… and so she is especially proud of the fact that someone reached her site by Googling the phrase: “I hate Michelle Kwan.”
Special Ops does too. Welcome to the dark side, anonymous Googler.
Even just looking at that photo of Kwan makes Special Ops angry.
Great comments section in that old post, too – although there are (of course) a couple of humorless literal-minded people who show up, people who never seem to get into the SPIRIT of any given discussion (The best humorless uppity comment is: “are you going to criticize Sasha Cohen, too, or does she have special rights??” Some people are literally too sensitive to live.). Special Ops, with her cold logical heart, and her undying love of the Winter Olympics, felt that a general catharsis of Kwan-hatred was needed, so she took the risk that she would be misunderstood and despised.
Because this is what Special Ops is all about.
Risks, and hatred.
I admit I sometimes get giddy with delight reading my sitemeter search word entries. Some of them are truly stunning although I’m sure I’ve typed in quite a few weird word combos myself through the years. I’ve long wanted to do a post on my favorites but feared alienating those very people who did the search. After all, if they are now a faithful reader I don’t want to put them off by mentioning their embarrassing word search in a post.
But I figure since no names would be attached I guess it wouldn’t be that bad. But just so you know people all over the world are constantly searching for naked photos of stars from Hollywood’s Golden Era. I mean, just take any classic actor or actress, insert the words “naked”, “tits”, “dick” etc. after their name and you’ve accounted for more than half the random searches that lead people to my pages. I’m thinking maybe I should start some kind of Golden Era Porn extension to Cinema Styles but outside of Clara Bow and Hedy Lamarr I got nothing to put on it.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!! I used to really like her, but then got sick of the whole entitled “I am an artist, here is my ever-ready smile of pretentious joy as I glide around” thing.
Sorry, I tried. I tried for five minutes straight.
I can’t hate this picture.
wutzizname:
Special Ops does not need agreement on this issue. So there is no need to TRY to hate anything if you don’t hate it already. Special Ops’ hate is organic, and comes from her heart.
Kate – yeah, i got so sick of her psychodrama!! So you didn’t win a Gold medal. Big whup. Get over it, Kwan.
I know I shouldnt but I kind of gave up on watching the Winter Olympics after the Tanya Harding stupidity…and how whats her name (the one that Tanya was interested in knocking out of the picture – can’t. remember. her. name!!!) capitalized EVERY SINGLE F’ING MOMENT of it. And there was Oksana Baiul flitting across the ice like a little winter fairy, while Whats Her Face lumbered across the ice like some Budweiser Clydesdale. I FELT the ground rumble every time she came down on her foot after some twirl or another…and there was Oksana Baiul, DANCING like the whole rink was her ballroom…and yet Whats Her Name got all the attention because she was the Poor Victim Of Nasty Tanya….
Nancy Kerrigan!
THATS the name. HER.
I hated her.
Kwan WHO?! *groan*
Bloggers sleep peacefully in their beds because Special Ops stands ready to do hatred on their behalf.
You have the thanks of a grateful Internet!
I got swept up in the Sasha Cohen thing – and Irina Slutskaya – now there’s a skater I can feel for. Great athlete. Probably won’t get a gold medal. There’s something about her I like.
Have I written a post about the haikus Mitchell and I wrote in honor of the Kerrigan/Harding winter olympics? We were OBSESSED with the Olympics (still are), and also obsessed with haikus at that moment in time – so we wrote haikus about EVERY ATHLETE – not just the skaters. We wrote haikus for lugers, and downhill skiers, we wrote haikus for everyone.
I just read your old post and somebody’s comment included the phrase: “and shut up Dick Button” I am laughing OUT LOUD right now! Personally, I much prefer the slavic, eyelinered, d.u.i. type skaters.
Jackie – HAHAHAHAHA Everyone got so worked up – it’s so awesome.
And please, let us never forget:
I haf a name! It’s Lillyhammer!!!!
Also, this particular comment from my friend Stevie makes me laugh out loud:
//I thought Janet Lynn (Peggy Fleming’s successor) was a slow-moving dipsy doodle, and I swerved mightily from the rest of the country when I didn’t jump on the Dorothy Hamill bandwagon. Wedge smedge. //
hahahahahaha
waaaaaaaaaaaah! Leelee – hahhhhhhhhma.
//Leelee – hahhhhhhhhma//
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
How ’bout when it morphed to Lillyhamm-U.
Like, Mitchell – what?
“I haf a name …. itttsssssssaaa Lillee–hammmmU.”
God, what was I *on* in February 2006? I was HILARIOUS! I need to get back on THOSE meds. ;)
(Oh, love the picture of the Bobby Sands mural. ::runs away from Emily::)
Where is that picture?? In my Flickr banner? I don’t see it anywhere. I wish I had had my good camera back then – because you can’t walk 2 feet in Belfast without a memorial, or a huge painting on the side of someone’s house of a gun, or whatever.
Lisa – and that whole thread is hysterical!! Everyone just went INSANE.
It was in the Flickr banner, yet now it’s gone. Poor Bobby.
I don’t know if you saw it, but there’s a big one commemorating the women on the republican side that I really like. Except it’s not very flattering to any of them, which I think is odd. I mean, you venerate these women! You can’t make ’em pretty?
Well, there was that hilarious moment when Carrie was giving me directions to her house.
“Okay, then take a right when you see the chicks with the guns …”
I was in Ireland when the hunger strike was going on. I have no real memory of it – which is bizarre to me. I was aware of the hunger strikers when we were back in the US and I remember praying about them – but when I was in Ireland, and it was at its full height – I just have no memory of it.
Back to the issue at hand:
What the hell happened to Skating with the Celebrities? It was so cheesy and yet so enjoyable! The show broke up a long-term marriage in the first season alone! Let’s keep going!!
The Figure Skating Drama is what makes the Winter games so much better than the Summer games, in my opinion. Granted, Summer has the Gymnastics Drama — which is very high drama to be sure, but it ultimately finishes second, because the coaches’ contribution to said drama is much greater in figure skating. Seriously, I enjoy watching the reaction to the scores being read off as much as the routines, because that’s when you get to see the skating coaches. All that’s missing for some is Blofeld’s white cat, as they sit there, quietly seething at their charge’s worthlessness to them because the little tinkerbell turned a triple into a double. You don’t get that vibe when the coach is in a tracksuit clapping encouragingly like Jeff Van Gundy on the sideline.
Yay for the Olympics and their insane Boris and Natasha evil skating coaches!
Oh, and to the actual point of your post…your having the overall #1 Google rank for “I hate Michelle Kwan” is sublimely badass.
I’m a winter Olympics whore, and not ashamed to say it! Someday I MUST get my ass to the Olympic winter village. Considering my situation right now, that could probably be arranged … but I would have had to start organizing it a year ago. Sadly, I did not. But I want to walk around in a ski jacket and hear a million languages being spoken around me, and go see luge events at 11 in the morning and crap like that.
Here is a figure skating highlight…
My good friend Larry and I had an unscheduled run-in with the strangeness of the skating world.
A couple of years ago we were watching a playoff football game. It was not a very exciting game and on a commercial break we flipped channels to another major network.
There, in all its bizarre glory, was the special “Kenny Loggins On Ice”. Kenny, wearing a flannel shirt and grunge facial hair, rocked out while Brian Boitano and a host of others did interpretive dance/skate.
Needless to say, Larry and I were transfixed by the horror and missed the rest of the football game.
THIS WAS NOT A REPEAT FROM 1979. This was a current broadcast.
How many music artists turned this down before they settled on Kenny Loggins? What does that list look like?
Brendan, I am not lying when I say that last night while flipping through the channels I came across “The Music of Seal on Ice,” which featured Seal belting out his hits while Brian Boitano and co. skated to it.
Last year, Earth, Wind and Fire on Ice came to the local arena, too. Same formula. If Metallica on Ice ever happens, I will kill myself.
Bren – HAHAHAHA
I can so see you and Larry being totally struck dumb and having to keep watching!
I still love your commentary on the routine that Scott Hamilton did where he was in a grey conservative suit and then he whipped it off (mid-routine) and he was wearing a hippie outfit underneath.
Were you the one who told me about that??
I feel like I’ve seen it – but I actually haven’t … I think you just described it to me vividly.
Noonz – hahahahaha
I love this.
Actually, one of the skaters from China in the last Winter Olympics (or wait – maybe it was a couple – I think it was a pairs routine) – skated to “Kashmir”. It was pretty hot, actually.
I have no memory of that so I probably did see it and blocked it out.
Scott Hamilton makes my innards clench. He’s like a kid throwing a tantrum in a quiet store.
I love me a good pairs’ duo skating to Bolero.
And the tragedy of Tai and Randy.
Also, (I will shut up after this and go outside to join the world)has anyone addressed Dorothy Hammill’s current health crisis? Do you think Scot Hamilton has called her to lend moral support?
Remember last time in the ice dancing when the dude messed up, and his partner was just STARING DAGGERS at him during the scores? If the cameras hadn’t been on them, I think she would’ve shanked him.
LOVE the Winter Olys. Much more drama, it seems.
Is that why no more Skating with Celebs? I hate to beat a dead horse (I was married to that Nazi bastard for forty years and I got NOTHIN’. Eh-ze-bub-eh-de-buh) but I do miss that show.
I am sure Hamilton is being very loving and supportive, in his typically cheesy and frenetic way.
o.k., I can’t stop. The greatest tragedy of all was Sergei and Katarina. Oh, the humanity.
Jackie – oh my God, I think I blocked that one out AS it was happening. It was far too painful.
I have Katarina’s book, “My Sergei.”
And I’m not ashamed.
it’s taken me about 20 comments to admit this but… as a child (circa 1980 olympics) I had a crush on S.H. I feel dirty…
Lisa – You shouldn’t be ashamed!!
Jackie – hahahahahahahahaha
“I feel dirty”. It’s okay. This is a safe place. We all have such secrets.
After all, you were in Lake Placid in 1980! You got Eruzione’s autograph!!
He seemed so self assured and …. I feel dirty.
hahahahahahahaha
Well, okay. If you WANT to feel dirty!!
I remember you and I having HUGE crushes on all the “Eastern Bloc” boys who showed up for Oksana Bayul’s big moment and were cheering her on from the sidelines. Member that? We were DYING about them!!
oh to be loved by a boy named vlad or igor…….
Or Tadeusz.
hahahahaha
Oh and by the way I tracked down Mitchell’s haiku about Tonya Harding, which I present here, in all its glory:
Pink Spandex Falters
Guilty Skates Have No Rhythm
The World Is Unmoved
and how in HELL did you manage to spell that??
Brilliance!!
Jackie – hahahaha I have no idea!!
Shed a little light, Tadeusz!!
Guilty skates have no rhythm?
It is as if George Michael decided to retool something for Harding.
Hilarious.
I had forgotten how that whole comment thread spawned my blue skater onesie rage.
hahahahahahaha It’s an awesome thread, isn’t it?
Lisa suddenly demanding, “Shut up, Dick Button” is still making me laugh. And Stevie’s comments are killing me!
I miss the winter olympics suddenly.
oh Lord…i LOVE my friends..u are all soooo brilliant..Brendan i cant think of anything more fun than watching Kenny Loggins on Ice with YOU!!!! and btw..i think my Tanya Haiku is among my best work! Leeeleeehahmuuu …notwithstanding!..Sheila…whowas the hottie speed skater with the grey eyes that we loved??? Remember..i read a haiku to him at Pat at one particularly crazed Olympics moment??? i miss u all!!!
You read it at Pat!! I am dying!! I remember having a feverish conversation with Pat where he said, “You know, I don’t think Nancy Kerrigan is the nice little good girl the press is making her out to be.” Like, we were all obsessed!
Then of course there was that time I overheard your phone conversation with Sandi and you literally sounded like a hardened Olympic judge. You were like, “Look, she didn’t finish the triple flip, that’s at least a 2.3 deducation right there …” Like just going on and on in this manic expert way.
Wait a sec … let me think about the speed skater.
Wasn’t there a crazy skiier we loved, too?
And let us not forget when you called Nancy Kerrigan a “hometown girl legume”.
I remember years ago seeing a phony ad for an ice show in a magazine (I forget which one). It was called “Jesus on Ice” starring Victor Petrenko and featured a picture of Petrenko (he of the ample buttocks) skating in his onesie with a crown of thorns on his head. On the side of the main “Jesus” photo were smaller head shots of the costars. It read something like: “Co-starring Tonya Harding as Mary Magdalen; Nancy Kerrigan as Mary, Mother of Jesus; annnnd ….. featuring Oksana Baiul as HERSELF.” This next to a typical picture of Oksana, head thrown back, sobbing.
I wish I would have saved that. I am still not over it, obviously.
Re: Nancy Kerrigan, there was actually some minor controversy over her Campbell Soup commercial, in which she forechecked some anonymous hockey player into next week to get to a bowl of soup (it was when Campbell was doing the “Never Underestimate the Power of Soup” campaign).
Mitchell – I think Maria was obsessed with that speed skater too – but wasn’t there some skier too? Bobby?? Where the hell is that haiku –
Dan Jansen?
But there was a skier too that we loved. Hang on.
TOMMY MOE!!!!!
Featuring Oksana Baiul as HERSELF in the Passion? Was the board meeting held immediately after a Dead concert? HO. LY. CRAP. My mind is in itty bitty splinters. I need to go to the Jane Austen Clinic AT ONCE.
Mitchell – it was the Tommy Moe haiku you read at Pat.
And also: what?? You read a HAIKU at a Pat show? About Tommy Moe?? hahahaha God, I miss those days!
Nightfly – I think the ad was phony, right, Tracey? But seriously the Jane Austen clinic welcomes you!
I see pictures of Oksana now in places like Go Fug Yourself and think: wow. Look at her!! Kind of sleek and weird and crazy-looking, like Eva Peron or something. But I STILL remember that routine from 94, and what she wore, and her little feathers, etc.
Sheila – true that, but the very concept has damaged my mind with its awesome. Seriously, I need a poultice.
Smelling salts!
Tommy Friggin’ Moe!!! Loved him…i read before it i did my second appearance as Cher..crazy times!! and f.y.i. she missed her triple AND popped her lutz!!! Um ??? Who? I dont even remember who i was talking about…but i do remember saying to my sister that “she can kiss her dreams of Olympic gold goodbye!”…like i have any idea what im talking about!
..and btw…Dan Jansen!! meow!! woof!
NF — Yes, it was totally fake– and hilarious. God help me.
I got something wrong on the details. It was a Jesus face with crown of thorns Photoshopped or something over Viktor Petrenko’s face. I know it was him. Because of the onesie. And the telltale ample buttocks. I keep trying to Google the image; can’t find it!
Remember Kurt Browning’s Singin’ in the Rain?
Pardon the non sequitur amid all these other posts, but Special Ops is not only about risks and hatred. She is also all about referring to herself in the third person. Awesome.
I’ll be damned – it looks like Bowman the Showman died today:
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080110/SPORTS17/80110087/1025/FEATURES
Sorry for jumping out of lurkdom, it was just sad to see him have such a stereotypically grim ending. I wouldn’t have known it except this thread inspired me to check Wikipedia and Youtube in a fit of “Where are they now?”
Eric – I think Special Ops is gunning to take over this blog.
Mitchell – yes, you were totally an expert, and you were babbling about popped lutzes and Olympic gold and Sandi was on the other end, listening patiently, and it was hilarious!!
Not as hilarious as you suddenly beating your breast like a gorilla and shouting, “I HAF A NAME ….IIIIIITSSSS AAAA LILLLLLEEEEEHAMMMMMMUUUUU…”
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant!! I’m sitting here in a rhapsody of nostalgic longing for a previous blog string experience! I’m mean, how existential! I completely remember the thrill of being able to comment about Peggy Fleming IN CONTEXT, not just some Tourette’s moment in the vegetable aisle somewhere while ogling the yams. God, I love you :)
xxx Stevie
Wandering in from lurker-dom to comment… I also love the Winter Olympics! Although my personal preference is for the sports that combine gravity, slick surfaces, and the potential for serious bodily injury, the skating events just seem to have some sort of intrinsic melodrama that makes it captivating. My personal Olympics-related pet peeve (beyond Michelle Kwan, that is, and Nancy Kerrigan and her 340 teeth) are the Bob Costas-narrated personal interest stories on the athlete from some obscure country, who, despite being orphaned at age 6 after a tragic tungsten-mining accident, and having to have her legs sewn back on after a training accident, is representing Stanstanistan in the luge.
Lisa: “Remember last time in the ice dancing when the dude messed up, and his partner was just STARING DAGGERS at him during the scores? If the cameras hadn’t been on them, I think she would’ve shanked him.”
YES! The Italian couple, right? If referring to an ice dancer as “Bitchface” for the duration of the Torino Olympics is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
OMG, I love you all! What a fabulous way to start a bleary-eyed Friday morning. Speaking of the Harding-Kerrigan drama, did any of you see the following at Tufts? Please share with us:
http://budk1.blogspot.com/search?q=Tonya
Not to aggravate matters, or anything, but did you all see this? It was halfway down the first page in google under the search string ‘I hate Michelle Kwan’
http://forum.newsarama.com/archive/index.php/t-59290.html
I opened CNN this morning, and saw Figure Skater Dead… and was briefly afraid it was Michele Kwan – where would this thread go then?
The fiasco of ice skating judges
Fascinating!!! I’m a huge fan of figure skating (the ongoing blight of Michelle Kwan notwithstanding) but I’m also not blind to the fact that the judging “system” and the scoring “system” is kray-kray to the nth degree. A really interesting…
No. No. No. No.
Special Ops has heard a rumor, and Special Ops says in response: No. Go. Away. I’m not yelling or hysterical. I’m just telling you firmly, MK, because I almost care about you: Your time is done. Give it up. Go…