A Perfectly Legal and Transformative Visual Interpretation of the Olympics Opening Ceremony

Did you happen to catch the Rio Olympics Opening Ceremony tonight? The floor projection, the dancers, the athletes—what a show! Unfortunately, we can’t actually show you any of it. But don’t worry. I’ve got the next best thing.

As is tradition, NBC will be your one and only cable-based window into the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio for the next two weeks. And as is also tradition, NBC will be cracking down on any rogue video that’s not theirs.

At the moment, NBC doesn’t appear to have a video of the full opening ceremony available on their website. I do, however, have a brand new set of colored pencils and crayons. With the help of a few friends, I’ve managed to recreate the most important parts of the Rio Opening Ceremony below. It’ll be just like you were there. Promise.

This is the image that played on TV for an hour because I thought the ceremony started at 7 p.m. In fact, it started at eight.

Before the actual ceremony began, the crowd enjoyed a fireworks show with a finale that spelled out “Rio” in sparks.

Next, Matt Lauer came on to talk about Brazilian culture. Hi, Matt.

At some point after that (in the midst of my artistry I forgot to note the time), a bunch of dancers dressed up in foil and pretended to be the ocean. It looked great!

Then a bunch of dancers pretended to be different types of bugs. I am relatively confident this was meant to represent the landscape of ancient Brazil.

I don’t remember which part of Brazil’s history this was, but there was lots of brightly colored string. Perhaps the “String Age.”

Brazil notably chose not to skim over the uglier parts of its history and prominently acknowledged the country’s history of slavery. I did not really do the dancers justice.

Some time passed while I frantically drew, and when I looked back up, a whole city seemed to have risen up from the floor. A bunch of people were doing what I assume was parkour.

Soon after, the Brazilians lied to the people of the world and said that Alberto Santos-Dumont made the first powered flight instead of the Wright Brothers.

Later, Brazilian samba legend Elza Soares came on with three other singers, though I ran out of blue crayons.

Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen walked across the stage, as well. As you can see below, she looked great.

I am sorry but I do not remember what this was.

More time passed before, at long last, the athletes came out. Believe me when I tell you that there are an absurd amount of Germans at the Olympics this year. Good for Germany.

Then more countries came by with flags.

One thing that caught many a tweeter’s eye was each country’s brightly colored, pack-leading bicycle.

And of course, finally, Michael Phelps arrived with the rest of Team USA.

It was truly a beautiful celebration of athleticism and unity. I can only pray I did it justice. Now, let the games begin.