If you missed last night's opening ceremonies, you missed out on history.

Think about the North Korean mass games, except more high-concept and slightly less creepy but much more intimidating. Sarkozy was drunk, Rudd was accompanied by some jolly fat woman who was even drunker, Bush looked like he would have preferred to be somewhere else, which is odd because the family has long loved them some China, and the commentators were like something out of “Best In Show,” except unscripted and more unintentionally hilarious. Meanwhile, someone had the bright idea of dressing up the U.S. team like they were on their way to a boat party in the Hamptons, which actually may have scared some of the other countries, which, of course, is the point of all this anyway.

Towards the end, one gets the feeling, “Oh, wow, there are a lot of these people and they’re the most competent adversaries the U.S. has faced since the Germans.” But then, when the Chinese roll out their giant squadron, they’re led by a cute little victim of the recent earthquake - and you think, “Ah. They’re just as scared of their own people as we ought to be of them. They're worried about dissatisfaction over their response to the needs of their people. They’re politicking. We're not so different after all, are we?”

But then they pull off this Triumph-o-the-Will stunt towards the end involving a flying Chinese athlete and a giant torch that appears out of nowhere, followed by the greatest fireworks display since Dresden, and you wonder, “Are we working on some sort of nano weapons, just in case?”

We’d better be.

If the intent of China was to impress, they have, I think, succeeded.