DWTS Season 18 - Week 9. Looky here.

I am putting together the DWTs recap post from last Monday, which, so far, mainly means I'm procrastinating about looking at Meryl's "dances". That recap will be here in this post.

Meantime, I came upon a video of Derek Hough and Amy Purdy rehearsing for the finals. Here's a gif.

Whaddya know.

Meryl Davis fans might protest that Derek is stealing Meryl Davis's lift entrance, but I have a suspicion this is Derek's lift. I suspect he's the one who taught the counter-motion entrance to Davis White while working with them on whatever his contribution might have been to their short dance. Derek is prolific, and no doubt not everything they tried made it into the short dance. Something they got from Derek might have made it into the free.

Amazing a 34 year old woman with no feet can get this counter-motion awesomeness in - what? A day. Didn't it take Davis White three years?

Or so we were told.

Here we go. Meryl's jive.


The thing that kills me with Meryl, on ice, and on this show, is she will actually stop and just stand for a beat to catch up or re-set. It's self-indulgent.There is nobody, no dancer, no skater, in a judged competition, who will do that as nakedly as she does it. Meryl's been enabled, so she's fallen into the habit. She has all kinds of bad habits she doesn't put in check because it's never called out.

The dancing may not be anything to write home
about, but at least Maks knows how to costume his
partners to look their best.

It's exactly like her skating. Lip service (meaning,
two beats) towards the dance, then filler.

I don't know how this is going. It appears as if Meryl is in the Ricky Lake slot of presumptive trophy winner, only, at the last minute, the audience favorite, the lowballed celeb, surges to win. At times, as in the season when it appeared to be J.R. Martinez versus Ricky Lake, the storyline was transparent. Here, it's difficult to tell if it's J.R. v. Ricky Lake - i.e. Meryl being tossed tens no matter what, because her job is to be the presumptive winner until the likes of Amy takes the mirror ball - or if it's about hustling Maks to the win.

Ironically, Maks has complained for years that he, Maks, doesn't get ringers. Derek does, whinges Maks, and you need a ringer to win.This season, Maks got a presumptive ringer. Derek got a partner who doesn't even have fucking legs.The unacknowledged irony is that Maks' partner is actually a severely handicapped mover who has been, and needs to be, enabled, via corruption, to win. Maks has no way of knowing, or, alternatively, admitting, that he doesn't have a ringer. She's bad.

Ah, karma.

Meanwhile, Derek, in Amy, has an Olympic-fit athlete, who, it turns out, has the mind-body awareness/intelligence of a Tessa Virtue/Tatiana Volosozhar, and looks to match. Amy Purdy is someone who can recruit *this* part of her body to compensate for what *that* part of her body can't do. Furthermore, she's somebody with infinite musicality. As someone who has survived bacterial meningitis, the loss of both kidneys, the loss of her legs below the knee, and the threat of losing her arms and hands as well, Amy Purdy is, naturally, nerveless when it comes to a reality show competition. It's hilarious. Derek has the ringer, Maks has the ball and chain, but it's impermissible to acknowledge this.

There's another whole dance to go - the Viennese waltz. Where, I understand, the costuming was special. Bear with me.

Here's Meryl and Maks' "Viennese Waltz":



And gifs:

 

 

Look at what she's wearing. The judges have no idea what she did.

 

 

 

 





I was really looking for animatronics or mechanical dolls to gif as counterpoint, but you-tube search produces too much trash to be able to grab something quickly. I figured South Park would do just as well, same principles.

Tonight's the final. My suspicion is that Amy Purdy will win and they've just thrown tens at Meryl without caring what she does in order to set her up as the presumptive winner, as they did with Ricky Lake versus J.R. Martinez. But there's also the Maks saga, and the drama of the poor Chmerkovskiy who has never won the mirror ball, and the fact that if Amy won, it would be Derek Hough's sixth mirror ball. I'm not sure that's much of a deterrent for the show. Who knew he'd get to win five of them?

I intended the newest post to be a DWTS re-cap, chronicling Charlie's exit, along with the position of DW fans - who henceforth should be called "Meryl Davis fans" - that Amy Purdy only sat on a table and kicked during her jazz routine with Derek Hough. A recap requires looking at all of the dances and cutting them up, and I haven't yet been up to the challenge this week. I hope to get it done tonight or tomorrow.

Until then, these observations: Meryl Davis fans on fsu were bright-siding Charlie's departure by saying at least now they don't have to split their votes. Right, because they weren't voting for only Meryl this entire time. What they mean is, "At least now I can vote for only Meryl with a clear conscience." and "Charlie would want me to vote for Meryl. Even when he was still on the show, you know he'd have wanted us voting for Meryl."

They think he's Scott Moir with this. Along those lines, one of the reasons Charlie didn't get enough votes was that he was unable to form the white hot, seething chemistry with his partner that Meryl enjoys with Maks, that Meryl enjoys with him, and with every other man who crosses Meryl's path. Charlie, poor thing, just doesn't work with anyone but Meryl.

I guess we kind of already knew that Davis White's following was actually a following for Meryl And The Guy Who Validates Her, but now it's confirmed. To be fair, for quite a long time, fsu's VM fans seemed to really be fans of Scott Moir and Whatever Girl Helps Him Get Gold, if It's Tessa, Okay, Even Though Her Style Is too White Bread, But We Have Other Candidates if Tessa's Shins Don't Improve. Many of those VM fans did later came to appreciate Tessa as a skating talent in her own right, even if it took something as out-of-its mind brilliant as Carmen to achieve this realization. It shouldn't have taken Carmen.

That's my DWTS two cents until I look at the actual dances. For now, it seems that St. Louis Rams draftee Michael Sam is doing a reality show, and writer Drew Magary of deadspin.com says this:

They can call it a "documentary" series even though it's a dirty little secret that even acclaimed documentary filmmakers will coach subjects and have them do multiple takes. They can do all that and it still won't scrub away the fact that reality shows are fucking beat and no one worth a shit bothers to do them.

This isn't a football issue, or even a matter of distraction. This is me just saying that a reality show is always a transparent and pathetic exercise in self-branding.

My only quibble is "dirty little secret." It's not a secret.

DWTS Week 8

Better late than never, I guess.

So, apparently Meryl's fans are having ten shit fits these week. They're crying foul because they believe Amy Purdy was overscored, and because Amy Purdy sat on a stool for part of the AT Tango. This is what we've come to. Meryl Davis fans crying "unfair" over a girl with no feet.

I bet Meryl could do this. Her butt wouldn't slide off the stool, her alignment would remain long, strong, open and stable, there would be no weight shift/center-of-gravity collapse to knock the legs of the stool out from under her. This move? It's nothing.

Perhaps if Derek and Amy had just stood around for fourteen seconds pretending they were about to kiss, Meryl's fans would have been okay with it.

Here's Purdy's full Argentine Tango, so we can see just how much she's overscored:



Since Meryl's fans are losing it over Amy Purdy, why not also see Purdy's Celebrity Duel jive for ourselves. The woman needs extra stability/resistance (i.e. some point of contact with another dancer) because of the no-feet thing, but she doesn't need external resistance for her WHOLE FREAKING BODY AND EVERY JOINT.  More importantly, she doesn't need it for her core, her hips, her knees. She needs it to orient her prosthetic feet to the floor. Seeing as her actual body ends just below her knees.

Amy Purdy, Derek Hough, Peta Murgatroyd and James Maslow four-way jive:



Fake feet or real feet, which, of these two athletes, Meryl or Amy, is actually dancing on this show? Who has better technique, musicality, rhythm, performance, precision? Which athlete/celeb dance contestant dances better? The one who stood on the top of the ice dance platform in Sochi after seventeen years of training, or the one with no legs below the knee who has to dial herself into her snowboard?

Here's Meryl's "rumba".



We can all agree; no damn stool sitting in that rumba.

Let's look at the rumba content:

There's one part.

That's the other part.

While the leg kick/swing saved itself for Meryl's celebrity duel with Danica McKellar,

 this essential element of any authentic rumba had to be included in Meryl and Maks' rumba:

My second favorite part of the entire evening was this:

That's not a choreophed bump; it's Meryl coming out of a spin.

My absolute favorite part of the evening was this:

"So don't grab onto me."

Look at Charlie White.

It's almost as if Charlie's going through a little PTSD, or maybe de-programming. Grabbing? You don't do no grabbing in lifts!

Charlie, you and Meryl are still hedging about retirement. Until you're an eligible alumni, deal with it. You're a grabee.

Here's embeds from the rest of Meryl and Charlie's performances:

Charlie's contemporary with Candace Bure, Sharna Burgess and Mark Ballas:


Meryl, Danica McKellar, Val Chmerkovskiy, Maksim Chmerkovskiy samba:



Charlie and Sharna's quickstep:



It's not the best celeb/pro quickstep ever on DWTs, but it's one of the rare quicksteps where the upper bodies remain in contact for almost all of it.

For what it's worth, and it's OT, here's an article on Amy Purdy in the Theatre & Dance section of The Washington Post.  Amy Purdy and The Washington Post.

Intermediates Feng and Ponomarenko back in 2012. A bit out of sync, but as that's now the established criteria for +3 in twizzles, it shouldn't hold them back. Nitpick: the "dance jump" entrance should jerk more. These two appear to enter it on a nice, smooth, forward outside edge, which will only hurt them.

The dance jump above resembles the entrance to an axel jump. Jumps rotate. Nevertheless, this entrance doesn't create angular momentum. If it did, it would actually be an easier way to do twizzles, and not merit Level 4. Besides, very low level adult skaters on fsuniverse.com find they have trouble staying on their feet after a hop.What further proof do we need?

*****

I thought the blog may as well take a look at this article: Kickasscanadians.ca

To start, here's something about the author of the article, Amanda Sage: http://amandasage.ca/writing/.  Remember when Scott and Tessa were interviewed by that green journalist who live-tweeted while conducting the interview, and who linked to the subsequent article from his twitter about a bazillion times? Amanda Sage is also a free lancer. She's also done SEO copywriting. This article on Tessa & Scott is straight up SEO, larded with key words.

These are the people Virtue Moir recruit. People who need the credential.

The Scott & Tessa narrative is that the public has a consuming interest in their personal life. They've been putting that out for years. But when the fans want to discuss the skating, nobody, including Scott and Tessa, want fans to discuss the skating. Look at P.J. Kwong, who, on her twitter, had to fend off questions about Scott and Tessa's p.r., deflect questions about their social media behavior, and wax disingenuous about photos that popped up on instagram. She should be happy when fans want to talk skating. But, when fans started questioning the results in Sochi, Kwong tried to shame them into shutting up. Icenetwork's Lynn Rutherford also doesn't want to discuss the actual skating. Only the protocols. Don't even think of using the skating to audit the protocols. That's a sign of hysteria.

Those who write for mainstream media outlets direct us to think of the skaters as personalities and storylines. Then they scapegoat fans for their own choice to cover the skaters only as personalities and storylines.

I'm happy, though, that, more and more, fans aren't shutting up about the skating.

Here's the article's headline:

 

Scott Moir & Tessa Virtue, figure-skaters-champions-icons-great people

From Scott:

“People feel like they’ve been part of our journey, which is really special and we’re really grateful for that support.”

 

Scott often tries to be clever in the framing of his comments, with mixed results. Here, I wonder if saying, "people feel like" they've been part of his and Tessa's journey is deliberate. People have that impression, even though they really haven't been part of the journey, because we've lied, and promoted a fake story.

 

When they were interviewed by the Russian fans, Tessa said that what you did or said isn't remembered. How you made people feel is remembered. Under that umbrella, we can include, I guess, making people feel they're part of your story, even though you've really just lied to them, while instructing them about how honest you're being. How will people feel, though, when they become aware Virtue and Moir lied?

 

I recall that when Scott had his fan facebook page, he made people feel just great. Right from the start, when he announced that he was shutting down his "personal" facebook because he didn't want to leave anybody out, and proceeded to kick people off his personal facebook while keeping it going, in plain view of everyone he'd deleted.Then, on his fan page, making a rare appearance in order to solicit fan feedback about a profile photo, only to make a spectacle of how little their time and energy mattered.

Scott's lecturing fans on not friending a fake facebook account was also one for the memory books.

Just super, super bad

 Charlie's "meh" paso doble. Poor bugger (not really, but you know).



This post was going to have title like "Live by the scores, die by the scores", or "How does it feel, Charlie White?" by way of sticking it to Charlie White for going through a little bit of a Virtue Moir experience on DWTs. Not only is he getting screwed in the scoring despite blatantly outdancing the leader, who isn't dancing at all, not only are his scores suppressed in favor of somebody the judges shower with tens no matter how awful she is, but that somebody is his own ice dance partner. It's like, look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair! And look what you hath wrought, Charlie White!

Except I doubt it goes that deep.

But then I saw Meryl's "salsa," where she "danced" with an entire troupe, a dance which consisted of stomping around the floor on bent knees, being flipped and held up like a marionette by Maks while groping for her footing (watch, she gropes for her footing), and where the "troupe" was configured at the top of the dance to hide Meryl's ass. You'll see that part. It was terrible. When someone is that terrible, that's the headline.



To spare myself gifing every single second, because it's so bad every second should get its own gif, and I'd be here all night, I saved it in slow mo, so Meryl's fabulous form, rhythm, control of her body in space and sense of balance can get the showcase it deserves. Yes, rhythm in slow mo. When someone with rhythm is in slow mo, the tempo has changed, but you can still see the rhythm.

Or not.

And now I'm off to gif my favorite parts, as soon as we get this out of the way:

And this:

Be back soon.

Someone on one of the discussion sites called Meryl's dancing "masterful." It's another triumph of narrative over eyesight (something Virtue and Moir themselves exploit off the ice, which I'm going to post about later).

Walk walk walk walk push and walk walk walk.

More tomorrow.

She's a born dancer.

The challenging skipping part of salsa.

Davis White Off-Balance, Out of Sync in Sochi

These gifs below are from neverendingdreamtumblr. Blogger doesn't permit the posting of gifs side by side; at least I've not been able to troubleshoot that process. So, below, the gifs are angled in a descending sequence instead. On the neverendingdreamtumblr, this gif set is titled: "Why Meryl Davis and Charlie White Shouldn't Have Won in Sochi". Below the gif set there is this caption: "Balance issues, lack of synchronicity and they had problems with their twizzles for all FOUR performances! Perfect GOEs…???"

But of course! What are you going to believe? The protocols, or your lying eyes? What report has more credibility - the skating itself, or the commenting on the skating?

So here we go.

I'm re-posting this from neverendingdreamtumblr, because it's important that video like this is seen by as many people as possible. I encourage everyone to visit neverendingdreamtumblr for these gifs, even though they're also posted here. That tumblr has the gifset neatly formatted in a grid, instead of inartfully angled, and the grid has more impact. The impact this mess deserves.

I'm also re-posting these gifs to push back against the notion promoted, even by Canadian skating interests, that it's impolite, hysterical, obsessive or disrespectful to notice cheating. P.J. Kwong, for example, seems to believe that challenging the results is disrespectful.

What does respect mean to P.J. Kwong? I believe it's disrespectful when a team goes out and skates according to the rules, and elevates the standards of execution set out therein, all the while demonstrating absolutely textbook+ skating according to the criteria that governs the scoring, and the rules are ignored. Instead, right in front of our faces, in defiance of what we've just seen, that team gets ripped off, point stripped, manipulated and low balled. Why? Because the sport can flaunt its lack of accountability.

It's also disrespectful to the skating public when a team produces bastardized bullshit while demonstrating skating technique explicitly discouraged in the guidelines, and is scored as if they skated exemplifying the rules, standards and criteria.

Gaslighting is always disrespectful, P.J.

It's always disrespectful when we're directed and coerced and badgered into accepting a lie as the truth. Everybody involved in telling the skating public to do that can fuck off, and that includes most of the Canadian commentariat. If they want to lie their faces off, that's up to them. But when it comes to pressuring fans to fall in line, who do they think they're talking to? A bunch of "fraus", that's who. "Frau" is biggest perjorative on the internet, and that label is implied in everything the skating commentariat says to and about its fans. It's implied in nearly everything sportswriters say about the fans. I believe the dismissive, trivializing tone used by skating site contributors such as Lynn Rutherford is intended to trigger appeasement and insecurity in the fans who are treated that way, who are embarrassed by the implied "frau" label. That patronizing tone is meant quell those who persevere with pointing out what happened in Sochi. So again, fuck that.

Canadablue's Twizzle Sequences and Step Sequences Video Showing Virtue Moir and Davis White in Slow Mo

This video is from Virtue Moir and Davis White's free dance programs in the ice dance competition at the Sochi Olympics. First up below is canadablue's full video - the twizzles (the element), and the twizzles in the step sequences. It's followed by my breaking out the full video into smaller video clips and gifs. The very last two gifs from DW's step sequences are a particular mess. And of course, turns out what someone in the blog comments section insisted to have been jpg's of Tessa screen capped from the twizzle element in VM's free dance, were not from the twizzles.

Thank you, canadablue. These are wonderful. I'm going to fill out this post later but for the moment I think the videos and gifs speak for themselves.

Remember who got the GOE for these.

The full video.

Just VM's twizzles:

And just DW's:

VM: twizzles in step sequence

DW twizzles in step sequence:

VM: twizzles in step sequence:

DW twizzles in step sequence: