I think my favourite bit of the Olympics so far has been the British commentary whilst watching the Ice Dancing. One couple danced with absolutely no commentary at all, except at the end where, after a bit of a pause, one of the commentators went ‘Meh.’
Stay classy, British commentators!
Julia Sebestyén from Hungary for me. Szép nő!
I’m watching the Ice Dancing, and I notice that the first competition is the Compulsory Dance, where everybody dances the same sequence of steps to the same music. They chose the Tango Romantica as the dance.
I noticed that couples come in three types.
Actual couples who are dating each other.
People who are not dating their dance partner.
Siblings.
I’ve got to wonder how you sell the “romantica” part of that dance when your partner is your sibling, like the Kerrs. There are apparently four couples of siblings competing. What kind of a mindset do you get into on that? :eek:
Watched the second round tonight, the original dance. The Russian couple were bizarre. They chose Australian aboriginal as their dance motif, and not only music but costumes. They’ve received a lot of heat over their choice in the international competition coming into the Olympics, and a big deal has been made of them meeting with the First Nations and exchanging gifts. I wonder a lot of things.
Why is the First Nations’ opinion important? I mean, yeah, they’re like American Aboriginals and the idea of representing another culture kinda carries over, but really it’s not their culture, either.
After the Compulsory, the Russians made a big show of putting on the blankets they got from the First Nations while waiting for their scores. I was annoyed by that, like it was a publicity move - an obvious and heavy-handed one at that.
Their dance program, they changed their costumes due to some of the previous criticisms, including lightening the “skin color” parts and subduing the body “paint”. Okay. But I saw the program and I cringed through the whole thing. Advice to people - if you want to do a tribute to some culture you are not a part of, do it like the American couple Meryl Davis and Charlie White. They did an Indian (i.e. from India) dance, so they got authentic Indian clothing a took Indian dance lessons. Nothing in theirs was cringe-inducing, unlike the Russian pair that gave me shudders.
I wonder what the hell is wrong with Meryl Davis’s head. It’s just wrong. Looks like one of those digital sites you can morph your friends’ faces into funny shapes.
I was impressed that a member of the Na’vi was able to get American citizenship.
Thinking about it some more, it’s like someone grabbed her face and stretched it sideways at the eyes.
Damn, all these hot figure skaters are killing me. Tessa Virtue is tops in my book.
slide show
http://www.nbcolympics.com/photos/galleryid=433289.html#vancouver+tessa+virtuescott+moir
http://virtuemoir.blogspot.com/
Well at first I was thinking it might work better because a sister is the only way you are going to be able to avoid popping a very obvious chubby in your tights when the chick is rubbing you all over. Then I wondered how many of those guys that is even a issue for, orientation-wise.
Congrats to Bill Demong, chosen to be the Olympic flag bearer for the USA. He probably would have been my choice (1st US Nordic gold medalist)
Brian
The main reason why I find the Winter Olympics less interesting than the Summer Games is that there is very little head-to-head competition: the Nordic races, hockey, curling, short track speed skating (IIRC, not long track-- there are two competitors, but they go against the clock), and one of the snowboard events. Everything else is against the clock or is judged.
Compare to the Summer games where all track events, swimming (except diving), basketball (and other team sports), boxing, wrestling, fencing, etc, are all head to head, or in heats.
You don’t have moments like Michael Phelps winning that gold medal at the last fraction of a second; it happens, but one competitor is done before it even begins. That makes if far less interesting.
something that seems to be forgotten or I don’t really know the answer to.
Do the referees get paid? They did a fantastic job in the Hockey gold medal game, and pretty much throughout the whole Canadian games i watched. Nothing was a terrible penalty or undeserved, the flow of the game was there. I thought they did a job of gold medallists. Do they get rewarded someway?
Norwegian silver medalist Odd-Bjoern Hjelmeset, on his performance in the men’s 4x10 cross-country relay:
“My name is Odd-Bjoern Hjelmeset. I skied the second lap and I f----- up today. I think I have seen too much porn in the last 14 days. I have the room next to Petter Northug and every day there is noise in there. So I think that is the reason I f----- up. By the way, Tiger Woods is a really good man.”
My favorite Olympic moments;
Watching the Indian luge team enter the stadium, during the parade of nations, in matching outfits like every other country. Even though they’d arrived without any and the local Indo Canadian community stepped in and made it happen, in very short order. Sweet.
Watching Rob What’s his name’s disabled brothers excitement, as his little brother won Canada’s first gold medal on home soil. Listening to Rob credit his brother as his inspiration, over the years, was good, watching the embrace they shared, after the event, was just awesome.
Watching the Women’s Hockey team take gold is always sweet, when I was a girl there was no hockey for us, y’know except in the street with your brothers. They will always mean something special for us, I think.
Watching Jasey J whatever is name was, finally winning a gold medal having taken every other award in his sport, in front of his wife and daughters on a BC mountain was very touching, I thought. He is old for his sport but he stayed competitive and it paid off.
Watching Joannie Blanchet (I’m sure I got that one wrong!) skate was totally inspiring, when she lost her Mom, suddenly a few days earlier. No one would have faulted her for pulling out, truly. But she put in an awesome performance, not perfect but enough to reach the podium. It was very moving.
Watching the Gold medal performance during the same event, the Korean girl was breathtaking. Her performance was perfection, smooth and elegant. She is so young, who knows what lies ahead. She was coached by Canadian Brian Orser who was denied a gold medal in his career. It was really something to watch him, watching her perform. I was tickled for him too.
The European co winner of the Terry Fox award, not wanting to be interviewed on camera as she didn’t speak ‘good English’. Saying she’d heard of him, spent an evening reading about him and was honoured to receive the award. She slid off the ski hill into a 15m ditch, got up and restarted and medaled, with several cracked ribs and a punctured lung!
Sidney Crosby’s goal, enough awesome for generations to come. Dreams are made of this.
But I think my favorite moment might have been the men’s skater, (sorry, can’t keep the events straight), he’d been denied in the races they’d predicted he’d medal in. His girlfriend (can you tell I’m awful with names?) was also a skater and had already medaled. She was in the stands, as the race ends, she tears down to rinkside. He garners a gold medal performance and looks around for her in the crowd. Spotting her rinkside he skates over and, in one leap is up on the boards, as is she, in a remarkable and moving lovers embrace, even a little pat on the ass. It was freaking awesome, brought a tear to my eye.
On the last morning, the tv hosts had gone out onto the streets for opinions on passerbys favorite moments of the games, many were the ones I’ve mentioned. It went pretty much as you’d expect, red mittens, scarfs and olympic gear everywhere, rabid fans, pumped up, telling stories of the crowd exiting the women’s gold medal hockey performance, spontaneously bursting into the national anthem, etc. Best of all, the people interviewed (it being almost dawn in Whistler at the time), were young and breathless with excitement and joy, lots of ‘Go Canada’, etc. And all but one, was clearly of some other original ethnicity, than waspy white. With glowing hearts indeed.
And there was something remarkably touching about hearing the anthem sung along to, at the awards ceremonies. All ragtag to start with, and loud, proud and one voice for the final verse. Watching the athletes sing along. It was a very rare show of nationalism for my country and I found it all really wonderful.
There were may other wonderful moments, but these are the ones that stand out the most for me.
Oh. And Neil freaking Young. Uh huh!
Charles Hamelin is http://www.vancouver2010.com/olympic-short-track-speed-skating/athletes/charles-hamelin_ath1012972sP.html the one who skated to kiss his girlfriend Marianne St. Gelais.
Rob = Alexandre Bilodeau http://www.vancouver2010.com/olympic-freestyle-skiing/athletes/alexandre-bilodeau_ath1012843tY.html
Joannie Rochette http://www.vancouver2010.com/olympic-figure-skating/athletes/joannie-rochette_ath1012611Sh.html
Bmada, you rock!
I bet Mary Carillo was pissed that they sent her all the way to the Arctic Circle to find Polar Bears and only spent 5 minutes on the story.
How come every Olympic athlete NBC profiled had some kind of horrible tragedy in their background?is that a pre-requisite to being on an Olympic team?
No, it’s only a requirement to be featured in a life-story vignette.
The Danish team had the brightest uniforms I had ever seen in my life. They looked like traffic cones.
