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.
Thursday, February 28, 2019
Wednesday, February 27, 2019
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?
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 |
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!! |
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!" |
 |
| 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. |
***
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.
Sunday, December 30, 2018
Virtue and Moir STILL haven't retired. I'm wondering if they are waiting and seeing if Cizeron's back issues cut short the Papadakis & Cizeron juggernaut. Let's put "back problems" in quotes. Don't wish ill on his back, but if a pretext could be found for pre-Olympic retirement, that would do the sport good. Seriously, THESE are going to be seven time consecutive world champions when all is said and done? That's just absolutely stupid. Nobody's buying it, and it has been driving teams out of the sport. Lie in wait, Scott and Tessa!
They could also be doing their favorite thing - keeping the guesswork up for publicity and content.
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| I love this on Tessa. |
If a woman is wearing the 'wrong" lines for her body type, she is still a beautiful woman, but she will look most herself in stuff that matches her lines. I have Tessa pegged as a "soft classic," which means I don't think she looks her best in all the edgy, detailed, geometric, on trend stuff she has often liked to wear, as that stuff is better suited to gamine (for example, her sister Jordan). Ditto for the Audrey Hepburn-esque black leggings/flats thing she used to favor. That's a gamine. It looks juvenile / contrived on the wrong type.
So she looks great here. Stay there, Tessa. It's the difference between "Tessa is styling" (I just can't make myself drop the "g".) and "Tessa is gorgeous."
I can't believe she's not even thirty yet.
I'm focused on the dress because the more-platonic-than-thou remarks seeded throughout the accompanying Walk of Fame articles is instant sleep-spiration, to hijack one of social media's most obnoxious portmanteau trends.
Every once in awhile, something comes along:
I love quotes like this one:
My failures from the past seasons really motivated me to do well," Kihira said through a translator. "I promised myself that I would remember them and never repeat those mistakes again.Not that the positivity and bright-side-ing of North American sports culture doesn't have its place, but I like when athletes, particularly very young athletes, dispense with subtext.
Nicely done for the elements, feels a little content-lite:
Which is the direction the ISU has been pushing ice dance for years. Just creep on back to the late 1990s. I haven't deconstructed Hubbell and Donohue's elements and in betweens, but my immediate impression is it's pretty cursory. Lots of swinging around for transitions.
They have a lovely, powerful glide, although in the first half Madison's upper body movements call to mind John Mueller's critique of Cyd Charisse's dancing - that she "slams into position." She really slings those shoulders around, and although they won, and stipulating it might not matter, maybe nothing should compete in the power and flow of the glide.
Friday, November 30, 2018
One of the worst parts about following ice dance lately is having to actually watch it.
The fact that Papadakis & Cizeron are serenely untroubled by program mistakes doesn't mean the judges should be, but talk about screaming into a void.
Their characteristic "can't be fussed about this unison stuff" also happened in the free.
Remember this crisis?
It is clear that figure skating looked at the emergence of Virtue and Moir in the early-mid-0s as a looming issue. Two very young ice dancers, spectacularly talented, versatile, musical, wonderfully charming and good looking, passionate, and, most of all, unambivalent about each other, skating and competition. They were built to last. If things had been allowed to proceed without interference, they would be the winners of four Olympic gold medals - Vancouver, Sochi, Pyeongchang and, coming up in 2022, Beijing. Nobody came along in that time who could challenge them, and even ten years ago skating knew the odds of a team with the goods to challenge them coming along the pipeline were slim. There is still no team to challenge them.
This could not stand.
So the sport did two things – pretended another team had accomplished stuff on the ice that had not been accomplished (key points, steps executed correctly, stable, synchronized elements, speed, unison, edges, skating) and scored accordingly, while dumbing down the requirements to eliminate any advantage Virtue and Moir gained from their ability to achieve extraordinary skating feats on the ice. A third component was propaganda, easily accomplished in an enterprise where even the journalists who cover it know little about what they're covering and continue to be incapable of distinguishing performance (i.e., apparent energy, "flair", charm, theatrics, emoting, personality) from content.
We got gold medalists in Sochi who held hands at arms’ length throughout their program interspersed with piggy back rides and dragging, and we currently have dominant world champions who skate two footed, flat bladed and frequently out of sync but look so floaty when they do it. This pacifies the mediocre skaters whose whining begins to sound as if having a lot of talent and being really good at something is an unfair advantage, unfairly awarded. Shouldn’t working super hard to overcome or packaging yourself around a handful of inherent deficiencies get more points?
This article:
How do you make tango so fluid
Has two of my favorite quotes. One is a question from the 'journalist'. "Usually tango can be quite stiff and formal. Yours is completely fluid. How do you make passion so fluid."
How did you make the tango the exact opposite of its requisite sharp, staccato characteristics so it is performed like every other program you've ever skated?
And from Papadakis: "Four years ago, we didn't start with an Olympic medal hope. Then we realized it was possible."
What was their first clue? Even they are saying they knew they weren't skating to an Olympic level but suddenly were getting scored as if they were.
If you took a snapshot mid-twizzle rotation of any pair of ice dancers more often than not there will be moments out of sync, and then they catch up by the exit, but these two. What did this sort of execution win in Pyeongchang? World record? Explosive GOEs?
***
I’ve get a wry enjoyment out of Gilles and Poirier, still doing their thing all these years after Poirier controversially jettisoned Vanessa Crone, still essentially occupying the same spot, still cheesy. If Poirier had known he'd be treading water in 2019 with the same goal just about the same distance away he might have jumped off a building.
 |
| Is it that Gabriella can't be fussed about the free leg on the exit or she just forgot? |
Their characteristic "can't be fussed about this unison stuff" also happened in the free.
Remember this crisis?
It is clear that figure skating looked at the emergence of Virtue and Moir in the early-mid-0s as a looming issue. Two very young ice dancers, spectacularly talented, versatile, musical, wonderfully charming and good looking, passionate, and, most of all, unambivalent about each other, skating and competition. They were built to last. If things had been allowed to proceed without interference, they would be the winners of four Olympic gold medals - Vancouver, Sochi, Pyeongchang and, coming up in 2022, Beijing. Nobody came along in that time who could challenge them, and even ten years ago skating knew the odds of a team with the goods to challenge them coming along the pipeline were slim. There is still no team to challenge them.
This could not stand.
So the sport did two things – pretended another team had accomplished stuff on the ice that had not been accomplished (key points, steps executed correctly, stable, synchronized elements, speed, unison, edges, skating) and scored accordingly, while dumbing down the requirements to eliminate any advantage Virtue and Moir gained from their ability to achieve extraordinary skating feats on the ice. A third component was propaganda, easily accomplished in an enterprise where even the journalists who cover it know little about what they're covering and continue to be incapable of distinguishing performance (i.e., apparent energy, "flair", charm, theatrics, emoting, personality) from content.
We got gold medalists in Sochi who held hands at arms’ length throughout their program interspersed with piggy back rides and dragging, and we currently have dominant world champions who skate two footed, flat bladed and frequently out of sync but look so floaty when they do it. This pacifies the mediocre skaters whose whining begins to sound as if having a lot of talent and being really good at something is an unfair advantage, unfairly awarded. Shouldn’t working super hard to overcome or packaging yourself around a handful of inherent deficiencies get more points?
This article:
How do you make tango so fluid
Has two of my favorite quotes. One is a question from the 'journalist'. "Usually tango can be quite stiff and formal. Yours is completely fluid. How do you make passion so fluid."
How did you make the tango the exact opposite of its requisite sharp, staccato characteristics so it is performed like every other program you've ever skated?
And from Papadakis: "Four years ago, we didn't start with an Olympic medal hope. Then we realized it was possible."
What was their first clue? Even they are saying they knew they weren't skating to an Olympic level but suddenly were getting scored as if they were.
If you took a snapshot mid-twizzle rotation of any pair of ice dancers more often than not there will be moments out of sync, and then they catch up by the exit, but these two. What did this sort of execution win in Pyeongchang? World record? Explosive GOEs?
***
I’ve get a wry enjoyment out of Gilles and Poirier, still doing their thing all these years after Poirier controversially jettisoned Vanessa Crone, still essentially occupying the same spot, still cheesy. If Poirier had known he'd be treading water in 2019 with the same goal just about the same distance away he might have jumped off a building.
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
I don't like you, Madison Hubbell
Happy Halloween
Now that ice dancing has been cleared of many high level competitors, Hubbell & Donohoe have easily qualified for the Grand Prix final, where they will be defeated by Papadakis & Cizeron, who have yet to make their Grand Prix debut.
I still hold a grudge against Madison Hubbell from last year, where she employed her outspoken personality to perpetuate the kind of narrative bullshit that we can't get enough of in ice dance. To refresh:
Tessa and Scott are kind of that — for me, at least, they’re the quintessential Old Hollywood team. Like, they just…no matter what music you give them or what choreography, they find their place inside of it. I think that they knew their strengths and they knew their weaknesses and seeing them train, they don’t compare themselves, so it lets them be 100% committed to whatever it is they choose to do. And that’s where you see, for me… You know, they get the tens and they get all the +3s. And we see them compete, you know — they’ve had a lot of little bobbles, little mistakes this season in their performances. They don’t always skate perfect, but they make you believe that it’s perfect because they’re so committed to each other, to their performance, and they just get lost in their own little world.
Oh fuck you again, Hubbell.
The sour grapes in figure skating are enough to choke on. Dear God the resentment when somebody or a couple of somebodies are extraordinary AND consistently win. Hell, the resentment persists even when the best skaters with the best skate of the competition are blatantly prevented from winning. Can we please not get some gold hardware and serious respect for the amazing stuff thrown down by the lesser skaters and teams over here instead? Let's have some fairness!
I went looking for Hubbell's quote before starting this post and found it on a webpage -JudgingPrivilege wordpress - I hadn't read before. It reads like something a regular participant or two on this blog may have created. Here's Hubbell re Gabby and Guillaume:
For Gabriella and Guillaume, I think that they’ve always had, even when they were younger and less successful, they had a power, a glide and, you know, sometimes in practice… We actually trained for a little while with them in Detroit when they came, visited Pasquale [Camerlengo] in our first season together [2011-12], and they were a team that were a little bit of a mess, made a lot of mistakes, but those moments that they were really skating together, you could tell they had just this special chemistry, a glide…
Like, for me they are the kind of skating that I want to see in ice dance. It’s power but it’s also elegant. Their lines are just gorgeous and they’ve put a lot of work in the last four years of being here in Montreal on the precision and what it takes to not lose points and not make mistakes, and that’s really the only thing they needed to become the powerhouse that they are, because naturally they have just such beautiful lines. They’re artists in the way that they represent music and feeling and so I think that’s their quality.
I was going to call up some images of P&C's magnificent lines* but how often can you do that? It doesn't matter.
The Judging Privilege blog calls her out.
Excerpts:
When the quotes were condensed and tweeted by Figure Skaters Online, they got to the heart of the matter: Hubbell holds up Papadakis and Cizeron as a sort of Platonic ideal of ice dance, while Virtue and Moir make mistakes, but let you forget about them.
It is also a curious juxtaposition to create — Papadakis and Cizeron as a team who have ceased to make mistakes, Virtue and Moir as a team who do — when the French have logged disruptive falls at two of this season’s events.
Hubbell also stressed on the same call that they are keenly aware that none of the three top U.S. teams have any real edge over the other, nor can they overlook the threats of many other international teams ranked on par.
But something has made them feel similar caution is not in order where Virtue and Moir are concerned.
Judging Privilege surmises this something was Hubbell & Donohue's cozy relationship with notably non-partisan US Judge Sharon Rogers and her frequent scoring of Virtue and Moir as on par with Hubbell & Donohoe.
So in these quotes from last season, Maddie is not being candid. She's politicking.
She will be much happier always coming in second to Papadakis & Cizeron than third behind Virtue & Moir and Papadakis & Cizeron. She can't possibly kid herself that they have a shot no matter how the skating goes down. They're already better than Papadakis & Cizeron and yet must pretend Papadakis & Cizeron's abilities are something to which they can only aspire.
Here's Hubbell & Donohue's free dance at Skate Canada. I don't think it represents their best. I thought there were a lot of little bobbles, as it were, too much sliding and scampering, and many small slips and moments out of sync. And they seemed somewhat gassed in the back half of the program.
I think Hubbell's attitude also resides in the Montreal situation. I suspect and continue to suspect that while H&D and P&C were actually coached by and part of the supposedly close-knit crew at Gadbois, Virtue and Moir were pretending for public consumption only - something with which Virtue and Moir are thoroughly experienced. I suspect Virtue and Moir had their own coaching, own training ice somewhere else, their own choreography, and behaved as if they needed resources far beyond what was available at Gadbois - and indeed they did need resources far beyond what was available at Gadbois and they got them. As skaters they are far beyond Gadbois and everybody there.
I suspect that what Virtue & Moir did was considered elitism, which I've come to understand is a big no no in elite sports like ice dance. As is truly elite level performance. Be truly elite, you will piss people off.
*sarcasm.
 |
| I don't know these people, but it's a bunch of biathletes dressed up as figure skaters for Halloween. |
Now that ice dancing has been cleared of many high level competitors, Hubbell & Donohoe have easily qualified for the Grand Prix final, where they will be defeated by Papadakis & Cizeron, who have yet to make their Grand Prix debut.
I still hold a grudge against Madison Hubbell from last year, where she employed her outspoken personality to perpetuate the kind of narrative bullshit that we can't get enough of in ice dance. To refresh:
Tessa and Scott are kind of that — for me, at least, they’re the quintessential Old Hollywood team. Like, they just…no matter what music you give them or what choreography, they find their place inside of it. I think that they knew their strengths and they knew their weaknesses and seeing them train, they don’t compare themselves, so it lets them be 100% committed to whatever it is they choose to do. And that’s where you see, for me… You know, they get the tens and they get all the +3s. And we see them compete, you know — they’ve had a lot of little bobbles, little mistakes this season in their performances. They don’t always skate perfect, but they make you believe that it’s perfect because they’re so committed to each other, to their performance, and they just get lost in their own little world.
Oh fuck you again, Hubbell.
The sour grapes in figure skating are enough to choke on. Dear God the resentment when somebody or a couple of somebodies are extraordinary AND consistently win. Hell, the resentment persists even when the best skaters with the best skate of the competition are blatantly prevented from winning. Can we please not get some gold hardware and serious respect for the amazing stuff thrown down by the lesser skaters and teams over here instead? Let's have some fairness!
I went looking for Hubbell's quote before starting this post and found it on a webpage -JudgingPrivilege wordpress - I hadn't read before. It reads like something a regular participant or two on this blog may have created. Here's Hubbell re Gabby and Guillaume:
For Gabriella and Guillaume, I think that they’ve always had, even when they were younger and less successful, they had a power, a glide and, you know, sometimes in practice… We actually trained for a little while with them in Detroit when they came, visited Pasquale [Camerlengo] in our first season together [2011-12], and they were a team that were a little bit of a mess, made a lot of mistakes, but those moments that they were really skating together, you could tell they had just this special chemistry, a glide…
Like, for me they are the kind of skating that I want to see in ice dance. It’s power but it’s also elegant. Their lines are just gorgeous and they’ve put a lot of work in the last four years of being here in Montreal on the precision and what it takes to not lose points and not make mistakes, and that’s really the only thing they needed to become the powerhouse that they are, because naturally they have just such beautiful lines. They’re artists in the way that they represent music and feeling and so I think that’s their quality.
I was going to call up some images of P&C's magnificent lines* but how often can you do that? It doesn't matter.
The Judging Privilege blog calls her out.
Excerpts:
When the quotes were condensed and tweeted by Figure Skaters Online, they got to the heart of the matter: Hubbell holds up Papadakis and Cizeron as a sort of Platonic ideal of ice dance, while Virtue and Moir make mistakes, but let you forget about them.
It is also a curious juxtaposition to create — Papadakis and Cizeron as a team who have ceased to make mistakes, Virtue and Moir as a team who do — when the French have logged disruptive falls at two of this season’s events.
Hubbell also stressed on the same call that they are keenly aware that none of the three top U.S. teams have any real edge over the other, nor can they overlook the threats of many other international teams ranked on par.
But something has made them feel similar caution is not in order where Virtue and Moir are concerned.
So in these quotes from last season, Maddie is not being candid. She's politicking.
She will be much happier always coming in second to Papadakis & Cizeron than third behind Virtue & Moir and Papadakis & Cizeron. She can't possibly kid herself that they have a shot no matter how the skating goes down. They're already better than Papadakis & Cizeron and yet must pretend Papadakis & Cizeron's abilities are something to which they can only aspire.
Here's Hubbell & Donohue's free dance at Skate Canada. I don't think it represents their best. I thought there were a lot of little bobbles, as it were, too much sliding and scampering, and many small slips and moments out of sync. And they seemed somewhat gassed in the back half of the program.
I think Hubbell's attitude also resides in the Montreal situation. I suspect and continue to suspect that while H&D and P&C were actually coached by and part of the supposedly close-knit crew at Gadbois, Virtue and Moir were pretending for public consumption only - something with which Virtue and Moir are thoroughly experienced. I suspect Virtue and Moir had their own coaching, own training ice somewhere else, their own choreography, and behaved as if they needed resources far beyond what was available at Gadbois - and indeed they did need resources far beyond what was available at Gadbois and they got them. As skaters they are far beyond Gadbois and everybody there.
I suspect that what Virtue & Moir did was considered elitism, which I've come to understand is a big no no in elite sports like ice dance. As is truly elite level performance. Be truly elite, you will piss people off.
*sarcasm.
Sunday, September 30, 2018
GOE changes.
If a judge or team of judges is going to give a mediocre (or even poorly executed or barely executed) move a +3, there will be no problem awarding the same move by the same skater(s) a +5. As everyone has already remarked. It's cosmetic b.s. that won't affect the rankings.
I enjoyed this. I think only Russia can produce figure skaters who win the Olympics but come back with the drive of a runner up. She's not skating as if she won, she's skating as if she pep talked herself all summer and this time, damn it, she can do it. She's got more power and speed. War horse music and then some in both programs, but Carmen is fantastic figure skating music, and the music is supposed to support the skater, not vice versa. Phantom of the Opera I'm meh about but in a women's short with lots of cuts, it's fine.
I've read all the comments over the past couple of years that report what is really going on here (above, and by here, I mean Zachary Donohue and Madison Hubbell), but I have no first hand information. If the comments are correct, then I just can't.
IMO (and obviously this is not a unique position) just about everything has devolved into the lowest common denominator of self-promotion.
I think this year Hubbell & Donohoe will win most of the silver medals in competitions shared with Papadakis and Cizeron and the rest of it will be P&C's uninterrupted march toward 2022 gold. Of all the ice dancers in ice dance history, this is the one the ice dance decided should be as unchallenged as Grishok Platov in their day, while ice dancers with actual talent, Virtue and Moir, were treated as disruptive and a problem. It's because of this we have the Shibs and W&P sitting things out. There is no point. The Shibs have already won all the silvers.
It's never going to happen. There will always be something to promote. They're going to be on the public stage the rest of their lives, and at that point what with all the doubling down and raising the ante, they'll consider the price of coming clean too overwhelming and, as with most people who double down on something wrong or are on the losing end of a sunk cost fallacy, they'll become more convinced the initial lie was right. Maybe if we have WW III they'll decide it's ok but I'd bet that they wouldn't want to distract from world events.
About lies, I've been watching a bunch of youtube on how to spot a liar (it's a super popular topic these days along with analyzing narcissism). The body language info that was most interesting made the point that stress is much easier to spot than deception, and if you see signs of stress when someone is speaking, that can be a tell. Well, actually, you will see signs of controlling stress. Self-touching, exhalation, lip biting, rubbing one's arms or legs. And blocking - arm crossing, eyes averting. Virtue and Moir, when really lying, between the fixed eye contact and faint smiles (Tessa), and the strenuous self-pacifying we see from Scott, were almost a parody of lying tells. I used to wonder if they were trolling on that basis alone ("We're pretending to be terrible liars.")
Dr. Phil comes along, however, and is not a huge fan of body language tells. He believes there is one major thing that will tip you off - someone telling you shit you never asked. Too much detail. Going on and on. Explaining why and how what you say is true.
On that basis:
*I read a 1930s movie star's autobiography. Towards the very end, she goes on for paragraphs explaining to us why she and her long time leading man and close friend never slept together. They loved each other dearly, she explained. From time to time he'd have a crush on her or she'd have a crush on him and the other one would keep it in check. Why is it so hard for people to understand that the closest, most intimate, most beloved friends who sync together effortlessly can have the tenderest feelings of love but not do the deed? This was a duo where nobody (in the show biz media or show biz history, or among fans) has ever insinuated they DID sleep together, but she throws this in. It raised a whole bunch of flags to me but I didn't know why. Now after hearing Dr. Phil, I know what it is.
If a judge or team of judges is going to give a mediocre (or even poorly executed or barely executed) move a +3, there will be no problem awarding the same move by the same skater(s) a +5. As everyone has already remarked. It's cosmetic b.s. that won't affect the rankings.
Alina Zagitova.
I enjoyed this. I think only Russia can produce figure skaters who win the Olympics but come back with the drive of a runner up. She's not skating as if she won, she's skating as if she pep talked herself all summer and this time, damn it, she can do it. She's got more power and speed. War horse music and then some in both programs, but Carmen is fantastic figure skating music, and the music is supposed to support the skater, not vice versa. Phantom of the Opera I'm meh about but in a women's short with lots of cuts, it's fine.
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| Ok. |
I've read all the comments over the past couple of years that report what is really going on here (above, and by here, I mean Zachary Donohue and Madison Hubbell), but I have no first hand information. If the comments are correct, then I just can't.
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| I saw this when it was first published, obviously, but who took the picture or was Meryl's right hand holding a selfie stick? |
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| Fedor. Red carpet appearance. His lovely bride to be is out of frame to his right. No point in showing her because it's the same facial expression she has worn 99.7% of the time she has been in front of a camera lens. She is one of the mysteries of my time. |
I think this year Hubbell & Donohoe will win most of the silver medals in competitions shared with Papadakis and Cizeron and the rest of it will be P&C's uninterrupted march toward 2022 gold. Of all the ice dancers in ice dance history, this is the one the ice dance decided should be as unchallenged as Grishok Platov in their day, while ice dancers with actual talent, Virtue and Moir, were treated as disruptive and a problem. It's because of this we have the Shibs and W&P sitting things out. There is no point. The Shibs have already won all the silvers.
It's never going to happen. There will always be something to promote. They're going to be on the public stage the rest of their lives, and at that point what with all the doubling down and raising the ante, they'll consider the price of coming clean too overwhelming and, as with most people who double down on something wrong or are on the losing end of a sunk cost fallacy, they'll become more convinced the initial lie was right. Maybe if we have WW III they'll decide it's ok but I'd bet that they wouldn't want to distract from world events.
About lies, I've been watching a bunch of youtube on how to spot a liar (it's a super popular topic these days along with analyzing narcissism). The body language info that was most interesting made the point that stress is much easier to spot than deception, and if you see signs of stress when someone is speaking, that can be a tell. Well, actually, you will see signs of controlling stress. Self-touching, exhalation, lip biting, rubbing one's arms or legs. And blocking - arm crossing, eyes averting. Virtue and Moir, when really lying, between the fixed eye contact and faint smiles (Tessa), and the strenuous self-pacifying we see from Scott, were almost a parody of lying tells. I used to wonder if they were trolling on that basis alone ("We're pretending to be terrible liars.")
Dr. Phil comes along, however, and is not a huge fan of body language tells. He believes there is one major thing that will tip you off - someone telling you shit you never asked. Too much detail. Going on and on. Explaining why and how what you say is true.
On that basis:
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| Tessa and Scott. The W Network Case closed.* |
*I read a 1930s movie star's autobiography. Towards the very end, she goes on for paragraphs explaining to us why she and her long time leading man and close friend never slept together. They loved each other dearly, she explained. From time to time he'd have a crush on her or she'd have a crush on him and the other one would keep it in check. Why is it so hard for people to understand that the closest, most intimate, most beloved friends who sync together effortlessly can have the tenderest feelings of love but not do the deed? This was a duo where nobody (in the show biz media or show biz history, or among fans) has ever insinuated they DID sleep together, but she throws this in. It raised a whole bunch of flags to me but I didn't know why. Now after hearing Dr. Phil, I know what it is.
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