Up close in Beijing

Sweat and pollution seem to be the unfortunate leitmotifs for this year's summer games. Peter Sanders, a reporter in the WSJ's L.A. bureau who is on an Olympics vacation, says that the Friday night opening ceremonies, while stupendous, also proved to be an endurance test for the 90,000 in attendance. The stadium is called the Bird's Nest, but Sanders has dubbed it the Boiling Pot.

Call me weak, call me soft, call me Californian, but sitting at the opening ceremonies in a pool of my own liquefied salt not 100 feet from a powerful wind machine focused on keeping the Chinese flag (and absolutely nothing else) flapping at 85 miles an hour was a unique form of torture. Never mind that two rows in front of me a gaggle of Dutch fans hadn't broken a sweat and were merrily slugging away beers -- or the woman one row down who had a no-holds-barred religious awakening at various moments during the elaborate and stunning show that opened the Games. I simply spent those four hours marinating.

Surprisingly, the men's room was the best place to find relief. Pungent -- but refrigerated -- air circulated throughout the bathroom, though loitering was discouraged. Folks, if the most comfortable place for the average spectator at the Olympics' grandest hour is the john, there's a problem. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't have skipped it or turned down a ticket, and I still feel pretty high and mighty about being one of only 90,000 people in the world who had the privilege. But from what I've read in the press so far, that's a big, sweaty elephant in the room that no one's talking about.