Sakura of DOOM

Haven't watched the free skate yet! Please do not spoil me!

( Women's short program )

OMG with the new team event, watching all the figure skating is like a sport in and of itself! I have not yet seen the men's free skate or the results: SPOIL ME AND DIE!

(CB just got spoiled by a well-meaning friend, and I have only barely avoided them everywhere! And this is when I'm trying to Google ice dance programs from five years ago!)

(apologies for all name misspellings; I am not risking Googling it right now)

( Team skate )

( Pairs )

( Men's short )

For women's skating, I am wondering how Kim Yuna will do, since it sounds like she hasn't really been in the competition circle for a while, and I hope Mao Asada does well. I think the last I really watched her was when she was retooling all of her jumps, and it was so painful to see. Also happy to see Akiko Suzuki on the team. Aaand aside from that, I really don't know much re: what's going on.

It's so weird: I feel all the skaters I used to watch when I first started getting into figure skating are now retiring (or have retired), and I can't quite believe the new judging system is ten years old!

On a more serious note: via sanguinity, An Indigenous Olympics is a good look at the branding of the Vancouver Olympics and the problematics thereof.

Warning: the following commentary will have way too many exclamation points and allcaps and squee.

( Spoilers for men's short and pairs )

I love the Olympics, despite the fact that I generally despise the nationalism that goes along with them.

On the other hand, it is very frustrating watching them in the US and having the focus be on all the US athletes, all the time. Plus, the announcers ask the stupidest questions!

ANNOUNCER: Keri Walsh, just how good does it feel to have found your wedding ring after it fell off during your game?
KERI WALSH: Oh, so good!
ME: ... DUH.

Also, besides the annoying US-centrism and the annoying faux Chinese commercials, all of which seem to feature dragons, and the horrible pronunciation of Chinese names (seriously, announcers! I know Mandarin is difficult, but it is still painful to listen to, especially for the athletes who aren't exactly new on the scene) and the desire to watch people not from the US, the focus on the US athletes is also just boring.

We all know the US is going to walk out of the Olympics with a ton of medals, right? As such, I am disgruntled and contrary and rooting for everyone else, and it feels like there is very little suspense in the broadcasts.

ETA: spoilers in comments

*points to subject* I bet those are two words you never expected to see together on my LJ ;).

But yes.... squigglesquiggleYAYsquee!!!!! OLYMPICS!!!!

Predictions:

1. Evgeny Plushenko will win, or else I will yell at the TV an awful lot.

2. Johnny Weir and Brian Joubert will have horrible costumes.

3. I will yell at the commentators all the time.

4. I will have the same not-very-deep thoughts about nationalism and country pride and competition that I do every time I watch the Olympics.

5. I will either cheer loudly when "Taipei China" enters while yelling at China about the name change, or pout when Taiwan isn't in the Olympics, despite fully realizing that it is a subtropical island and probably doesn't participate much in winter sports at all.

6. I will cheer for the Chinese ice skaters and then feel bad for cheering for China and then feel worse for thinking nationalistically.

7. I will find random sports that I didn't know existed (biathlon?).

8. I will get caught up in totally random sports that I usually care nothing about, just because.

9. I will cheer for all the underdog countries. (Sadly, my brain just collapsed on me and I forgot the word "underdog." I knew it was "under-animal," but kept defaulting to "underduck" for some odd reason. Possibly I was inspired by the dead duck wine bottle holder that my dad has.)

10. I am entirely too fond of numbered lists.

Article in this month's Wired on anime, focusing specifically on the upcoming releases of three big directors: Miyazaki Hayao's Howl's Moving Castle, Otomo Katsuhiro (of Akira fame)'s Steamboy, and Oshii Mamoru's Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. I'm actually only really interested in Miyazaki's... never was that fond of Akira or Ghost in the Shell, as both belong to a particularly violent postapocalyptic type of scifi that doesn't really appeal to me. I haven't closely analyzed, but I have the impression not only of a great deal of violence, but a great deal of violence directed toward the female body in particular in some anime that particularly disturbs me -- Kai in Akira (the movie, I haven't read the manga), what I remember of Ghost in the Shell, Evangelion even (though I do like Evangelion), Perfect Blue, and probably some others I don't remember.

It's really interesting looking at how articles on anime have changed through the years -- I had particular fun looking at various newspaper and magazine articles while I was writing my thesis. Everything pretty much up through 1999 was in the vein of: Japanese adults read comic books with weird and violent sex! Japanese adults watch cartoons that are pornographic and violent! Look how strange this is! 1999, which I mainly remember as a turning point because of the popular appeal of Pokemon and the art crowd appeal of Princess Mononoke. Then there were a lot of articles trying to say anime and manga weren't just weird and strange with lots of sex and violence, but there was still a lot of the old "how strange, look at those giant eyes and the strange color hair!" type thing. This one is focused very much on the directors instead of the medium as a whole, maybe because Wired is a fairly geeky magazine that doesn't feel like it needs to explain anime. It was also arguing on how these three major releases may very well (finally) bring anime into the mainstream, although I would posit that it's been moving that way for yeeeeaaaaarrrrsssss (albeit slowly). I think Spirited Away won over a lot of the art crowd types, more so than Princess Mononoke, probably because Princess Mononoke had to do the hard work of breaking ground. Of course, I mainly have this impression because I was actually able to drag my non-anime watching friends to see it and have them like it (it's the purple mouse. No one can resist the purple mouse).

I also found it funny that the article was going on about how Japan's economic power may have waned, but it might be coming into a new power via popular culture. I'm kind of amused, because I got to watch (and participate in) Taiwan going through a Japanese pop culture phase. It's still a fairly big part of the cultural landscape there, but there are no longer ramen stores popping up like weeds. And when I went back about two years ago, it was all about jewelry imported from Korea and K-pop and Korean soap operas. And I know on one hand there are all the arguments about exoticization and fetishism and the like, but it will be interesting to see what happens, if Japanese pop culture does indeed catch on. I sort of figure it will be an interesting contrast to the exoticization/adoption of American culture in Japan (Hawaiian stuff in particular in Okinawa). I guess I would probably feel weirder if it were Taiwan/Chinese pop culture catching on. Actually, I would probably just be happy because it would mean that I could get C-pop CDs and things like that. Living in California often does feel like a mix of Chinese and American culture some times. Not the pop culture things, but foodwise... I find it very, very funny (and extremely convenient) that there are four bubble tea shops just on Castro Street/downtown Mountain View. I speak not of a very large stretch of street! They are all concentrated within a four block radius!

Just read the news: WTF is up with the Paul Hamm thing? Jeez. Poor guy.

The Olympics are so on crack. And by Olympics, I mean the entire men's gymnastics competition. To think I used to think men's gymnastics was the more boring cousin to women's gymnastics.

I still *heart* Aleksei Nemov, who was a crush item way back in 1996.

I need to catch up on comments and entries, but am still sort of stressing about upcoming interviews, sigh, sigh.

I fear nothing intelligent will come out of this journal until the Olympics are over.

Watched men's gymnastics today, along with various swimmy things, but missed stuff because I was at work. Silly work.

Buying day was pretty good -- I bought more stuff. And someone sold us their entire set of Sandman, and they were all the original covers, and they were in beautiful condition, and I am a happy happy buyer ^_^. I also came across an order with some older "how to make a relationship work" books, then a wedding planner, then a whole bunch of fairly new books on divorce. Yowch.

The worst part of the day was coming across a small cockroach (about an inch) in one of the boxes I was doing. I was quite restrained. This means that instead of screaming my lungs out and jumping about ten feet into the air and skedaddling, I merely gave an undignified squawk, which caught the attention of pretty much everyone within a ten foot radius, and skittered to the other end of the buying counter. Luckily, my boss dealt with the nasty thing for me, and ew ew ew ew ew just thinking about it is making my skin itch and my toes curl in a particularly unpleasant way.

I am not good with bugs.