Anthony Lane surveys the first week of the Olympics with an ambling wit:

“There was much wrangling, ahead of the festivities, over the quality of the air. In all honesty, though, the atmosphere is not that bad: recent analysis uncovered a quantitative ratio of eighty-five per cent nitrogen, ten per cent carbon dioxide, four per cent oxygen, and one per cent vichyssoise. On the first day of competition, I watched the cyclists pass through Tiananmen Square, near the start of their road race, and none of them seemed in danger of expiring. Logic suggested that they zip up the east side of the square, since they were heading that way anyhow, but politics demanded that they take the western route, and then hang a right. This allowed them to pass in a pretty blur beneath the portrait of Mao Zedong, who, having overseen the deaths of up to seventy million of his countrymen (and having earned a spot on their banknotes for his pains), was more than happy to survey a handful of fat-free Spaniards in red-and-yellow spandex. I watched the speeding procession in the company of the strapping Goss family, from Amsterdam, all of them rabid fans of volleyball. How did they rate the Dutch chances this year? ‘We have no volleyball team,’ Mr. Goss said, with infinite gloom. The Netherlands hadn’t qualified. The Gosses would have to make do with the beach equivalent, which is to proper volleyball what Elvis’s movies were to Elvis’s music. …”