I've been following Warren Ellis (the comic book writer) on Twitter. He's a funny guy.
Here is his commentary as he watched the opening ceremony for these Olympic Games.
Points to Danny Boyle for a genuinely creepy start to the opening ceremony. It's all some kind of hideous fucking Summoning
I will pay serious money for it to end with Ken Branagh inside the Wicker Man.
Ken Branagh now stands in a glowing Circle Of Power as giant smokestacks rise up and fuck the very sky. This is deeply odd.
Oh, it's time to be sad. Animatronic muttonchops on Victorian gentlemen deploy to "sad" position. Ken Branage is eating a baby.
It appears that the One Ring has been forged, in Birmingham.
Victorian industrialists are dance-miming beating poor people to death with their penises I think
The Olympic Rings are forged, raining torrents of scourging fire down on
the peasants who were forced to make them. Good message there.
Wait, James Bond has come to shag the Queen
He's going to bend her over a corgi any second now
I see Prince Philip couldn't fake another bladder infection to get out
of this one. Maybe he can ask James Bond to just shoot him.
The Queen has summoned the armed forces and is announcing that everyone
in the stadium must die to activate the hidden gods of Albion.
Okay, she's not, but that would have been right in character for this show. Did I mention I'm quite ill?
Somewhere in the background, Ken Branagh is riding around in a cart made
entirely of black people, setting model villages on fire
And now, a tribute to the National Health Service, entitled "Here's Another 27 Million Pounds You Can't Have."
I somehow always knew that the soundtrack to the apocalypse could well be "Tubular Bells." Next up: child sacrifices!
Here comes a performance of the music from Chariots Of Fire. Stage is of course aptly decorated with dead marathon runners.
Rowan Atkinson, folks, keeping comedy dead.
Okay, now a house full of people is being surrounded by glowing worms. I'm not sure who I'm rooting for. Possibly the worms.
mod dalek-loompas
i swear to christ "Tiger Feet" by Mud was really not a cultural pinnacle we needed to reveal to the rest of the world
i don't feel very well and i don't know how much of what i'm seeing is actually happening
My daughter just said: "Underage sex! Another great British pastime!"
During the 90s sequence, if you looked carefully, you could see Shaun
Ryder selling the audience dodgy E's from a Sainsbury's carrier bag
And now we celebrate the forthcoming red-giant phase of our dying sun. I think.
What if this whole thing was the intended original ending of the Danny Boyle film "Sunshine"?
BBC commentators have informed us that Burundi is where tea comes from
and that names from other countries are strange and exotic.
Sadly, the North Korean team may not walk on inside a giant inflatable
political punishment camp. But, given the show so far, I have hopes.
Am holding out for the final part, where the Tardis appears in a
five-ring halo of purifying flame and John Barrowman has sex with
everybody
Lord Coe of Cola has turned up to give a strangely Nietzschean sermon on the mount, only with more business motivation.
Oh god that was heartbreaking. Muhammad Ali is there. His tender is
saying "Wave, Muhammad," but he's not in there any more. He can't.
In happier news, it seems the United Nations have elected a female "champion of the earth."
Okay, they did this right. The flame lit by seven young athletes, both
genders, mixed races, sent on their way by medallists of the past.
And that cauldron of flame is a magnificent piece of engineering.
All it needs now is for Paul bloody McCartney to turn up and ruin everything. OH WAIT
