…. I took down the Doctor Warp post and my stretched-out creations of Brad Pitt and Katie Holmes. I don’t wanna fight about it. To those offended, I am sorry. But I imagine I’m not sorry enough.
That I can even call myself a “Christian” is by grace and GRACE ALONE. I’m just as broken and flawed and struggling as …. well, as any of you, I suppose.
Whoops! Forgot to put this up! Guess it’s kind of a moot point, now. Oh, well ….
Some Russian pair, I don’t even know — I swear they were skating to xylophone music. Plinky-plinky-plinnnky-dink. The guy was ancient in skater terms — 35 — and looked exactly like Quentin Tarantino. Three minutes into the program, he officially achieved geezerdom — hunching over, gasping for breath, flailing his arms about. He looked like a big ol’ bear on skates. Good thing Timothy Treadwell wasn’t around to see that.
Pang and Tong — one of the Chinese pairs. Skating to — yawn — “The Phantom of the Opera.” Several times during their skate you could literally hear their coach yelling things like “Cow yow!” and “Shauw ni hong shy!” One assumes this was encouragement. I’d hate to think he was standing there with a #1 foam finger in one hand and a gun to his head in the other.
The Russian pair — they show the HORRIBLE fall she had when he lost his legs on a lift a while back and she cracked her head on the ice. How much it shook them. So it’s all about the confidence for them. They’re the favorites and in first place, but the whole skate, Dick Button and Sandra Bezic keep TALKING about the two Chinese pairs. One already skated well, one is still to come. Blahdie blah blah. Shut UP about the other skaters and let this pair SKATE, already! Damn.
My Beloved, annoyed, said, “All right, already! ‘Marcia, Marcia Marcia!!'” (Which only makes sense if you watched “The Brady Bunch”)
Chinese pair — Zhang and Zhang. She FALLS horribly on a throw jump, landing on her knees. It’s awful. They stop and she’s clutching her knee. Brief conference with coach. They’re allowed to pick up from where they stopped. From the looks of that fall, I can’t imagine how she could go on. BUT she does. And they skate. WELL. It’s astonishing. All the jumps and lifts and spins and her knee holds up! Such guts, really. They finish and wait for their scores. And …. THEY WIN THE SILVER!! Wow. For skill AND guts. Good for you.
Oh, and yes — the “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!” Russian pair won Gold. I guess that kinda makes them “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia,” doesn’t it?
…. that the half-pipers get to compete in their jammies:
The kid is at it again. I know I write about her a lot, but I just can’t get enough of her. I don’t have my own children — as I’ve shared before — and so in some ways, she feels like mine. Just indulge me.
So I’m on the phone with my sister the other day. I hear Piper talking in the background.
“What’s she doing?” I ask.
“Oh, she’s got this plastic jar of wooden beads. She wants to make a necklace,” Sister replied. Then she warns, “Piper, you need to hold that with BOTH hands; you don’t want to drop it.”
We chat for about 30 more seconds, then
CRRASSHHH!!
CLAT-T-T-T-T-T-T-TER!!!
My sister sighs.
“The beads?” I say.
“Yes,” Sister says, heavy under her breath. “The beads.”
Then, the instruction:
“Okay, Piper, you need to pick them up, please.”
“Mommy!” Piper protests.
“Please pick them up.”
We are stiffling giggles, because — and who knows why, really — something about little kid angst is just funny, face it.
Now we’re whispering to each other.
“Is she doing it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s good.”
We resume our interrupted conversation. Another 30 seconds go by, then
“MOMMMMY!”
Oh, the utter anguish of it all!
“Yes, Piper?”
“ADULTS ARE S’POSED TO HELP WIDDLE KIDS!!!!!!”
That’s it. We’re gone. I’m forced to hang up, shrieking with laughter.
That Shaun White on the medal stand. His face! He just looked like such a little boy to have achieved this thing — this extraordinary thing. There was one moment as the anthem played where his face went from awe to glee — complete, utter, this-is-the-best-Christmas-ever GLEE! Then seconds later, his face was in his hands, overcome, overwhelmed.
The moment was simply left alone, allowed to be BEAUTIFUL, and it was.
Congratulations, kid.
(He’s from my necka the woods. Can I please say I know him?)
Chad Hedrick, USA. He used to be an inline skater. He recently switched to speed skating and now hopes to win gold here. I’m only commenting on this because of the cheesy, manufactured drama injected into his “backstory” tonight:
He cried earlier today because, well, it’s the anniversary of the death of his best friend, his biggest supporter.
Yes, people, THIRTEEN years ago today, GAMMY died. HOW can he go on?? HOW will he even see the track through his red, Gammy-puffed eyes??
I swear. If he wins and says he felt Gammy’s presence, I will hurl all night and I will still not feel purged.
UPDATE: He won. And he said it: “I know she was looking down.” She died of “bane cancer,” according to Chad. And afterwards, he had to talk even more of how he cried, egged on by the reporter, of course.
I hate this kind of manipulation. Deeply. Can the event not be allowed to have DRAMA on its own?? Must everything turn into a wretched Hallmark Hall of Fame movie?? The very fiber of competition IS drama. But it’s not enough anymore. Any little maudlin bit that CAN be added, WILL be added, crammed into our hearts by whatever means necessary. And the more it shouts at us HOW to feel, the less we’re actually capable of feeling. Genuine, spontaneous emotion is stolen, replaced with showy, clanging fakery.
I remember my drama professor in college teaching me this very principle. I was in “The Fantasticks,” a show with a potentially tear-jerker ending. My leading man and I were prancing about, messily emoting — ACTING, dammit! — and my professor, from the dark at the back of the theatre, in a giant, you-will-NOT-question-me voice, boomed, “STOP THAT!! STOP THAT RIGHT NOW!!!” We stopped. We were scared. (Well, actually, I wasn’t that scared yet because I was sure it was my putzy leading man, screwing up somehow. It certainly wasn’t ME. I was brilliant. I mean, I was crying with the emotion of it all! It was sheer liquid poetry! SEE how REAL I am?? Wait. Hold on a sec. Here’s some even BIGGER tears!)
But my professor strode up the aisle — it seemed in one colossal step — and stood before both of us, eyes blazing: “When you cry and emote and ACT like that, you alienate the audience. You take their feelings away from them because they are too busy watching you SHOW yours. You rob them of something priceless — the right to decide how to feel. It’s not that you don’t emote,” he said, “but you don’t beat them about the head with it, for God’s sake!”
Then he said this: “Simplicity, kids. SIMPLICITY.”
See? The same thing is at work here. Let the event — skating, skiing, bobsledding, whatever — play itself out. It has dignity of its own; it has a DRAMA of its own. Don’t decide for the audience how they MUST feel. It’s condescending. It’s thievery, really. I hate it. And when you “beat them about the head with it,” they’ll end up feeling NOTHING.
DON’T — as my brilliant, now departed professor said — rob them of something priceless — the right to decide how to feel.
Skating to “Kashmir.” He’s wearing The Dreaded Onesie. Come ON, China!! This practically classifies as a human rights violation. Two words: PANTS. TOPS.
But the music almost makes up for it. For the jagged, sparkly awfulness of their costumes.
They’re just ehh.
….. just hear Dick Button say, “She didn’t stick her fanny out”???
I didn’t notice whether it was IN or OUT.
(And I call myself a figure skating fan.)
At one point during this day — this first day of Olympic competition with which I get a little carried away — My Beloved and I had a moment. You know what I mean, right? Those little moments? Moments, that if not handled deftly, can drag into longer and longer moments that stretch into a full-blown rowdydow??
I know this will SHOCK, but I was being annoying, vexing, even. But I am blessed with a husband with great — GREAT — reserves of patience and humour. And thankfully — oh! so thankfully! — most of our moments are short-circuited when one of us makes a crack and we’re too busy laughing to continue the squabbling. So today, I said the stupid thing I said and he paused for a moment.
Then, as if irritated by THE WORST CHORE EVER:
“HOW much longer do we have to live?? DAMN!!
He kills me.
Chinese pair 1:
Pang and Tong. They skate slowly. He appears to be sporting the dreaded skater onesie. At least it’s black, and NOT skater blue:
Dick Button sniffs at their efforts. Sandra Bezic condescends at the end, “That was the best they could do.”
So, of course, they move ahead of our pair — our throw-triple-axel-landing pair.
Chinese pair 2:
They were considered gold medal favorites — that is, until he tore his Achilles not too long ago. They skate. They bore. Me, at least. I think they end up in second. Luckily for him, Achilles does NOT dust the ice with his arse.
