All those camera at the Olympics

There was a Richard Pryor concert movie. It started out with a guy walking back and forth in front of the stage with an instamatic camera taking picture after picture of Pryor who was on stage yelling at the idiot to sit down. Pryor told him he'd go to his friends and say, "I got pictures of Richard Pryor!" and they'd say, "So what?"

I started to realize that snapshots didn't make sense. Why take pictures of things like celebrities and landmarks when you can see infinitely better, commercially produced pictures of the same thing?

When my sister and mother dragged me off to see Bill Clinton back when he was running for president, they demanded that I bring a camera and take a picture of him.

"What for? There are thousands of pictures of him. Millions."

But they insisted. I got a picture of his hair. There was a big crowd there and I wasn't going to push my way to the front.

It's a lesson those Olympic athletes should have learned. You watch the opening of the games, most of the athletes and most everyone else involved walked along carrying a cell phone camera or a little video camera. I've never been able to get very good footage while walking. I think they should have designated one athlete as videographer or exchanged cameras. Each athlete would film on another athlete's camera. That way there was a chance that they could get pictures of themselves on their own videos.

The Japanese team defied stereotype---none of them had a camera.

They should have asked people to record it at home, and maybe got some footage of stuff behind the scenes that no one would see otherwise.

Rowan Atkinson made fun of it while doing his bit in the opening, holding a cell phone as he did his bit.

And, really. There were some guys using old standard def Flip camceras. You're at the Olympics! A once-in-a-lifetime thing! At least get a high definition camera!