Dick Button's ears are burning. Scott Hamilton's too. I suppose the rest of the sappy, dippy, screechy (the three lost dwarfs?) figure skating commentators should be on my list too, but I just haven't managed to learn their names yet.
Chip and I are big Olympic fans, so I confess that we have watched the primetime coverage pretty much every night. We do Tivo it so we can fast-forward through the boring parts and the commercials, but don't tell the Olympic sponsors. Chip is already on his last leg as far as figure skating is concerned. After being tortured by not two but three nights of ice dancing, he wasn't necessarily thrilled to watch the ladies' long program. Still, we both got into it, getting misty-eyed in the appropriate places (the Italian's last skate, Slutskaya's sick mom, Tugba's Turkish sacrifices). What we just could not contend with were the commentators.
It started with the first Russian, Sokolova. Now, I've forgotten whatever I once knew about ice skating. (I don't want to brag, but I *did* skate as a munchkin in what must have been the 1977 Great Falls ice show.) But what I do know is that it's patently unfair to assign stupid pop psychological motives to routines that are similar. When Sokolova two-footed a landing, "her heart wasn't in it." When an American did the same, she was "fighting for every element and showing her Olympic spirit."
And, with all apologies to King Kaufman, whose writing I adore for its ability to make sports interesting even to me, could Dick Button have been a bigger, bitchier queen about this final? It's pretty clear that nothing about today's skaters satisfies him--not their sit-spins, not their laybacks, and certainly not their superfluous hand gestures. Why doesn't he just admit that he hasn't enjoyed figure skating since Sonja Henie left the sport? Meanwhile, I worry that Scott Hamilton is going to have a thrombo every time someone does a jump: "And here's...the...TRIPLE SALCHOW....UNHHHH... RIGHT on!" It can't be good for him.
The woman, whose name I refuse to learn on the grounds that I have enough useless nonsense cluttering my brain currently, generally weighs in with quasi-philosophical, psychological pronouncements such as, "You can see how she skates *on* the ice, that's why she is not competitive with the top skaters." Right. And now to the physics desk, Dick, to explain how the other competitors do what exactly? Skate while encased in ice? Skate several inches above the ice?
Still, the Japanese winner's program was great, and we got to watch a scant few moments of the aerials, which were a loss with no Ales Valenta. And I'm going nuts waiting to see how the Czechs will do in hockey. Too bad there are no Czech bars here.