Oh yes, so that the NBC network could milk its advertisers for every last cent, we had to wait till "prime time" to see anything. That was 7.30pm on the east coast and 6.30pm Central time, which is where I am. (6 hours behind London.) The west coast didn't get it for two hours after I started watching. Meanwhile, on the NBC news, we had every bloody journalist on the payroll "live from London" telling us what they absolutely could NOT talk about, and reminding us that we had several hours to wait. Grrr....
Then - Piers Morgan (in London) took to Twitter and, despite his Translaticness knowing that American Tweeps couldn't yet watch the proceedings, tweeted the big surprise about who would be lighting the torch! If there was a twit and a wazzock of the 2012 Olympics, it wasn't Mitt Romney as the newspapers claimed, it was feckin' stupid Piers Morgan. Unbelievable.
So, when we finally started on the US version of the Opening Ceremony, we first had to sit through a few dozen montages about various Olympic team athletes. Now, we'd been sitting waiting for several hours to see anything "live"; couldn't they have given us the meaningless background stories (about school nicknames and domestic pets, no less) during the run-up? I mean really?
And then there was the constant, inane, superfluous and often clueless chatter from various NBC celebrity commentators like Bob Costas, Meredith Viera and Matt Lauer. This person ranted about it in a very succinct way, so I'll just guide you over there in case I self-combust. Let's just say, it wasn't great commentary.
Oh and we had to cut away for commercials every five minutes, but there was a funny angle to this. Bearing in mind that the entire thing was pre-recorded, our commentators kept saying "While you were away..." then telling us what we'd missed; as if, a) we had gone to make a cup of tea when really, we'd been sitting still, waiting patiently for the ceremony to return, and b) it was not a pre-recorded event and they couldn't have shown us anything they wanted to.
Give me strength. (And I'm not even mentioning the fact that they skipped entirely, any references to the tribute to 7/7 victims. God no; not in an election year. Hadn't Mitt Romney served up enough controversy?)
So yes, the Opening Ceremony was fantastic, put a lump in my throat etc, but I have to be honest, I was