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Published: August 01 2012

The Olympic flame burns in its cauldron at Olympic Stadium during the opening ceremony at the London 2012 Summer Olympics on July 27, 2012 in London. UPI/Terry Schmitt

Buzz Fleischman - Columnist Page. The Olympics are here, but did London top the synchronous complexity of the Beijing 2008 opening ceremonies? Yes!!! In fact it was gloriously ‘over the top’!

England has certainly earned a gold medal for self-promotion in their opening ceremony. They managed to cram more references to ‘British pop culture through the ages’ than we could count. There were more people on the field than at a free for all after a soccer match between Liverpool and Manchester United.

From Mr Bean to their head nerd (inventor of the world-wide-web) the host country paraded what looked like dozens of themed groups over hundreds of years’ of history in thousands of costumes sewn by millions of Chinese.

Even the queen got into it by agreeing to act with James Bond portrayer Daniel Craig. She was shown as jumping into the choreographed fray from a helicopter to the eponymous Bond theme and propelling a poison dart from a gimmicked pen toward the Duchess of Cornwall. It was the only miss of the evening.

If England can produce a themed group that edifies the onset of the industrial revolution, they can do anything. The grand tribute to smoke and pollution had giant chimneys springing up from the field where sheep and cows had danced to Elton John’s ‘Madman Across the Water’. Actors dressed like hospital patients coughed up phlegm in unison as doctors from the National health System denied them coverage. It was awesome!

Mary Poppins, flying in from Brixton, thwarted a phalanx of villains from Captain Hook to Voldemort by skewering them in turn with a knife tipped ‘brolly’. Oh yes, then there was the parade of athletes.

And now on to the games….

The once plentiful ‘American down-land skeet’ has been officially placed back on the endangered species list due to a rash of hits at the London Olympics. Kimberly Rhode, who has won the woman’s skeet shooting medal for America singlehandedly pushed the hapless skeet back onto the list about halfway through her program. During the medal ceremony she said she felt the dichotomy of winning the gold medal and sorrow at ‘killing’ so many skeet to get there.

Although the American skeet is prolific among animals with their ability to breed like rats, their sleek seal like coat, which makes them among the most ‘pet-able’ animals, also contributes to their downfall. It is this lack of wind resistance in their coat that makes them ideal to be hurled through the air and shot at like fleeing felons.

In the Olympic Games, skeet shooting is very different than the everyday backyard ‘shoot’. Two throwing machines at different heights launch a series of 25 targets in a specific order and this is quite the challenge.

Just like any other world class sport, the participant must live eat and breathe skeet shooting and this means shooting (At) hundreds a day.  

A tax exempt organization called P.E.T.S. (People for the Ethical treatment of Skeet) has been incorporated to find homes for the skeet, lucky enough to be shot at by the losers.

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