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Feb. 19th, 2006 10:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cleolindaAh, ice dancing. I had drifted away during the skiing, so I missed some of the ice dancing. I arrive just in time to see a Lithuanian (?) pair fall in the last thirty seconds of their program. "The toepick is a dangerous instrument!" cries the announcer. TOEPICK!
Here's some Russians. At first, they (Domnina and Shabalin) are doing an "oozing" rhumba. The stuffy male announcer: "This is far more romantic than some of the feverish theatricality we've seen from the other pairs." As if on cue, the music stops, changes to something faster and salsier, and the Russians? Go into feverish theatricalities.
Pink, pink Ukrainians doing a samba-rhumba. The girl is more Barbie Goes to Rio than actual Barbie Goes to Rio. Stuffy Announcer is bitching that their "twizzles are unattractive." I am deeply out of my element here.
(Dude, I just realized that her skimpy costume isn't held together by the usual nude mesh. More Rio than I knew!)
The French pair looks scary--she's like a deeply tanned Posh Spice in cheesewagon yellow. Despite having long sleeves, her costume is mostly nude mesh and sparkles in the front and back, which kind of makes her look topless. He's wearing... a headscarf (also Velveeta). It's very Karate Kid, what with the white shirt and pants also. Well, maybe Karate Kid if he shipped out on the S.S. Village People.
Bulgarians! He's a little bit Fabio, Lord of the Night; she's a little bit Miss America Swimsuit Competition. Also, he just held her up by the ass with only his face.
(Whoa! Apparently I missed a shitload of falls. I love how the slideshow is actually titled "Carnage!" I told y'all that was NBC's buzzword this year.)
[Five years of speed skating later:]
Canadians--oh, shit, I saw the pictures from this! This is totally painful. I'm not even going to describe it; just go here, start at #8 and start flipping. She does have a relatively classy dress, tho--OH GOD! God, that was excruciating to watch, knowing she was going to bounce off the ice hip-first any moment and would have to be carried off the ice. God.
Italians in tangerine... wait a minute. I've seen this tackiness before! All those pictures I saw, I thought they were of pairs who had already skated. This means... great, more falls. I'd rather not know about them ahead of time, is all I'm saying. Because it's like trying to watch a horror movie with some masked killer right behind the nubile blonde for five minutes solid, only with more samba. Aaaand there they go.
"And now, two pairs in a row have fallen," says Stuffy Announcer, over a shot of a Russian blonde in turquoise praying to the Lord that OH MY GOD WHAT IS SHE WEARING? It's this unholy mix of brown leopard and electric blue, Jesus H! With a headband. It's got this wild Electric Pocahontas Speakeasy air about it. Her partner's costume, while relatively subdued, still looks like it was stolen from a disco. Okay, maybe a funereal disco. NO FALLS! YUSS! They salute their fallen comrades with a teddy bear.
The Canadian is carried out on a stretcher. Eeeek.
Another skimpy Carnaval costume--who is this, more Italians? Oh God, I've seen pictures of them, too. The chick announcer is talking about how she's the stronger partner and does all the footwork and basically the guy is her maypole. And maybe not a very good one, either. That last picture? That's before they took their bows. Ouch.
"Only one couple remains to skate: BELBIN AND AGOSTO!" I don't even know who these people are, except that frickin' everyone is talking about them like the second coming of Fred and Ginger. And that they're American. And that--apparently--they don't wipe out. NBC even played some ridiculous slo-mo music video-esque clip of their practice the other night--I forget the song, but the whole thing was very sad. Not the skaters themselves--just NBC's naked Please Watch Our Coverage Even Though Kwan Went Home desperation.
Belbin is wearing a strange off-the-hip thing. The second part of the program is set to J. Lo's "Let's Get Loud," and God bless her, Belbin sells it. Apparently their speciality is a ridiculous amount of charisma and smolder. Do they fall? No? WINNAH! "It's just nice to see someone not fall on their ass perform to the best of their ability!" yelps Stuffy Announcer. Like, you can hear the strikeout font in his voice, the announcers are that exasperated with the sparkly, sparkly carnage. Technically Belbin and Agosto are only in second at this point, but God knows who's going to hit the ice ass-first tomorrow.
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Date: 2006-02-20 04:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 04:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2006-02-20 04:55 am (UTC)Dude...Belbin is SO pretty. GUH. Hawaii outfit has NOTHING on her.
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Date: 2006-02-20 04:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 04:56 am (UTC)I still can't take the word "twizzle" seriously.
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Date: 2006-02-20 04:59 am (UTC)Apparently ice dancing became an Olympic event in 1976, which pretty much explains everything you need to know about it.
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From:Not that I feel strongly about this or anything...
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Date: 2006-02-20 05:08 am (UTC)#2-Not only did the Italians in Tangerine fall, but I'm pretty sure the guy kneed the girl in her girly area...ow
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Date: 2006-02-20 05:40 am (UTC)2. I once run into one of those metal posts that are about crotch-height, all over Europe, and supposed to keep cars from going into pedestrian areas. OH GOD HOW IT HURT. Excruciating pain for hours (I panicked about internal bleeding and imminent death), and then I had a nasty bruise for a month. Men might have it worse, but I don't think we have it all that well either.
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Date: 2006-02-20 05:10 am (UTC)I can almost smell the spandex
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Date: 2006-02-20 05:12 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2006-02-20 05:15 am (UTC)I was flipping the channels and only watched a teeny bit of the ice dancing. Now I'm kicking myself for missing all the carnage.
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Date: 2006-02-20 05:29 am (UTC)I imagine you may already know this, but the "stuffy announcer" is Dick Button. He's an icon of figure skating and although I can see where he might come off sounding stuffy, he's anything but.
He's an Olympic gold medalist and Harvard Law grad. He is, as this excellent article in the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/11/AR2006021101460.html) notes, both "crass and brilliant." Five years ago he suffered a serious head injury when he fell on the ice, and I was heartbroken to think I might never hear his wonderful just-this-side-of "you damn kids get off my lawn" commentary again, but the old man fought back. I started watching the Olympics as a child in the 1960s and 70s, and to me, ice skating IS Dick Button.
Enjoy him while you can! There will never be another.
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Date: 2006-02-20 05:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2006-02-20 05:58 am (UTC)I was downloading them as the events were going on. Hover over a thumbnail to see what I named them, in the spirit of the moment ;)
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Date: 2006-02-20 06:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2006-02-20 06:10 am (UTC)And then Photo #21...is that her mother or something? Because she's gonna drink the guy's blood after her daughter bathes in it.
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Date: 2006-02-20 07:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2006-02-20 06:26 am (UTC)As much as I hate the new scoring system (oh, ice skating, what has become of you?) I'm glad to hear it's at least made ice dancing more fun to watch.
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Date: 2006-02-20 06:28 am (UTC)Twizzles are the multiple rotation turns across the ice. Looks like fast footwork while traveling down the rink. Because this is ice dance, the moves should be attractive based on what idiom of dance they're invoking. Think Fred & Ginger gliding along a polished dance floor, Judy Garland hoofing it down the Yellow Brick Road, or Fosse dancers high-kicking and slinking across the stage. The twists in direction and body rotation combine with the footwork to move the dancers through space,as opposed to walking or jumping; in the case of skating, it's the opposite of bare stroking on one blade after the other. Speed and changes of direction are the point.
This is the one sport I follow, to the point of attending competitions. I'm seeing LJ posts of "They never fall like this in ice dance". Actually, they fall a lot in ice dance and the other skating divisions in competitions.
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Date: 2006-02-20 10:10 am (UTC)o.0
Date: 2006-02-20 06:46 am (UTC)teh horror
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Date: 2006-02-20 07:27 am (UTC)