I

12:58AM, in the comments to the previous post, left this link, so I thought I'd embed the video here. Thanks 12:58.

The skating is sublime. As to the music, thank GOD their competitive program choices don't resemble anything they do in shows. Enough already with this quasi-acoustical wispy shit.

*****

Periodically I follow Jessica Dube's social media, and of course encounter her inspirational quotes or her "this is me" memes - we know the kind. "Your faults are beautiful and compelling, they're like patina on a painting, it's how you know you're alive, etc." Came across this article:

If you share deep quotes on social media odds are you have a low IQ

The linked article addresses a study out of the University of Waterloo called: "On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit."

(It's actually a decent paper. Here's the pdf: On the reception and detection of pseudo profound bullshit. The researchers used this website: New Age Bullshit Generator)

I believe the study bears out my own impressions of the relative intelligence of Scott's fake girlfriends. In descending order: Kaitlyn Lawes, Cassandra Hilborn, Jessica Dube.

Don't know if Hilborn is closer to Lawes or Dube in the brainpower spectrum. I suspect she might have used her pseudo profound quotes about love and life as a lazy fake girlfriend's formula for keeping up appearances.

What if her face freezes like that?
Most people with this facial expression 
HAVE frozen their faces like that. 
Jessica just uses filters on the brow furrows 
to get that desired bad plastic surgery effect.

Aieeeeeeee!

"The Olympic champions, two-time world champions, six times Canadian champions, and parents of three..."

I missed this completely this weekend. I'd planned to celebrate the Shibs at the 4CCs, put it off until today, then saw this on youtube.

I will fill this out later with the 4CCs, which seems a little irrelevant now that these two are returning. Does the sport have the gall to pretend Papadakis/Cizeron or Chock/Bates are remotely competitive with them? Did awareness of this decision impact Weaver & Poje's performance at the 4CCs?

Edited from earlier:

I hope to God Virtue and Moir have received a clear green light from the ISU and an absolute promise they will not be ratfucked in 2018. Watching the sport pretend anybody else is in the same universe would be unbearable.

This:

took me aback when I saw it. It may be down to thin-slicing, but the way they moved even in this tiny instagram clip is not how show skaters move. The condition they're in is not show skater condition. At the time, I thought maybe they were doing it for themselves, but we all know show skating and tour skating is no real format to sustain, let alone develop, an athletic/technical peak. They weren't moving like retired skaters, but who knew if it was leading to a comeback, or if they couldn't help themselves.

I wonder if Virtue and Moir's comeback has any bearing on what happened with the Shibutanis on the back half of this season. Their fortunes completely reversed themselves even though they have always been the best of the post-Sochi competitive ice dancers. What happened? Is the sport preparing the way for VM's return by creating a new climate in which the authentically best ice dancers get the best scores?

During the Grand Prix series, I was pleased that the Shibutanis were suddenly being scored on par with the A team instead of the bench, but after the Grand Prix final I was sure that any impulse towards fairness had been squelched. I never anticipated everything would flip at the US Championships, that the Shibs would outscore the same basic Chock & Bates effort that had defeated them over and over in the past.

Virtue and Moir should be competing. Of the show programs I've seen, Tessa Virtue is even better than when she left. I am not looking forward to protocols claiming Gabrielle Papadakis got her key points and levels while Tessa Virtue did not.

P.S. - while maintaining every impression of amicability, Kaitlyn Lawes has appeared to vanish from the Virtue Moir narrative. I'm wondering if a new Olympic-cycle girlfriend has been chosen, or if the entire post-Sochi extension of the sham was intended to last only as long as it took Tessa to have two kids. The woman is a machine.

I'm very excited, but also unsettled. I don't want to see ice dance re-buried and Virtue and Moir humiliated, which is exactly what we'll have if they don't win everything from now til 2018 as soon as they step foot on competitive ice.

P.S. Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon? They suck. Maybe it was part of the deal Skate Canada hammered out when allowing Virtue Moir back. Train with Canadians at a Canadian training center and we won't screw you over at Canadians. Maybe they'll secretly pay Marina to choreograph. A whole lot of bullshit has always fueled Virtue and Moir's public persona; perhaps "training in Montreal" is the Jessica Dube/Cassandra Hilborn/Kaitlyn Lawes of this new phase of their competitive career.

****

Random from the skating season to date:

I still can't fathom WTF with Chock and Bates. They're on par with Davis White in sucking the oxygen out of an arena. The extreme artificiality of their performance personas, the rote execution of skating skill workarounds, and the same slowing down before and after elements that we saw with DW. The Shibs do not skate a great deal in close hold either, but they're skating, not taking turns skating a la Chock & Bates, and, before C&B, Davis White. The Shibs' unison is wonderful, they have "the same rhythm and knee action" in them (quoting Peggy Fleming) and they have tremendous speed, flow and ice coverage. Chock and Bates skate as if they're underwater. Not as if they live underwater - as if they've been forced to do a program underwater.

Duhamel Radford aren't really world champion calibre now? I agree, but when was that decided? I guess Trankov can move onto something else to critique - his work there is done. I'd read that DR had revamped their program so they didn't telegraph the quads as much, but I saw little improvement there. I also don't know when Megan's range of motion became so small and so tight.

I think Illyushechkina and Moscovitch need to go to a pairs coach, even for a clinic, even if it means asking the group at Gauthier's make room. She has her jumps. Their skating skills are strong. They just continue to have weird problems skaters at their level shouldn't be having, problems which make them more cautious than they should be when exiting lifts, for example. It's stupid.

Kirsten Moore Towers: What strikes me about her is she seldom talks about figure skating the way the best skaters do. I never read or hear her talking about the skating side, the athletic side. Never squeezing more points out of a program or growing GOE. It's always Moore Towers and her personal experience/gratification working with somebody, it's always the program, it's the packaging. She'd fit right in at the skating forums with where she puts her emphasis. It's just mystifying to me that she's as ambitious as she represents herself to be, that she changed coaching centers, but getting herself into the same fitness and strength level as other podium-contending pairs girls isn't an avenue she considers. Even when she's in reasonable/decent shape, as she was at Canadians, she's not remotely at the same strength and fitness level as those on the podium. When I look back at Sochi or Worlds, she and Dylan could have easily made the podium if it weren't for the incremental accumulation throughout the programs of small sloppiness-es, unnecessary wobbliness (down to not having the same core strength and full body stretch of podium skaters) and lack of finish. That, also, seems stupid. 

P.S. I hope someone had words with Tanith Belbin White after her US National Championship commentating effort and told her to put a lid on it. I can't watch the Shibutanis winning performance because she's squawking all through it, taking two paragraphs to make a point that contains less than a sentence's worth of observation or perspective.

Better five years late than never

I was pretty sure I knew how both the Canadian Championships and the U.S. Championships would play out, so I decided to sit them out and take a look after both were finished.

I am shocked the Shibs were allowed to win. Chock & Bates were clean. The Shibs won by almost 4 points. I believe that figure skating doesn't care about public appeal, nor attendance revenue, not weighted against the stuff it really cares about, so the fact that the Shibs have crowd appeal by virtue of being the best, most honest, most musical ice dancers currently competing isn't something I'd have guessed would be factored into a decision to actually let the skating determine the outcome. I'm beyond happy for them. Maybe now that they're National Champions they'll be allowed to win worlds. Weaver & Poje - seriously? Cappellini & Lanotte don't have the same edge quality and speed.

You know she's been thinking that for years.
Marina is some kind of zen master,
but most people would have gone
over the edge a long time ago.

Bitchy resting face.

I'm not current with Madison Chock, but I read that when she was in high school, she was class president. (Or similar.)  I don't think she's the glacial, ice queen sex goddess her programs have her portray. I miss the cheeky Madison who skated with Greg Zuerlin. It's obvious Madison's current on ice persona is part of a formula her training center understands will get the right scores, so never EVER deviate, and if you alienate the crowd, everyone will just pretend you got them excited, just as when Davis White were winning.

For Hubbell Donohue fans.
There was a lot of this.

Tanith Belbin is the new Scott Hamilton. She never shuts up. She mashes up informed observations with bullshit, and perpetuates disinformation.  I'm still looking for a Shibs video without her commentary.

All right, schadenfreude.
Enough already.

I'm surprised their new training center hasn't revamped Marinaro's alignment, and drilled his edges until he fell over. Also, get him to stop racing ahead of his body and his blades. In this maneuver, when he pivoted, he got on his flat and bounced a little, then his ankle fell over. I'm sure he has a strong core, and I'm equally sure he doesn't work from it when he skates. He skates from the neck up, and then God help the rest of him. I am not a skating expert, and it was obvious to me, looking at his skating with his previous partner, that the height of his previous partner wasn't the problem. He's not over his skates, he's not skating within himself, he's always in his head, and his skating isn't secure because of it. I just don't know how you do a try out with somebody and not see that. Or ascribe it to newness, or his other partner was too tall, or you have to get used to each other. How does an elite skater, and her TEAM, not perceive fundamental technical issues with a prospective partner?

***
I feel better about Ilyushechkina Moscovitch. In the start of the season, I was about to write her off as someone who did her utmost to lower expectations as the stakes got higher, and then met those lowered expectations. I had her pegged as one of a long, long roster of skating's underachievers, somebody who hedged their bets at crunch time. Simultaneously, I still hoped that skating at Katia Gordeeva's "From the Heart" event would rub off in some way, give her a bit of the champion's ruthlessness (Gordeeva and Tessa Virtue are both the sort who would blast through their program even if the rink collapsed. Even if they fell six times.) I consider their skates at this championship a step up, because they skated as if they were comfortable in the environment.

****
Random observations: For the past little while, at least on twitter, Virtue and Moir have been doing what they always should have been doing on social media. Sharing shared experiences. How hard is that? It's never been zero sum. Oh geez, my options are a) Mindfucking and exploitation, OR b) spilling, explaining every intimate detail of our lives.

and,

I read a few tweets from Barb McDonald. When did she decide to become human?

Grand Prix Final Short Dance

Have some Level 4 twizzles
(First set)

Apart from Anna finishing the first set of a twizzles a rotation ahead of Luca, in the slow mo (and even not in the slow mo) it's apparent Anna pre-rotates the first twizzle with her upper body.

Still higher than the Shibs.

Talk about sticking the saber in your gut and moving it around (sorry for the analogy, it was in a young adult novel I had to read - long story). There you go, Shibs. Apparently the "as long as they're not seen to stumble" theory was giving ice dance too much credit.

As usual the press acts as if it's poor form to question even an outcome like this. Let's look at the protocols to justify the protocols. What's on the ice may as well not take place.

****



Above is Virtue and Moir's show program, Good Kisser, which, although a show program, is embedded just for the complete control they have over their bodies, their absolute unison, how it's a lot of staccato, isolation movement but is still driven from their blades, and even a show program is a level above everybody currently competing, but they'll be told to stay retired, and this gif of the rotational move in the program

is what high GOE actually looks like, since in eligible ice dance high GOE looks like anything.

***

I'm putting together a new blog cover, which, while basic, has a lot of images to pull together.

Things that make me go hmm

I'm more skating-focused than sham-focused at the moment, after not being either-focused for some time, but, this post is a throwback to the days of sham analysis/explication. After more than a year of the same blog cover image, I've finally started pulling together some ideas about a new blog cover. In that pursuit, I went through some old social media stomping grounds to search out new images of the old sham cast of characters.

I will never, ever, understand the skaters who went through Skate Canada in the mid-00s.

Here's what I mean. One sham alumni is Cynthia Phaneuf. Cynthia, to me, appears to be a straightforward case of that was then, this is now:

Up top is when she was hot and heavy with with the ubiquitous
Jay Chappelle. At bottom she's with her baby daddy,
and now-husband, Max Talbot.

Cynthia's sort of how we'd expect it to play. "Okay, I'm retired, can't be bothered with any more bullshit. Here's my real boyfriend. And my real facial expressions when I'm actually interested in the guy."

Then we have Bryce Davison:

and his lovely fiancee, on Bryce's facebook, an instant after getting engaged. I'm not saying they're not in love and engaged. Who'd fake an engagement? I'm fully expecting Ashley Schmidt (nee Davison) to bridesmaid it up the aisle (or grass, or sand) at her brother's nuptials. I'm just saying maybe, like so many other Skate Canada alumni, they're SO in love they don't need to put on a show. Look at the hands there.

Maybe Bryce was warped from the years of pretending Jessica was closer to Scott than to him, and hasn't yet learned it's okay to actually touch his future wife in front of the camera. Nothing major Bryce. Just uncurl your fingers. It's okay to touch the middle of her back through her bra, golf shirt, and warm-up jacket. You just got engaged for God's sake.

Here he is on fiancee' Michelle's facebook doing the actual proposing (photo apparently by Dylan Moscovitch):

Proposal. Only one point of contact.
High level of difficulty.

I don't know where I'm going with this. Just saying these are the only public photos on either of their facebooks, and who doesn't propose to his beloved twenty-five feet from a golf course parking lot, in front of his best guy friend who takes the picture for posterity? People propose via jumbotron in front of thousands of strangers all the time. He's got the ring in his right hand, but his left hand isn't doing anything. What's he supposed to do, touch her? It's the proposal, not the wedding night!

Cassandra:

A basic image from her starlet days with Scott.

Crazy for him. Can't miss it.

Now, below, here's the guy she's currently with, per her instagram and facebook. She's part of yet another couple so hot, so perfect, none of their friends need to be in relationships of their own.

Then there's the time in the way back that she briefly put up a profile shot of herself with what appeared to the public to be a random (to us) dude, whom she hashtagged as #justlikefamily:

#likeabrother

Going by her eyes and her smile, guess which is the platonic dude? You'd be wrong, according to CH.

I'm not being coy. Bryce's deal looks weird. Posing at an empty table in an empty restaurant weird, including the meh body language. I have no idea whom he might be with instead, if anyone, but if you're gonna put your engagement picture on social media why not do it up right like Charlie and Tanith did when they were "papped" getting engaged totally without their knowledge at some resort, in the company of the entire cast of Dancing with the Stars. They kissed and everything.

They actually are together, but actually full of shit
at the same time. This is for the "paps". (If they're
invited, aren't they not "paps", but venue photographers?
Particularly if money changed hands.)

Bryce and Michelle seem underwhelmed. Yet one comment adjacent to the photo of the ring is "You look so happy!!!!!" I've never seen Michelle before, but what is she usually, a chronic case of bitchy resting face? That's "SO" happy? Maybe Bryce likes them morose.

Cassandra's apparent boyfriend is a hockey player, so, I'm assuming super famous in his own world, and of course, since Cassandra's time with Scott and Tessa, her own star has - coincidentally, no doubt - ascended. (Cassandra's restaurant photo with her current SO also features unfilled glasses and empty plates.)

The sham has always ended up quid pro quo. Jessica and her family got travel perks, Jessica and her partners got assignment perks, Jessica got other perks, such as being one of Hello Canada's most beautiful. Cassandra was with an amateur modeling agency, not getting anywhere despite her family's money, and once she's discharged her sham obligations with Scott, she's in a totally different category - Miss Universe Canada London (there's a Miss Universe pageant every year - only post-Scott did she get in the loop), and she's a local luminary, the face of London Operation Smile.

Cynthia's how you'd think it would go. Okay, back to real life. A GREAT real life it looks like, but her facial expressions look real to me.

The other two are a little weird. In the celebrity world, there's sometimes the case of the has been who shows up with an entourage, acting paranoid about fans and security, going all cloak and dagger, when the reality is nobody cares - the fuss is all ego, vanity and front.

If there's post-sham new sham going on anywhere, my guess is that accounts for it.

November 30

I've watched more skating this past weekend and the weekend before than the previous eight months combined, caught up with everything pairs and ice dance in the Grand Prix series, and enjoyed some of it, because of

Alex Shibutani's hair,
Skate Canada 2015

which takes its place alongside

Tessa Virtue's 2007-2008 
Skate Canada CD skirt

as a non-skating facet of a skating program that, to me, is worth at least an extra level of GOE in the element in which it occurs.

(Re-watch that cd, performed a few years before VM got close to their prime, and see the hair's-breadth's distance between their skate blades in hold and changing hold. In that screen cap above, Scott has stepped BACK from Tessa. That distance is now the conventional separation between teams skating "closely" in hold. There are teams competing whose feet and bodies are markedly closer together compared to the the rest - Hubbell Donohue, the Shibs - but nobody approaches VM. They're extraordinary, but even if you're not them, it's not impossible to skate your patterns and your steps and be in hold with your feet decently close together, so you look like ice dancers and not middle-schoolers being put through an introductory Canskate drill. The ISU doesn't give a shit, though. Skaters that work on that aspect anyway, and skate well, will probably be rewarded with higher TES, while the team that can fit a picnic table between them will get bloated pcs.).

*****

Shibutanis. I love this. It's not a program highlight. It's part of a
small series of directional changes. It's just a grace note.

I don't know why the ISU abruptly decided to green light scores for the Shibutanis that almost reflect how much better they skate than almost anybody else, after the ISU spent four straight years punishing them for something - I think it's the TES mark they got over DW that time - with the stench of futility.

I'd like to imagine the parental Shibutanis, from whom the public never ever hears a peep, parents whom I fantasize were at least partially responsible for telling Maia and Alex: "No way are either of you appearing in that W Network Tessa and Scott tire fire," finally took their bank account and slugged a few ISU people around the head with it, without letting any actual $$ fall into the pockets of any officials.

Because it's the Shibs, and I love their skating, I can be happy that their actual skating was recognized, instead of my remaining uncaring because giving good scores to good skating has become as meaningless as giving good scores to crap. It's arbitrary, and always will register that way, because of Sochi.

Skate Canada juiced the scores for Weaver & Poje at Skate Canada, although probably not as much as they'd have preferred. I like Weaver & Poje compared to Gilles & Poirier, Chock & Bates, and last year's "World Champions", but not in comparison to evenly matched ice dancers with fluid power and speed who move with their entire bodies, who have wonderful unison, and matchless musicality.

I'm still curious as to how Skate Canada was brought on board to sell out Virtue and Moir in the post-Vancouver quad, and were convinced to set DW up for Sochi even before that. I don't know if it's a good or bad sign for their Worlds prospects that, OTOH, nobody thinks throwing Weaver & Poje under a bus is worth anything in trade. Kaitlyn Weaver is notably stiff-backed and short-stepped in comparison to the Shibs, she and Andrew Poje were creaky with their new program. The Shibs outskated Weaver & Poje, using more of the rink than anyone else, with the longest, most powerful run of blade anywhere this season, so of course they received higher TES, but lower pcs than a clunky W&P. Figure skating loves to make sense.

(Very) Small Mercies. The Shibutanis at Skate Canada

 The only upside to the Shibs coming in second at Skate Canada was at least it wasn't: "Did you hear something?" "Nope, I didn't hear anything."

They're in the runner-up mix now. Oh joy. Leaps and bounds for the ice dance team that I, for one, now consider the best in the world. If only ice dance could become a sport.

For me, Skate America was a huge what else is new, although a poster on Goldenskate had a belated observation, which will be cited later.

Before touching on the Shibs at Skate Canada, let's check in with life along the Milk and Honey Route, where Tessa plays model, hawks her jewelry line, and fiddles with filters and photoshop on instagram, while Scott's menage a trois continues strong:

I've followed this crap enough to be
pretty sure those are Kaitlyn's feet.
Nothing to brag about, not saying it is.

 What a life. It's almost a sister wives arrangement he's got going here. Scott Moir, who knew. Still, it's a bit odd to me that this is a guy whose primary influences in his career have been women (no matter what he pretends, it ain't Mike Babcock), and yet it's the women who appear to have more insecurity about the perception of Scott's traditional masculinity than I imagine any man could possibly have. Maybe some feminist consciousness raising is in order in Ilderton.

So, Skate America. These remarks from Goldenskate, I think, cover everything:

From "Moon" at Goldenskate. About Gilles & Poirier, but could easily be about Chock & Bates:

 I think that this is the point many people are trying to make. They are fun to watch but ice dance is a sport and is and should be marked predominantly on technique and quality of the blades knees and hips. This is the quality that makes good icedance versus pairs without lifts.

 I think sloppy feet and poor extension is a quality that any dancer is trying to show no matter what style they choose. This is not just a G/P problem. So many teams are trying to emulate SYTYCD programs and it has turned into messy show dancing. If you cant control your body movements and are constantly clutching and grabbing your partner for balance then scale back on the OTT moves and concentrate on partnering properly and blade work.

Oh come on now Moon, that horse left the barn after 2012. Why would anyone scale back when every deficit you're highlighting put an Olympic gold medal in Davis and White's possession vis a vis a team that not just did everything better than they did, but did it better than anybody in the world to that point. More accurate to say the "silver medalists" did everything, and the ones wearing gold didn't do anything that the rules, standards and critieria tell us are needed to get the highest protocols. Not to mention Virtue and Moir weren’t the only ones who beat Davis White on the actual ice.

****
Okay, Skate Canada. Duhamel Radford won pairs:

My problem with their skating is that Megan's run of blade is miniscule, and she is so stiff, so tight, so cautious, so pitched forward, she seems not to be breathing, let alone breathing through her movements, and, strikingly so compared to Radford's fluidity. The poverty of her range of motion makes Meryl Davis look like Misty Copeland (okay, not really. They both suck). This is another team scored on the stronger partner, contrary to what the rules proscribe. Duhamel used to be a demolition derby. I guess everybody's decided clenched is an enormous improvement. There's also this:

Lutz entry to the split triple twist, without the actual lutz part. Look at the protocols. Let's not get the outside edge, and just say she did.

*****

Skate Canada and the Shibs:

Their two magnificently skated programs came in second to a couple of polished (but not as polished as the Shibs themselves) journeyman efforts by the home team. Naturally and as ever, the team that crushed their competition in pcs, on paper, LOST the competition in pcs.

Quote from Sun Dae on Goldenskate:

Free dance practice was also very convincing for The Shibutani's. Hard to put my finger on it but they are skating with a lot of "moxie" and confidence. New music section works well with footwork which had emotion and expression throughout. Maia looks completely different this year. Not a little girl any more at all.

 I'll put my finger on it, Sun Dae. They're skating their programs, and at the highest level. Clean feet, speed, power, unison, fluidity, musicality, run of blade, tremendous ice coverage, seamless transitions, using the entire rink. Remember that? Weaver and Poje were pedestrian compared to the Shibs.

 
Love this from the Shibs short program:

In terms of gifs, it was between this and the stunning rotational in the long. Compare either of this programs with - forget Weaver and Poje - anything the current World Champions have ever tried.

If I were scoring this, the Shibs would have run away with the competition, Brobrova and Soloviev about six points back in second, but neck and neck with Weaver and Poje for third.

I'm only slagging off on Weaver and Poje vis a vis the Shibs. Weaver and Poje are Virtue and Moir compared to Chock/Bates and Gilles Poirier, yet the Grand Prix final and Worlds set up to score ice dance in inverse relation to what any team delivers on the ice so that God forbid a Marina Zoueva team win a major title in a third Olympic cycle. That's all we're looking at here. Paul/Islam, unfortunately, are elbowing a bunch of other teams for consideration up in Montreal, and the fact that they're Canadian probably works against them there.

Maia and Alex Shibutani after the free at Skate Canada.
Considering how they've been fucked over, their
passion and their skill are extraordinary. Even NOT
considering that, they're extraordinary.