A few hours ago, I watched the entirety of the Opening Ceremonies for the London 2012 Olympics. I was more than a bit surprised to last the 3 hours and 50 minutes, running till 12:46 a.m., here in England, considering I was alternately bored and puzzled.

It must have been the caffeine in the diet Coke I was drinking.

Anyway, the verdict, ahead of those of you on the West Coast getting a look?

Impenetrable. Chaotic. Too “inside England.”

(And I was not the only one to make that assessment. Check this posting by a correspondent for the Daily Telegraph.)

I’m not saying the nearly four hours of running around at the Olympic Stadium are beyond the understanding of American viewers … but long stretches will test your patience.

The long “Pandemonium” section of the event, which is a paean to the glories and (especially) the horrors of the Industrial Revolution — which may never before have been singled out for their great entertainment value — was hard to follow. And the prelude, the Britons of the Middle Ages, and the tracing of the Thames from source to sea … and Daniel Craig meeting the queen … it’s a lot of random stuff patched together.

The BBC talking heads, here in England, love-love-loved it. Of course they did.

Oh, and another extraordinarily weird part: The tribute to the NHS — the National Health Service. No. Really. They did this. Doctors and nurses singing and dancing and fake little patients bouncing on their beds. It was very bizarre.

And the long nod given to Brits who have written children’s books, and how creepy a lot of their work has been …

The Parade of Nations was the tribute to tedium it always is (Sao Tome and Principe has a team, and so does Nauru, best known in the Gulf as the only country in the world with a higher incidence of Type 2 diabetes than the UAE), and it was better in one way and worse in another.

Better in that organizers focused on up-tempo music, during the parade, with the idea that the athletes would walk faster, and I think it worked.

The downside was, the one anecdote the BBC people had, per team, couldn’t be spit out fast enough before the next nation was walking into the stadium. Be interesting to see how NBC handles it.

And the Olympic flame … was just a dud.

Spoiler alert! I’m about to talk about the flame. Do not go further, if you want to be surprised.

So, the flame. The torch relay ended at Tower Bridge. Then the flame was brought down the Thames in a speed boat that David Beckham, the soccer player, drove … with some apparently famous female holding the flame.

They handed it over to “Sir Steve Redgrave” … whom, the BBC assumed, everyone watching knew on sight. I’ve covered 14 Olympics, and I had heard the name but couldn’t place him. Anyway, he’s been knighted, and I thought maybe he was one of the Coe-Cram-Ovett generation of middle-distance runners … but no. He was a rower. A rower.

Can you imagine an American rower becoming so famous that he would carry the flame into the stadium?  No way. But it can happen in the UK, where they went about a decade with nearly no gold medals.

So, as I recall (and I was not taking notes, and this is beginning to get foggy now) … Redgrave (Sir Steve) handed the torch over to Muhammad Ali, who is looking really frail. (And I just do not get why the Olympic movement has such a love affair with him. He won a gold medal in 1960; I could understand Atlanta 1996 having him light the torch, but involving him in London 2012? Why not Carl Lewis? Why not Prince Harry?)

But I digress. The torch eventually went to seven sub-torches carried by “young athletes” nominated by seven people involved with London 2012 because, see, the theme is “Inspiring a Generation” … and these seven kids not even the Brits know … simultaneously lit the device that turns into the cauldron.

The limpest, lamest cauldron-lighting since … hell, I don’t know. Maybe since Sarajevo 1984, where I nearly froze to death in the dullest (but mercifully shortest) opening I’ve seen and can’t even imagine who would have lit the flame in the former Yugoslavia. Tito had died, and that Wide World of Sports guy (the agony of defeat, remember?) would not be suitable. Hmm.

It was weird to watch this on TV from this hotel in Coventry, England. I had been to every Summer Games opening since 1996, and I might have been there at Barcelona in 1992, too.

Another queer thing? Some of the people at the stadium talked about how “it was an event of a lifetime and I will never, ever forget it.”

1. I’m already forgetting the London opening …

2. If you’ve seen more than one, and you can remember two details from any of them, then that was a hell of an opening.

Los Angeles 1984: 84 guys at 84 white baby grand pianos playing Gershwin on a tiered structure at the peristyle end of the Coliseum, and Rafer Johnson carrying the torch up all those steps.

Seoul 1988: Don’t remember a thing. I was in the city, but I’m not sure I was in the stadium. No recollection. None.

Barcelona 1992: A stadium filled with water so that boats floated on it … then it was drained, and the cauldron was lit by a guy shooting a flaming arrow. Now that was cool.

Atlanta 1996: The guessing game. Atlanta kept handing the torch off to yet another Yank sports celebrity every 100 yards, inside the stadium, a sort of jerk-the-football-away-from-Charlie-Brown thing, and then finally someone carried it up to Ali, who was trembling from his Parkinson’s, and I remember distinctly thinking “I hope he doesn’t set himself on fire” … and Ali lit the flame.

Sydney 2000: Lots of eerie Aborigine music and … uh-oh. I’m not sure I remember a second thing. I liked it, but I can’t remember another specific. Oh, wait! I remember that they did the Australian anthem, and I found out it’s Advance Australia Fair. I’d always thought it was Waltzing Matilda. And I kinda like Advance Australia Fair. So that’s two things.

Athens 2004: In the stands; don’t remember a thing. Or was I in the media center, watching?

Beijing 2008: I remember the 2,008 drummers, and I remember it being profoundly hot, to the point where I nodded off. Here is a recap of it: I called it the “sweatiest opening” ever.

I don’t know what I will remember from London 2012. Nothing left an impression of me other than confusion and rising smokestacks and Paul McCartney at the very, very end — if you can last that long. Oh, and the BBC had no idea who Kobe Bryant or LeBron James are, despite each of them getting more than a few seconds on camera. (Britain plays no hoops … at all.)

Good luck. Pack a lunch.