about LeBron these past two years and he's not even the most important dude on his own team.

Basically, what I'm trying to ask is this: did Jay-Z say he was better than Jesus?