This is How Olympic Athletes Think

OK, so this is how Olympic-caliber athletes think. It’s a warmup before a Canadian Stars on Ice show. Vancouver bronze medalist Joannie Rochette, sorta done practicing, or maybe just taking a break, sits near the ice. Two other Olympic-eligible skaters land triple jumps, in sync, at opposite ends of rink. JoRo gets up, goes back on the ice, lands a triple-triple jump, sits back down. Just like that. As if to say, hello, I'm a frickin' Olympic medalist. I’ll see your solo triple and raise you a triple.

That is how Olympic athletes think. Even at an ice show practice.

Sneaking a Peek at Athletes at Their Peak

Life is mainly regular old stuff, stuff you have to do, stuff you really don't want to do, stuff you just do. Then every once in awhile, you get a treat. Like for me, it's spending warm nights in cool rinks, watching people who can race around on ice skates like Horowitz used to race around the keyboard. It's watching people who are my stars on ice, in places like this arena, from center ice 10 rows up.

Good thing I saw the warmup, 'cos my show seat was way over at rink's end, up top. The kind of low-rent seat that can distance you from the performances. (Of course, I’m someone who’s been spoiled rotten, able to watch top skaters close up at these kinds of practies many other times. How you gonna keep 'em up in the peanut gallery once they've sat downtown?)

The Main Show

Among the actual show highlights for me at this 2010 edition of Stars on Ice, Canada, were Rochette's “Summertime” followed by Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir's adaptation of the Mahler program that won them World and Olympic gold this year. Just magnificent performances by skaters at the peak of the power.


Another fave - the “Intermission” program, skated by three of the guys and Ms. Rochette. This cast meshes well. If they secretly hate each others’ guts, they’re faking friendship superbly.


Of Course, I'd Be Charmed if They Just Sat There Texting
Informal practices are always fun to watch. Saw lots of cute stuff, like when Kurt Browning was practicing footwork, and Rochette started to playfully imitate him. I just wanted to pick them both up, put them in my purse and have them with me to do charming things like that all day. (BTW Dear AllSkatersEverywhere: Mr. Browning is a good person to try to imitate footwork-wise.)


It took me awhile to realize some skaters were running through parts of programs, not skating to random warmup songs. Duh. (I had been secretly giving props to former world champ Jeff Buttle for what I thought was a brilliant ad-libbing to Stones music.)


Illegal Geese

Later in the practice Tessa and Scott - that's Virtue and Moir to you non-obssessed - practiced their signature move, the Goose, with a fantastic (but deemed “illegal” for competition) dismount.  And some of their elaborate lifts. (TBH, who’d just put her eyes back in her head from the eligible skaters’ JumpFest, was all *eek* again.)

And then the hubby/wife dance team of Dubreil and Lauzon ran through a bit of their “newspaper” program, all slinky and everything, as if to say, “No one even has to ask US if we’re sleeping together.”

Javier Fernandez - Will He Reign From Spain or Mainly Stay Kind of Plain?
Of course, being an obsessed fan also mean the joy of discovering new talent. (Once upon a time JoRo and V/M were my new little finds.)


Here's another one who might make a big splash (by not splatting) someday. A kid from that hotbed of ice sports, Spain. Javier Fernandez. I don’t know when he got on my radar within the past several months, but he did.

I was looking at this drunken pirate’s website/ wiki entries (his long program was a wacky routine to Pirates of the Caribbean). Not a lot of detail yet. Because again - Spain?!? (A few weeks ago I was reading some condolences posted at Joannie Rochette’s website. It popped out at me that one of them began, “I’m from Spain - ice skating isn’t very big here …” It’d be interesting to see if that would change much if this young man progresses to a high level.)


It’s just always fascinating how people get into something, no matter what their circumstances, as if they’re just destined to do it.


And you know who that kind of person is? The kind of person who gets up in the middle of an ice show practice and throws down a damn hard old jump combo. Just for the hell of it.

"Why Don't She Write?"

Bonus points if you can name the movie reference in the title

Just realized it's been three weeks of post-Olympic fog since I last wrote something here. I still don't know how Joannie Rochette managed to skate in Vancouver. I don't think she does either.

I continue to work on two scripts.

FADE IN
INT. AMY'S PLACE - EVENING

So far I've expressed one of these stories, "International Latin," in all of the following formats:

• As a one-act play,
• An unfinished full-length play and musical, 
• A one-hour TV pilot, and 
• A short film script.

Next will come posting the script line by line on twitter and reciting it on the corner of 11 Mile and Main in Royal Oak. 

By the way, bonus points if you get what the title "International Latin" refers to. (Answer: A category of ballroom dancing styles.)

I have lived with these characters for more than a year now. I know them so well, and yet I'm still filling them in every day. 

Writing is so hard. And yet it's so fun. You get to be all the actors. And the director, lighting designer, music editor.

A few days ago I finished the short-film version of the "International Latin" script and submitted it to a contest run by S3 Entertainment Group. That's the all-services production company that's also been one of the first to get new film studio space up-and running here in Southeast Michigan. (Hey guys, freebie plug.)

Then I went back to polish up the one-hour pilot version of "International Latin" for some upcoming TV scriptwriting contests.

And finally, after three months I've gone back to the other script, a 170-page!!! film script, "Do Not Delete," which is about time-travelling ex-college roommates.

Oy, where to start trimming slashing the hell out of that thing?

I've decided that editing is to writing what food poisoning is to gourmet dining.

FADE OUT (for now)

THE END (for now)

Image: Gabriele Goffredo and Antonia Goffredo

The Olympics: How I Mostly Love Being Half-Canadian

Croooosby! [Shakes Fist.]  I - living in Detroit of all places - have been a fan of yours for two or three years. But maybe a little less today.  Because I did want the boys from this side of the border to win. The way I figure it, you folks have clean, safe cities and great healthcare. You could've thrown us the bone of one little hockey game.

But mostly, I do love Canada and Canadians. And although I haven't spent much time there, I'm proud of my Canadian ancestry. (My dad's side came across Lake Huron from Ontario and from way on up in Beauharnois, Quebec.)

And I especially have adored Canadian figure skaters. Brian O. Kurt. Jamie & David. Virtue and Moir. Joannie.

I've been a fan of the latter since well before the Torino games. Like so many others, how  long I had waited for the times she would pull it together at a big event.

And in the meanwhile, I too have faced my share of hardships over the years.

So how much more personal did this second week of the Vancouver games seem to me.

I think I've handled my challenges as well as I could. But if there's ever a day I feel myself faltering, I will look back on the way that beautiful (on the inside and out) young woman acquitted herself in the face of tragedy and with the eyes of half a billion on her. And pulled out two of the performances of her life. Merci, ma petite.

And Tessa and Scott. Temporary transplants to my state. The millennial Torvill and Dean. How special, how ethereal, yet how down-to-earth. I'm thrilled to witness the gift of your talent.

Thank you, Canada. Ya got some good kids there. Even the one who scored the OT goal. I'm fully proud to be half Canadian.

Shorpy, Part The Second

Early Motown
No matter where you live in the States, on Shorpy.com you might find pictures that’ll hurtle you back a century in your own neighborhood’s life. How I have pored over this view of a sunny day on Woodward Avenue, 93 years past.

I’ve wondered about the mothers and their children. Was that girl in the white dress – above the ankle! – a flapper-to-be, a handful for her worried parents? And just up the street from them, a mom grabs onto her exuberant young son as he attempts, (like all boys everywhere and everytime) to make his great get-away.

Look, there’s a soldier, in the same kind of Army uniform I’ve seen in a picture of my grandfather that was taken the same year, in a town 100 miles to the north. And what is the man in the shade, the White Suit with Hands on His Hips, what is he looking at off beyond our frame to the left/west?

My gawd, the cars. The streetcars. The signs. Hudsons. A movie theatre playing a picture show about Ty Cobb. The Soldiers and Sailors monument, which still stands downtown.

Such moving personal emotions come from looking at these 100-years-past strangers. But Shorpy is also about sharing the view with other commenters.

Roadside Gawkers

Take for instance, this picture of gawkers (there‘ve always been gawkers) eyeing a D.C. storm‘s damage, 1913.

The range of 21st-century comments on Shorpy are typical: Wry jokes about those people who finally got to be on the internet. Another who expresses the all-too-common desire to jump into the photo and strike up a convo (as we say on the Internet) with those denizens of this black-and-white world.
 Who Made It Out Alive?

One thing leads to another, and then a different picture of the same storm’s havoc.


And as I read the reports of the terrible damage, I study my own reaction. Hastily skimming, hoping to learn that people described as “perhaps fatally hurt,” or “likely to die,” (they didn’t mince words in those days), did indeed survive.

And why do I wish that, as those people are all long gone anyway?

Doesn’t it go back to the same reason we wish to jump in the photo in the first place - the connection we feel with these people, the feeling that they’re not dead - because they still live in those photos.

And then I wonder - who’ll find a picture of us, 100 years from now, and will they think about us, and care about us, and wish they could talk with us?


All Images Courtesy http://www.shorpy.com/

This Old Photo: Shorpy.com Part One

Shorpy.

First Shorpy was a kid coal miner who had a short, hard life. But because a few pictures of him were taken one day long ago, he lives on in that ephemeral way that photos can bring us immortality - randomly, sometimes whimsically, very often poignantly.

This is Shorpy the boy.

Shorpy the Website

And now Shorpy lives on as the very name of a website devoted to the mystery and yet the immediacy of old photos.

Each day brings a few new photos, some of which have been lovingly restored by the site runners. And with these instant portraits of long-ago days comes witty, informative, nostalgic, always fascinating and fascinated blog commentary.


It Takes a Village, ca. 1905

Here’s a recent gem from New York City, 110 years ago. Sure, it's a chance for non-New Yorkers to discover this beautiful, still existent architectural gem which has had at least three lives. (Market, courthouse, library.) A kremlinesque colorful lower Manhattan landmark which has posed for paintings, from the Ashcan School all the way to present-day sidewalk artists.


But on a nonspecific day, circa 1905, was the centerpiece of this quick study on early 20th-century urban street life.


HD Web-See
Ramp open the Hi-Def view and drink in the details of a day when George M. Cohan was actually performing somewhere in that city: Take a look up 10th Street - The laundry airing on the roof opposite. The cop, the stairway loiterer, the streetcars, the horse-and-buggies, the wagon piled high with barrels, the horse fountain(?) on the corner of the building. And to the left, on Sixth: The train pulling away, the guy below striding along, reading his paper, a sign on a more distant building advertising a Famous Old Remedy Painkiller (Keep It Handy).


30 Rock, '33

Now quick, jump forward with me. Is this moment in time in the Village really only 28 years before this stunning central Manhattan image? 
And is there any more spectacular city image anywhere than this moody night shot of the brand-spanking new, now-iconic 30 Rockefeller Center?

All images courtesty http://www.shorpy.com/

OOOOOhhh! The 2010 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremonies

The Opening Ceremonies. What'd ya think?


I’m an Olympics freak. I want to like any Olympics’ Opening Ceremony, and I really want to like anything Canada does. (Technically I’m half-Canadian, with ancestors from Quebec and Ontario).

Sport, art, music, drama, spectacle - this is my thing. But … how can I say this politely, and friendly, like a good half-Canadian.

Um, I liked the whales on the floor.

Semi-Hot Mess 
Really - the best parts were those that celebrated nature more than that big noisy hot mess involving violins on the moon and mohawked dancers. Grungie tapdancing fiddling kilted lumberjacks. (And I’m still confused where the Maritimes thing turned into the Quebec part.)

Aside from the music going on forever, and the not-particularly exciting dancing, the set and costumes for that long East Coast section were just jarringly unappealing to me. Even the neon-blue boat against that weird scary orange-yellow moon. Yuck.

The Good, The Meh and the Whimsical 

I liked flying prairie boy. The evocative rainforest. The dudes in red going completely vertically down the tissuey white mountain. And those whales.

But oh, the many phallic symbols. And the cauldron malfunction. And Wayne Gretzky in a fecking pickup truck tooling around downtown Vancouver with a giant doobie. Worst torch light in my memory. Not exactly like the guy coming down the ski jump with the torch (Lillehammer?) or the flaming arrow lighting a cauldron (Barcelona?).

And O, Canada, one of the most beautiful national anthems ever. That dirge version was an early indicator of more missteps to come.

Bob Costas Will Be Back to Say Something Dumb In a Minute 
It also almost seemed like the long musical “codas” were there so US TV could cut away for commercials. Switching back and forth from NBC to online viewing of Eurosport feeds I noted one of the few times NBC missed a really new music section was the Samuel Barber piece - yeah, they missed the *American* composer* - at the end of the rainforest section.

Why We Love the Winter Os 
That said, I still love the Winter Olympics. The small, cozy feeling just makes you want to move to a quaint mountain valley and ski and skate all day. Even if you can't do either.

I enjoy watching almost all the Winter Olympic sports except curling. (Brooms? A top?)

In light of Friday's tragedy, I don’t want to come across as insensitive - but the very fascination of the Winter OOOOOs as a whole IS just how dangerous almost all the sports are. People hurtling down icy mountains and even icier roller-coaster-like tracks. Or in a rink, crashing onto the ice or each other.

And that highest ski jump? I don’t even want to go to the top of that thing and cling to it for dear life. Let alone ski down it and leap off. How breathtakingly insane.

[Photos 1,3,4: TylerIngram. Photo 2: © VANOC/COVAN]

Let’s Not get Overly Coo-coo for Coco

Did the greatest entertainer in the world just pass away or something? Good lawd, the most rabid Conan fans need a bit of perspective. A guy lost a job. He's still rich. You'll get to see him somewhere else. Stop posting comments on blogs wishing all the Olds who watch Leno would die. Because, first of all - nobody has been watching Leno. Not “older“ people. Not even Jeff Zucker.

Ah youth, to be so naïve you’re actually still surprised by the fact that quite frequently crappy no-talents get ahead of other people at work. Yes, it’s true! I’m old enough to have been on the Conan end of that scenario several times. (Only I was making in the tens of thousands what he makes in the millions.)

 It's All So Goofy
At some point this past week or so I went from being transfixed by the highway wreckage that is NBC to being tired of all the Coco-hype. He's not always THAT funny. Especially if, like me, you prefer more intellectual, political satire to goofiness. His monologues are frequently in the mediocre-to-average range and some of the bits, like Masturbating Bear, pretty juvenile. To me, the funniest stuff on his shows have been the taped-on-location bits - the UPS delivery guy, the pool boy. (Triumph was funny but a little too mean at times for my taste.)

And he's certainly not a great interviewer, which should be a prerequisite for a talk show. But then again, neither is Leno, Ferguson or Fallon. (Letterman, when he's not being snotty, has his moments with guests that he likes.) And to be fair, there was actually a time when Leno used to make some half-way decent political zingers.

Anyway, deep breaths, people.