Peter Finney: Another grand Olympics opening  Follow on Twitter
on August 08, 2008 at 7:16 PM, updated August 09, 2008 at 9:16
AM  Another opening.  Another show.  Another Olympics.  This one
was launched Friday in an architectural marvel known as the
Bird's Nest, a 70,000-seat stadium sitting on a mound of earth
in downtown Beijing, China.  Enclosed by an elliptical
latticework shell, National Stadium, on the inside, has a series
of cantilevered trusses supporting the roof and a pattern of
irregular crisscrossing beams, creating, as one observer put it,
"the illusion of a gigantic web of rubber bands straining to
hold the building in place."  There was no such illusion 24
years ago, as the Summer Olympics returned to Los Angeles, to a
stadium that had aged well, the stately Coliseum, which had
hosted the Summer Games of 1932.  I remember sitting in the
Coliseum that August day in 1984, on the eve of the opening
ceremonies, talking to Tommy Walker, the man in charge of a show
that was about to unfold before a