23 posts tagged “figure skating”
Right now, the latest Disson figure skating special is on King 5. It's a Christmas show, featuring REO Speedwagon (who I mistook for Air Supply. Silly me.). And a bunch of skaters.
Anyways, I was thinking of Disson skating specials that will never be produced:
- Tribute to Vote for the Worst
- Tribute to Milli Vanilli
- Tribute to the Shaggs
- Tribute to William Hung
- Adventures in Success (with musical guest Carly Hennessey Smithson)
- Tonya Harding and Friends
- Skate for the Liver (hosted by
DrunksanaOksana Baiul) - Fundraiser for D.A.R.E. (hosted by Nicole Bobek)
- Festivus Celebration on Ice (with special musical guest Jason Alexander) - Jason Alexander is actually a really good singer; I'd actually watch this!
I looked at the cast for the shows - Princess Jorbacca is actually singing (howling) in one. It's a fundraiser for underprivileged Wookiees. Disson needs to invite a more worthy American Idol, like Sanjaya.
...which is not a sequel to I, D'Oh!Bot. (That's the episode where Bart entered a battling robots contest, and Homer masqueraded as the robot.)
Today's Simpson's episode is a rerun (stupid World Series!), so I watched Battle of the Blades. Sadly, CBC has not seen fit to put Sanjaya on the show. Reality TV just isn't reality TV without Sanjaya. No one has rocked the ponyhawk yet, either.
There was some commentary about the remaining five couples from RandyPaulaSimon, uh, Dick Button and Sandra Bezic. I didn't bother watching it. It made my brain hurt.
Yu-Na Kim (current world champion) will be skating on the results show, hopefully not to "Pauler" music or anything written by Krappy Kara.
Ken & Jodeyne (James Brown's "I Feel Good") - I have no idea who either of them are. They did a nice flippy thing at the end and she stuck the landing. The judges liked them.
Shae Lynn & Claude (Stevie Wonder's "Superstition") - Shae Lynn looked like she stuck her finger in a light socket. A ponyhawk would have looked a lot better. Unfortunately, I was so busy mocking Shae Lynn's hair that I forgot to watch the program. Claude had a nice shirt on. The judges were relatively mehh. I think.
Marie-France & Stephane (James Brown's "It's a Man's Man's Man's World") - Enjoyed it, although I thought it relied too heavily on the lifts. The judges enjoyed it, too.
Interesting bit where Paul Martini was showing the guys how to deal with a lift gone bad.
Tuffy (Christine Hough) and Tie (don't know the song) - Okay. Relied too much on the lifts, too. I like Tie Domi, though.
Jamie and Craig - I can't stand Jamie Sale (she and David have given me serious hypoglycemia from their syrupy skating over the years), so I hate anything that this team might do. I actually didn't watch them because I had to take a phone call during their program.
ETA: Ken and Jodeyne were eliminated. I still don't know who either of them are. Since the Simpsons are in reruns for the next 2 weeks, I will get to watch next week, too.
I saw an article in the Globe and Mail about the Simpsons' 20th anniversary this year. Has it really been that long? Bart and Lisa should have moved out years ago!
And Marge is in this month's Playboy! I thought she hated Playdude, I mean Playboy. There was an episode where she trashed all of Homer's vintage Playdudes (Bart salvaged them and converted his tree house into the Playdude mansion).
The shows were broadcast in the same time slot, so I did a lot of channel switching.
Mrs. Krabappel (who has the stereotypical miserable life of a Singleton - whatever happened to Principal Skinner?) got annoyed with her class and confiscated their cell phones. As revenge, Bart had the class collect as much booze as possible, and substituted it for her coffee. Mrs. Krabappel was fired for channelling Wing & Lowe, and Bart felt guilty. So he decided to help her with the help of a book called The Answer (a parody of The Secret).
The episode was pretty good, but felt like a mix of "Bart The Lover" (Bart answers Mrs. Krabappel's personals ad pretending to be a millionaire) and "Seymour Skinner's Badasssss Song (Bart gets Principal Skinner fired.)."
Bart has an iPhone or Blackberry Storm - how could Homer afford it?
Battle with the Blades pairs up female figure skaters with hockey players. This week was arena rock week. Sadly, Sanjaya did not show up to sing "You Really Got Me." So I actually don't remember what happened. (Note to CBC: get Sanjaya.) Next week is Frank Sinatra week, and Don Cherry will be a judge.
Anyways, Adam and Allison didn't perform "Slow Ride," so I have nothing more to say. I didn't vote. (I don't like Jamie Sale or Barbara Underhill, and I would rather listen to Archuleta music rather than vote for them. And there's nobody Vote for the Worst-worthy.)
I still think that Wing & Lowe should get their own reality show.
The cast has been announced. I am disappointed.
Some of Canada's most accomplished female skaters, including Jamie Salé, Shae-Lynn Bourne and Barbara Underhill, are to join the cast of the CBC reality television series Battle of the Blades.
Other participants include:
- Isabelle Brasseur, who was an Olympic bronze medallist with partner Lloyd Eisler.
- Marie-France Dubreuil, who transformed ice dancing with husband Patrice Lauzon.
- Christine Hough-Sweeney, who represented Canada at two Olympic Games with her partner Doug Ladret.
- Jodeyne Higgins, who has performed for the past 10 years as a professional pairs skater.
- Kristina Lenko, an international dance competitor.
NHL players Sean Burke, Ken Daneyko and Ron Duguay have been added to the men's roster.
What...no Wing & Lowe? No Sanjaya? Not even Speidi? What sort of reality show is this?
Hopefully Isabelle Brasseur meets a better reality TV fate than Lloyd Eisler. (He dropped his wife for his "Skating with Celebrities" partner Kristy Swanson. At least it wasn't KKKristy Lee Cook.)
Do the viewers get to vote on this show? This could be VFTW-worthy.
Sanjaya is currently on a reality show called "I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here." While I am actively cheering him on, I am not watching the show because Spencer and Heidi were so freakin' annoying. And so was Patti Blagojevich (former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich's wife) -- she's as big a whiner as Rod. Sanjaya is cute and sweet. Spencer, Heidi, and Patti are neither.
I can hardly wait to see this show. Figure skating deserves to have a reality show (Skating with Celebrities sucked -- Kurt Browning and Debbie Gibson were robbed! As were Tai Babilonia and Bruce Jenner!). However, I was hoping for one with Wing & Lowe (of course!). Maybe someone will film them during Paula Abdul's tour. They could earn extra immunity points by skating to a Krappy Kara song without projectile vomiting.
And the show will be produced by the same folks that gave us Canadian Idol and Project Runway Canada. (I actually liked both, but don't tell anyone.) Perhaps there will be some Vote for the Worst moments.
I decided to take a break from picking on Hokey Gokey (yeah, I know, he isn't a nose!) and pick on someone else. When I saw ads for So You Think You Can Dance Canada, I wondered if Emanuel Sandhu would try out again. He is.
"I consider myself a performance artist," said Sandhu, 28, who flew in from Vancouver. "I'm warming up right now -- so that's my big distraction -- my music (that keeps me calm). I almost made it to the top 20 last time."
Well, if you heard him sing, you'd definitely consider him a performance artist. If Emanuel's vocals were Pro Tooled and AutoTuned to the max, he'd almost be as good as...Kevin Covais. And hey, Kevin got to be in a movie (although he didn't sing).
Last year, one of the judges said to Emanuel "I sense a real diva vibe from you." Obviously, he didn't watch skating that much.
If he doesn't make the Top 20, I wonder if he'll blame it on sunspots/ misaligned planets/ the ghosts in his room like he did when he was skating.
I spent the afternoon in the exotic burb of Burnaby. First, I commuted to the middle of nowhere the ninth circle of Hell 8-Drinks (which really is in the middle of nowhere; there's all these trees and cement around the place) to watch the B.C. Centre of Excellence ice show. "Pauler's" favourite ice dancers, Megan Wing and Aaron Lowe, were hosts and MCs for the event. They were introduced (by the infamous CoE director and coach Joanne McLeod??) as "B.C.'s treasures." Uh, okay. They're actually very good at speaking, although when they evaluated Jason Castro on his second song (which he hadn't sung yet), it was clear that they were reading off of their notes. Oh, and did I mention that Aaron sounds like a duck?
Aaron actually pulled a Kara (as in Kara Dioguardi) this afternoon - when he was introducing one of the skaters, he said that the skater would be skating to "Harry Potter Jr." Which was actually pretty funny, because the skater in question is a dead ringer for the guy who plays Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter movies. (The music was actually Harry Connick Jr.)
The skating was really good, too, although I thought the finale went on too long (maybe I was just cold). No one skated to "Jai Ho," but, then again, no one skated to Jorbacca/ Archuleta/ Hokey Gokey music either.
Afterwards, I headed over to Metrotown for a bout of power shopping. There was a pit stop at Taco Time for a veggie burrito. I am tired. And I am wondering about refried beans - why refry them? Why not fry them correctly the first time?
The mind boggles. (For the record, Steamrollers has far better burritos. They're lower in fat and have whole beans, not the refried type. And you can get them with salsa or chipotle BBQ sauce. I must go and get one soon. I haven't had a Shanghai Noodle burrito for the longest time.)
As much as I hate to admit it, Wing & Lowe are working with a couple of really talented dance teams. I can't believe that I just said that. Next thing you know, I'll be saying that Hokey Gokey sang really well. Ewwww. I feel so dirty.
Speaking of Hokey Gokey, he is now the new VFTW pick. I guess, out of the four remaining Idols, he truly is the worst. And he's certainly the biggest douchebag on the show, although I don't know how he stacks up against BBBBBlake Lewis, Constantscream, CarlyPlant, or Song-Stealing, Sanjaya-Dissing, BLASPHEMOUS Aussie Douchebag.
I once told Bill that I really, really wanted to see Wing & Lowe in a reality show. This might be close enough.
Battle of the Blades will see teams of Canadian figure skaters and hockey stars matched to compete each week in an elimination-style challenge.
Although I'd still like to see what would happen if they went on tour with "Pauler." Maybe Disson Skating could give Pauler her own show - "Disson Skating Presents: Paula Abdul on Ice."
Or Perez Hilton?
Apparently, not everyone in South Korea likes figure skater Yu-Na Kim. In fact, some of her detractors - gasp! - have started websites against her.
What has Kim Yu-na done to deserve this? Among the arguments is that Kim has neglected her duty as an athlete by filming too many commercials.
Obviously, she's very good at time management, since she managed to win the World Championships in between filming commercials.
"We don't have the right to criticize (Kim's) detractors just because they have different opinions. But we do need to take a note of the fact that it is cyberspace where the detractors come out vocally," Yonsei University professor Whang Sang-min told The Korea Herald.
"When there is a mainstream, there is always an anti-stream, just like a thesis and an antithesis. So if you have a complaint that goes against the mainstream in the off-line world, it will be recognized as your personal opinion. But in cyberspace, your personal opinions and complaints are often mistakenly viewed as some social phenomenon that is as big as the mainstream," he said.
I wonder if Professor Whang has taken overexposure into account. Any time something/ someone becomes really popular and is mentioned all over the media, some people try to get attention for themselves by bashing them. (They're being contrary just for the sake of being contrary.) After Tiger Woods won the Masters in 1997, some guy wrote a very critical book about him. Okay, Tiger really isn't the second coming, but did he really deserve the criticism?
Maybe Professor Whang needs to get out a bit more. They don't have insulting celebrity websites in Korea? Or tabloids (electronic or otherwise)? Or cyberbullying (of non-celebrities)?
Anyways, I think I will take the opportunity to post another picture of Yu-Na:
Entertainment Weekly presents "Pauler's" ramblings as free verse!
Example:
A Heads-Up To David's Bodyguard
David.
You are ridiculous.
I want to squish you,
squeeze your head off,
and dangle you from
my rear-view mirror.(Judging David Archuleta's season 7 performance of ''Imagine'')
Run, David, run!
In other news, I went to an ice show yesterday (Canada Ice Dance Theatre) and saw Wing & Lowe skate. I've never seen them skate live. They did one piece about a hockey sweater that ended with Aaron taking off one of his skates. (Huh?) Their second program was a tango to something that sounded like the Gotan Project. Sadly, they didn't interpret "Pauler" music. Now THAT would have been funny. (They should really skate a tango to "Tomo Y Obligo.")
