Beijing Opening Ceremony Performers And American Astronauts Have Much In Common

Say, remember those Opening Ceremonies from Beijing the other night? Pretty awesome, right? There was a globe! And glowsticks! And a scrim! And all kinds of crazy shit! As we now know, many of the elements from the ceremony were faked (or as fake as something involving a staged presentation can be). The fireworks were fake. The cute child singers were fake. Pulling back the curtain further, now comes word that many of the performers from the opening ceremonies were possibly forced to perform while wearing diapers. Hope they didn't have extra spicy Szechuan Triple Delight for lunch that day.

“You wanna know a secret?" an International Olympic Committee member from Las Vegas asked me in the lobby of the Shangri-La's Kerry Centre Hotel in Beijing. "The performers are wearing diapers during rehearsals so they don't have to take bathroom breaks."… Hannie Yang, a 21-year-old Beijinger and intern for Time Out Beijing, says she and her fellow performers were given absorbent pads when they were rehearsing for China's 50th National Day. "They gave us the really long ones that you'd use at night," she said. "Ugh, how hot and suffocating! We just chucked them and used the toilet when we wanted to anyway."

A report on NPR recently also mentioned that diapers were worn during the ceremonies themselves. One of my favorite parts of the whole thing was when they had a thousand people in boxes bobbing up and down, simulating ocean ripples and what not. Turns out many of those box performers had to imitate the wind with a steaming hot chocolate egg roll in their shorts. Kind of takes away from the magic. I’m also assuming those people were not let OUT of their boxes once the ceremony had ended. Give those performers a brown medal. This truly is the Year Of The Fudge Dragon.