That Really Is A Lotta Love

Watching the Closing Ceremonies last Sunday, I couldn't help but wonder how in the hell London plans to follow Beijing. They put on quite an impressive show for the world -- not without its subtleties. As Anthony Lane astutely noted,

China supports a population of 1.3 billion, and the knowledge of that resource was never far away... One townful of men and women would race on, swarm into a shape, and race off, to be replaced by the next... deep below the spectacle, there was an unspoken suggestion that it would be an extremely bad idea to go to war against this nation.

On an unrelated note, only one male athlete in the entire games was openly gay (gold-medal winner), a statistic that profoundly saddened me.

It seems that London has come up with a strategy to top Beijing and also entice more openly gay athletes to the games without resorting to vague threats of colonialism. During the closing ceremonies, a London tour bus rolled in with a cadre of what seemed to be the stars of the West End doing the robot, I imagine to represent the awkward male, white pub dwellers of London. Jimmy Page rose out of the top of the bus, playing Whole Lotta Love.

Right about the point where the lyrics go "way down inside/way down inside you/you need it need my love, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, / I wanna be your backdoor man," none other than David Beckham popped out of the bus.

Let me remind you that David Beckham looks like this:
So, while England evidently has a country to run, mouths to feed, social programs to run, blahdy bladhy, blah, and seems far less willing than China to blow its national budget for the next 600 years, they are willing to offer the opportunity to have anal sex with David Beckham. Better still, since you'll be serenaded by Jimmy Page, you won't even have to listen to Beckham's pipsqueak excuse for a voice.

I'm guessing there's people out there who would pay $40 billion for that - especially since in 2012, that'll be worth approximately £49.95. Or 20 yuan...