Somehow I missed this thread.
I was at the event too, right at the front of the crowd. What a strange night. Nobody noticed that the "40" didn't light up until the politicians and the kill-me-now radio-host MCs kept making awkward jokes about it. The whole thing was awkward, awkward, awkward. If you've ever wondered what the sound of several thousand people coughing politely at the same time was like, you should have been there. It was very... small-town.
And then there was the main event, the crazy Italian performers who came off like a fourth-rate cirque de soleil. It was performed almost solely by a horde of white girls, seemingly aged 18-24, none of them masters of their art. Mostly they "danced" by making flowery gestures with their arms whilst suspended from some cable or balloon-type device, none of them in synch with one another.
It had some neat moments - girls dangling from helium balloons, girls trapped in inflated hamster balls - but it went on exactly twice as long as it should have, mired down by endless honking of synth-strings and endless chatter about angels that made sense to nobody. ("I am the angel of something. Watch me hang from a cable. I am the life and the earth. I breathe fire upon spirits. Still on this cable...")
In conclusion, pheh.