Short takes

These gifs aren't apples to apples comparisons. They're just my takeaways, distilling my impressions of Skate Canada and Skate America 2014.

Moore Towers/Marinaro:

Yep.

Chock and Bates:

Not so sure about the curve part or
the "lift" part.

I can't.

What I noticed with Chock Bates is that after the uber stand-still, draggy, dramatic opening, and some effortful stroking, the program turns glacial. That's a thing now in ice dance.Be slow. Truncated run of blade is preferred. How can you be crisp, clean, and tight with your music if you spend any time on an extended, deep edge. By the way, very.deliberate.sustained.gesturing is the new "crisp and clean."

The other thing in ice dance is the less skating you do, the higher you'll score.Ice dance. Once the skate-iest of all the figure skating disciplines. Then the North American Feds and ISU officials realized the public and media didn't know the difference, so why not turn it into a favor swapping pawn, and a pile of crap, while bragging it's now legit, in the best tradition of the most corrupt enterprises in civilized history.

I can't even touch the base value and levels bullshit.

The Shibs. I want to cry. The blade run and speed alone. How many points behind Chock & Bates? North American figure skating is a bunch of assholes:

Chock and Bates, of course, have one of the most
rudimentary, mediocre step sequences in contemporary
free dance history.

Hubbell Donohue (switched to their 2014 skate)

They need better speed, but how relevant is that in ice dance anymore? Chock & Bates are slow, and Hubbell Donohue have deeper, longer edges, better unison, softer knees, more program content, and skate their program.

Gilles Poirier:

I think there's some sleight of hand with them where she's on an extended edge supported in some type of connection/hold with Paul (and hey, I won't look a gift horse) but he's doing the actual skating, he's the one with power, and that's how they achieve speed/ice coverage when they DO achieve speed/ice coverage. It's a more palatable strategy then just in-your-face dragging and pulling, and that's the best I can say at the moment til I sit with their program a little longer.

******
Update to the paragraphs that follow - here is the attorney's original article:

An Idiot's Tale

Her name is Javairia "Jia" Junaid. I don't know if her linked-in profile is current.

My issue isn't with what she describes as her "bias" - a bias that assumed the appealing (to her) famous guy was being targeted by a vengeful ex. Plenty of people harbor attitudes and biases at variance with their education, job description and experience.

My issue is with her stupidity and her inability to process information. There were two components to the original story. One was The CBC's announcement that they were getting rid of Ghomeshi. The other was Ghomeshi's facebook post.

Any lawyer - any regular person with common sense - would know that a publicly funded corporation the size of The CBC, run by a bunch of well-paid, lawyered-up corporate dudes, is not going to get rid of one of its longstanding marquee talents because some ex-girlfriend with a chip on her shoulder made shit up. But attorney Jia Junaid had no problems reaching that conclusion. I wonder what she charges per hour - her clients must get tremendous value whatever her rate may be.

It's an especially comforting read when one absorbs that she's worked in advocacy sectors. NICE.

My original remarks:

I don't know what kind of idiot juice some media types are drinking in Canada, but one of the many naval-gazing Ghomeshi "think pieces" was from a media-type/lawyer (a woman) who confessed that when Ghomeshi's firing was first announced, and she read his facebook post, she believed him, and imagined that he was being victimized by a bitter ex girlfriend, probably a model/actress wannabe (I will hunt down the link to the article later).

Think of the brains it took to default to that assumption. This legal light immediately assumed that a corporation the size and power of The CBC would fire its famous signature face/name/brand because some anonymous, wannabe, resentful ex girlfriend decided to make trouble by making shit up. An actual lawyer figured that. A lawyer assumed The CBC just went - sure, probably true - he's gone! The subtext in this lawyer's assumptions was that it was probably a pretty girl, and therefore entitled and uppity, and you know, they get publicly funded major corporations to do their bidding all the time.

SO so incredibly stupid. And she had no problem publishing this.

I bet this woman/lawyer defaulted to that assumption without ever having once in her entire life witnessed/experienced an ex-girlfriend taking down some guy. She believes in myths more than she believes in real life. I would love to ask this lawyer exactly how often in her real life experience, and not her soap opera viewing, somebody's vindictive ex-girlfriend, all on her own, not only attempted some sort of combination smear campaign/stalking strategy against a guy, but against a much richer, more powerful, famous guy, and succeeded.

This woman is now regretting her default reaction because as it turns out, a couple of well-known women are accusing Ghomeshi, so now she knows it's not some phantom model who persuaded CBC to ditch the guy whose 20 foot poster was on the side of the building, but a few People Who Count.

I am dying to find out what firm pays this woman for her legal expertise, what her hourly rate may be, and what clients pay through the nose for her work. I hope it's not Siskinds.

*********

Enjoyed this from MacLean's latest on Jian Ghomeshi:

Stories circulated at the CBC about his penchant for “rough sex” but they were mostly dismissed as gossip, says Paul Malcolm, a Q producer for four years. “I heard rumours of punching for as long as I was on the show, but I didn’t believe it.” “Jian was very private,” says one producer, who noted he seemed to have different tiers of girlfriends. There were high-profile women with whom he was aligned —Ani DiFranco, Sarah Polley, Lisa Ray, Tessa Virtue—as well as far younger women who would accompany him after show tapings in other cities.

Nice, right? Virtue and Moir are lucky Ryan Semple only appears to be a quasi-virtual-douchebag on twitter and instagram. But I bet anything they don't know much about him.

Virtue and Moir's social media alliances are paper thin, there's not even rudimentary due diligence, it's all cosmetic Stepford bullshit. Virtue and Moir have turned themselves into brittle, pageant-esque, image-burnishing paper dolls each an inch deep. It's so bizarre - years ago all they seemed to care about was skating, and Tessa was adament that neither she nor Scott had any interest in becoming celebrities. That attitude was either a complete lie at the time - wouldn't be surprised - or they've morphed into opposite sorts of people, and what are they getting out of it? They don't want to be adults? They want to stay in their version of high school their entire lives? There are twelve-year olds with more guts and character than either one of them.

At least with the Ghomeshi case causing people in media to come crawling out of the woodwork to confess how insular, dishonest, self-serving and inverted their "industry" and "community" actually is, we know the sorts of people with whom Scott and Tessa have affiliated themselves, and there's that saying that you know someone by the company they keep. Without even needing to, Scott and Tessa have adopted a community and are being reinforced by a community that is self-admittedly immature, self-promoting, self-obsessed, afraid, and insecure.

This post is brought to you by the windows behind Scott and Tessa:

There's been a lot of Funhouse Mirror-themed decor in the events they've attended this summer and fall.

Smiles

It's weird how these are exactly like the last year of Jessica/Scott photos. Face the camera in a public event or at some party/gathering with lots of people, smile and call it a day, minimize the body contact.

Giving Cassandra credit, she doesn't have that needy look in her eyes when she looks at the camera lens, so the ick factor goes way down. The connection factor is still as nil as ever. They don't even sit like they know each other - she could be a fan or friend of a friend.

Scott throws his arm around the shoulders of fans but with fake girlfriends, especially in photos of recent vintage, he's all eh and tentative.

And after posing with a couple of guys:



Wow Tessa, you go out without Mommy?

Tessa snuggles next to a girlfiend while horizontal to send the countermessage that the photos with the guys are OBVIOUSLY platonic because she's cozier with a freaking girl than with them. Who knew Tessa had friends? The way she portrays herself, she skates and studies and hangs with her mom. Has she ever described friends?

This all seems like it should get a Level 2, GOES - 3 for future-hindsight image messaging.

Present day message: Scott and Tessa have significant others off ice! Look!

Future hindsight message: nothing ever happened or went on with any of these fakes. Look, a photo with Cassandra from the time he was supposedly dating Jessica! Look, all of these photos are exactly like regular fan photos! Look, Tessa and her parents and Scott and his parents are all in collusion with it, there were no triangles and nobody was cheating on anybody!

What about protecting yourselves from the future hindsight of people looking at these and realizing just exactly how ridiculously arrogant and self-obsessed you were? How you couldn't stand it when the fans calmed down about your status, so you kept trying to stir the pot? How a blog about the lies you guys tell that was at first a pain in the ass became a last resort showcase for getting attention?

The fact that their kid is completely edited out of their official story for the Sochi Olympics and that they will never see a shout out from the Kiss'N'Cry or their name mentioned in any of the articles to show THEIR kids - who cares. Family scrapbooks are cool enough!

The hardest thing to explain to people about Tessa/Scott's sham? The stupid. People follow along to a certain point and then they get that rotten fish smell expression where it's not even outrageous enough to be funny or - outrageous. It's just - who do these people think they are? What's wrong with them?

Call Capurnicus - he was wrong. The sun revolves around Scott and Tessa.

Cannot WAIT for Canadians to hear that announcer announce at the gala that Tessa and Scott are all that role models should be.

Oh well, let's look at the upside. Since Tessa is now perfectly willing to show herself on the web in a bikini, to pose with buddies on a boat, surely she won't nix the facebook or internet publication of a photo that would show her at the Moirs, or at a party, or with Scott somewhere anymore. She must be growing up. That's a good move for a mom.

Isn't it amazing though, all these off-ice photos of Tessa in one rush, and this is her intimate, private life! But with her professional, platonic partner, she still behaves as if a camera lens will dissolve her. She's the one who says they golf, drive places together, work out together, "are always together" so why does the photo spam try to show them having totally separate social lives?

Yes, let's have more of them. More outing American figure skaters while protecting
 your own (or what you think is protecting), more mocking fans and setting them up for sport,
more double standards depending upon whose skater from what country has won or lost, 
and more bragging on how much more wonderful you are than other people while
lying your faces off. Let's have Moir of that.