…opening ceremony live on CBC (one more reason Canada’s a cooler place). The thing’s a big, gaudy, lovely performance-art spectacle (think Cirque du Soleil) with gods, lovers, classical art, philosophy, history, and huge nude male sculptures.

The celebration of Greek history within the show, like most accounts of that proud nation, lingered on the ancient/classical days and rushed through everything since. As the ceremony’s parade of live tableaux depicted it, the fall of Greek creativity didn’t stem from the Romans’ conquest but from the rise of that late-Roman religion, Christianity.

PS: Yeah, the original Olympic athletes were all male and naked. But there were even more differences between then and now; some of which involved the eternal contradiction between democratic ideals and slavery.