Are You People In-Seine?

The Paris Olympics are in full swing, and many of us have mostly gotten over the opening ceremonies by now.

If you missed the torrential regatta, you were one of the lucky ones. Here’s a brief recap:

Paris apparently cut off all communications early with the International Olympic Committee regarding the opening ceremony plans. Then they assembled a planning and project management committee consisting of the Parks and Rec department, the maritime academy, and a homeless guy named Pierre.

“Why have the opening ceremonies where the athletes can all be together and the people of the world can clearly see them, in a comfortable environment such a giant Olympic stadium of some sort?” they asked. “That’s so sensible and traditional. We have a river.”

So, the athletes arrived to nowhere on boats. They just motored on the Seine in what can only be described as a hurricane without as much wind. I know France cannot be blamed for the rain, but somehow, it’s still their fault.

While the athletes got to mingle with no one except whomever was also on their boat, other people along a three-mile (or 67-kilometer) route got to experience live music and dancing, and people up on poles, swinging in the wind. They did not get to see the athletes, however, since the Olympic games are not about them.

Then the big finale began. A floating rock came up the river with a flaming piano and a seasick singer belting out “Imagine” and later, most of her dinner.

Then a silver, caped, Olympic antihero rode up the Seine on a weird chrome mechanical horse on top of a submarine. Her cape was the Olympic flag, and she was charged with bringing it approximately seven miles along the three-mile route.

After an hour of riding on top of a very visible invisible submarine, the rider got on a real horse and rode under the Eiffel Tower. Then she got off that horse and walked, ever so slowly, up a 2000-kilometer stage, shaped like the Eiffel Tower.

The tower shot lasers. The slowest rider/walker on Earth delivered the flag to some people who did not have the Olympic flame. Where was the flame? Was it extinguished by the rain?

No! Hats off to the Olympic torch designers, because that thing apparently can’t be put out by mere monsoons. We catch up with the flame back on a boat! Another damn boat? Yes, and it’s going the wrong way, opposite the athletes, who are still waiting to see Lady Gaga and have no idea any of this is happening.

Everyone who is not on a boat is under the Eiffel Tower wondering who the weird flag lady is and getting hyped for a Celine Dion concert. The athletes are not invited.

Neither is the flame. It goes on a boat to where no one is.

When they finally dock the flame at a city park of some kind, it gets carried approximately two and a half feet each by 600 people before it reaches a 100-year-old French cyclist, now on four wheels, in a wheelchair. He rolls it to two other people, but at this point, no one has the capacity to care who they are or why they are qualified to be there.

The unnamed duo walks the flame across a gangplank to a balloon and together hold the flame up to the cheers of tens of people.

Then they light the Olympic cauldron, and the cauldron lifts off and brings a massive flame high above the city. Any living French person over 85 years old, including our cyclist, has a PSTD-induced heart attack.

Far away from the flame or any of the athletes, whose boats were last seen entering the English Channel, Celine Dion sings in French, as if she had been speaking French her whole life. The crowd of non-athletes and non-flame-bearers goes insane.

Everyone, including the broadcasters, are confused about whether it's over, until an unfortunate gust from the storm breaks the flaming balloon’s tether. It is last seen heading toward the North Sea over Belgium.

Meanwhile, the surfing competition concludes in Tahiti, because they are thirteen days ahead of Paris time.

France publicly apologizes to Lebron James, and finally ends the opening ceremonies by formally surrendering to the athletes from the Trinidad and Tobago ski boat, the only country to make landfall on French soil from the Seine flotilla.

Thankfully, the English Navy was able to rescue a majority of the remaining athletes, and the rest of the games are under way!

Go ‘Merica!

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

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