(no subject)

[cleolinda]

Mom and I sat up and watched the Olympics last night--I hadn't even turned on the TV once so far, but I'd read so much about the skaters on various journals that I kind of knew what was going on and I thought, well, I'll hang around to see Plushenko and Weir. In no way did I expect to totally fall in love with Snowboard Cross (I hear the women's tonight is going to be totally awesome. NO SPOILERS PLEASE) and/or Seth Wescott. (He's building a cabin in Maine from scratch, you know. He's raised all the timber from sapling trees and chewed them all down with his bare teeth.) Maddeningly, of course, NBC felt compelled to switch back and forth between snowboarding and skating, to the point where my mother would get antsy and flip back to Dancing with the Stars to see if "the blonde" was dancing (we'd already missed her), and we'd be sitting there watching commercials ON THE WRONG CHANNEL while I would be muttering over on the couch, "Snowboard? Snowboard! SNOWBOARD!"

And then I got sucked into the skating, too, and have pretty much decided to marry Evan Lysacek. My sister declared that he sucks because he "just gave up" after a bad fall on an earlier short program I didn't see: "You don't give up! YOU NEVER GIVE UP!" Of course, I'm kind of giving her a sidelong look, trying not to say anything about the fact that she dropped out of high school and got her GED instead and has threatened to drop out of cooking school umpteen times, but I find that if you bite your tongue hard enough, you can control the blurty urge. Anyhoo, by the time Lysacek entered my consciousness, it was to do nothing but pwn. Plushenko's long program was pretty limp in comparison, but you feel bad rooting against the guy after they show you the Heartwarming Back Story segment, in which the poor guy's like [subtitled from Russian]: "My parents gave up everything to send me to St. Petersburg to skate. Sometimes we dug in the trash for old shoes to boil into soup. My skates were made of tin cans and dead rats. Only my overlong bangs kept me from freezing to death when we couldn't afford coal. I LOVE YOU MOM AND DAD!" You end up feeling pretty bad that you have everything you have and you didn't cure cancer today. Hell, you feel pretty bad that you're sitting in a warm house watching this on a large TV, quite frankly.

And then there is... Johnny Weir. I had heard he was fey, flamboyant, feminine--all those things. I was not, however, prepared for his wit and wisdom:

"I like nice things, and beautiful things, so if that is the only way people are determining that I swing one way or the other, then to me, that's sad. You can't judge a book by it's cover, ever. . . . I am who I am, and I don't need to justify anything to anyone."

"I was causing a stir because...I was wearing a chinchilla scarf that someone thought was a boa. First of all, boas are so out. Secondly, I would never wear a boa to a press conference."

And then, Johnny goes shopping:

"Honey, I've got all day."

I played along and said, "You're such a diva!" Honest truth.

He giggled and said, "I am a princess."

From one princess to another: Shine on, Johnny Weir. Shine on.


RSS feeds: I finally got it into my head that I should look into this whole "RSS" and "news aggregator" thing, because the upshot would probably be that I could create a sort of friends list out of non-LJ blogs, and thereby stop forgetting to read half of them. (I'm going with the Google Reader at the moment because it's there and it looks easy.) I did discover, however, that you can aggregate Livejournals as well, so if anyone reading this who isn't so much into the LJ thing (and yes, I have talked to people who come from outside LJ), you can get a feed for any single user or community on LJ. Mine is http://cleolinda.livejournal.com/data/rss.

German Girl Rescued After Dropping Notes.

zikade: "Cleo, you need to see this: the 'correct' translation of those hieroglyphs in Lost. :)"

From sexion8: Unfortunate Star Wars Costumes. (Sample: "I can see why someone might convince themselves if would be funny to dress up as Indiana Jones and raid a Star Wars costume contest, I guess. What I don't get at all is why the Phantom of the Opera is there.")

Salon takes on the creepy Tom Fordified issue of Vanity Fair.

Oh, and today at dailydigestnews: Sean Bean to do American TV? Plus the new Bond girl and a film version of Love in the Time of Cholera. (Feed: http://community.livejournal.com/dailydigestnews/data/rss.)

Comments

[mckennl.livejournal.com]

What about Plushenko's coach, the Russian Wilderness Muppet?

Cleolinda, how I wish you had live-blogged the opening ceremonies.

[kalliopeia.livejournal.com]

I too got totally addicted to Snowboard Cross. Although that is a terribly unweildy name. Surely they can come up with something snappier. And half-pipe, too. I swear to God, who knew snowboarding was such fun to watch?

And I too love Johnny Weir and Evan Lysacek. Johnny's a character, for sure, and I ached for poor Evan. I wanted him to medal so bad, his free skate was friggin' awesome. I mean, the dude was on IVs the day before! His VEINS COLLAPSED.

Dammit. This means I'm going to have to start watching figure skating all the time again, doesn't it? Sigh.

[andromeda-77.livejournal.com]

With his bare teeth?
Man...and I had heard toenail clippers.

[wmetoile.livejournal.com]

1. Roommate has dibs on Seth Westcott. She almost had a stroke during the NBC ego piece when he was in a tank top, hiking up the side of a mountain in Alaska.
2. My sister declared that he sucks because he "just gave up" after a bad fall on an earlier short program I didn't see

He had the flu. And was wearing a matador outfit. Dude, I'd give up, too.

3. It's sad that you missed the short programs on Tuesday because Johnny Weir? Was dressed as a swan. God, he's amazing. He looked like the Enchantment Under the Sea dance last night. I kept expecting Marty McFly to run across his shoulders waving a photo.

[allichaton.livejournal.com]

Ooh, yes. I too fell in love with Lysacek after his long program (didn't catch the short programs). Then I looked up the results online, saw that he didn't win a medal, and sulked and decided to boycott the rest of the skaters.

[virtuistic.livejournal.com]

I love Johnny Wier. He's the cutest thing since care bears.

Aside from that, I really want to party with him. Or go clubbing. Same thing.

[lannamichaels]

Snowboard cross is incredably addictive, and Evan Lysacek looks oddly like Peter Wingfield at times. I don't know if you're into Highlander, but it made me wonder if Methos had a new identity.

re: RSS feeds: There's a good chance that the blog already has an LJ account. Most blog places like blogspot or whatnot have RSS feed info on the page. You can copy/paste that url into http://www.livejournal.com/syn and create a new account or find the already existing one. It's great.

[angelene.livejournal.com]

I liked Evan Lysacek's performance too, it had heart and stamina -- but Plushenko's was so robust and polished, it was so obviously Gold Medal.

plus, as far as the other athletes went, I had my eyes pretty much settled on Jeffrey Buttle (http://www.torino2006.org/ENG/IDF/ATH/600101.html)... on a purely sport/artistic point of view, of course!

and those Wier's quotes... *snickers* ooooh-kay. his free program was sloppy and tame, though. that's the reason he didn't win. other than the ice being scratchy under his feet and the 'feeling black inside' grip of course. *snickers some more*

okay, I'll shut up. sorry. :p

[katiefoolery.livejournal.com]

I've recently become obsessed with synidcation. All of those outside blogs that take forever to check are now on my friends' page and I keep wanting to extol the virtues of syndicated feeds from the rooftops.

In conclusions: feeds are good.

[sexion8.livejournal.com]

I'm just vulture-watching to see if Plushenko tries to knock Weir dafuggout with...a hairdryer or something. It's been far too long between Skater Sabotages.

[missbingley.livejournal.com]

The Snowboard Cross last night was so, so awesome. I am excited for the skiing tomorrow even more, though. Eeee!

Johnny Weir is one of my new favorite people ever. He named his costume Camille! OMG! Best ever!

I cannot have positive feelings for Plushenko after seeing him like this (http://img208.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fs01109303ss.jpg).

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

You heard how Plushy's coach was totally dogging on Weir about talking too much, right?

[kilted.livejournal.com]

ahaha, of course that's what the glyphs mean! How could we all be so blind?! hee hee...

Did you see that lost-media.com got hacked?

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

I can actually top that picture: http://www.nbcolympics.com/2005/0620/5055540_640X480.jpg

[sexion8.livejournal.com]

No wai! I missed that!

[sexion8.livejournal.com]

He looks like the lead singer of Kajagoogoo -- only he doesn't look too shy shy (hush hush) in that get-up.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

I just went to Search for New Content and plugged in, let's say, "Go Fug Yourself." Voila.

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

Is that a google thing?

[fleurrochard]

Oh, but that show program was so awesome - so funny and self-ironic!

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

I think it's on the SF thread--basically, the coach was like, "Some skaters just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk all the time. You know who I'm talking about. Skaters should work, not talk." This was after Johnny was doing his whole "I'm all black inside and can't skate" thing.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

NO! GAH.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the Google Reader.

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

Okay, all gone. I moved the list to my journal, if you still want it for some reason. It's here (http://particle-person.livejournal.com/35214.html#cutid1).

[kilted.livejournal.com]

Seriously... what jerks...

[sexion8.livejournal.com]

MEOW!