Jul 30th 2012 08:12 am No use arguing
Well, the London Olympic Games have begun since we visited last. Let me say that I enjoyed the opening ceremony, right up to the point I fell asleep. I don’t mean that the way it sounds. Friday was a very busy day for me, one that began early, and it was a tribute to the event that I made it as long as I did, about halfway through the parade of nations. I was punched awake for the lighting of the torch, for which I’m grateful. I missed Sir Paul, to my chagrin. Yes, it was entertaining and quirky, as has been noted, but the fact that amazed me was that no participants got killed during the extravaganza! I’ve never seen so many live actors flying around on wires since, well… ever! At some point, someone is going to have to dial it back. They’re going to have to say, “We have a few nice musical numbers for you, a brief welcoming speech, the parade of athletes, a few fireworks, and then some old Olympian will struggle up the steps and light the torch with a flick of his Bic.” Very retro. I have a feeling it won’t happen in Rio.
Posted by jimmyjohnson / Vintage A&J
30 Responses to “No use arguing”
Rickmeister on 30 Jul 2012 at 8:15 am #
When the Olympics come to Rio, I’m sure the opening ceremonies will be much like Carnival. Perhaps a certain Mr. Buffett would be a good choice to perform, no?
Dave in MA on 30 Jul 2012 at 8:30 am #
Sir Paul did a wonderful job for someone performing live at the age of 70. His voice is a bit shaky on the soft passages, but quite powerful when he sings out. It was obvious he was enjoying the atmosphere and the crowd.
The whole extravaganza was amazing. I’m surprised they pulled it all off so well. I’d love to see this get released on Blu-ray disc, but I bet the licensing of the music and the royalties would be extravagant and prohibitive.
Breathtaking visuals, amazing technical feat turning the entire audience into one large display screen. Wonderful stuff!
Burns on 30 Jul 2012 at 9:14 am #
I was thinking how cool it would be to be part of Sir Paul’s backup band. “Holy gosh! I’m playing ‘Hey Jude’ with Paul McCartney!”
Did you notice the little ditty they played just before “Hey Jude”. It was just a phrase or 2 and I’m sure it was on a Beatle’s album but I could not find it (and now I’ve forgotten). I actually think it would be pretty funny if he had done another little unlabelled ditty from the very end of one of their albums. The one that goes “Queen Elizabeth’s a pretty nice girl…”
Mindy on 30 Jul 2012 at 9:47 am #
But not as good as Sir Mick and Sir Keith?
Dave in MA on 30 Jul 2012 at 9:53 am #
Burns, the 20 second or so piece he did before Hey Jude is from the end of the song “The End” on Abbey Road, and the one you quote is also from the Abbey Road album and is called “Her Majesty”. And yes, after the James Bond/Queen Parachute entry, I was fully hoping he’d sing that.
On another note, though, I can’t imagine the anxiety of being in the Arctic Monkees and going out to perform a Beatles song knowing that you’re about to be followed by Sir Paul McCartney himself!
Dave in MA on 30 Jul 2012 at 9:54 am #
Guess I’m showing my age. That should be Arctic Monkeys.
Boise Ed on 30 Jul 2012 at 11:18 am #
McCartney, shmartney! I was loving the bit with Rowan Atkinson. And, of course, the Queen as a Bond girl.
Blinky the Wonder Wombat on 30 Jul 2012 at 11:19 am #
Dave in MA-
And there I was thinking they had frozen Davey Jones’ head…
Dave in MA on 30 Jul 2012 at 11:32 am #
Boise Ed, I agree! The Queen’s part was phenomenal. She’s got a great sense of humor and allowing this bit to be done, including her appearance in it to give it credibility, was a riot!
As for The Black Adder, I agree, fantastic!
Karla on 30 Jul 2012 at 11:52 am #
On another note, was it just me or did it seem weird that more than one Sunday comic made reference to the audience yesterday? Sally Forth and Luann are the two I really remember but there might have been more. Conspiracy or Coincidence?
Whistling Rufus on 30 Jul 2012 at 12:21 pm #
A little off topic,(what else is new here?) I believe Keith Richards turned down knighthood (as did David Bowie).
Tom in Glendora, CA on 30 Jul 2012 at 12:39 pm #
I only saw bits and pieces. But the most interesting thing was that my wife actually
recognized Mr Bean! She didn’t know his real name though. I’ve been a fan of
Rowan Atkinson for quite some time.
Bob, near Mark on 30 Jul 2012 at 12:46 pm #
Karla,
Doonesbury did, also.
Dave in MA on 30 Jul 2012 at 1:14 pm #
My daughter (18) knew him as Mr. Bean too, but to me he’ll always be the Black Adder.
phil in Missoula, MT on 30 Jul 2012 at 1:42 pm #
Some city is going to have to lose their shorts on an Olympic Extravaganza before the silliness subsides. I’ll bet when all is said and done in London, the cashier’s till is going to be even more than empty.
Boise Ed on 30 Jul 2012 at 3:18 pm #
Karla, see http://comicsidontunderstand.com/wordpress/2012/07/30/breaking-the-fourth-wall-synchronicity/ In addition to Doonesbury, there were Luann and Sally Forth.
sideburns on 30 Jul 2012 at 4:35 pm #
Phil, the last two cities that I know of to make a profit from hosting the Olympics were Los Angeles (1932) and Los Angeles (1984).
MINDY on 30 Jul 2012 at 4:37 pm #
I’m shattered! Sir Keith is just a regular guy?
sandcastler on 30 Jul 2012 at 4:39 pm #
sideburns, sure that was not creative accounting?
emeritus Minnesota biologist on 30 Jul 2012 at 4:52 pm #
Phil: Don’t most World’s Fairs also lose money?
Trucker: Theories are explanations of observations that can potentially be falsified or modified by contradictory observations. Lots of generalizations have been discarded, e.g., that humans grow no new neurons during their lifetimes. Here are two more or less in my areas, biology and vertebrate paleo. [This will have to be long].,
Biochemists long thought genes must be made up of proteins (which are long, folded chains of amino acids), because only such large complex molecules could possibly code for the many diverse hereditary variations any species has. Nucleic acids were considered too simple, each nucleotide consisting only of a five-carbon sugar (only two varieties of that), an identical phophate in all of them, and one of only five different organic bases. Somebody (I’d have to look it up) in the ’40s or so showed chemically that it had to be nucleic acids, which led to the puzzle. Francis Crick and Jim Watson, by model building using Rosalind Franklin’s x-ray crystalography photos, figured out the double helix structure of DNA chains, which led to to the breaking of the almost universal [slight variations at a few sites in one taxon or another] genetic code. The only reason Rosalind didn’t get the Nobel Prize with them is that she had died before then, and it is awarded only to living people. That needs fixing.
In geology, it was long thought that the continents had always been about where they are today. The rise and subsequent erosion of ancient mountain ranges was thought to be the result of isostasy, the tendency of lighter rocks to rise more than denser ones. In the 1920s, Alfred Wegener, a meteorologist suggested that the continents had drifted to their present positions, based largely on similarities in the strata found in eastern South America and western Africa, the rather neat fit of their respective east and west coasts, and also on the close relationships of some tropical organisms, mostly plants across the tropics. He theorized that internal forces from beneath pushed the continents apart, causing them to plow through the thinner rocks of the ocean basins, and he asserted that Africa and South America began to separate in the Eocene, some 50 million years ago [MYA].
Even though isostasy could not completely account for moutain building, no conceivable mechansim could push continents through the ocean basin rocks. Paleontologists could easily show that many groups of plants and animals that are now pan-tropical were previously distributed widely throughout the Northern Hemisphere when most of the world’s land surface was tropical, so easily could have populated southern continents from the north. Also, many groups that are now confined to the New World tropics and Old World tropics originated before the Eocene and should have become pan-tropical. Later work led to the theory of plate tectonics: continents ride on plates of denser rock that are generated volcanically along mostly oceanic spreading centers* and that subduct under other plates at various places such as western South America and North America, and beneath two continents such as the Himalayas between India and Tibet. *[One comes above sea level in Iceland, another in the Afar Triangle in Ethiopia and Eritrea.] The process results from heat conducted upward by deep circulating currents within the relatively fluid mantle causing the extrusion of new crust along oceanic spreading centers (rift zones). The current episode of contintal drift began not in the Eocene 50 MYA but aound the end of the Triassic about 250 MYA.
Both the DNA revolution and the acceptance of continental drift driven by plate tectonics, by the way, falsify one contention of philosopher Thomas S. Kuhn in his 1962 book. “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”. He suggested that, when a new paradigm arose as a result of new observations that did not fit the old picture, older establishment scientists typically resisted the new picture and that the new one only became accepted as the old guys died off. For decades I have watched dozens of scientists in both the above areas of science and most if not all, once they have considered the new evidence, have come around to the new view. Their are exceptions [disregarding the "exceptions" who are constrained by religious tenets and those who are paid to be exceptions by Big Tobacco and such], but we are a reasonably rational [and religiously diverse] lot.
Mary in Ohio on 30 Jul 2012 at 5:18 pm #
Yesterday’s Comic Strip of the Day also did a nice job of explaining Sally and Luann et al:
http://www.weeklystorybook.com/comic_strip_of_the_daycom/2012/07/following-the-conversations.html
He often pays tribute to A & J , so you may want to bookmark this!
Lost in A**2 on 30 Jul 2012 at 5:56 pm #
Some years back,while looking at small-scale map of the Near East, I noticed that the Jordan Valley and Red Sea were at roughly the same longitude as the Great Rift Valley in eastern Africa. I wondered about their connection with each other, and with continental drift, but never seriously enough to look into the matter. Thank you, eMb, for confirming my conjecture.
sideburns on 30 Jul 2012 at 6:47 pm #
Yes, Sandcastler, I’m sure. The ’32 Olympics were well before creative accounting was invented. They were also the first to build an Olympic Village, although only for the men. The ’84 Olympics not only were run with proper fiscal responsibility but also used much more corporate sponsorship than had been customary in previous Olympiads. McDonalds, in particular, got badly burned by it’s promotion: Just as it’s doing now, it was offering free items for every US medal and lost quite a bit on it because the Soviets boycotted the games, running the US medal count up far beyond what they’d anticipated.
Ghost Rider 6 on 30 Jul 2012 at 7:07 pm #
MINDY: I doubt the phrase “regular guy” has ever been used to describe Keith Richards. But you knew that, didn’t you? I’m beginning to think you have a thing about the Stones.
Why were you yelling your name?
MiNdY on 30 Jul 2012 at 10:17 pm #
Ghost, the name was “yelled” because John knows I never check the heading before posting in here and he wanted to make me appear to be “strident.” I told him that it was a futile effort because everyone in here knows how shy, quiet, prim and proper I am. And then I banished him to the outhouse to repent for his transgressions. Of course, Keith Richards is perfectly normal, the entire world knows that, and I love the Stones unless they’re Kidney or cherry.
Mindy on 30 Jul 2012 at 10:17 pm #
He did it to me again!
TruckerRon on 31 Jul 2012 at 12:29 am #
emeritus Minnesota biologist and curmudgeonly ex-professor — thanks! Neither of you disappointed me with your answers. Now if we could get politicians to pay attention to the cause/effect of their policies we’d solve a few problems. Maybe. The only thing larger than the ever-expanding national debt are the egos of our narcissistic political class.
Boise Ed — thanks for the AppleScript. I’v enjoyed tinkering with it and have marveled at how many comics we both enjoy.
curmudgeonly ex-professor on 31 Jul 2012 at 2:52 am #
Trucker, another one just came to mind. As I grew up, it was taken as gospel truth that dinosaurs were completely cold-blooded critters. For maybe 20 or 30 years now, there has been found evidence that many dinosaurs were at least somewhat warm-blooded, and some probably were as warm-blooded as any of us. In any event, the scientific idea of purely cold-blooded dinosaurs was destroyed during my professional career.
Relatedly, it now seems true that quite a few of them had feathers, too – though I do not recall if that thought was considered anathema in my younger years.
Burns on 02 Aug 2012 at 3:41 pm #
Dave in MA, thanks for the ditty info…I think I only have >Abby RoadDr. Pepper< between "Dr. Pepper" and "Get By with a little Help" there is that little "Billy Shears" ditty. All part of the Paul Is Dead fakement…
On that subject, how many people spent how much time trying to play "Revolution #9" backwards?
Burns on 02 Aug 2012 at 3:52 pm #
Whoa! That got screwed up based on what I was trying to do to separate album names and song names. It was supposed to say that I only have the album Abby Road on vinyl, while i have Dr. Pepper on CD/MP3, so the latter is easier to search.. And then I said that the Beatles did a lot of those little dittys, and gave the example of the one between the Dr Pepper song and “Get by with a little Help”. And then the rest about Paul is Dead…which was quite fun for several years!