Blogging My Life

It is true, I think, that the new skating rules have made the programs look largely the same, with a few exceptions now and then. Lots of beautiful skating from the women as well as the men, though. Shizuka Arakawa was great. The two with the most to lose, Cohen and Slutskaya, were a little nervous and tight.
Every four years I have to find a website to guide me through the salchows and loops and stuff. This year I found a reference to the “flutz,” the lutz that wobbles back from the last-minute outside edge to really be a flip off the inside edge The super-slow motion on the triple lutz that Sasha Cohen fell on at the beginning showed so clearly that it was a flip. Why does she get credit for it?
I’m so tired of Dick Button. So much a back-in-the-day-when-things-were-beautiful kind of guy now. I hope he retires soon. Scott Hamilton is very pleasurable and interesting to listen to.

More on snowboard cross. I do detect a strategy now: Stay the hell out of the way and be the last one standing. The announcers keep saying that “anything can happen” in snowboard cross. The top riders can end last, and vice versa. So, is an event in which anything can happen a sport or a throw of the dice? The women’s final was “total carnage,” according to the announcer, as if that’s a good thing.
Lindsey Jacobellis’ showboating that lost her the gold was the talk of the Mammoth ski area, of course, as the video clip ran over and over again in the lodge. Too easy to call it a symbol of American hubris abroad? Probably. Hard to know whether it was the joyful irreverence of an upstart sport or the lack of discipline symptomatic of a gen-x diversion masquerading as sport.
Denis Petukhov, the Russian who became an American citizen last year to perform for the US said in an interview that he’s the “best example of the American dream.” Huh?
Shani Davis. We can’t hold him to a higher standard for being African-American, of course, but it is too bad his role model for potential young skaters from a new demographic (urban, Black, whatever…) has to include the prima donna act. Hedrick was not too much better by the time it was all over.
Memo to Canadian Joannie Rochette, re: figure skating, short program. “Like a Prayer” scored for chamber orchestra not a good idea.

…spending it at the Lake Quinault Lodge.

I went to Mammoth this weekend primarily to cross country ski, but I slipped my telemark gear in the box as well, thinking maybe one day, but when the snow dumped Friday afternoon and night and then all day Sunday I forsook the skate and classic skis for the tele boards and skied two long days at June Mountain. Great snow, lots of sun on Saturday, and Sunday’s dump made the skiing get better and better as the day went on. I did a little classic x-c on Friday afternoon after the long drive up.
On Saturday I skiied for an hour with a Inoyo National Forest naturalist. I was the only one who showed up for the tour. We talked about the vulcanology of the Long Valley caldera and the white-bark pine beetle, among other topics. Retired guy, now a volunteer, great skier.
Driving back five hours Sunday night I realized that some of those nice people I chatted with on the lifts may have been the same anti-social SUV assholes who tailgated me with their high-beams on at 75 mph on US-395. As they close in on L.A., the reversion to type is complete.
You know how when that happens, you hope they suffer a speeding ticket, if not a single-vehicle rollover fatality? The former kind of poetic justice finally happened on the way up to Mammoth on Friday. This car rode my bumper hard all the way through a speed zone in a little town, roaring past me at the first opportunity and straight into the waiting arms of Smokey, who might have gotten me for a few miles per hour over the limit if this car hadn’t flushed him out. Green Jetta with two women. Ha ha ha!

Watching two nights from my hotel in Bishop, CA, Friday and Saturday, home again Sunday night.
I was going to say no event where nobody ever falls can really be a sport, but the Canadian ice dancing couple who fell painfully in the last few seconds, and then the two Italian teams both sprawling on the ice in their programs, send me to find other reasons to disqualify this goofy event. Maybe the vulgar costumes. Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto may be the most attractive pair ever to hit the ice, but her original dance program costume was more than vulgar. Was that a fake thong? Like a thong dickey?
The second half of the program of Barbara and Maurizio, the second Italian pair, started with a bossa nova, which is not even a dance, moving to a samba which looked nothing like samba whatsover.
Can I just say that I also hate freestyle skiing of all kinds, and then I’ll say nothing else negative about entire medal events? Halfpipe, snowboard cross, ice dancing, freestyle skiing, moguls. Can ’em all.
Luge, skeleton, and bobsled are almost impossible to make interesting on television, short of a crash, but I admire them as sports.
Ski jumping is too cool for words. I wish they’d figure out a way to televize it so as to give some sense of the scale and the view from the stands. The cams on the track don’t do it for me. Ski jumpers are so waif-like, like flying skiing fairies.

Look how chubby! Look how he holds his head to see the book! Look how he snoozes suspended over the stinky dog!

I love curling, and I loved it before everybody started saying it was “cool.” A little before, anyway. It’s icy shuffleboard with young, attractive people.
Skeleton and luge: If I had known at age ten that these were sports, I would have had a very different childhood, is all I’ve got to say. I lived for that.
No medal I guess, but Matt Savoie’s free skate tonight was as enjoyable to watch as any I’ve seen. All three American singles men (4th, 5th, 7th tonight) are really beautiful, interesting skaters.
Ok, half-pipe is a stupid, stupid sport, but it’s not boring, exactly. Boring – no, NOT curling – is the even newer “snowboard cross.” No detectable skill or strategy, even while reports of skill and strategy are pounded into my ear by totally stoked commentators. I’m currently watching the quarterfinals, where the two riders who don’t fall down advance. Ditto semis.
If the US ends poorly in the medal chase, I think they should add a biathlon of saucer sledding and snow ball fighting (to improve a bit on Felix Gillette’s suggestion), and I’ll go back into training.
Tomorrow I head up to Mammoth for some winter olympics of my own, hopefully two days of skating at the Tamarack x-c ski area and one day of telemarking.

Can I just say that Zhang and Zhang – trying the throw quad salchow, her falling straight on her knees, shaking it off, and their finishing the program for a silver medal – that’s what I watch the Olympics for. The golden Russians were absolutely beautiful.
Hey, more half-pipe. Wheeeee. Lots of agonies of defeats in downhill. Luge accident. Ouch.