#meetta

[moscarific]

10, 16, 19?

10. I was born at the height of the original disco trend, so no, I haven’t been to a disco. But I’ve been to lots of gay bars where they played disco. I have heard the chimes at midnight, and I was drunkenly shouting along while they played “I Will Survive.”

16. I was studying in England during 1999-2000, but I was back in the States for a visit. I’m pretty sure I was at my parents’ house but had a bunch of high school friends over. Probably, this was driven at least in part by the availability of beer: I was legal to drink in Europe but not in the US, so my parents were like, do what you want, just don’t leave the house. I don’t think anyone even got that drunk because nobody wanted to be that person.

19. I don’t get this question. Like, is it worth the effort of registering my car, getting a city sticker, keeping the vehicle in good repair, and driving carefully, in exchange for the privilege of driving a car? Well, yes, but that has more to do with maintaining a civilized society than adulthood, and I could also opt out of those responsibilities and take public transportation. Is it worth paying municipal taxes so the city can provide me with clean water, a safe park to run in, and a library system that’s in many ways superior to the university libraries I’ve used? Well, when I put it that way, obviously, but kids use all those privileges too, under the assumption that they’ll grow up and contribute to those systems someday as well. If I refused to get a job, there would be enough social and family support for me to eat and not be homeless (another kind of privilege that isn’t about adulthood per se), but having a job means I get to have IceNetwork and new comic books. So yeah, the responsibilities of life are worth the benefit, but not in the way I think this question is asking.

[sywtwfs]

meetta replied to your post “Not sure whether you have talked about this or not, so if so I'm...”

They can penalize for pre-rotation, if clear enough, see for ex the TP handbook under Cheated take-off: "A clear forward (backward for Axel type jump) take-off will be considered as a downgraded jump."

You're right! It slipped my mind because penalties for pre-rotations don't appear all that often. But they do exist. My bad.

This is what the handbook says, in case anyone's interested:

A clear forward (backward for Axel type jump) take-off will be considered as a downgraded jump. The toe loop is the most commonly cheated on take-off jump.

The TP may only watch the replay in regular speed to determine the cheat and downgrade on the take off (more often in combinations or sequences).

[moscarific]

Does Brooklyn Nine-Nine count as one of your fandoms? If yes, that.

I wrote fic in it for two consecutive Yuletides! So, yes.

lowkey otp: Holt/Kevin. Lowkey in the sense that it’s canon, so I don’t have to work hard to ship it.

highkey notp: Pretty sure the creepy Rosa/Boyle crap from season 1 even squicked the writers.

[softly] don’t notp: A small, strange part of me wants Gina and Boyle to get back together.

highkey otp but i’m scared of saying it because it’s not a very popular choice: I don’t think I have one for this fandom. Like, everyone non-secretly ships Hitchcock and Scully, right?

highkey otp and anyone on my tumblr knows it: Amy/Rosa. They’re like a ‘90s femslash trope revival, and I live for it.

[moscarific]

3, 5, 20, 29?

3. list your fandoms and one character from each that you identify with.

Since I have a few bajillion fandoms, let’s stick to the ones I’m active in now.

Figure Skating RPF: Not sure if I identify with anyone, per se, especially in the current crop. I like writing about the skaters because I have things in common with many of them, but they’re all different enough from me to make it interesting. Also, they’re all a lot younger than me. 

Marvel Cinematic Universe: Tony Stark, even more now that I spend most of my life doing research while listening to loud rock music and trying to get my cats to obey me.

Marvel 616: Hank McCoy, forever.

Firefly: People associate me with Kaylee a lot, but I always felt more affinity with Inara. And Jayne is pretty much the human embodiment of my id.

5. do you think of yourself as a human being or a human doing? do you identify yourself by the things you do?

I don’t really understand this question. I think we’re the sum of our experiences/accomplishments and our potential/aspirations. And that there are parts of our personality that are either embedded in our brain chemistry or so ingrained by a lifetime of reinforcement that we can compensate for them but not change them. What I do in the present is important to me, but the things I feel and perceive might be more important  - they’re the ways I tell myself the story of my life. I can’t put my finger on why, but this feels like a very Jewish answer.

20. would you rather be in Middle Earth, Narnia, Hogwarts, or somewhere else?

Can I choose the Star Trek universe over any of the above? I’d rather live in the future than in the past, and I find science more comforting than magic. But it’s not just the fact that the Star Trek future has air conditioning, antibiotics, and the internet - it’s that Roddenberry’s vision is full of hope.

29. three songs that you connect with right now.

Mountain at My Gates by Foals, Quiet Americans by Shearwater, New York I Love You by LCD Soundsystem. Loud, slow, dorky late-autumn music.

[thefinersports]

top 5 skating programs Based on a Musical

You had no way of knowing this, but this is basically asking me to pick the five least objectionable options from my least favorite category of skating music. That’s because I love Broadway but am as much of a hipster about it as any other kind of music. Nobody skates to the shows I want them to skate to! I mean, I understand why nobody’s doing a free skate to Next to Normal or Company, but why no Wicked or Into the Woods? 

So here’s my list of five marginally acceptable skating programs to songs from Broadway musicals.

5. Daisuke Takahashi, Phantom of the Opera free skate (2006-7)

If you absolutely insist on skating to Phantom, do it five years before it becomes an insufferable warhorse and focus on the most bombastic, discordant moments in the score. Also, be Daisuke Takahashi.

4. Sasha Cohen, “Don’t Rain on My Parade” exhibition (2005-2006)

It’s from Funny Girl, so it totally counts. Barbra + Sasha = perfection, especially that spiral sequence that goes on for about ten minutes and the fact that she ends in a full split on the ice.

3. Jeremy Abbott, “Bring Him Home” free skate (2012-13)

I don’t think Abbott ever skated this without screwing up his jumps, but it’s a beautiful, expressive piece of choreography. Recognizing that all Les Miz medleys are terrible, he stuck to the best song in that show and emoted the heck out of it.

2. Akiko Suzuki, West Side Story free skate (2009-2010)

West Side Story is my favorite musical, and Suzuki’s is the only figure skating interpretation I will accept. That step sequence at the end is practically Jerome Robbins.

1. Paul Wylie, “I Can Do That” exhibition (1987)

I cannot find video of this anywhere, save for a grainy .avi on my own hard drive, from back in the days before YouTube when people traded video clips on semi-secret message boards. This pains my heart, because it is awesome, with giant Russian splits and fake tap dancing. It’s also the perfect song for a men’s figure skater.

[thefinersports]

meetta replied to your post:

@meetta replied to your post:Hey, re: ’“I Can’t...

(Also I guess the 6/8 default may have come from the ballroom tradition and/or the classic Viennese pieces with 6/8 and/or some of the relevant CDs working in effect on a six-count, but who even knows. ISU has always had ¾ for all, I think. Maybe.)

and also:

What I wanted to ask, tho, was if I’m supposed to be hearing any of the 4/4 other than where it coincides on the 1st of the triplets (i.e. sort of functionally as 12/8, as it were), those syncopations aside, bc that I still can’t. 

All of the classic Viennese waltzes I know of - by which I think you mean Strauss et. al.? - are in three, not six. I don’t know enough about ballroom tradition to speak to the six-count, but generally when you’re learning choreography in contemporary or jazz, you divide up choreo into two-measure phrases. So you do a six-count for music that’s in three (”one two three, two two three” or “ONE two three FOUR five six”) and an eight-count for music that’s in four. If I were counting off a song in 6/8, I’d do a subdivided four-count: “one-and-a, two-and-a, three-and-a, four-and-a.” 

As for the 4/4 in “Can’t Help Falling in Love with You,” the other place you hear the rhythm is in the melody. There are places where quarter and eighth notes run up against the triplets, like the “only” in “Only fools rush in,” and there’s a bit of rhythmic dissonance that sounds really cool. It’s subtle, though. Until I read the sheet music, I didn’t realize it was in 4/4. I could just hear that it wasn’t in waltz time and couldn’t figure out why.

[thefinersports]

@meetta replied to your post:Hey, re: '"I Can't Help Falling in Love with You"...

The, uh, whatever the non-boomy drum is called in English? is also in p. clearly in 6/8? (Also, as further side note, for ex the US rules for ice dance at least used to consider 6/8 the default signature for Ravensburger & co., iirc. (ISU doesn’t.))

Hang on, let me put on my hardcore band geek hat.

I re-listened to a better audio version, and you’re right, there are triplets in the snare line for most of the song. It cuts out a few times and goes into a syncopated four, but not often. The bass parts (drum and I think an upright bass?) are still giving 4/4 rhythm, though. You can read it as 12/8, I guess, but all the sheet music I’ve seen (and oh, did I look before writing that post) puts it in four with triplets. It’s definitely not in six, which would have twice as many downbeats. 

Interesting that USFSA used to designate 6/8 as the default for fast waltzes. Most of the classical and Broadway pieces being used this season are in a true 3/4, and all of the pop songs are in either three or twelve, so clearly that rule has been done away with. Again, you can waltz to a song in six or twelve, you’re just not getting the same emphatic downbeat for each three count.

I feel a dorky compulsive need to link to this 1970s Elvis show, where the tempo of “Can’t Help Falling in Love with You” is sped up to chipmunk and the drummer has no choice but to stick with a syncopated four for most of it. Speeding the song up shows that it is fundamentally in four, though.

This is making me admire WeaPo even more for Ravensburgering such a time signature nightmare. 

[thefinersports]

Hey, re: '"I Can't Help Falling in Love with You" is in 4/4.' in the Finlandia SD post - while there are 4/4 versions of it, W&P are using a 6/8 (or 12/8, I don't actually know which one it officially is) one, no?

No, they’re skating to the Elvis original, and it’s in four. There’s a triplet structure in the piano riff that makes it sound like it’s in three, but the rhythm line (percussion/bass) is in 4/4. Listen to the song again and keep your ears on the drums, not the piano, and you’ll hear it. 

A little Google-fu shows that pro ballroom dancers do consider it to be a Viennese waltz anyway. It’s possible for skilled dancers to line up a waltz to the triplets, or to the threes in a slow 6/8 or 12/8 song. But a true waltz (in 3/4) has a stronger downbeat to line up with rhythmically. Skaters are making it harder for themselves to stay on the beat when they waltz to music that isn’t in 3/4. Since the Ravensburger Waltz seems designed to create timing issues, that’s a disadvantage I wouldn’t want to create for myself, if I were them.

But I’m a former band geek, not an ice dancer, so I’m looking at this from a different angle than they are.