I don’t think anyone will be able to outdo the “American excess” of 84 grand pianos playing George Gershwin’s “Rapsody in Blue” at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
intercst
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“Spectacle” is what Shiny-land does.
Steve
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Hi Steve,
Over the years you continually list all the things you feel this country and its people/businesses do wrong…and it is quite a list.
Could you please list the things you think we do right?
Light some candles instead of always “cursing the darkness”?
Thanks!
Murph
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The 84 pianos were only a small part of that opening program, one that reminisced on the links between show biz, athleticism, and joy despite anguish, recalling the far earlier 1936 Olympics hosted by Los Angeles in the depths of the depression while Busby Berkeley’s insanely creative Goldiggers of 1935 was playing in theaters:
It wasn’t typical fake shiny, it was the real thing, and I was there at the opening ceremonies rejoicing with the athletes at the beginning of the games, and later partied until 2 AM with two of them, one Nigerian and one Canadian, whose competitions would not come for a half week. It was glorious.
And unlike most Olympics, the Los Angeles Olympics made money for the city, endowing a foundation for city wide youth atheletic programs that continues to this day.
Hollywood actually knew how to do shiny well.
d fb
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The US televised Olympics use the best media experts in the world. Only once every 4 years.
I look forward to anything shiney.
The 84 games opening ceremonies set the standard for sure.
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Absolutely. America is the land of scam, skim and fraud. It’s possible to retire early just by not letting yourself get screwed. You don’t have to invent something, start a business, or do anything special. Merely watching your expenses and capturing the “skim-free”, compounded return on the stock market over an investing lifetime is enough to do it for you.
Phone company said it was a “good bill”, until the TV reporter came calling.
intercst
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Not the previous poster, but I’ll say plumbing. Other nations have made dramatic improvements over the last couple decades, but overall the USA has the best plumbing in the world.
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Absolutely! When I was renting an apartment in London for a year on Exxon’s dime, as a condition of the lease I had the landlord install a pump in the bathroom of this newly constructed penthouse overlooking the Thames River to give me enough water pressure to take a shower. There was only about 3 feet of hydrostatic head between the shower head and the atmospheric tank in the attic, just above the tub. Oddly there was about 80 psi of pressure in the faucet in the kitchen sink, but it was verboten to connect a showerhead to that pipe.
intercst
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Maybe a vector of puritanical morality? “cleanliness is next to Godliness”?
Steve
So you can’t do it … you can’t praise anything in the USA … even good plumbing isn’t a good thing because it is likely due to some outdated puritanical notion of godliness. 
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The richest, fastest growing and urbanizing 19th C nations, the USA and UK, not surprisingly led the way in worrying about sanitation and inventing plumbing codes, getting serious about it in the 1880s after cholera outbreaks forced sensible people to think more clearly about Public Health. Here is the most succinct summary on the plumbing revolution I have found:
Mostly the rest of the world followed in the wake of the UK and USA.
The USA started seriously writing plumbing codes in the 1880’s, starting in California, closely followed by New York.
I’ve done a lot of plumbing in my life (primarily to save money because competent plumbers are usually very expensive) and worked within both of the two main codes of the USA:
and
The UPC and offshoots worldwide originated in Los Angeles (!), and is usually a little more expensive and bothersome to implement, but I think works wonderfully better than any other system. The IPC and the mostly similar British based codes are much friendlier when installing plumbing “post hoc” into olde buildings, and usually somewhat cheaper.
The UPC systems are almost always quieter, and often more durable.
d fb
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So, how often were plumbers called to fix it at Catholic churches, etc?