BlackberryJam

I cannot look at Tom Cruise's face because of that tooth right in the center. What the hell is that?

Thank you! That pirouette is not good. Maybe I just see that now that I’ve been exposed to so much more quality dance. I remember loving that routine back in the day. Also, doesn’t everyone periodically fall down the rabbit hole of watching old routines?….

You weren’t lying. I want to go back in time and give that girl a teddy bear and a warm cup of cocoa. Sure, Lilia P.’s 1996 floor had some lovely leaps but also had a lot of weird arm flapping and jerky steps to get to the corner of the mat. And weird posing. Katelyn Ohashi’s 2019 NCAA floor incorporates dance better than Lilia’s. Yeah, I said it.

With sports that are judged subjectively, there is always going to be a push-pull between difficulty and artistry. I enjoy Simone's dancing part of the floor because it's so her. However, Simone's beautiful, incredible, amazing body is not the same as Misty Copeland's beautiful, incredible, amazing body. Even if they did the exact same pirouette, Misty's is going to look more pleasing because of her body type. With gymnastics, the push for more emphasis on "artistry" often means pushing for more balletic moves, and unfortunately, thinner, less visibly muscular bodies.

So...I turned on Peacock's 4 hours of Women's Dinghy coverage. The announcer was terrible. He didn't explain anything. And he was solo, so there was a lot of dead air. Also, Dinghy looks fun.

If we look at the fun Jordan and Simone had with Rebecca on the podium, it’s pretty clear she’s fine with it. Simone is 27 and has already shown the world she values her own mental health over medals of any kind.

I was thrilled for Alice on beam and after all the work Rebecca has put in, she deserved that gold.

Simone looked so happy for Rebecca. She did end on a high. I know we expect gold medals from her, but any medal is fantastic.

I support your poly relationships and wonder if I could join in.

I loved the women’s high jump. So happy for every single Ukrainian athlete. I want to have beer and wings with the Canadian hammer throw gold medalist.

What they do is difficult and requires hours and hours of training and a considerable amount of talent. Just because it’s not popular in the US doesn’t mean that the competition or the athletes should be denigrated and told it’s “not a real sport.”

Shaving 18 seconds off your own fastest time and no one being faster than that one anyway? Insanely good.

I’m getting limited feed right now and didn’t see the Dolci high bar. UGH. I’ve got Ilia on parallel right now. I know nothing about Jake Jarman, but that facial hair reminds me of guys I went to high school with trying to look edgy and cool.

Here is Simone's post. For the background, Skinner said she didn't think (other than Simone) that this team had the same work ethic/talent as prior teams and that SafeSport has made it so coaches can't really get on athletes to work harder. Simone, on Threads, said simply that some people shouldn't have a mic. Yesterday, Simone posted this. Captioning it, "lack of talent, lazy, olympic champions" https://www.instagram.com/p/C-ESNIFIQ8l/?img_index=1 Mykayla Maroney responded: It doesn’t get more iconic than this.. She f’d around n found out fr. Feels like I need to apologize just to redeem my first name Michelle Kwan: Four letter word for all the haters - G.O.A.T 🐐!!! Bravo. The comments are great!

I don't get why the producers think they need a "villain" on one of the other teams to craft a compelling narrative. The Olympic moments I treasure the most are when countries come together to support and help one another, not when the Sainted USA Athlete beats the Evil Doer.

Color me shocked that the US team is doing so well. Also add me to the bored and annoyed by Brody Malone team. Nothing can make me like him, but I want him to do well for the sake of the other guys on the team. I’m at a bar watching on their TVs.

With Peacock, I found the first 2 minutes or so of when I turn something on is a bit blurry, then it clears up. Also watching on YouTubeTV.

Reading around and it seems Marine Boyer took a bad fall at the training facility right before the competition, like a possible concussion level fall. That put the French gymnasts in a bad spot, as apparently they all saw it happen. After the competition, she was taken to be checked out and skipped interviews.

So happy for the women’s foil going USA 1/2. They were both so excited. Also, I love fencing. I did 4 classed and my left knee exploded, but I wish I had started younger.

Exactly! It was commissioned by Sforza who married a teenager then went super crazy when she died. Da Vinci painted it for money, not because he had some divine inspiration. The Last Supper is not a holy relic painted by or for a particularly pious man.

The Last Supper is an artist’s likely very incorrect imagining of a Bible story. It’s not a realistic illustration of an actual event. It’s highly unlikely that they were all same-side sitting at a long table. Ugh. I’m of the opinion that Leo would have found the whole thing to be a total hoot. Da Vinci was gay, after all.

Jaime and Brienne have many rom-com tropes! Enemies to friends. Stuck together in a road trip. Beauty and the Beast. Inverted Beauty and the Beast. Dreaming of each other. Insulting nicknames. Jaime cracks the jaw of a guy who speaks ill of Brienne. Jaime jumps in a bear pit, unarmed, to save Brienne. When she asks why he did it, his answer, “I dreamed of you.” That’s some romance. The ASoIaF canon is so damn dark and depressing. There is only so much that can be done within it, and it’s unfinished. How many takes on Lady Stoneheart can there be? (Answer, a LOT.) Not that I’ve done a study or a poll, but it seems to be the JB authors start with canon and then find it restrictive and move into different AUs. There are some fantastic regency AUs. There is a great baseball AU. A The Americans AU. A Remington Steele AU. I could go on. There is a fandom joke that absolutely anything can be made into a Jaime and Brienne story. The fantasy football one, Stannis is the league commissioner and they are all vying for the Iron Throne trophy. It’s done in like a discord chat and has around 2 dozen characters who all manage to have their own story threads. One line that cracks me up every time is Ned is asked by someone about why Catelyn’s sister doesn’t like him, and he answers that they bottle fed their kids. (iykyk) It’s so perfect and reads so deadpan. In the fandom, I also think the AUs give the writers a chance for closure of the Jaime and Brienne story without having to tackle the nightmare that is ASoIaF Endgame. I mean, even George Martin is too intimidated by Endgame to finish his own damn series. There are some insanely high quality writers. I’m just braggin’ on them.

I’m with you. The illusion fabric on the sleeves is thick and wrinkly and the Basque waist is dated. The flower appliqués look like they were made from wrinkly bed linens. Her skin looks amazing and I love the bouquet.

Life has its own angst so I've been re-reading the funny, Mod AU fics. There is a fantasy football one that is 9 fics in a series that still makes me laugh 10 years later. There are some great Hallmark movie style fics too.

In my fandom, Jaime Lannister had 7 TV show seasons and five books of character development tossed out the window for a super shitty ending, while Brienne was left to pine for his memory. It SUCKED. The fandom though is mostly supportive. The larger GoT/ASoIaF fandom has a lot of gatekeepers (mostly male) who pretty much ignore everything the author has said about Jaime and Brienne. They devalue the individual characters and mock the ship. I’ve learned to avoid those fandom spaces. Rarepairs, those are rough, because it’s hard to find fandom friends. Especially when your fandom has no new canon material being produced. I realize I’m lucky. GoT/ASoIaF has almost 100k fics and JB has over 10k of those. JB is the #1 ship in the fandom. Which is a little crazy because they didn’t even get together until the mid-point of the last season. Anyway, I’ve taken to re-reading old fics that I love.