Well dang

This whole thing. I did a dive into non mainstream web pages and forums*, hit the expected mudslide, and saw myself out.

When it comes to versimilitude, you can't
beat figure skaters. But I think her story
might be more interesting than his.

I call twins in 2020.

I've looked at a bunch of pictures from the Meryl Davis and Fedor Andreev weddings and Marina Zoueva certainly managed to hide from the camera whether it be Town & Country's or People's.


*Everything is mainstream for all intents and purposes but meant non pay for play publications and pages.

**********

Every good thought to and for this one.

Maia Shibutani

The Davis White of ballet

A few years ago (2015) Tessa Virtue's twitter excitedly noted Misty Copeland's elevation to principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre. I follow ballet only intermittently and half-assed, but recognize superior musicality and (hopefully "AND") technique when I see it, When I checked out Copeland after Virtue's tweet, it was clear Copeland didn't have either. Her core strength wasn't steady, she wasn't overendowed with grace, and she was, in the great tradition of recent World Champions in ice dance as well as in the tradition of the 2014 nominal Olympic champions in ice dance - iffy at transitions (transitions are the tell for every skating discipline).



Copeland eliminating nearly two thirds of the fouettes in Swan Lake - filling in the music with rehearsed "improvisation" - gave away the game. She can't do them - it wasn't just the night. This caused a lot of talk even though, in my impression, few observers were surprised.

Also very Davis-Whitey is this critique of Copeland's Kitri in Don Quixote:

Ballet Focus - Copeland's Kitri in Don Quixote

Unfortunately, her performance Saturday evening was an exercise in getting by, a cautious rendering that included shortcuts in certain steps allowing her to check the Don Quixote box as she works her way down the classics list.
An example is Kitri’s turn in attitude (leg bent behind her) after a supported promenade in the Act III pas de deux. Generally Kitri does at least one turn before going to a knee; Misty did about a quarter turn before quickly going to her knee. Another example is Misty’s fouetté turns, the punctuating mark in Kitri’s solos in Act III. Much has been written about Misty’s struggles with fouettés since her debut in Swan Lake, summarized in Gia Kourlas’s profile of her in The New York Times. On Saturday, she started her fouettés off-center at stage left rather than the customary center stage. The reason is that she, like Hee Seo in Swan Lake, consistently travels to the right as her turns progress. On Saturday, her rightward movements were pronounced as she started her turns. There was hope midway though the segment as she righted herself and did several turns in the same spot. However, she finished up moving dramatically to the right, punctuated by a single pirouette to finish.

It continues to grate that the only reason Virtue and Moir are retiring (or so I believe) is they're not allowed to fairly compete. Maybe it took two years for them to finally reconcile themselves that this was not going to change.

My impression has been that most legends of sport perform at a time - an era - where everything comes together to facilitate their success and nurture/reward their talent. Virtue and Moir competed at a time where the entire sport, including those who should have had their back - worked to undermine them and blatantly resented their capabilities. Even the run-up to 2010 was setting the table for the aftermath when V&M's talent would become as welcome as a skunk at a wedding.

The better they got, the more dumbed down the criteria, and even that wasn't enough as those who couldn't fulfill even dumbed down criteria got full marks while Virtue and Moir were frequently dinged for imaginary errors.

I think more veteran ice dance teams would be competing if Virtue and Moir were still in the game. It's different competing against a superior talent, scored fairly. They can always face splat on an element, get a terrible cold or fever (see Katia Gordeeva at the 1988 World Championships in pairs), get an injury that means sitting out a competition, but if not, at least you know it's fair dealing. In the current climate, it's predetermined. There's oxygen in the sport when actual ability is rewarded.

So when's the wedding

That's not a dare. I completely believe we'll hear there was one. I'll double down and bet we "see" there was one. It'll sort of trickle out, "uncovered" by an enterprising fan.

This tweet made me laugh because the first
time I was clued into this Jackie 
thing (right here in the comments
section of this blog) I could hear
the guffaws and smirks in Ilderton
from here. And maybe also picture one of
W Network-Tessa's small, malicious smiles (the
creepy ones she used for the bot-version
of herself in their mockumentary.)
 Team VM's development is still arrested.
Still prefers to punch down. They experiment with
maturity/a facsimile of mutual respect,
then revert to douche after getting bored.

I looked at the Skate Canada/Skate America figure skating results and it's just as if figure skating has been cancelled and the skaters still training, prepping programs and getting themselves out there to compete missed the memo. Are figure skating competitions still a thing?

AND I looked at the Virtue Moir fandom where not a lot is going on either (although there's a good chance I'm not surfing the right social media hot spots). The buzz seems to have hit a wall (or gone "private") after quite a bit of flailing at the end of summer. I'm not sure why it is that - after Jessica, Cassandra and Kaitlyn - Jackie Mascarin seemed to push some fans over the edge. I get the impression some of the most ragey fans were new, but I also believe that on an instinctual level many of the newer fans as usual KNOW they're being fucked with, so they script a scenario to incorporate that feeling, but have somehow blocked themselves from considering the actual ways they've been fucked with and exploited. I really would recommend that anyone who persistently has that feeling towards a situation (not just a fan one, as shamed as fans may be made to feel), to stop taking a personal inventory of yourself in some effort to signal maturity and "objectivity" to yourself (i.e., I'm overinvested, I'm projecting, I'm I'm I'm I'm) and use some freaking common sense. Is projection and overinvestment a recurring issue in your life? No? Then you're being fucked with. When it comes to gaslighting, I would always advise someone struggling with things that "don't add up" to just go ahead and reject whatever basic premise you've been given. Things will clear up fast.

Plenty of celebrities have taken to scripting their lives for the public as if they're in a reality show.

But, in addition, with Virtue and Moir and their team, terrible acting and collateral offense-giving are still intact after all these years, not to mention Scott's habit of working both sides of the street.

Then cue general interest/lifestyle reporters who step in to lecture fans over the fan reaction to a situation the reporter either knows is a lie fed to the fans being targeted, or the "journalist" doesn't know either way, hasn't checked it out, but just kicks into fan-abuse autopilot because that's how our transactional celebrity/media - celebrity/celebrity ecosystem functions. I have no no no no no more patience for that on any level on any topic in any sector.

A distinguishing and extra obnoxious facet of Virtue and Moir's shenanigans has always been how the media and the ten-years-married duo incite the fans to react, and then proceed to patronize them (at best) or attack them (not atypical) for this strong-armed, prompted reaction. It really does borrow from the classic abuse cycle template.

****

Switching gears, this gif of Katia Gordeeva on Battle of the Blades:

Showcasing a more pleasant eternal verity.

Speed, immaculate stroking, impeccable body control. She's been doing this for over 35 years. She calls back to an time when Olympic champions in figure skating were legitimately and consistently extraordinary.

I want to mention that this is someone who for ages gave the impression of wanting to be left alone. A professional, considerate person, clearly a quality human being, as they say, but not much of a self-promoter. I'm not a fan of Dave Lease (the Skating Lesson), but once he described Gordeeva's impatience at a post-show corporate meet and greet as, "She was beginning to not understand English."

She was completely genuine, and did not suffer fools. One day she turned up on social media (twitter). Kristi Yamaguchi basically virtually fainted. "Is that actually you!!!!!???" Ever since, Gordeeva has routinely posted, supporting her daughters, supporting skaters she assists, showing off something someone she loves has cooked, showcasing accomplishments of those she loves and supports, showing us adventures and outings. It's a very generously managed account. What she doesn't tweet about? Her divorce. Her dating life. She figured out that she wanted to use the spotlight on her to turn the spotlight on other people, to engage with the world and open up that way.  To be accessible without violating her own privacy, and without ostentatiously making a show of her boundaries. She decided to be a person, not a very unique snowflake. (And if she's not very very unique, and refuses to handle her public life as if she is, who in skating has the right?) From what I've read about her, she's always tried to teach herself gratitude, and now she's putting that into practice in public (reports are she's always done so in private). She's clearly from a bygone era.

Thank Heaven

Speculation to follow. I think they were holding out for a potential 2022 and got a no go. I'm not sad about it. Ice dance competitions shouldn't produce impotent rage, and that's all the sport has been about for five years and counting.

... Checking back in. I rewatched the video and are they retiring from skating after this show, or retiring from the "competitive sport" of ice dance? Most of the video appeared to refer to a competitive career, particularly when they verbally pass the baton to upcoming teams who will "break all of our records." But there's also the part where they say they're retiring, but not before they're done with the current tour.

I think most people thought they'd already retired from the sport, just as most fans made the same assumption after Sochi. What have they been doing for the nearly two years since Pyeongchang? Certainly not competing in their sport. This is what makes me suspect they wanted to do a fourth Olympics but not if they really weren't going to get the opportunity to officially win. I am not selling short the fact that their entire lives have been spent as elite level athletes, and officially retiring is a massive step, and getting on the ice to make the video is their highest level of geeking out. And I think it also underscores how important competition has always been to both of them, no matter how Tessa has blathered over time about balance, fashion and dance, or Scott acts like he'd rather be off somewhere using his penis to shoot a gun (sorry to mix or maybe fuse metaphors there, but anyone who watched their "reality show" will know the Scott I mean). They're insane competitors, and probably hold the record for successive perfect performances in Olympic figure skating. No other skaters, no matter how great, have put down two perfect Olympic performances in successive Olympics, let alone in three successive Olympics. I do wonder if this official retirement has been thrust upon them.

Years on, it's still unsettling how in these scenarios everybody looks uncomfortable but Tessa. I've tried to bury the W Network's Tessa and Scott Tessa but still recall that what came through of the Tessa and Scott Tessa made one pretty queasy about the actual Tessa who signed off on it.

The video of Scott Moir mentioning his "fiancee" isn't embeddable yet, so I went with this robot report on youtube. He certainly made that announcement most naturally.

I've never stalked Virtue Moir for blog material, although as many know, that would not be difficult. More people know about them than don't know about them.

As place-holdery as the blog is currently, the point was never just or even primarily to highlight the gap between the reality and what they're selling. It's the cynical exploitation of their fan following; their early deployment of social media as if social media weren't democratic but something they could use as a one way street to exploit their fan following. It's the corruption - the faux sincerity and earnestness pushing lies, with a side order of entitlement and pan-flute accompanied sanctimony.

And it's the gaslighting, the complete inversion of what's actually happening. Fans are called over-invested, basically sex-and-romance-starved and delusional, while Virtue and Moir signal rationality with commendable empathy and tolerance. Let's not call it condescending.

There's a status element to it that's revolting.

Very few fans outside this blog publicly question their claims, which makes Virtue and Moir liars in portraying their fan base. Those who call Virtue and Moir liars are correct. Virtue and Moir are married parents.

Didn't they do this already?

Another Hall of Fame Thingie

I thought they already had Hall of Fame installations put up in London/Ilderton after 2010, but I guess you can never have enough.

I'd imagined 2019-20 was the season Virtue and Moir had to pull the trigger (or not) on a fourth Olympics, but I jumped that gun. All we've got anticipation-wise is speculating what next troll-tastic firecracker the two will throw into the otherwise semi-dormant VM fandom: Can they even top, "Scott's dating his partner. His OTHER partner." It was a one note joke but easy to imagine guffaws all around in Moirville.

Almost 25 years ago a number of pairs figure skaters were bitter at Gordeeva & Grinkov's return to Olympic competition. It kicked everybody else down a step, "robbing" several aspirants of their podium finish hopes. Similarly, if Virtue Moir hadn't competed in Pyeongchang, Papadakis & Cizeron would have received their gold medal in 2018, and this current cycle might claim some legitimacy. Instead we endure two more years of Papadakis & Cizeron's synchronized swimming on ice. Two more years of virtue-signaling from Tessa Virtue's social media, two more years of Scott and Tessa yet again re-tweaking their established relationship narratives or inventing new ones to suit their most recent commercial partnership. It's no Shibutanis again, for no reason other than what's the point. It's updated rules and requirements with no actual competitive relevancy. Not Virtue and Moir's fault, but here we are.

Ice dance should be abolished as an Olympic sport after 2022. That could be the direction its headed. This cycle could be the argument that gets it done.

10 years of marriage + kids and I'm still not sure
Scott's 100% comfortable with another human
making physical contact with Tessa.
(from Tessa Virtue's instagram)

It's Tessa Virtue's fault

There's a pinned tweet on twitter asserting that Tessa has broken up Weaver & Poje and Virtue and Moir. Weaver and Poje are stepping away, but obviously it's because

Four World Championships for
the same junior level program, performance
and skating skills.

The Shibutanis have also 'extended their break' from ice dance.

We all know only the wardrobe malfunction prevented Papadakis & Cizeron from being crowned Olympic champions in 2018, however Virtue & Moir may have been baited and lured down the garden path the previous season. The sting had already showed itself.

Still, I can't believe that in exchange for the Davis & White Olympic gold in 2014, with which every skating federation clearly cooperated, ice dance agreed to let Papadakis & Cizeron dominate for 8 years, thus bringing Canada and France into the cartel. That's ridiculous. Maybe they were going to retire after 2018 if they'd won, maybe Olympic gold was part of the scheme and Virtue & Moir were sold a bill of goods to entice them back. Ice dance has no Plan B so here we are. How many teams of any appeal still exist as fodder for P&C's gold medal monopoly at this point?

I don't follow either Virtue or Moir on social media, but I do search their tags and @'s when it's time for a blog post. Their social media makes me uncomfortable, particularly Tessa's. Her deep dive into instagram standard imagery while spouting anodyne inanities and "curated" wisdom just feels out of date, and even more, and as much as it's not my thing to focus on, I wish she'd leave herself alone at this point, take that as you will. I keep waiting for her to switch gears, but it's not happening.

Oh My

Has a more confrontational breed of VM fan evolved on social media since the previous Olympic cycle? "That's not a Spanish tan, Scott."

I mean, Scott - do you take them for fools? These aren't yesteryear's fans, you know. They can tell things.

I do think, though, that there's something just echt-Ilderton about the choice of Jackie Mascarin. It's the malice. He IS dating his partner, ha ha ha!!

The meek fans and the badass may differ in tone, but remain siblings under the skin. Identical convoluted fan fic plots running in their heads that they apply to real life, plots that as ever feature their take on a Scott Moir possessing an stagnant psychological state and a stereotypical adolescent expression of same. Narrative stays the same. Common sense never shows up.

Sale & Pelletier at the end
of their Olympic Short Program in 2002

Remember when Skate Canada joined up with the USFSA, the always composed Scott Hamilton and the execrable Sandra Bezic to bully the OOC out of a "second gold medal" to hand off to these deservedly runner-up Olympic pairs skaters? (Only a year later even the bronze medalists, Shen & Zhao, would up their game and leave anything these two ever did behind in the dust). The actual winners, Sikharulidze and Berezhnaya, experienced a wobble in his double axel during the long, and the U.S. media, egged on by the two Feds, and the two hysterics in the broadcast booth, attempted to incite a riot in the arena. 8 years later at the 2010 World Championship, Scott Moir experienced a wobble in his twizzle pass and Virtue and Moir still won. Scott explained this is why you train, so even a wobble in an element still merits L4. He's wrong, the element was downgraded, but of course whether or not the score differential sufficiently reflected it, Virtue and Moir's superior skating skills, higher level of real difficulty and complexity of choreography did make that Worlds win a deserving one. I don't remember Scott ever saying the thoroughly second rate Davis White deserved the gold instead.*

12 years after Salt Lake City, in Sochi, Skate Canada ruthlessly threw the best ice dancers of all time under a bus so that the fucking Gadbois Center could get credit for training champion ice dancers in the next Olympic cycle. That's Skate Canada down to the ground. Blood on the ice for the sake of Sale & Pelletier, into the woodchipper with Virtue and Moir.

I miss the days when people in figure skating could bitch about the judging and about other figure skaters' overscoring or getting screwed, and I don't know if any of us are going to live to see those days return. That was some deal that was struck. There's got to be a Faustian component because it's a fucking eternity this has lasted. The only ice dancers it's permissible to bitch about are/were Virtue and Moir. Virtue and Moir can't bitch about anybody.

******

They still haven't retired.

I wonder who Scott will be dating in 2049.

Fan 1: She still looks pretty glamorous.
Fan 2: Remember when people wanted them
together?
Fan 1: Some people thought they were.
Fan 2: How come?
Fan 1: Baited, trolled, gaslighted. With
a side of female empowerment.
Fan 2: I sure bought a lot of Noxema.

*Pelletier had an improper hold on Sale in a lift plus they skated at arms' length. Soon enough, someone conveniently produced a smoking gun of judging malfeasance that I'm pretty sure was actually bribed / coerced into existence. Nobody needed to strike a deal to score superior skaters over lesser ones.

P.S.

Tessa's been doing some promotional things with this bright and shining feminist. It's disturbing how some of Tessa's instagram production mimics this aesthetic. When you start thinking this looks good (and this is heavily app'ed) you need to come up for air.

Imposter Syndrome

Wonder if they ever have it?
They'll have six World Championships
and an Olympic gold medal when they're
done, and that's assuming they won't follow-up
the Olympics with Worlds in 2022.

I suspect Charlie White knows he and Meryl weren't the best skaters and never defeated Virtue Moir on the ice, but bought into the idea that perceived off-ice merit was a valid element in competitive outcomes. Hard work, sacrifice, good sportsmanship, waiting their turn.

Papadakis & Cizeron at the moment look like figure skating didn't think long term. The most any competitor can hope for is a Grand Prix title when P&C routinely come down with an injury during the series. Otherwise, the top spot is locked in and the sport has left itself no exit strategy.

Missed this until now:

Ilyushechkina Bilodeau:



We'll see. They look good together. Glad she's still an enthusiastic Canadian.

I did some surfing to see what fresh sham was out there, almost forgetting speculation as to why the whole sham process may have been revived (pregnancy). Tessa's social media output is so stylized

it could be pregnancy or just aesthetic.

In Pyeongchang, Scott's personal aesthetic was almost on par with an instagram model's - his crow's feet, which once extended across his cheekbones, were then just faint lines at the corners of his eyeballs. I guessed they felt they had to leave nothing to chance after the way "fat" had been weaponized in the 2014 narrative against VM. Only in figure skating would a supernaturally beautiful pair like VM be made to feel on the defensive in the beauty stakes. I'm not a fan of the hyper polished, erase everything standard and especially not a fan of a body and self-positivity message coupled with extreme filtering.

Ok.

Well, SHE's presenting as excited.

But the medium is still the message and I'm not a fan of this medium.

London Knights

Since there's a beehive of reactionary fan behavior re Virtue and Moir, I did some belated googling and found this recentish article.

https://thewalrus.ca/the-olympics-are-over-but-tessa-virtue-is-just-getting-started/

I believe there's something in there about yet another recent mood crisis Tessa had that impacted their relationship (we were due, it's been over 10 years since her shins severed all communication between them although it did nothing of the kind).

The piece also relates how the Humboldt Broncos junior ice hockey team tragedy impacted Tessa, causing her to harken back to her "first boyfriend", a one-time star of the London Knights.*

Aha!

http://dubemoir.blogspot.com/2013/03/propaganda.html

This is a blog entry from 2013, observing that the London Free Press's Ryan Pyette was obsessively and seemingly randomly working in mentions of the "London Knights" in his recent coverage of Tessa Virtue, with a particular emphasis that it was Tessa who was friends with the team.

Back then, this blog said this:

Of course anything Scott says is overshadowed by Ryan Pyette continually mentioning the freaking 2005 London Knights in all his recent articles, specifying how Tessa befriended them back then (har de har Ryan - she befriended the entire freaking team at age 16?) while Scott merely rooted for them (what did Scott do - judge the contest among them for the guy who got to nail Tessa?). That's a joke set up right there, but we all know it's a sham boyfriend dealie here so please already. Just make your real point. The way he's shoveling that into his articles apropos of nothing looks incoherent.

This is like when Scott and Tessa tried to set up a Paris bait and switch with Jessica Dube but were called out and it never happened. It was one of their most petty gambits and one of their most mean-spirited. They skyped and gave quotes about this lovely Paris walkabout they were planning, visiting all the Funny Face spots, taking pictures, priming the pump. Then - bubkus.. Because sting was foiled in advance, of course they couldn't share pics of themselves. They put the Jessica pictures in the bank and dropped them over a year later. Waste not, want not.

This time it took six fucking years but you know - winning is everything.

Comments section

I removed one multiple comments from the comments section of one of the previous three posts.More would have been put into spam if I'd participated in those comments sections, but I didn't, and it's water under the bridge.

Very sorry Virtue and Moir decided to stir the shit to this extent (Andrew Poje, at this late date, really?, and is Scott's ex-partner married? Well done.) with the most attention-grubbing gambits they could conceive, as if they don't already get more than enough attention with the same act they've been pushing since 2009.  Clearly they missed the negative attention and set out to prompt predictable hysterics in the limited community of reactionary online fans.

They enjoy bringing out the worst in people*, instead of the best, and they enjoy punching down.

People who double down in my experience are arrogant, afraid, or control freaks. Maybe Scott and Tessa are triple threats. Tessa and Scott are extraordinarily courageous athletes and competitors, but they have the talent to match. In an area where they can't control the outcome and may feel less sure footed (and by outcome, here I'll use "Skating performance" and not results), they recoil, become juvenile, and act out. Not a good look, but hey, everybody else is doing it. They have a lot of bad company.

P.S. I'm kind of WTF that anything they do this many years on can produce this kind of freak out, but all fans are alike and the new ones are the same as the old. This is how shipper fans of TV characters act, of anime characters act, of historical figures act.

*Wait. Are fans people?

I totally missed this

Hot stuff

Even though I mentioned the Mr. D episode in an earlier post, I only halfheartedly tried to look up to see if she was actually Scott's first partner (whose name I had forgotten) or a pretty ok sitcom actress - certainly better than either Virtue or Moir. I decided she must be an actress playing a sad sack/whipping post character on Mr. D, and moved on (is she that as well? I know nothing about Mr. D).

ETA am informed below that the childhood partner on Mr. D was played by an actress (and the character name is not Jackie Mascarin), so it's just extra fun for all.

I don't review the comments as much as I should (which I should change) as I'm trying to place hold this blog until ice dance wakes up to something other than Papadakis & Cizeron's march to 5 World titles and their already-awarded 2022 Olympic gold. Clearly, stuff slips through the cracks as the blog lens gets wider and more general instead of gathering up the details - to mix metaphors.

So I missed the fun in the blog comments (which are very funny, and my apologies for having not seen them when they first landed) and remained in the dark. I had no idea Mascarin was the actual ex partner and this was a new thing they were doing until I recently plugged Virtue and Moir into a search engine and landed in tumblr:

This account has Lots and LOTS OF FEELINGS ABOUT FANS!!
HAVING FEELINGS!!! STOP!!

I've edited out the account name for obvious reasons.

That sort of post makes me cringe, but obviously VM find this stuff entertaining.

Takeaways. They missed trolling? They're going for it in 2022? The latter terrifies me. But they're just not going away. Is their fame so ephemeral that if they dial this shit back their Q rating and earning power takes a dive? WTF are the elements in the algorithm that spat this thing out? Can't they hawk grocery delivery services, fawn over each other, smirk about partnerships, can't Tessa pull diner imagry she got from some movie* where the people are old, the lighting is misty, they share hot chocolate and get wistful about that time they were young and never got together and now never will but what a time it was - if they retired? Aren't those things retired Olympic champions can do? So why aren't they retiring? I could do mental backflips and think they're not retiring just so they can have an excuse to be cowards and not widen their own lens, but that's what I thought last time, and then they announced.

How come they mix it up with every new program (except their show programs) but don't mix this up? Wait, the parenthetical just answered the question.

In hindsight, the spot is a lot cuter without the 
multiple overlays of "See everything we just did there?!!!
In real life things are the opposite but then it flips back again
and then again!"

I'm kind of creeped out by this configuration. I know why - I think it's because most people had only known he had a previous partner when he and she were both eight and then it was radio silence (she wasn't even dragged in to weigh in in all the years Virtue and Moir competed and their "bio" was served up relentlessly. Nothing that got around, anyway.). Her showing up this late in the game in this capacity is kind of cooties-inducing no matter what retroactive narrative gets stitched together. Ew. But then again:

The W Network, 2014. Tessa & Scott.
Want some "Ew"? Check it out. Still available
on video-sharing and streaming
service websites. And reviewed on this blog.

Yes, with Tessa's 30th birthday just around the corner I was anticipating that the icky days were behind us, but that was just a dream. And then again, a sort of knee-jerk bad taste has often been their metier. Their first sham flaunted plenty of partner-swapping and a kind of smarmy unsavoriness (and also voyeurism), the second started off benignly enough but got ambitious and then offensive (review the reality show if the ways it did so are lost in the mists of time), the third was pretty benign with Tessa showing up routinely as the bookend on (our) left, and this one is like Huh? and Yucky had a baby.

***

So now of course I'm checking out the comments I've missed and right off I see a transcript of commentators trashing P/C's inflated points. Thank you for that. But, it's also scary, because if people are allowed to question the judging instead of talking about PC's ephemeral magic, the door might be creaking open (again) and I just don't want VM to skate through it. I was positive they had the green light last time, and look what nearly happened.

*or Tessa pulled it from somebody's online fan fiction. She's wicked clever, right? Would not surprise as that's where the W Network's "Tessa and Scott" stole its entire script. I'm sure there's a Dr. Zhivago-esque scenario somewhere, only in London and it's a diner, and Old Scott sees Golden Ager Tessa across the street going into a shop, does a double take, rushes out, and gets hit by a car. Life is poignant. The diner schtick, for me, evokes Tessa's tweet of some time past sharing a wisdom-fueled flight she experienced with her seatmate, a man named John who was just the right amount of old (77). If his name had been Larry we'd have never heard about it.