The Olympics are Underway!

The Hollywoods are doing something kind of rare - watching TV. The opening ceremonies of the winter Olympics are on the telly.

Mrs. H. is drooling over Vancouver - her hometown for a brief period. It is also one of my favorite cities. My first visit to Vancouver was unforgettable, thanks to my cousin and her husband who lived there at the time. My first exposure to Indian food was in Vancouver. I've always found it clean, beautiful, cosmopolitan, and quintessentially Canadian. And in the Hollywood household - at least among the human denizens - the Canadians outnumber the non-Canadians two to one.

The athletes have just finished parading in. Canada has just made its entrance to the roars of the crowd. I could do without the disturbing idols set up on the stage, though. But political correctness is part of Canadian (and Olympic) culture.

The Canadian national anthem is rather shocking - mentioning both "God" and "the cross." Strangely, this is not the stuff of lawsuits in the Great White North. It is sad, however, to see that O Canada is now being warbled up American Idol style in the same way that the Star Spangled Banner is routinely butchered. It is a pretty awesome thing to see the Maple Leaf brought in by a unit of Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Hopefully, all the athletes will be safe and there will be no more fatal mishaps as happened to Georgia's luger, Nodar Kumaritashvili, in whose memory the games are being dedicated.