<< A Marla original and the Olympic firework display: both very impressive, yet deceptive - but does that make them less spectacular? In a word, yes.
If you were in Greater London last Friday lunchtime, and you listened very carefully to the sounds on the breeze, you'd have heard what sounded like a group of fat men sobbing. That, of course, was the board of directors for London 2012, being bombarded by a stratospheric Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing. Opening ceremonies usually consist of a few weirdly dressed schoolkids pushing a life-size plastic cow round the arena - this had a drum-wielding synchronised army and a man running the entire length of the stadium - in mid air. If there's any consolation for our boys, it's that the reports of digital fireworks and lip-synching kids have taken the edge off proceedings a touch. China didn't want to take any chances with their opening act - it kicked off at 8.08pm local time, on the 8th day of the 8th month, in the year 2008. As anyone who's ever seen that HSBC ad will know (everybody, basically) the number 8 is lucky in China - because its name is the same word used for 'prosperity'.
After the razzmatazz had died down, it was on to Saturday's slightly anti-climactic early events - to have that opening ceremony introducing weightlifting semi-finals was a stroke of hyperbole only matched by The Dark Knight in recent times. It's interesting to find out which obscure events certain nations excel at, as we do in rowing and sailing (hence wall-to-wall coverage of wholly unwatchable sports). For example, Italy's most successful Olympic sport, in terms of gold medals (how else would you measure it exactly) is fencing, and not scooter control, hair care or hot-headedness, as some of you despicable xenophobes may have thought.
Sunday brought two events with even greater caché than the golden Games - my sister's wedding to a lovely Italian bloke (apologies for the awful stereotypes I've had to expose above) and my very own birthday. Now that I've hit 25, birthdays are all about forgetting, and what with the free wine and buffet, there wasn't a lot of time for learning. The best I can offer is that August 10 (for that was the date) is the 222nd day of the year - except this year, when it's the 223rd (damn you, Freak Day). Far from being associated with prosperity, the number 2 is of course associated with poo - what that makes my special day, I'll leave to your discretion.
Monday closed with a fact with my possession that is possibly the most remarkable of the entire quest so far - that we are all made of stars. That's right, Moby wasn't just being cute - quantum physicists have theorised that as all matter in the universe is made from heavy elements, which originated in the Big Bang. In layperson's terms, all matter that came forth from said Bang is technically stardust, and if we're made of it, then you do the maths. It's more a question of definition than of actually being made of stars (I've felt that I'm closer to being constructed of a certain number for most of the day), and it does seem a touch ludicrous, but I'm a few textbooks away from arguing with a quantum physicist, so we'll have to take their word for it.
More hard-to-believe high-jinks this evening, as Knowledge Towers' cinema took in a showing of My Kid Could Paint That, a documentary about 4-year-old 'artist' Marla Olmstead, whose parents began exhibiting her abstract works and created a worldwide debate on whether a child could truly create art. The answer, in short, appears to be no, as it seems her father at the very least assisted her with the paintings. I felt a strange mixture of disgust and pity towards the parents - the mother who appeared to sincerely wish to keep her daughter from the spotlight, yet was there, with Marla in tow, at three separate exhibitions; and the father, whose mental state appears to visibly disintegrate as the film progresses, to the point where he takes an innocuous comment from his daughter and transforms into a crater-sized hole to bury himself in.
The film did bring into question the value of modern art; the fact is that the father would have got nowhere painting these pictures himself - the fact that his daughter was credited with the work caused their value to skyrocket. This leads to the suggestion that some paintings have gained value through notoriety rather than intrinsic brilliance - to whit, I can inform you that Jackson Pollock's Number 5, 1948 piece is the most expensive painting in the world. It was sold for $140 million in 2006 - going by the theory suggested above, it may well be made of stars - and for that price, it ought to be.
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