Re: Brian Boitano Show
The show starts off on the wrong foot, two of them actually, belonging to Apolo Anton Ohno. He quite literally skates around in a circle to music (it could be a Chinese skater's program minus the jumps). He did have "great speed and good ice coverage," though:smokin: .
The show itself has the theme of paying tribute to the ice shows of yore. That means even more gaudy group numbers, and some really old guy who skated with the Icecapades waddled around the ice quite often.
Some highlights of the program include:
Anything and everything with Yuka Sato. She skated with her husband Jason, who looks like Donny Osmond, only uglier. The disturbing Mormon connections aside, Yuka was fabulous in every move. The couple even did a big, perfectly united, close together double axel. This team is ready for eligible competition, in my opinion, if Yuka can get the citizenship thing straightened out. Wouldn't we like to see Yuka back in amateurs? Wouldn't we? Wouldn't we?
Brian Boitano asserts his love and obsession for a dancer (she stood on a stage near the ice) while skating to Girl from Ipanema. Alas, as much as the very heterosexual (saying otherwise gets my posts deleted and gets me death threats) Brian Boitano wants to have his way with the girl, she rejects him, probably because of his dorky oversized opened shirt that made his upper body look even more out of porportion to his giant legs. The skating and dancing was great, though.
Brian Boitano also skated in unison with the Icecapade geriatric I mentioned. Anyone who says you can't tell speed on TV needs to see this performance. It was OBVIOUS, TV or not, that Boitano slowed down massively to accomodate the old coot. Boitano even dumbed down the flex in his spread eagle to match the codger. Very nice guy, that Boitano. Maybe he was just happy he finally gets to do a same-sex pair routine.
Laurence Toebel or whatever his name is did a drag parody of Katarina Witt's Carmen routine. Look, a man wearing non-man clothes, everybody laugh! Seriously, I thought he skated better than the real Witt, and the Carmen death at the end is a must-see for any skater who thinks literal choreography in character skating is a good idea (Yagudin, Irina, AP).
Apolo Anton Ohno, proving that he's capable of doing more than just making left turns on ice (which is all speed skating is, goes to show what kind of retard Cinquanta is), did a little breakdancing on ice. He sure made Michael Weiss look like an amateur. Then again, even that Icecapades fogey could breakdance better than Weiss.
The lowlights:
Renee Roca did some routine to 70s music. There was barely any skating. She just puttered around and posed a little. Apolo's program had more content than hers.
While Kristi Yamaguchi was skating to En Vogue, either she had to take a potty break during the program, or for some reason the camera decided to focus on En Vogue nonstop for 2 minutes. There's a reason they're called SINGERS, we LISTEN to them. We WATCH the skaters, we LISTEN to the singers. Got that, idiotic camera directors of ice shows?
Nancy Kerrigan, whom I find repulsive, skated to En Vogue's constipation-themed song "Don't Let Go." It is one of the most painful and awful songs in the history of music that I have ever heard. I'd rather listen to Jenny Kirk's ABBA medley and Honda's Mummy music and Arakawa's trip-hop Swan Lake back to back for 24 hours than hear that song for 30 seconds. The great thing was, since it was Nancy skating to the dreaded song, I just put the TV on mute and ignored it for 5 minutes. If Yuka Sato had skated to it, I'd have been screwed!
There was actually very little skating to watch in this special. With all the irrelevant interviews with ice show has-beens, the group numbers where elite skaters shuffle around mindlessly in gaudy clothes, the awful music, and Apolo Anton Ohno, this is a show you want to TIVO and fast forward.
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