The Worst Olympics Ever: The London Games look ugly - literally - Calgary Herald

After calling the 2010 Games in Vancouver the worst Olympics ever, The Guardian in London has requested that a Vancouverite return the favour.

It wasn't difficult to recognize the strategy in London's coverage of the 2010 Games in Vancouver. As a Canadian citizen, I'm attuned to crippling insecurity, and the UK press's insistence that we were staging "the worst Games ever" was teeming with it.

But no hard feelings. Disparaging the Vancouver Olympics was a savvy approach for the knock-kneed nation going next. What better way to ensure that London won't be viewed as a momentous disappointment than by setting the bar as low as possible? Of course, this strategy works a whole lot better if, after deprecating the previous Games until an afternoon at Crufts feels like a grander occasion, you don't rest on your laurels so completely that you still manage to limbo below the bar.

The London Games are looking ugly, and I mean that literally. It started early, with the unveiling of that painful logo, the colour scheme for which appears inspired by a Nike catalog from 1991. Depending on who you talk to, it resembles either Lisa Simpson performing a sex act or a child's illustration of the breakup of Pangaea. Granted, a long look eventually yields an Easter egg -- a "2012" hidden amidst the horror -- but, like an eclipse, it's hard to stare at it long enough to appreciate it. (Has the sun taught you nothing, London? Perhaps if you saw it more often.)

But a logo that's best viewed through a pinhole projector is just the beginning. The official font looks like the result of a search through Microsoft Word for the script that best screams "fun." Thank God LOCOG started at the end of the alphabet and not the beginning, or all the Olympic signage would be written in Comic Sans.

In fairness, not everything has been an eyesore. Danny Boyle's opening ceremony looked absolutely beautiful, and it had some truly fun moments. Finally putting James Bond and the Queen on the same screen was a deft touch (as was sparing us a scene depicting what Bond usually does when he finds himself in the room with a powerful woman).

The ceremony may have been a touch too keen in its representation of the host country, however. For example, the 15,000-person army of volunteers acted as a trenchant nod to British history, since the United Kingdom is an empire built on the backs of volunteers, willing or otherwise.

And a ceremony overloaded with musical acts underscored Britain's tendency to overhype their musicians to the point of absurdity. I especially liked the appearance by the Arctic Monkeys, a band the UK press has gone to such embarrassing lengths to "Lisa Simpson" over the years that a Briton might be forgiven for assuming the opening ceremony was the only venue befitting their prodigious talent.

Of course they performed a Beatles song. Self-aware the festivities were not.

But I guess we shouldn't be surprised at the United Kingdom's lack of self-awareness when their press smugly gave us the term "worst Olympics ever" two years before they began to define it.