Johnny Weir says it with fashion (while skiers shake that booty)

February 13, 2014

Johnny Weir – the famously out skater turned NBC commentator – told us at WAG magazine that he would pull no punches in anti-gay Russia. But leave it to the flamboyant fashionisto to make a statement with gold pearls and a white ensemble and blush and lipstick. Perhaps that’s why he and gold medalist Tara Lipinski are relegated to commentating on NBCSN instead of on NBC itself. Maybe the Peacock Network thinks they’re not ready for conservative prime time – though there are many in the blogosphere who’d rather listen to the free-wheeling Weir and Lipinski than the more staid Scott Hamilton, Andrea Joyce and Sandra Bezic.

In other fashion news, The New York Times had a fun story on skiers’ pronounced derrières that readers took way too seriously. Read more

Mountain Men: The Sochi downhill and the uphill battle of Michael Sam

February 11, 2014

The Caucasus are a long way from the gridirons of America, but they both yielded big news Sunday, Feb. 9 that spoke to the allure of male power and its limitations.

Matthias Mayer of Austria took gold in the men’s downhill – one of the most glamorous, thrilling and dangerous of Olympic sports – ending a 12-year Austrian drought in the event.

The men’s downhill is two minutes and change of pure testosterone. It’s men against a mountain and a clock. Hemingway couldn’t have scripted a crisper, cleaner, crueler narrative. And while the women ski the same disciplines as the men, I don’t know, they’re not as exciting.

“It’s just in my mind, for lack of a better word, kind of a manly sport,” veteran American skier Marco Sullivan said of the downhill in The New York Times. And it demonstrates what’s so attractive about men – their speed, their power, their abandon, for no one wins the downhill without combining technique with risk-taking. Veer too much to the former and you’ll ski too cautiously. Stray too close to the latter and you’ll crash and burn. (American favorite Bode Miller, anyone?)

The dark-horse winner Mayer said he eliminated his final training runs to conserve power for the race. That comment conveys the truth of power, which is as much about retaining as it is attaining. Read more

Observations from the ice

February 10, 2014

Is there a better night in sports than the first Sunday of the Winter Games? Figure skating and one of the most thrilling events in all of sports – the men’s downhill. The only thing that would make my rapture greater would be if there were curling, too.

Curling combines two of my favorite things – competition and housework. Watching people sweep and cry “Ai, ai” as that fat curling stone comes down the ice in a kind of wintry shuffleboard is beyond adorable. It was David Letterman of all people who cemented my love of curling. One year to promote his “coverage” of the Games, which consisted of reports from his mother, his publicist sent us entertainment writers curling stone paperweights. I keep mine in its little plaid box in my library. (It’s in a plaid box, because curling comes from Scotland, the land of kilts, Sean Connery and Andy Murray. We owe Scotland so much.)

But back to skating. Read more

When (Olympic) doves cry

February 8, 2014

In my new novel “Water Music,” the Summer Olympics in New York includes an opening ceremony as pretentious and ponderous as any of those sound and light shows that make up the actual opening ceremonies.

Let me ask you a question (or two or more): Why can’t the host country simply present its culture rather than hit us over the head with it? What did the opening ceremony for the Sochi Games really have to do with Russian culture? Why not an excerpt from “Swan Lake” or a clip from a film of “War and Peace”?

The irony of all these opening ceremonies is that they are supposed to celebrate the unique histories and cultures of the host countries, but they are actually interchangeable because they’re filled with faux PR symbolism. Enough with the cutesy mascots and whirling snowflakes and required releasing of a peace dove and that un-singable Olympic Anthem. Read more

Hanyu’s great skate

February 7, 2014

Well, it didn’t take long for the theme of rising to the occasion – or not – to emerge at the Sochi Games with the new team figure skating event. American Jeremy Abbott, whom I’ve rarely seen skate well, turned in a disastrous performance. Canada’s elegant Patrick Chan, the three-time world champion who acknowledged that hometown nerves got to him at the Vancouver Games, skated well but tight. Evgeni Plushenko was, well, Evgeni Plushenko. He’s a big-game skater but loses points in my book for arrogance. (We all remember how he dissed gold medalist Evan Lysacek in Vancouver when Plushenko stepped up to the top of the podium before taking his silver medal place.)

No matter. For me the performance of the first night of team competition belonged to Japan’s Yuzura Hanyu. Read more

Is Peyton the Michelle Kwan of football?

February 6, 2014

Forget Richard III. This is the winter of my discontent, and it isn’t just the unrelenting cold, snow and ice in the Northeast. (It’s like “Dr. Zhivago” without Omar Sharif.)

No, it’s partly because my guys – Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Colin Kaepernick, Gov. Chris Christie and now Peyton Manning – have all fallen short this season. (Thank God Tim Tebow has found his calling as a T. Mobile pitchman and ESPN analyst, or this winter would be a total bust.)

Let’s leave off Gov. Krispy Kreme, shall we? Remember how in math you always had to pick out the one thing that didn’t belong to the set. Well, he doesn’t belong to the set. His is a different kind of performance to be judged by other criteria. What I want to talk about today in the aftermath of that dud of a Super Bowl and with the Olympics beginning Thursday, Feb. 6 with the new team ice figure skating event is why some people – brilliantly talented everyday achievers – fall flat in big moments. Read more

Is gay the new black?

January 20, 2014

Recently, I was giving someone a pitch about my new, gay-themed novel, “Water Music,” which bowed last week – a pitch that I sometimes end defensively with, “Well, it’s not for everyone.” (I really must learn to stop demurring like that.)

Or maybe not, because when I say that, my listeners often respond as this man did: “I’m not so sure about that. I think it’s an idea whose time has come.”

This week seems to have confirmed that. HBO has a new series, “Looking,” about gay men searching for love in San Francisco. Unlike Showtime’s “Queer as Folk” (2000-05) – which was, let’s face it, all about hot guys (and women) having hot sex – “this show is at such a time when suddenly gay people can conform to heterosexual blueprints of how to live,” out actor and “Looking” star Russell Tovey told the Sunday New York Times (Jan. 19). “You can get married, you can have kids, you can have joint mortgages, you’re recognized as next of kin, which is all fresh.”

Tovey, who’s actually made a career of playing straight guys (the athlete Rudge in “The History Boys”), stars as a closeted footballer – soccer player to us in the U.S.– in John Donnelly’s play “The Pass” in London.

So is gay the new black – in more ways than one? Is Ellen DeGeneres, who’ll host the Oscars again (March 2), the new Oprah? Read more