Alyssa Liu, Hell Yeah! Olympic Notes 3

1

I was trying to explain to my kids about Alyssa Liu.  I normally loathe the tiny featurettes that showcase the backgrounds of the (only) American athletes at Olympic games (summer or winter), but I happen to put eyes on the complete four minute feature for the figure skater out of Oakland.

She was the youngest national champion? At 13? I've since seen that 2019 routine in Detroit...a little girl kicks ass at some highly difficult and highly technical things. It's...cool. The tension gets to her as she comes off the ice, and then again once her score is announced (first place! national champion!) and the tears flow both times. But she was a kid.

In 2022 she was at the games in Beijing, and she came in 6th or 8th, but, at 16, at her first Olympics, she showed up and did well, but didn't medal.

And then she quit. Retired...whatever. She wanted her life back. She traveled to Everest base camp. She pierced her own frenulum. It was on a skiing trip where she felt a kind of exhilaration, the kind of exhilaration that she used to get from skating, and so she decided to go back to skating.

I only summarize the video and common knowledge to give the context for trying to explain to my kids how this girls is so free, how she cares so little for placement and medals and tension, who only wants to show off what she is capable of. Unafraid of the results is when you'll be truly relaxed, when your brain is finally convinced it's not life or death, you can be free. Peak performance has such a better chance to follow when this level of zen is achieved.

Just look at how relaxed and chillin' she is:

This is from an interview with Mike Tirico after the event, and I get that it's easier to be relaxed after winning. She's wearing the gold medal, because of course. Watching her skate---both the short program and the free-skate---was such an experience when you see them in the context of everyone else. Stress...life or death...tears...tears of relief versus tears of gut-wrench...a weary stoicism...the gamut of post-skate emotions runs the relief-to-heartbreak racetrack.

Except for Alyssa. And that was what I wanted my kids to get, to feel. The lightness and the smiles and the relaxation. It may not be the only way to reach peak performance, but it's surely the emotionally healthiest.

All that, and I tend to support and follow my Nor-Cal people...your Marshawn Lynches, Dame Lilliards...even Aaron Rodgers up to a certain point. Add Alyssa Liu to the list!

2

A few years back I felt like NBC's coverage was about shoving snowboarding events down our gullets. I think it was early in the X-Games-ification of the Winter Olympics. Now with being able to stream the events I want to watch (Alpine skiing, short-track, women's figure skating), it seems like having curling shoved down our gullets this year is easier to mitigate. 

I mean, curling's cool and all, but yeesh...

3

Random things to finish up thoughts on Winter Olympics: 

1. Did you know that when you cross-country ski your heart rate is up to about 90% capacity? About 90% of what it can do as a human? WTF?
2. If I can stream the events that have passed, how come I can't stream ice dancing? Not that I want to, but I know it's impossible to find anyone other than the one American team...

One last thought that get's it's own bullet point:

• I heard the Winter Olympics described as: the overlapping of two supremely weird groups: the mountain people and the rich people.

Can you imagine? To be a giant slalom skier takes...money for outfits and skis and passes for the mountain. To be a sprinter you need...feet? Space to run? Jamaica is the top per-capita sprint running nation in the world. Would it be surprising that "poorest" slalom olympian in Cortina this year would probably eclipse the most well-to-do Jamaican sprinter is terms of financial security?

Skates of the Season: Olympic Notes 2

I love the differences in the same basic things. It's a nerdy proclivity I have. Anyway, I think I have a new favorite spectator Winter Olympic sport. All in due time...

I've been ice skating before! I even got Corrie ice skates for Decemberween! In both instances---the skates I got for Corrie and the skates I rented when I went skating---were of the figure skating variety.

Marc, one of our New York people (and star of the first year of this blog), had hockey skates and while I checked them out, I never wore them. I did, though, mentally spaz out at the differences and similarities between their designs:

Hockey

Figure Skating

But there's another style of skating I remember usually most often every four years: speed skating. And their skates are wild:

Speed Skating

I even found this cool graphic, and it's the kind of thing I would have enjoyed putting together myself if I was 1) more knowledgable about ice skating, and 2) artistically inclined for infographics:

But then I saw the different comparison chart/infographic. And it has the different styles for the different kinds of speed skating: so-called "speed" and "short track":

And that brings me to short track speed skating.

This could be the best thing to watch. There is a stressful pace, a ramping up of speed, true danger, cramped spaces, and a muted physicality that belies the awesome punitive and draconian rules: if you make a mistake and knock someone out, you get penalized and they move on. The finals of one 13.5 lap races (the 1500m) had 9(!) racers, because 3 had been 'advanced' because of other people's mistakes in earlier races. I rewatched it with Cass, and it had both of us wobbling on the couch like we were watching that chase scene from OBAA.

Also, shout-out to the Korean 17 year old half-pipe snowboard gold medalist, Ga on Choi. She beat her mentor and the heavily favored American Chloe Kim (from Torrance! (local shout-out)) after taking a terrible spill in a practice run, nearly doing a header on the way down from a big move.

She came back and nailed some huge moves and took home the gold. Chloe, to her credit, was very excited and ran over to embrace the newly gold-crowned and sobbing teenager.

Downhill alpine skiing and short-track speed skating are two of my new favorite things...

Random Comic Notes

I came across something when I was looking at something else with Cass, and that led to this and then that, and at some point I was putting in a tiny bid on Ebay for the first 8 issues of a comic from 1990, DC's Shade, the Changing Man.

I'd heard about this comic over the years, and the time came for me to make a purchase.

The comics are, to say the least...strange. There was a comic that came out recently that made me think the same kind of thing: 'Well, this is weird.'

Look at these covers, about 35 years apart:

That Shade cover, from 1990, is one of the classic mainstream-WTF covers from any era:

I only bring it up now, and am comparing these two, completely unconnected comic storylines, because they shared a spot in my head. I tried explaining Shade to Cass, to Corrie, to my dad and brother...and I struggled.

If, in 1990, you picked up a Superman comic, or a Batman comic, or the X-Men or Spiderman...if you picked up a comic from one of those main companies, you'd have a pretty good idea of what to expect, and even what you're looking at.

My mother would occasionally buy me little lots of comics from Ebay or Amazon once she found out that I was giving my old, 90s-era comics out as prizes. These were full of era-specific dreck, surely, but the idea remained true: you could tell pretty much what was happening or what was going to happen.

And that's where this Shade title comes along and messes all that up. Just look at this collage of the first 8 issues. Does this look like anything from 1990, besides the digital backgrounds of television commercials?

It's not like you can randomly pick up issue 4 and have any idea what happened before and what will be happening later...or even just WTF you're looking at right then.

Even the description defies sanity: Rac Shade is from another planet, and has been sent to Earth, but needs his madness vest to help him cross the Madness Zone, and while his body seems to be stuck in the Madness Zone, he has been implanted into the body of someone about to die, but not just anyone: he's been put into the body of newly executed serial killer and needs the daughter of the killer's most recent victims to believe him and help him regain his memory and powers.

Anyway...JFK's assassination plays a prominent role in the first story arc...so, there's that...

Now, Bleeding Hearts exists not because of comics like Shade, but rather they are created in a world where comics like Shade effected the readers-who-become-creators...well, maybe those things are the same.

This comic shows the kinds of stories that comics can do. Action movies can do some of these same things, surely, and novels too, I guess but...sequential art is like the sandbox for these whacky stories.

The main character, Poke, seen there on the cover, is a zombie in a horde that has a name that I can't recall at the moment. 'Poke' is short for something like 'mouse-pokes-hole-in-head' and his buddy Mush is a zombie with mushrooms growing all over his neck and shoulder. The central conflict, as their portion of the horde corners a group of survivors and, er, makes a meal out of them, is that poke's heart has started beating again. And he's not sure what to do, besides certainly not telling his buddies.

That kind of story isn't about using madness as the magic with which to exact or extract results---like Rac Shade's adventures. But in what world could it exist? One that had madness used as a plot point?

Olympic Notes, 2026

1

I had a conspiracy moment the other night, late night, watching the ladies dual moguls. This is the first year of the ladies dual moguls as an Olympic event. Moguls is a downhill ski race that has two jumps and all the bump-bump-bumps between the jumps. It's exhausting to watch.

The other night, and it was late remember, the first thing that seemed peculiar to me was that there were three skiers that had byes, and had no competition to get to round 2. Cool, that's the gravy of being one of the highest rated athletes. They were all American. Cool.

As the competition progressed, there were inevitably crashes...and it seemed crazier and crazier that the crash outs were against the American ladies. Every time it seemed like an American was going against a competitor, the competitor would go cockeyed at the first bump. One time I even called it: "Watch: that girl in the dark kit is gonna washout---oh no, jeeze, bummer!" One time the competition went around a flag, which is an automatic loss, and the announcer were like, "She just...just didn't cut back, I can't understand---" and at that moment, the American lady crashed hard. She got back up, moseyed on down the mountain slowly, came in far after the other lady and still advanced.

An American got to the gold medal match by having her competition washout, and the Aussie that made it beat a different American. Then the Aussie won the gold. The bronze was awarded to the American girl who scored better than the French girl, because winning the race isn't the whole game, and she did not win the race. It was peculiar and triggered by BS meter. But...it was late...

2

Curling is cool and all, but dang! So much curling on television! Why is it curling and not figure skating? It seemed like curling has been the default programming. It's slow but not devoid of entertainment, but it can really make your eyelids heavy,

3

I had to look it up: Super G is a souped up version of Giant Slalom, which itself is a souped up version of Slalom. This is the downhill skiing of my imagination: the sweeping turns and absurd speeds (SEVENTY MILES AN HOUR ON STICKS ATTACHED TO YOU FEET?) and 'just-survive-once-again' vibes. Slalom is that, but Giant Slalom is faster with more turns. Super G is even faster with even more turns. Holy hell, it's crazy.

So between it---Super G---and skeleton, I've been showing the kids the most terrifying winter sports imaginable.

4

Cass: "Wait...is that a gun? And why are they skiing like that?"

5

We watched the Finnish 18 year old on Big Air (the "Hot Dog" from our Commodore 64 "Winter Olympic" video game) land on his head and then slide down the hill face first, fully knocked out. Here's hoping to him being all good. 

That was unnerving to watch.

6

I had the Quad God final spoiled by an NPR report as I drove the kids home from swim on Friday, so when we watched it that night, it was interesting to watch the Kazakh kid get his big score, and then held it for twenty minutes and five skaters.

Birthday Girls and Weather Weirdness

My February girls had their birthdays last week on consecutive days---as in the nature of the, eh, days---but some weird weather had us confused.

I know we live in Southern California, and the two days in question tend to be the coldest days of the year (in the past while we lived back east), but this year they topped 80. One may have even reached 85 or 87, depending on the gauge.

A few days later I took the kids to the aquarium, and we wore shorts and rode bikes...what is going on? I know the weather shenanigans we experience are unreal, but this is bizarre by even our standards.

I think these jaws are the same ones from the holiday card, just in a different place on the grounds:

I'm not complaining...it's just different, even for here...

Seeing Myself in a Babette Cole Book

When I was a young boy, books were an important part of learning and entertainment. One book I was given, the inscription from my Auntie Peg remains on the inside cover, was Babette Cole's "The Trouble with Mom." It's a classic, colorful tale, full of gross stuff and a weirdo/witch mom eventually saving the day and becoming an important part of the once-anxious neighborhood.

A different Babette Cole book I still have is called "The Hairy Book." I've been reading with my own kids often enough. One part we all got re-accustomed to was the "hairy dad" drawing. Whenever we get to it during a read through, I usually joke and say: Hey! Look, it's me!

The kids will laugh and say, Jeeze, dad, it is you! Camille even introduces me to her friends, and teachers, and even her friend's parents, as her "hairy daddy." I usually shrug, and smile, and gently nod.

But on this last read through, the very next page has a line about "the drink that grandpa likes best puts curly hairs on his chest,: and has the following picture:

When we turned the page from hairy dad to this shirtless grandpa the other night, Camille squealed and said: "Wow! That's even more you!"

More crestfallen than amused, all I could say was, "That's...less flattering..." while Corrie choked on her own laughter.

I love this family!

UCLA Gymnastics

Wow, Camille won another accolade, and we were gifted another quartet of tickets to Pauley Pavilion, this time to see the home-opener for the UCLA gymnastics season. They were competing against Nebraska, both schools being odd members of the Big 10, historically at least. But here we are.

And there we were! It was general admission, so we found a front row seat up on the second level, which, despite the photo, felt right up on the action.

The way it worked was: one school would do one event while the other school did a different event, and once each school's six (or seven) competitors were done, they would switch. Once the six or seven were done again, they would move across the floor and repeat the process with two new events. First: UCLA had the vault and Nebraska has the uneven bars. After they finished and switched, UCLA had the balance beam and Nebraska had the floor routine. We watched the first set of rotations, but left about halfway through the second set, when UCLA was on the floor routine and Nebraska was on the balance beam.

One cool thing was that we got to see American gymnast star Jordan Chiles land a spectacular vault, crushing a 10 out of 10:

During Camille's gymnastics winter extravaganza, the balance beam gives me the most anxiety, but this time it wasn't as nerve-wracking...maybe because they're super professional and badass:

Whoa...in the past fifty days we've been to Pauley Pavilion twice. It's both pretty weird and pretty awesome.

Uneven bars are incredible to watch in person, by the by. All of these events are, really.