KJ

The Great British Baking Show: Caught up! I can hardly believe it. ( Spoilers )

We still haven't watched the holiday specials yet -- are those any good? It's still so weird to think we now have to wait for the next series with the rest of the world.

The Morning Show, Season 2: I've always had some trouble deciding how I feel about this show. Sometimes it seems to be crafting redemption arcs for characters who are unredeemable -- but are they unredeemable? What messages are they trying to send? How many social issues and character arcs are too many to juggle at once? Certainly this second season bit off a lot, and I'm not convinced it always succeeded in chewing. Racism and racial insensitivity among media professionals; "cancel culture"; the fallout from sexual harassment scandals and who does and does not take accountability; the difficulty of escaping toxic relationships (Bradley and her family, Chip and Alex); the realities of being an LGBTQ public figure; bullying; the looming threat of COVID-19.... All this, and I still feel like I'm forgetting something. Even half of that would've been plenty for a 10-episode season. Try to do too much, and you run the risk of not doing any of it well.

I do want to go into spoilery detail on one plot line, and that’s Mitch. ( “Spoilers )

2022 Winter Olympics: Much as I enjoy watching the Olympics, it feels harder to support them as an institution every time. The Uyghur genocide, the pandemic, the Russian figure skating doping scandal -- and I think it's time to admit that whatever punishment the IOC was trying to impose on Russia by forcing their athletes to compete as the "Russian Olympic Team", it doesn't seem to have worked (witness Putin's pleased, almost smug expression as the Russians took the stage at the opening ceremonies) -- the dangers of the fake snow, the looming threat to Ukraine... it's a lot to ignore. So I try not to ignore it, but to watch with all of these issues in mind as context. There were still some amazing moments -- Nathan Chen's electrifying performance will long stick in my mind -- and I had fun watching. But I do wonder how much longer the Olympics will survive in their current form.

Tonight, in the men's 400 meter freestyle, an 18-year-old kid named Ahmed Hafnaoui from Tunisia, who was the eighth qualifier out of eight and was so not considered to be a factor that the NBC announcers didn't even mention his name until about halfway through the race, came out of nowhere to win the gold medal by 0.16 seconds.

He's only the second athlete from Tunisia to win a gold medal for swimming, and it's the fifth Olympic gold medal for any Tunisian athlete ever.

These are the stories, the moments, I watch for. You can see the whole race here -- it's only about four minutes. The amazement in the announcers voices. The look on Ahmed's face when he realized he'd won. This, for me, is what it's all about.

1. Well I sure haven't been around much lately, have I? Does that even count as a thing, or is it just making an observation? Well, anyway, hello. I feel like I am only just now digging myself out of the pit that the flu dug for me. I started coughing on Sunday, 1/21, came home early from work the next day, and didn't leave the house again until Saturday. It was about another week and a half before I started feeling even vaguely close to my normal energy levels again. I'm close enough to entirely recovered now, but I still got very behind on life, and I sort of despair of ever catching up. Can we call a flier on the last four weeks and start over?

2. Olympics time! I kind of wish the Olympics had been two weeks ago because then I would have at least had something to do while I was lying on the couch all day. Anyway, I don't really understand this team figure skating event thing (I found this explanation from Deadspin helpful, but that doesn't tell me why they decided to do it, unless it was NBC going to the IOC and saying "figure skating brings in the best ratings, figure out a way to give us more of it")https://deadspin.com/how-seriously-should-we-take-figure-skatings-team-event-1822840248/amp, but there are worse ways to spend a couple of weekend days than watching a lot of pretty people do pretty things on ice. The Canadian ice dancers, Virtue and Moir, were like a level up to everyone else -- I loved everything about their act, from the choreography to the music choices to their attitudes. It was also pretty amazing to witness not just watch Mirai Nagasu hit her triple axel, but the reaction of the commentators, the crowd, and her fellow figure skaters to the feat. Secretly, though, I think my favorite performance of the team competition was the Italian figure skating pair, Valentina Marchei and Ondrej Hotarek. They absolutely nailed their performance, and they knew it, too. I'm sure a publicly available video will go up some day, and I hope I remember to post a link when it does.

3. However, I won't get to watch as much Olympics as usual this year, because on Thursday, T and I are heading off for a week! We'll be driving down to Los Angeles to visit museums and see a couple of his friends. Then we'll take a slightly longer drive back, stopping overnight in Paso Robles and doing some sightseeing along the way. I love road trips, so I'm happy to even be getting a mini one.

4. I neglected to mention here that the ladybusiness Hugo recommendation list went up last week. If you're interested in what several of the editors are planning to put on our nomination ballots, check it out! Unfortunately, it's too late to sign up to nominate (the WSFS changed the rules and you now have to register by the end of the year, a change that was not well publicized), but if you want to vote on the final ballot, you can still join in.

5. I just discovered that TPR, one of my favorite game music remix artists, recently (well, not quite a year ago) put out an album of music inspired by Kingdom Hearts. It has been my companion for the last few days, along with some of his other collections. Definitely worth checking out his work if you enjoy downbeat and dreamy takes on game music. You will never think of the Shoopuf theme from FFX the same way again.

So Beijing is 12 hours ahead of the East Coast, which puts it 9 hours ahead of California. This means that all the events that the US negotiated with China to have in the late morning -- Michael Phelps's swimming finals, gymnastics events -- so that they could be shown before midnight on the East Coast could actually be live on the West Coast during prime-time -- 7pm, 8pm. Sounds perfect, right?

Except that the programming genuises at NBC decided that it would be oh so much better to tape-delay coverage so that we're on the same schedule. So we wait, and dodge spoilers on the Internet, and it's way irritating.

I wonder how they'll work it with London in 2012? I suppose they'll figure out some other phenomenally stupid way of doing it.

Thoughts on the first few days of Olympic watching...

* The secret to happiness is low expectations. The American men's gymnastics team guarantees themselves a silver medal, and they are ecstatic. You can see their happiness on the medal stand at earning second place in the world. The women have the exact same result, a silver medal, and the disappointment on their faces is plain. Four years ago, I remember Svetlana Khorkina ripping the silver medal from her body in disgust after the ceremony in Sydney. Last night, I watched her jump with joy over the bronze. Is it maturity, or is it lessened expectations? Until last night, the media talked about Michael Phelps' Olympics as a failure because only one of his three medals was gold. (Of course, after that easy 200M 'fly and that thrilling 800M relay, his percentage is looking much better this morning.)

* Is Svetlana Khorkina human? Never have I seen such skinny arms and legs on a person. They look like they could snap at any time, especially when she makes a hard landing. I also don't think I ever saw her look anything but angry in five years, until she hit that floor routine last night. Then she lit up with a smile, and it didn't go away for the rest of the night. And then I saw why she has a modeling career.

* I love the congeniality in the swimming pool. In no other sport do the competitors congratulate each other immediately after every race and seem to mean it. Those hugs and handshakes in the pool look genuine to me, anyway. It's the great thing about the US-Australia rivalry -- the competition is fierce, everyone involved truly wants to win, but (serious-looking NBC interviews with blank backgrounds aside) it seems to be all in good fun. As some columnist I read this week put it (King Kaufman I think), you get the impression that there are "no hard feelings over a pint afterwards."

* Sigh, Ian Thorpe. Is there a more beautiful smile in all of Greece this week? I really don't think so.

* I know that avoiding spoilers was going to be difficult, but I didn't expect to turn on NPR on Monday afternoon and learn not only the outcome of the Thorpe-Phelps-van den Hoogenband race that day but to hear that Thorpe caught vdH in a dramatic finish. Sucked all the excitement out of the race for me. Do I have to go on a total media fast for the next week and a half? Sheesh.

(Hee hee, LJ spellcheck wants to turn Hoogenband into Herringboned.)