Hollywoodland

And I ain’t working for free. *g*

The sun is shining today. But it’s turned off cold again. Oh well, it IS still February.

This day in history:

• In 1889, director Victor Fleming was born. He’s best known for the movies The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind.

Tonight on TV, we have a new episode of Lost and three new interesting things on NatGeo: The Truth Behind Crop Circles, a new series called Paranatural and on Explorer, an episode about vampire forensics. Yes, you read that right. Vampire Forensics. Plus on tonight’s Olympics, ladies’ figure skating short program, women’s bobsled, women’s ski cross medal round and Nordic skiing team event.

Did a bit of tweaking but while the Olympics are going on, I’m just not feeling the love for writing.

Reading: Finished up Vampire Sunrise which was great! Hope we get more! Now I’m reading Town in a Blueberry Jam by B. B. Haywood. This is Haywood’s debut mystery and it’s very good.

And here’s the Olympics report!

The main thing that happened last night was the ice dancing free dance programs. So that’s all I’m going to discuss today.

The first U.S. team to skate was Emily Samuelson & Evan Bates. It was their first Olympics and they skated an amazing program. Scored their personal best. They’ll be a force to be reckoned with in 2014, I think. This year they finished in 11th place.

Great Britain’s brother/sister team of Sinead & John Kerr skated to Linkin Park‘s Krwlng which I thought was an odd choice of music. But their program was actually pretty good even if I didn’t like the music. They ended up in 8th place.

From France, Isabelle Delobel & Olivier Schoenfelder (and how weird is it that I could spell his last name and not hers???) knew they were out of medal contention, but they skated their hearts out with their beautiful farewell performance. They’re retiring now. They finished in 6th place.

The Italians, Federica Faiella & Massimo Scali were…. frankly, I don’t even remember their performance. They finished in 5th place, however.

Meryl Davis & Charlie White of the U.S., my personal favorites, skated their beautiful, breathtaking program to Phantom of the Opera. They were the first of the final five pairs to skate (and this was also their first Olympics) and they threw down the gauntlet. They also scored their personal best.

The U.S.’s Tanith Belbin & Ben Agosto had a gorgeous performance, too. Though I found their choice of music odd. They skated to Ave Maria and Amen.

Canada’s Tessa Virtue & Scott Moir’s performance was stunning. They skated to Symphony No 5 by Mahler. Being the hometown team, as it were, they brought down the house. They were also first-time Olympians and scored a personal best.

The final skaters of the evening were Russia’s Oksana Domnina & Maxim Shabalin. They skated to some freaky weird music called The Double Life of Veronique. And their costumes were controversial, having ropes tied around their bodies which they used in their lifts. To me, that smacks of cheating. And NBC’s expert announcer, Tracy Wilson, said she fully expected the rules would change starting next season not allowing anything like that. As well they should. I did not like their performance. It was just too weird.

And now for how the final four finished. I was hoping against hope that we’d have a North American sweep. Unfortunately, the judges scored the Russians slightly higher than Belbin & Agosto to give them the bronze medal.

On the plus side, that means two North American couples won top honors. Davis & White won the silver and Canada’s Virtue & Moir won the gold!!! In the entire history of ice dancing, only Europeans have won gold. Usually the Russians, although Britain’s Torvill & Dean won in the 1984 Olympics.

So, while I was hoping Davis & White would win the gold, I’m very okay with Canada winning. I even hummed along when O Canada was played during the medal ceremony.

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