[channeling Fark cliche]

I am in Beijing.

So I am really getting a kick out of most of these replies.

Some of you guys are very good at making it sound like you know what you are talking about.

But trust me.... You don't.

I think you just want to make yourself sound smart, when in reality you dont know what you are talking about.

This is how bad info gets passed around.

If you dont know about the topic....Dont make yourself sound like you do.

Cuz some Farkers believe anything they hear.

[/channeling]

Anyway, yeah. It's weird the way the ticket thing is working out. I went to beach volleyball a couple nights ago, outside were Westerners and Chinese with signs reading "need tickets", people were asking me as I walked by if I had any extra tickets to sell, etc. I get inside, our section is half empty, and so are good chunks of the rest of the stadium too.

A couple of seats over were a two women who had some connection to Bank of America, and they were telling me about the lavish hospitality suite they had set up for their bigwigs (no doubt paid for by my farking overdraft fees you BASTARDS, but that's another rant). Anyway, they told me that several times a day a lackey would walk through and announce something like, "we've got seventeen tickets to beach volleyball and fourteen to tennis. Who wants to go?"

So if you see empty seats on TV, it's asshole corporate douches like that who are mostly to blame. I feel most bad for the Chinese, who really do want to go to these Olympics but are having a hell of a time doing so thanks to that kind of crap. I was at another event this morning - there was a section completely packed wall-to-wall with Chinese people, and the very next section over had maybe half a dozen Westerners total lounging around in it.