that looks like the biggest powder puff i've ever seen in the world

I think that the Dick Button medal for personal excellence in commentary should go to Dick Button. He's a huge fan of saying that skaters have gotten their own personal medal for whatever they've done, whether it's getting up after falling badly, or landing the first throw quad salchow in the Olympics despite having a bad overall performance (and a weird, scary relationship involving a seemingly-possessive male and a v. passive female). So now I'm a huge fan of giving the Dick Button medal to all of the athletes (or friends) who I think deserve it. Like I said, Dick Button gets a medal for commentary; he was the only thing that enlivened an otherwise-excruciating session of ice dancing, except for half a dozen amusing falls in a discipline that should be easily error-free. The title of my post is a quote from Dick Button, regarding some chick's poofy, feathered skirt; my favorite Dick Button quote came during the men's competition, when he said that one skater's velvet, betassled costume was a 'distant cousin to [Dick Button's] dining room curtains'. Since Dick Button won his last medal in 1952 (54 years ago), it's amazing that he's still able to commentate, even if his commentary is usually in the weird middle ground between inane and idiot-savant.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to award a Dick Button medal to NBC. Back when they bid for and won the right to broadcast the Olympics, they were the top-rated network and could afford to spend a billion dollars on the rights. Now, they're the last network, and the company that once held the rights (CBS) is now far ahead of NBC in overall ratings. The fact that the Olympics are getting trounced by 'American Idol' really saddens me. It apparently saddens NBC too, which doesn't surprise me, since I saw a headline that said that NBC was going to give away free advertising to the Olympics sponsors because they're getting so much less traffic than they had been promised. That explains why NBC is trying to make controversies out of nothing, such as the 'feud' between Chad Hedrick and Shani Davis. The more I think about it, the more I've decided that Chad Hedrick is kind of a dick; reports indicate that Shani Davis wasn't asked to participate in the team event until the week before (long after he had planned his training regimen). And Chad kept saying that he wasn't going to beg Shani to skate with *him*, not with the team--which proves to me that Chad cared more about keeping his own goal of five gold medals alive than he did about getting a team gold. And if Shani was tired for the race last night after the team event, it would have given Chad more of an even playing field with him as well. Anyway, I was really pleased to see that Shani wasn't quite as obnoxious and idiotic in his interview tonight as he was in his interview last night, even if it's too late to save his reputation with most of the ten Americans who are currently watching the Olympics.

I would like to withhold the Dick Button medal from all ice dancers, except for the ones who wiped out after tripping on their own feet. But why, why do all the women look like 80s-style strippers? They've cut away as much bodice as possible, their hair is completely teased out, and everything is covered in sparkles and feathers. Don't get me wrong, I love sparkles and feathers, but most of those costumes are hideous at best and immoral at worst. I say immoral only because many of the moves require the guy to put his hand somewhere v. close to the woman's crotch, and the lack of covering leaves little to the imagination. Ugh. If the women were prettier and the guys looked less sleazy, it might be okay. Personally, though, I think it's crap that NBC showed so much ice dance tonight. A couple of major ski events were postponed due to snow, and so NBC filled the block in tonight's five hours of programming by adding ice dance. Where's the curling? Where's more cross country? Where's the biathlon? Then again, NBC's probably asking, 'Where are the viewers?' So if they know that ice dancing brings in more people than it loses, I guess they have a good idea going there. I'm still devastated though.

It's four a.m. and luckily I don't have to go to work today; so now I'm going to go to bed, and try to get up in a few hours to run some errands and do some work. Tomorrow night's coverage should be slightly better--and if nothing else, humanity will get the Dick Button medal for making it through another Olympic ice dancing competition. Let's not count our chickens before they hatch, though; if I were God and had the power to flood the earth, I might conveniently forget my promise not to do it again if I spent too much time watching ice dance. If anthropologists in the future document our Olympic Games and research ice dancing, they will come to the same conclusion that I have--when bastardized ballroom dancing on ice qualifies as a legitimate career choice, the West has once again reached the level of decadence attained by ancient Rome. America may still be too puritanical to allow men to have young male companions, and we may not get to wear the cool laurel wreaths, but what we lack in homoeroticism, we make up for with sparkles and Spandex. Hot! If the apocalypse doesn't come tomorrow, the Olympics are going to rock.