Cultureguru's Weblog

… Ice skating

That’s the name of Salon posting post board thread dedicated to the sport (some would say “sport”) of figure skating. A sentiment I confess to sharing.

Before leaving for New York, I set the PVR to tape every bit of figure skating I could find on CBC. (And finding that was a bit of chore, given the off-prime time hours given over to it—midnight, Saturday afternoon…) When back from New York and waiting at the luggage carousel, I saw Jeff Buttle’s smiling face up on the TV screen showing the news. While I couldn’t catch the details, I knew that meant he had to have done well. They weren’t going include a sixth-place finish in a five-minute news summary.

Back home, the stack of newspaper that weren’t supposed to be there (my registered vacation stop was ignored) gave the pre-story: 3 pairs teams in the top 8, including a bronze medal; the strong fifth place in women’s; the silver in dance. But it may have been only the next morning that I heard Buttle had actually won gold.

Why I like watching this sport so much, I’m not really sure. I’ve certainly never done it myself, my own skating skills never progressing much beyond the rudimentary. I like dance, too, but I don’t make a point of watching ballroom dance competitions on TV. But–and especially when Canada does have a reasonably strong team–I can’t help watching the ice skating.

This is a challenge, because I have hours of the stuff on PVR now, and DH does not share my enthusiasm. So I try to cram in the viewing when he’s not around, fast-forwarding the duller commentary and interviews, not to mention some of the duller skaters (that pairs silver team? My God, could they be any slower? As Kurt Browning said, maybe if they did nothing but jumps, I wouldn’t have to fast-forward out of boredom) and those just having a really bad day (one grows weary of wincing at all the falls).

So at this point, I’ve seen most of it. I think I just have the Dance Originals and the full womens Ladies Long program left.

I feel absurdly proud of the Canadian skaters, as if I had anything to do with it whatsoever. But those who doubt the toughness of people in this sport, think that fifth-place pairs winner Craig Buntin has to move immediately from lifting his partner over his head with one hand to shoulder surgery to repair the damage; that bronze-medal pairs Jessica Dube’s face was slashed by her partner’s skate last year; that gold medalist Buttle could barely walk a year ago, so bad was his back injury.

Also nice to see American Johnny Weir, always an interesting skater, finally win a world medal (a bronze), and that Japanese woman’s skater come back from a terrible fall in the opening moments of her program to be dynamic and perfect enough in the rest to win the gold.

But Jeff Buttle, I have to say, comes across as one of the sweetest human beings on the planet. So it’s really great to see that he won, and won decisively, by doing his quad-free program perfectly. Every big win this guy has had–the Silver at a previous World’s, the Bronze at the Olympics, and this Gold–always seems to be a big shocker. Maybe that’s finally over now.

As mentioned previously, during the TV writers’ strike, we stared renting DVDs of the remade “Battlestar Galactica” series, which I’d read was really good, but felt I was too far behind to watch on “live” TV. (One friend was amazed I’d never seen this series; another equally amazed that I had any interest in seeing it. In the immortal words of Dr. Temperance Brennan, I don’t know what that means.)

I’ll start by saying I don’t remember the old series at all, though I imagine I watched some of it at the time. So until watching the extras, I had no idea that Boomer and Starbuck were men in the original, or that one of the recurring guest stars was played by Richard Hatch, the original Appollo. So I judged this one on its own merits. And found it to be good.

It is, indeed, a drama in space, and not so much a space drama. Character is paramount, and each episode continues from the last—two features I always prefer in my television. So I’m drawn in my the story, and I care what happens to these people—even the ones who aren’t really people. The underlying mythology retains its interest. We’re halfway through season 2 now, and the full motives of the cylons remain mysterious.

The series is dark. There are moments of joy and triumph, but mostly the characters are struggling, running, and fighting. It can be kind of haunting. So though we’re getting through the disks pretty quickly—an average of an episode a day, I suppose—it’s also good to have a break from that world, to watch something else. To enjoy an escape that the characters themselves rarely experience.

It’s been somewhat amusing reading some TV columnists on the strike, using adjectives like “dire” and “desperate”, that seem just a wee bit strong to describe a temporary weakness in entertainment options. Truthfully, it’s taken me a while to really notice. After all, shows didn’t run out of scripts immediately. But an awful lot of them have reached that point now. So what am I doing?

Well, probably watching a little less TV, for one! I’m doing more workouts to fitness videos instead of to prerecorded DVR programming (on the treadmill). Maybe I’m reading a little more. But it’s not as if the tube has gone silent. So what am I watching?

• CBC stuff. They have four new dramas. I’ve checked them all out, and have stuck with two (the low-rated ones): Jpod, which is weird, but I read the book; and MVP, which has its moments of awkwardness, but is mostly soapy fun. Then there’s the stalwart Marketplace, which I really more people would benefit from watching.
• Jon Stewart. It’s not quite the same–he’s calling it A Daily Show instead of The Daily Show–but it remains worth watching in this time of particularly interesting US races for the White House.
• Documentaries. On PBS, CBC, CTV, even the Documentary Channel. Often somewhat depressing programming, is the thing, but this week’s DocZone documentary is Happiness, so it’s not all doom and gloom.
• Reruns that are new to me. Only this year have I regularly been watching Bones. Lately they’ve been rerunning episodes from past seasons. They’re all new to me, and it’s fun to catch up. (They should start doing that with How I Met Your Mother.)
• DVDs. Done rewatching My So-Called Life, working on WKRP, with more on standby. And just rented Battlestar Galactica; see how I’ll like that.

I hope the strike doesn’t end until the writers get what they want. Their demands seem perfectly reasonable, the networks very greedy. Be great to have some new episodes back, but in the meantime, I’m “coping” just fine.