I'll do more with this later, but I was so curious how Val would handle the positions in the air in Argentine tango, as often the man holds the woman with her feet off the ground, in frame (but supported). With her hips and both legs free, she hits lines with her legs while he turns or moves her from one side of his body to the other. That would require core control and control of her limbs Meryl has never shown in ice dance.

Take a look. The answer is - Val didn't. The strobe lights also helped the illusion of sharpness, as did a costume down one side of her body.

There has to be a reason Meryl's gotten two weeks of tens, and it's not because her dancing has gotten awesome after weeks one and two. Weeks one and two is when the fan vote comes in and the producers know what they've got. Frequently, if the fan vote is crushing it, the show creates suspense by lowering scores and building them over the season. If somebody is not getting the fan vote, then often their scores are inflated to make them seem like the sure winner. Meryl's score inflation is so abrupt, and so disconnected from what she's actually doing, even by DWTs standards, that it makes me suspect a Ricky Lake, Stacey Keibler, or even Mario Lopez situation (my understanding is Mario was popular enough but Emmitt Smith crushed it in the fan vote).

P.S. Charlie has to learn not to jerk his partner from here to there. Actual dancers like Sharna and Peta don't need to be yanked into place. Still, Charlie got an actual critique. This week, the judges decided to notice what was there and not there, and addressed it.

Okay, duly noted from comments contributor 5:34 below, Maks/Meryl's foxtrot got 120,907+ views. What does that tell us? I don't know. If you filter DWTS youtube videos by count, ignoring the non-dancing performances (like Bieber and Selena Gomez) and ignoring pro dances (like the Hough sibs jiving) and count only the highest views for celeb/partner dances, and depending, I'm sure, on how the search is worded, we see these results:

Bill Nye/Tyne cha cha: 3,545,714 views
Nancy Grace wardrobe malfunction: 1,281,543 views
Kim Kardashian Foxtrot: 1,183,195 views

And a whole bunch of Derek Hough dances with both Jennifer Gray and Nicole Scherzinger are over a million.

Gifs start after the jump.

Let's look at lots of teams

Here are more of canadablue's ice dance comparisons. Thanks canadablue.

Every time one watches Meryl skate, new weirdnesses. This time, I saw how her blade will jerk-slip-slide forward on a flat in the middle of a transition. It's as if her foot gets away from her. Watch her feet.They're ridiculous. Charlie's can be messy, and lack control, but she is on flats out of nowhere, and there are so many other instances of seemingly random what-the-fuckery with her skates constantly going on right in our face.


In the twizzles, look at the ice coverage from Tessa and Scott, and that Mery and Charlie's slow to a virtual standstill by the last rotation of the second set.

Let's also just revisit the glory of the team that stood on the top of the ice dance podium in Sochi because of this kind of "skating".

There's that technical precision that gives them the edge.
Well, not the edge, edge, but you know what I mean.

But at least in their twizzles, they're doing that super hard thing of hopping into them, an ultra challenging L4 feature seeing as how you could really hurt yourself trying to get back onto an edge. Hopping into a rotation doesn't create rotational momentum at all. That's why nobody jumps into a spin. Don't listen to actual physics. Listen to Doris Polaski's made-up physics.

Maks is catching on.

Got a better copy of this. As I just watched it, I had to take back the idea of not saying anything until tomorrow. My main question isn't just where did the Foxtrot happen, but where did the dancing happen?


Meryl actually walked this dance. I could see if it were contemporary, where you sort of walk around lyrically in between emoting and lifts, but this is Foxtrot. She was striding through the parts where she wasn't death dropping and kicking. I get when you've got somebody who's not really a dancer - and she's not - you break it up so they don't have to sustain a through line. I get it. But the part where we're to believe she was actually doing the assigned dance, she was walking and striding. No rise and fall. That's what I'm going to gif tomorrow.

Look at Meryl foxtrot.
One wonders what went on in training, and at what point
Maks realized he couldn't teach her to actually dance.
Break out the bag of schtick (He had Kirstie Alley
on the floor in one of their dances too. Of course, she
was 60.)

And this:

8 straight seconds standing dead still. I recounted. 14 seconds standing in one spot on the floor. 7 seconds not even changing position, just lip hovering. I bet even Marina would be hard-pressed to beat that. You go, Maks.



This guy's older than Meryl - it's John O'Hurley from Season 1, doing a foxtrot. I don't think he has a gold medal at home, but he's not taking a load off in the middle of his routine. I'm putting it here so the rise and fall can be observed.

It's not like Moirville is subtle

It's not random. It doesn't work like that.

And not for nothing, but let's remember a triple play of family events right after the Olympics last time and consider how it's setting up right after the Olympics this time. That didn't stop Scott from putting the Jessica sham on blast or Je taiming Jessica on facebook.

P.S. - this just occurred to me, so file it under the category of "Slow-witted":

Scott and Tessa could be being cagey about their retirement plans in order to keep the spotlight on themselves and Moirville. Yes, I think they want to stay in, but there's the need to stay relevant as well. Moirville went big the past two seasons, and went grabby. But Moirville isn't really good at saying "That's enough." Keeping the issue open keeps VM (and Moirville) in the spotlight.

Look at Shannon Woodhouse's follow-up:

Look at that follow up. Even "good friends" is a lot to see when you're watching from another table. What's the "can't say more than that." There's more to say but I can't say on twitter? Or couldn't tell if it was more?

This is such b.s. Imagine you work in an institution and at the next table is someone else who works there, dining with her well-known son, her husband and a guest. You get on twitter and tell the world the son is there with a well-known guest, and you put your name on that tweet. You don't ask permission to tell the world your colleague's business or her son's business. You know it's just fine you're putting news about a colleague onto the cybersphere. When a stranger on twitter follows up with a question, you are happy to expand and you are unnecessarily cryptic about the status of the famous son and his friend. Shannon Woodhouse is a freaking adult, a grown person, not somebody who just left school. This was a set up.

Please with this.

P.S. - Recapping DWTS tomorrow night - am not watching in real time so will wait til the videos are up on abc.com and elsewhere. I do know the scores so far - Meryl on top of the leaderboard. I'm anxious to see if it's the routine or the dancing (Maks got Willa Ford tens for Foxtrot once so it's not always dancing. But if he got Meryl to really do it, good for them. With Willa he pretty much held her up.)

I think there's bizarre score inflation for this season. I recently checked out the season where Zendaya/Val danced and that team got 8s for better stuff than they're giving 9s and 10s for this season. Maybe they're inspired by DW's ice dance career.

My work here is not done

So ISU president Speedy Cinquanta is looking ahead to his 2016 departure, and, as he notes in a recent communique, time's a wasting. A lot has been accomplished, but there's more to be done if the sport is to be irrevocably be stripped of its credibility before his final sayanara.

He shares his thoughts:

There's still time to make figure skating worse

Read that. Does anybody think a penetrating intellect like David Dore's would have trouble controlling this guy?

I don't know why Speedy's plans are so conservative. I've got some ideas:

For pairs:
Divide the rink in half and compress the routine.Two pairs teams compete at the same time, one at each end. Judges compare tricks, and the audience is on the edge of their seats in case one of the throws sends a lady sailing to the wrong end of the rink, decapitating the other guy.

For singles:
No more singles. Singles relay. One by one each skater in each flight races after the other onto the ice and does their opening pose and preliminary stroking. Repeat as each follows the other with their next sequence or element. Only half the footwork is done per turn, because the audience doesn't have the attention span for all that shit at once. The spirals can be completed in one go cause they're pretty.

For dance:
Two teams on the ice at once, but the rink isn't split. At a point to be determined by blind draw at each event, the teams must switch partners before a key, easily apprehended element such as the dance spin or the twizzles. The voting is factored so that the skaters are scored individually, not as a team. At the medal ceremony, it could be Alexandra Paul standing up there with Alex Shibutani.

She's tight with the music all right

I won't be able to gif this until tomorrow, so for now:


Gee, they thought Meryl lost timing a couple of times.

You don't say.

Imagine being an Olympic-gold medal possessing ice dancer on DWTs, getting a dance that goes right to your specialty, which is being tossed, flipped and flung like a sack of laundry while warp-speed flinging out your legs below the knee and your arms from the shoulders out, and the judges can only cough up one extra point from your debut. Meryl is really bad. How can a solid, built-like-a-fireplug, slam-into position, under five feet tall, teen gymnast be a better dancer than a gold-medal draped ice dancer? Shawn Johnson was Yulia Zagoruychenko compared to Meryl. Meryl is terrible!

No rhythm at all, no musicality. Her shoulders, head, back and hips are rigid. She's had two super fast, athletic dances to help her get her feet wet before the slower, dramatic, more controlled, more graceful stuff starts, and she can't pull them off.

She's doing nothing differently in terms of dancing than she did on ice, where judges apparently thought she was so "tight" with that music they wish they had +10's - referencing that section of the guidelines that deals with "tightness" that I can't seem to find anywhere.

This performance has nothing to do with the difficulty of transferring from ice to the floor. She wasn't on the damn floor half the time. This is - she can't dance.

I think the judges are being kind, and were kind last week. They're giving her points for the energy and the fitness. For now they're focusing on her total lack of musicality and her imprecision. Dear God wait til they get to her alignment and her rigidity. Baby steps. Don't want to pile on.

I don't know if I've ever seen an ice dancer with such a stiff, brittle back, who is all knees down, and then arms, no torso, no hips, can't phrase, and has no sense of time. I don't think even Maria Butyrskaya was this tight.



Butyrskaya had better edges too.

Meryl "dances" like one of the exercise obsessives in some high intensity, high impact jazzercise or aerobics class - you could break your face on her muscles, and your jaw drops at the zero body fat, but she has no rhythm whatsoever and walks funny. Little spastic scurrying feet, oblivious to any timing but frantic, is not dancing.

And why not watch Kristy Yamguchi on her first DWTs episode (not a dancer, a singles skater. And a pairs girl), years removed from her competitive prime, and in her thirties:



Okay, waiting for Charlie. And gifs tomorrow.

Why are people in figure skating so concerned about perception?

I haven't subjected myself yet to the interview where Tessa Virtue wishes people would not focus on the scandal, the better to bring credibility to the sport.

Tessa Virtue, ladies and gentlemen.

You know what would bring credibility to the sport, Tessa? If the sport had credibility.

The language used when skaters talk about how the public sees figure skating is always so sketchy and WTF.There was Sinead Kerr jumping onto twitter complaining that VM interrupting their 4CC's Carmen hurt the "perception" of the sport.

What actually hurts the perception of the sport, and will continue to hurt the perception of the sport, is that it's fucked up and corrupt, secretive and shady, and lacks all accountability.

What hurts the perception of the sport are communiques as dead honest and earnest as this one, from South Korea:

"We had to be extremely careful with our action because filing a complaint may adversely affect our relationships with the ISU and international figure skating judges, which could put our athletes at a disadvantage at future competitions," the statement read. "However, after deliberating over what would be the best course of action for our people, we decided to appeal with the ISU."
The ISU Constitution and General Regulations state that "no protests against evaluations by referees, judges and the technical panel of skaters' performances are allowed." The ISU also states that protests against results "are permitted only in the case of incorrect mathematical calculation."
However, under Article 24 of the ISU Constitution and General Regulations, complaints may be filed with the ISU's Disciplinary Commission "within 60 days of learning of the facts or events which constitute a disciplinary or ethical offense." The KSU and the KOC said they believe the composition of the panel in Sochi was in violation of the ISU's ethical rules.

What? WHAT? Is South Korea saying that if its complaint is taken amiss, the ISU may see to it that South Korean figure skaters skating according to the rules of CoP will have their scores fucked with in retaliation? South Korean skaters' levels and GOE and components  - the stuff that quantifies what a skater did on the ice, and nothing more or less - will instead actually reflect the ISU's displeasure with South Korea filing a complaint?

Tell me more, South Korea! How does the ISU get this done, exactly? You file a complaint, suddenly your skaters aren't making the final flights. Who issues the directive? It's not "The ISU". It's not a whole bunch of judges individually reacting as one to this complaint and individually deciding to jack your skaters' scores. It's a person. Somebody has to tell them to do it. Who?

Why are the public faces of the sport - the skaters -  more concerned with how the sport is perceived rather than how it is? Why are they eager for a disconnect between perception and reality?

Perception: Tessa and Scott interrupted their program and were allowed to go back and finish! How is that fair?
Reality: Tessa and Scott interrupted per the ISU's own rules.

Why wasn't THAT explained instead of all the oh oh oh oh oh oh hurting the perception! The ISU has/had a rule. Tessa and Scott were within that rule. Instead of the incredibly shady shade thrown left and right immediately suggesting Scott and Tessa were faking, how about explaining that they acted according to the ISU's rules on interruptions?

Why so assbackwards, skaters who threw shade? A little quick-triggered and oversensitive, are we?

Desired Perception: Judging is fair, DW brought it and skating is a wonderful, legitimate sport.
Reality: The results in ice dance have been predetermined for at least the past two seasons (and probably more). Any comparison between what DW did on the ice and what the ISU rules say they ought to have done on the ice in order to get the scores they received demonstrates that without a doubt. The sport is corrupt.

If figure skating were a real sport, staffed by officials who didn't use the mafia as their role models, someone like David Dore would register a strong objection/protest to South Korea's suggestion that the ISU would ever ever retaliate against a Federation's skaters for that Federation filing a complaint about a competitive result. But I bet it doesn't bug them. I bet nobody in the media who followed DW/VM and Slotnikova/Yuna Kim is going to go - wow, a whole entire Fed just announced, humbly, that the governing body of this terribly legitimate sport will possibly retaliate against the Federation's athletes on the score sheet if it doesn't like that the Federation filed this complaint.

They'll just let that statement sit there, and continue to tell us how on point DW's scores were versus VM. Scores that have no relationship to what was skated only happen when Russians are on the ice or on the judging panel.The ISU itself is A-Okay.

Obvious relational associations and logical implications are disregarded in the media coverage of these events. Just leave em there on the ground.

To conclude, let's note that the Korean Skating Federation has just told us that the ISU is perfectly capable of controlling/directing the international judging community to score a skater and event per an agenda that has absolutely nothing to do with the skater's performance on the ice (retaliation, or say, directing a particular team towards a gold medal at the Olympics). Not at one event, but systematically, going forward. However did South Korea receive the impression this was possible?

I can understand why a liar like Tessa would be reality averse, valuing perception over truth but I don't think she should be doing psa's about it on Strombo.

__________________
P.S. I found this 2011 article: David Dore and figure skating that quotes both David Dore and Christine Brennan. David Dore is described thusly: "One of the smartest and most profound international officials in figure skating today."

Gee I wonder what THAT pre-interview was like.

The topic is the International Judging System.

"Everybody has an agenda and you have to play your own game."  explained Dore.

"The new system is still undecipherable for civilians" said Christine Brennan.

Let me ask you Christine. Did you ever make a first-hand attempt to understand the new system or did the word "factored' pull you up short. Did you ever give yourself a boost by learning anything about blade work, steps and turns? Or did you look at it and go shit, that's a lot of decimal points and small type, nobody's going to understand it cause I don't!

"These are really difficult times for figure skating in terms of the sports media," said Brennan. "[Coaches and officials] need to think about ways to make it [more] interesting."

The thing with Brennan is she gets all her stuff from the people whose perspective is overcooked from being inside the sport too long. She doesn't act like a journalist and get that bird's eye view.

Does the "Ice Challenge Competition" discussed in this article actually happen?  It seems to be a competition for former champions and medalists, like the old pro comps.

Like any community, the inner workings of the ISU are complex and sometimes challenging, but it can work if you know how to work with it.  "The culture and concept of the ISU is that it’s a team," said Dore, who urged coaches to be smart, innovative and creative in terms of utilizing the IJS.

Uh huh. I don't exactly understand what is being said in this paragraph.

Okay, I figured out why that last paragraph is a WTF. This article isn't making sense. It's not explaining, connecting, or linking the supposed issues it's addressing into a coherent statement.

Let's look:

1. As I understand this article, it's saying the "new" judging system is a marketing challenge because the general public doesn't understand it and it takes longer for the scores to pop up when skaters are in the kiss'n'cry.

Okay, I see. But then there's this:

2. "Everybody has their own agenda and you have to play your own game."

What does that have to do with the UJS. Agenda in what respect? Agenda about what? Play your own game about what?

and let's look at this:

3. "Like any community, the inner workings of the ISU are complex and sometimes challenging, but it can work if you know how to work with it."

Yeah, no. That's not "like any community." Furthermore, complex generally means there are multiple components, not that nobody knows what the fuck is going on. How come this author (and Dore) aren't laying out what the "inner workings" are, what is so complex about them, and telling explicitly what the challenges are? How does one learn to "know how to work with it." What are examples of people who have successfully worked with it? What did they do? What challenges were presented? What is the wrong way?

I understand that might be a tough challenge when nobody's telling us what "it" is.

IOW, bullshit bullshit bullshit. They're telling us nothing here.

P.S. I also suspect it's likely that the Letter of Inquiry the ISU sent after Virtue Moir interrupted Carmen at the 4CC's was the ISU simply capitalizing on the event to throw shade on VM and enable the DW narrative. If the DW trajectory weren't the agenda, no letter of inquiry would have been sent.