Goodbye Bird's Nest, Hello Marshmallow

So, now that Furlong has thrown down the gauntlet, it's time to do a little comparison. Let's start with the ceremonies. According to CTV, VANOC is now working a $40 million budget for its opening and closing ceremonies. That pales in comparison to the reported $300M Beijing blowout, but is pretty much in line with the $34 million spent in Torino. And you know the Torino budget had to include the cost of Pavarotti's dressing room spread, am I right? ... Too soon?

As that article mentions, this will be the first indoor opening ceremony ever. The venue is the 60,000-seat BC Place Stadium, home to the BC Lions and, unfortunately, a quintessentially bland example of 1980s stadium design.

Please, try to conceal your awe.

Of course, the ceremony could very well end up outdoors if BC Place's most prominent feature, its fluffy white air-supported roof, suffers another deflating incident like last year's embarrassing tear:

The Place assures us all that between now and 2010, it plans extensive "renovations to suites, seating, washrooms and concession stands, and enhancement of the existing roof liner." As for the roof itself, a new retractable cover is in the works, but not until after the Olympics are over, so this sentence is pointless to you and me.

All that said, holding the ceremony indoors has its pros and cons:

PROS	CONS
Ceremony unlikely to be affected by the extreme likelihood of Vancouver rain in February	Does this really scream "Olympic grandeur" to you?
Cirque du Soleil will probably hang from the rafters doing something surreal and perplexing	Been there, done that
After Beijing, organizers can just show some fireworks on the jumbotron and promise us that they're there, they're real and they'd be spectacular if we could just see them	BC Place + indoor torch = giant toasted marshmallow
Crowd of luminaries less likely to be frigid and miserable	No awesome fur hats

The fur hats win it every time.