2010 Opening ceremonies dress rehearsal.

Fair enough, I thought I saw everyone laying down a torch standing upright.  But in any case, the point is even in a vacuum, completely aside from the spectacle of Beijing, it was spectacularly bad.  I wasn't terribly impressed by either Torino or Salt Lake City, but I don't really remember either of them.  They were just kind of meh.  I will definitely remember this one.  From an effects standpoint it was outstanding (the part in the beginning with the eskimo guy pounding the staff and sending out shockwaves was really cool, and the part with the whales was rad), but there were a lot of laugh out loud moments: a hundred foot tall wire polar bear, interminable interpretative dance, badly choreographed wire-suspended skiiers/snowboarders rotating randomly while people in LIGHT BULB SUITS skated around below in concentric circles, and honestly, white fat man slam poetry?  At what point it cut to a female American athlete with a confused/horrified look on her face and you could actually read her mouth, "...what?"  One of the guys watching with us was Canadian and he started out defending it, then admitted it wasn't that great, then just kind of went into perpetual facepalm mode towards the end.