From Beijing With Love

Dear London 2012,

Thank you for coming to visit my Closing Ceremonies on Sunday night. As you will find out in four years, hosting the games is a huge undertaking, and I wish you all the best. But as a fellow host city, I must be honest with you.

Your debut sucked.

While your choice to use the red double-decker bus at the beginning of your performance was well suited (if not a little obvious), your choice in everything else, well...let's just say you didn't get off to a great start by having your mayor parade out onto stage with his shaggy hair and unbuttoned coat.

As I said, the choice of the double-decker bus was okay, but the "street" dancers that accompanied the bus as it made its way to the middle of the Bird's Nest seemed reminiscent of some drug-induced group orgy of British bobbies and characters from the Sgt. Pepper's album. The way they climbed all over each other, and then crawled over to the bus, and then crawled back to the ground made me want to collect them all and detain them in one of my Olympic protest parks.

I see that you also chose to have the token physically handicapped "dancer," whom I later saw jump from her wheelchair onto the bus, flail around a bit, and then dance back over to her wheelchair. Not so handicapped, are we? (But really, who am I kidding. I had a little Chinese girl lip sync during the Opening Ceremonies because the real singer, well...you know...not so cute).

But I digress.

After the dancers calmed down a bit, we then had another cute little Chinese girl symbolically pass a soccer ball to your cute little British girl. The cute little British girl then proceeded to walk on the backs of the dancers all the way to the bus. So, I'll give you that, because we're all about some symbolism here in China.

Now, I can't let you get away with the musical entertainment you picked, which in my opinion (and granted, we really like techno over here), sucked the most. While your choice in Jimmy Page and Leona Lewis - separately - would have a been a great thing, combining the two singers to create some weird rendition of "Whole Lotta Love" was just awkward and painful to listen to. And don't even get me started on why you thought it was so genius to have Leona Lewis rise from the top of the bus and tower over Jimmy Page by 15 or so feet. She looked scared and confused. Luckily, she was lowered with out incident, and the song ended soon there after.

And then (to follow up on the symbolic passing of the soccer ball I suppose) you brought out David Beckham, which I really wasn't surprised you did. What I did consider odd was the fact that he was standing next to two other musicians, one of whom was rocking out on a cello. But I guess Becks served a purpose, as he symbolically kicked the soccer ball into the crowd. I was almost waiting for Harry, Ron and Hermione to come flying out of the top of the bus to engage us all in a game of Quidditch, the new Olympic sport to take the place of softball.

I guess our display of fireworks and dancers lit by tiny LCD bulbs made you envious, because in the end you busted out umbrellas that had blue and red colored lights, and your dancers then held them up all around the bus as it drove out of the Bird's Nest. But really, you should have left the lights out of your performance, because this is where we really kicked your ass - we've had over 2,000 years to perfect the fireworks and we're pretty savvy with technology. I'll go ahead and give you a tip now - don't waste your money on fireworks. Just work on rounding up a bunch of Mini Coopers to dazzle the crowd during the Opening Ceremonies, ala "The Italian Job" style.

So London 2012, I hope that I didn't hurt your feelings too much. You know I don't want to hate on another host city. I'm just trying to give you some sisterly advice so you don't fall flat on your arse come 2012. I know you have a lot to live up to (we did spend $40 billion dollars in preparation for the games), but I believe in you. Just get the mayor a stylist, find a better director for your Opening Ceremonies and for god sake....have Becks take his shirt off! That will certainly guarantee your glory in Olympic history.

XOXO,

Beijing 2008