Soccer und London

Winter soccer starts tomorrow! I are excited, although I'm NOOOOTTTTTT happy about the time--our games are between 9-12 in the morning. UGH. We all know how much of a morning person I am and I flat out told Zachary "expect me to sleep through at least one game," as always happens when we play in the morning. But still, even early morning soccer is better than no soccer!

We have a free agent on our team for the first time (and I'm happy about that, we need new blood!). We met him last night at the kickoff party--he is this adorable skinny ginger Brit who's been in the country for less than a month. I talked about London to him last night and I brought up the '90s movie Sliding Doors, which was on cable last weekend. [The movie came out in '98, a year when Gwyneth Paltrow was the Jennifer Lawrence of the day--she was in EVERYTHING that year, I think at least 4 movies? Sliding Doors, Great Expectations, the remake of the Hitchcock movie with Michael Douglas, and of course my beloved Shakespeare in Love.] Anyway I said to the guy that Sliding Doors is kind of cool, in that it gives us Americans a glimpse of everyday, undramatic, ordinary life in London, lived by Londoners. We see everyday life in, say, NYC or LA all the time in American movies but usually when London is in a film, it's specifically chosen as the setting for something huge and dramatic, or it's historical or something. It's cool to see how life is in another international city. (And oh God, that beautiful clean subway! Jesus wept. HOMESICK FOR LONDON NOW THANKS OBAMA.)

I've actually been toying with the idea of traveling there or somewhere in Europe maybe this year--nah, I don't think it's in the cards. For one thing I have several trips already planned--my college and high school reunions are this year. (My HS is so small we do all-class reunions, which is why it's in an off year. I like it that way, I get to see friends from other years. But it does amount to having to plan for both reunions in the same year.) I'm also toying with the idea of going to Pittsburgh in August to see WAG Nationals. None of these trips are terribly expensive as these things go, but it adds up. Besides I still have to save for my trip to Oslo--I think I've mentioned this already but my brother got posted there so I have to make the trip at some point and see the monsters.

Tonya and Nancy

Some filmmaker has done a documentary about the Harding/Kerrigan saga 20 years ago. I'd really like to watch this but it's airing on ESPN (which I don't get) so I'll have to go to their site or something like that to view it. Accompanying the release of the doc have been a lot of articles looking back at that whole debacle and surprisingly a lot of them seem to be more sympathetic to Harding than her typical coverage is. I'll admit it, I'm a Tonya fan. I was even back in '94 because I thought a LOT of the animosity toward her was due to classism and her looks (she wasn't as obviously pretty/elegant/whatever as Nancy was and she was more muscular and less svelte than other skaters). I remember talking about it with my Mom and was surprised to find out she liked Tonya as well. Look, I'm as much of a snob as any WASP I know but you should applaud Tonya for making something of herself, for working hard and succeeding as a skater. Because Tonya was pretty incredible when she was hitting her programs. She was an amazing jumper, the likes of which the sport has rarely seen. She was the second woman (and first American woman) to successfully throw (and land) the triple axel in competition.

The 3A is inherently difficult for women--it's a completely different kind of jump, and it's also the hardest of all jumps. Instead of skating backwards to approach, you skate forward (but you still land backwards which means that an axel has an extra half-revolution more than any other jump. So a triple axel is 3-and-a-half turns, not 3). And instead of using a toepick--toepick!--to launch yourself into the air, you have to kick your leg back and then forward--you literally launch yourself into the air. So you need upper body strength which is why it's easier for men. To put this in perspective there are still--20 years later!--only a handful of women that have accomplished this jump. Midori Ito (silver medalist in '92), Tonya, Mao Asada (silver medalist in '10, she and Kim Yu-na will battle it out for gold this year), Kimmie Meissner (US skater who was the '06 World champion) and a Russian skater and another Japanese skater. THAT'S IT. That's how significant Tonya was to the sport. And she didn't just chuck triple axels, her jumps in general had incredible power--her height was unbelievable. And her spins were great as well. No, she wasn't the most artistic skater but what she did well, she did very well. But the typical US viewer doesn't know anything about that, they just see "white trash skater" and they feel free to pass judgment on her based on that. Haw haw, look at her thighs! Haw haw, she skates to Ton Loc's Wild Thing! Haw haw--HAVE A NICE WARM CUP OF SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU CLASSIST ASS.

If you really want to see Tonya at her peak, check out her long program at the '91 Nationals where she first lands the 3A. She does it about a minute into the program and when she lands it her joy is simply incandescent. The crowd went NUTS screaming for her, and the announcers totally lost their cool. Even Dick Button was yelling his approval in his WASPy way--"oh, isn't that marvelous, isn't that superb!! Well done!!!" Very cute :) I love Dick Button. And after she lands it she still has the rest of her program to get through! Which she did, in style, and won the gold medal, the national title--over Kristi Yamaguchi who won the Olympic gold medal the next year! Anyway the program is great and girl can DANCE. She rocks the hell out to Wild Thing. (Only Tonya Harding could do her long program to both Wild Thing and Send In the Clowns :)

I haven't made up my mind about whether she was involved with the plot to hobble Nancy. I used to think she probably knew something--she admitted to "hindering prosecution" after the fact--but now I don't know. I read a great article that looks at the whole story within the framework of abuse. I don't think I'd realized that Tonya was abused by her (now ex-) husband or that she'd suffered the same under her mother. If I'd heard it, I might have hedged my bets because Tonya had a history of making dramatic claims, like the famous lace incident. But--I did not know this--apparently Tonya's laces broke all the time because of her jumps. According to the article after her '91 Skate America long program (which was flawless) she told her coach "my boot broke again." But no, the narrative was decided that Trashy Tonya was stoking drama again. Anyway the article is very interesting.

And although I've never really liked either Nancy's skating or her personality, I have some sympathy for Nancy as well (beyond, obviously, the attack which must have been horrible and which no one deserves). I did think she was snide about Oksana in the aftermath (the infamous "she's just going cry again" remark) and I didn't really like the "this is so corny remark." And I just cringed when, for her first joint practice session in Lillehammer with Tonya, she wore the white dress in which she was attacked as this kind of...statement or something. It just looked so drama queenie. Nancy, you ARE the victim, you already have tons of public sympathy, why do you have to PLAY the victim? Let your skating talk for you instead of silly junior high gestures. But maybe those remarks were meant differently (she was being sarcastic instead of mean)--maybe the public was just looking to tear her down after she'd been so propped up during the Olympics, in contrast to Tonya. I imagine she must have been bewildered by the rapid about-face.

But I still think Oksana deserved the gold :)