Two weeks is a long time for anything to capture my attention.
I can (and will) watch March Madness for a month, but it's not every singe day... all day... and all night, too. The Big Cuter explained the scoring in curling to me today (circles and rocks and ends and I'm sorry, honey, but I wasn't paying all that much attention to the details) and told me that I'd missed the wonderfulness that was the USA/Canada hockey game and that my last Olympic post gave it short shrift.
I suppose that I ought to feel some remorse that I missed it, but I don't. I'll watch most all sports, but I draw the line at hockey. And boxing, but I'll debate its inclusion as a sport with you anytime. Legalized brutality is more like it.
I can (and will) watch March Madness for a month, but it's not every singe day... all day... and all night, too. The Big Cuter explained the scoring in curling to me today (circles and rocks and ends and I'm sorry, honey, but I wasn't paying all that much attention to the details) and told me that I'd missed the wonderfulness that was the USA/Canada hockey game and that my last Olympic post gave it short shrift.
I suppose that I ought to feel some remorse that I missed it, but I don't. I'll watch most all sports, but I draw the line at hockey. And boxing, but I'll debate its inclusion as a sport with you anytime. Legalized brutality is more like it.
Monday
I'm so glad that the sun came out in Whistler today. Skiing is much prettier in the bright light.
***
Ski jumpers are flying off ledges, doing somersaults - how do you do that the first time?
***
I did watch some Ice Dancing. The women are much heftier than their pairs and individual teammates, and they are very strong. One of the women hoisted her male partner over her head and twirled him around. I was stunned. He was not a small man.
***
Switching between Groundhog Day
(waiting for and then smiling at Bill Murray playing the piano at the Groundhog Festival Ball) and NBC's Ice Dancing is a contrast between the ridiculous and the sublime. And I'm not sure which is which. Ice Dancing seems to be a sport where passion is rewarded. Not passion for the activity, but romantic/sexual/physical passion. This is an interesting conundrum, since several of the pairs are siblings. As I said, it's hard to watch.
***
Meryl Davis and Charlie White, University of Michigan students, were dancing to Phantom of the Opera... and I do not like Andrew Lloyd Weber in any of his many reiterative creations. I kept waiting for the chandelier to come crashing down on the ice. There were some amazing moves, like when she flipped over his head and stood on his legs (though to me it looked like he carried her on his lower back while she was facing in the opposite direction) and I see strength and power. But, I think they were best at taking bows. They did a really good job of bowing.
***
The kids who won the Gold and the Silver medals are best friends who train on the same ice. The four of them were so happy and it was so contagious that my smile muscles began to hurt.
***
Ski jumpers are flying off ledges, doing somersaults - how do you do that the first time?
***
I did watch some Ice Dancing. The women are much heftier than their pairs and individual teammates, and they are very strong. One of the women hoisted her male partner over her head and twirled him around. I was stunned. He was not a small man.
***
Switching between Groundhog Day
(waiting for and then smiling at Bill Murray playing the piano at the Groundhog Festival Ball) and NBC's Ice Dancing is a contrast between the ridiculous and the sublime. And I'm not sure which is which. Ice Dancing seems to be a sport where passion is rewarded. Not passion for the activity, but romantic/sexual/physical passion. This is an interesting conundrum, since several of the pairs are siblings. As I said, it's hard to watch. ***
Meryl Davis and Charlie White, University of Michigan students, were dancing to Phantom of the Opera... and I do not like Andrew Lloyd Weber in any of his many reiterative creations. I kept waiting for the chandelier to come crashing down on the ice. There were some amazing moves, like when she flipped over his head and stood on his legs (though to me it looked like he carried her on his lower back while she was facing in the opposite direction) and I see strength and power. But, I think they were best at taking bows. They did a really good job of bowing.
***
The kids who won the Gold and the Silver medals are best friends who train on the same ice. The four of them were so happy and it was so contagious that my smile muscles began to hurt.
Tuesday
The feel good story of the night so far is Tugba Karademir, the Turkish figure skater. She skated to Turkish music, her outfit was redolent with Turkish allusions and her parents almost couldn't come because they couldn't afford it until a Canadian Olympic sponsor offered to pay for their travel and event tickets and there they were, in the front row, waving their Turkish flag and beaming. There are times when I don't mind watching someone else's kid perform, and this was one of them. She didn't win a medal, NBC didn't even show us her scores, but it didn't matter.
***
Ski Cross has Jonny Moseley back in the booth, which tells you something about the sport. 18 features with four skiers on the course at the same time, the track is narrow and they are going 40 miles and hour and only the top two will advance. It was one thing on snowboards, when they expect to fall and then get right back up and continue boarding. But skiers stay down once they fall.
And it's very nearly a contact sport. They are jumping and passing in the air and the top qualifier, a Frenchwoman, has a camera at the crown of her helmet and her 9ish daughter waiting at the bottom, skipping school to watch her mom ski in the Olympics. I think that's an excused absence, don't you? Of course, Mom took a bad fall early on in the race and there she was, flat on her butt while the other three women finished the course. Lilou's pink mittens with ears were pressed to her mouth until she finally saw her Mom skiing down the hill. The agony of defeat, indeed. She was shattered.
***
The announcers for the Men's Combined ( a 90 meter jump and then some kind of a relay around a cross country loop course) have just informed us that if the skiers who are currently first and second can remain first and second then they will have a very good chance to win a Gold and a Silver medal. I can't believe that they get paid for this work.
***
The big money tickets at every Winter Games are for Women's Figure Skating, and NBC is showing us pretty young things twirling and leaping and spinning and smiling. The US's Mirai Nagasu ended up with a bloody nose and a wedgie but her last move was a spinning split with one skate on the ice and the other pointed right at the ceiling and then she went faster and faster and faster. It's hard to be anything but impressed.
***
Kim Yu-Na, the lissome, boneless, ultra-flexible, athletic Korean skater made $8-$9 million last year. Her face and figure sell everything from cell phones to refrigerators. She was elegant and charming and disarming and didn't take herself all that seriously. Plus, she spoke fluent English. The American, Rachael Flatt, may be as delightful as the announcers swore she was, and she may be going to Stanford in the fall, but she entered the arena chewing gum. She did not look elegant or charming. Nope, not at all. She's a fairly fantastic skater and the home movie of her skating as a toddler was adorable, but, once again, don't these people have loved ones to tell them that they are embarrassing themselves? Or, maybe no one cares .... no one outside the Burrow, that is.
***
Today's yoga class involved a series of back bends from a variety of positions - kneeling, standing, prone - but all of them stationary. I have spent the evening watching young women fling themselves up and around and across the ice with grace and precision and joy and sorrow and each and everyone of them did backbends on one leg, going backwards, quickly.
I am impressed. I am very very impressed.
The feel good story of the night so far is Tugba Karademir, the Turkish figure skater. She skated to Turkish music, her outfit was redolent with Turkish allusions and her parents almost couldn't come because they couldn't afford it until a Canadian Olympic sponsor offered to pay for their travel and event tickets and there they were, in the front row, waving their Turkish flag and beaming. There are times when I don't mind watching someone else's kid perform, and this was one of them. She didn't win a medal, NBC didn't even show us her scores, but it didn't matter.
***
Ski Cross has Jonny Moseley back in the booth, which tells you something about the sport. 18 features with four skiers on the course at the same time, the track is narrow and they are going 40 miles and hour and only the top two will advance. It was one thing on snowboards, when they expect to fall and then get right back up and continue boarding. But skiers stay down once they fall.
And it's very nearly a contact sport. They are jumping and passing in the air and the top qualifier, a Frenchwoman, has a camera at the crown of her helmet and her 9ish daughter waiting at the bottom, skipping school to watch her mom ski in the Olympics. I think that's an excused absence, don't you? Of course, Mom took a bad fall early on in the race and there she was, flat on her butt while the other three women finished the course. Lilou's pink mittens with ears were pressed to her mouth until she finally saw her Mom skiing down the hill. The agony of defeat, indeed. She was shattered.
***
The announcers for the Men's Combined ( a 90 meter jump and then some kind of a relay around a cross country loop course) have just informed us that if the skiers who are currently first and second can remain first and second then they will have a very good chance to win a Gold and a Silver medal. I can't believe that they get paid for this work.
***
The big money tickets at every Winter Games are for Women's Figure Skating, and NBC is showing us pretty young things twirling and leaping and spinning and smiling. The US's Mirai Nagasu ended up with a bloody nose and a wedgie but her last move was a spinning split with one skate on the ice and the other pointed right at the ceiling and then she went faster and faster and faster. It's hard to be anything but impressed.
***
Kim Yu-Na, the lissome, boneless, ultra-flexible, athletic Korean skater made $8-$9 million last year. Her face and figure sell everything from cell phones to refrigerators. She was elegant and charming and disarming and didn't take herself all that seriously. Plus, she spoke fluent English. The American, Rachael Flatt, may be as delightful as the announcers swore she was, and she may be going to Stanford in the fall, but she entered the arena chewing gum. She did not look elegant or charming. Nope, not at all. She's a fairly fantastic skater and the home movie of her skating as a toddler was adorable, but, once again, don't these people have loved ones to tell them that they are embarrassing themselves? Or, maybe no one cares .... no one outside the Burrow, that is.
***
Today's yoga class involved a series of back bends from a variety of positions - kneeling, standing, prone - but all of them stationary. I have spent the evening watching young women fling themselves up and around and across the ice with grace and precision and joy and sorrow and each and everyone of them did backbends on one leg, going backwards, quickly.
I am impressed. I am very very impressed.
Thank you for watching and reporting on the ice dancing! You know, I haven't seen it in probably four or five Olympic cycles; it was often romantic back then, but sex-on-ice, it wasn't. There seem to be some strange trends that have developed since I last took The Games in: the Male Singles' costumes, the ice-dancer's familial relationships, the focus on world records. Reminds me of the strange trends in television in general. I think, with this comment, I've just placed myself firmly in the Old Fogey Category...where I can compete with the best of them.
ReplyDeleteSo much of the Olympics is about "what I saw in..."
ReplyDeleteI think it's part of the fun... and if it makes us Old Fogey's , well, I am happy to admit to years of wonderful memories in this area!
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