Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

“woke” is the new caravan.

This country desperately needs a functioning Fourth Estate.

The problem people have with Biden’s age is the color of the VPs skin.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

ha ha ha! Nice try weird people.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Late Night Open Thread: If the London Games Make You Miss Johnny Weir…

Late Night Open Thread: If the London Games Make You Miss Johnny Weir…

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Rhythmic Gymnastics!

As explained by Brian Phillips at Grantland:

The structure here is not easy for the lay viewer to decode. RG has its own language, which non-RG initiates mostly perceive as a series of ultrasonic clicks and emoji hearts. What, for instance, is the precise distinction between the tournaments Miss Valentine 2012 (Tartu, Estonia, February 10-12), Pearls of Varna 2012 Academic (Bulgaria, July 2), and the 4th International Waves Cup (Germany, March 24)? I have read the rulebook in effect for the Olympics, the 125-page Code of Points: Rhythmic Gymnastics 2009-2012, and let me tell you — you thought football had a lot going on. Between the aggro-ballet terminology (fouetté, entrelacé), the extensive use of pictograms, and the radical linguistic uncertainty (“The French version is the official text,” the front cover proclaims, in English), this thing reads like Finnegans Wake as drafted by the unicorn debate team. It’s atavistically beautiful, like middle school cave art, until you realize that all the squiggly shapes represent positions to be assumed by the human body. At which point it becomes … extremely terrifying.

Reader Interactions

62Comments

  2. 2.

    piratedan

    just back from the AV Club where some idiot is attempting to state that 12 Angry Men shouldn’t be considered one of the top 10 films of all time because based on some books that he’s read and the evidence presented, the accused most likely really did kill his father….sighs…. and I wonder how people like that get paying gigs as writers

  3. 3.

    NotMax

    @piratedan

    Though might question it being the the Top 10 (any of those lists are subjective – top 30, perhaps), he has proved himself beyond the shadow of a doubt to be a yutz.

  5. 5.

    suzanne

    I could watch rhythmic gymnastics all day. It’s so awesome sauce. Like ballet with extra torture and then lots and lots of eyeliner.

  10. 10.

    Darkrose

    @The Dude Abides: It’s a measure of how distracted I was by the bugs in Dawnguard that I saw the ad, and all I thought was “Wow, this show looks incredibly stupid.” I totally missed the connection until I read your post, and then I winced, because that’s some clown scheduling, bro.

  14. 14.

    Uriel

    Since it’s an open thread:

    In honor of what would have been Elliot Smith’s 43 birthday, Kill Rock Star (irony!) released a previously unavailable alternative version of Alameda– and it’s awesome and fragile and masterful. What a enormous and frustrating loss…

  16. 16.

    Adam

    I looked at the book and right on the front cover it says “English is the official text” not French like Brian suggested.

    That’s just sloppy.

  18. 18.

    Raven

    ““You just have to not be afraid and go out there and just dominate,” Douglas said afterward, a stuffed Olympic mascot under one arm, a bouquet of flowers in one hand and an Olympic gold medal around her neck. “You have to go out there and be a beast. Because if you don’t, you’re not going to be on the top.”

    What if someone else called her a beast?

  19. 19.

    TheMightyTrowel

    Totally OT but gave me the warm and fuzzies (and I like to brag). On one particular website (which I won’t name to preserve my pseudonymity) my first book (published in May) is listed sandwiched between James Fallows’ and Rachel Maddow’s due to the alphabet and similar publication dates.

    I like being the lettuce in that brain sandwich!

  21. 21.

    TheMightyTrowel

    @arguingwithsignposts: shudder.

    I only know this because my mother likes to google me and just sent me a screen grab. Despite her rather biased opinions, i recognise that I am the wilted lettuce to their rich multi-grain bread in this particular totally-by-chance sandwich.

  25. 25.

    TheMightyTrowel

    @SiubhanDuinne: do keep that under your hat. My employer is not thrilled with having teaching staff with political opinions (even if those opinions impact foreign countries) if said opinions aren’t directly a part of one’s research!

    AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

  30. 30.

    Randy P

    @piratedan: Speaking of great films, what’s so great about Vertigo? I love it like I love all Hitchcock. But what extra stuff makes people vote it best picture of all time? (Apparently it displaced Citizen Kane on some such list)

  31. 31.

    JPL

    @Raven: Not me someone a little older and wiser figured it out. (maybe)

    A guilty pleasure of mine was watching the Hemy Neuman trial and now I’m looking forward to part 2.

  32. 32.

    TheMightyTrowel

    @SiubhanDuinne: You’re about the same age as my mom – she’s planning on retiring in Feb after her birthday and it’s clearly freaking her out enormously.

    I’m 30 this year (don’t hit me) and I could care less, but my cohort from university seem to be having huge problems with the concept. Age is strange like that – it creeps up on you and is strangely significant for something that is entirely arbitrary and socially constructed.

    That being said: 70 is the new 21. Embrace your second adolescence. I dare you to get a tattoo!

  33. 33.

    arguingwithsignposts

    Could someone explain to me the attraction of a “fixie” or single-gear bicycle? I’m not getting it. My “hip” must be broken.

  34. 34.

    gnomedad

    @The Dude Abides:
    Yes, I saw this and had an immediate WTF?? reaction. I can’t imagine it was deliberate, but if I were a producer I’d have freaked upon seeing it and tried to correct it. The comments following the article are predictable.

  35. 35.

    hep kitty

    Can someone splain to me why people like Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton make more money than these little girls?

  37. 37.

    hep kitty

    @TheMightyTrowel: Just tell her to be happy. Not to be a downer, but a lot of us plan to work until we can no longer ambulate, if anyone will have us, because we can’t afford to retire.

    I know that’s probably not much consolation because she is trying to figure out what to do with the rest of her life. But at least she has the opportunity and choice to enjoy it as she sees fit.

  38. 38.

    TheMightyTrowel

    @hep kitty: her employer is forcing her to retire, but I see your point. My grandma died young of cancer and my mom is the oldest of her siblings so she’s felt deeply mortal and older than her years for decades, this is just an uptick.

    ETA: reality TV stars are the focus of some really neat sociological research which suggests that people fixate on celebrity gossip because they no longer have local communities of people to gossip about so they adopt celebrities into that position to feel less isolated.

  41. 41.

    TheMightyTrowel

    It’s true. Every society measures time differently. Age depends on how you measure time. The fact that we measure time in a linear progression is entirely arbitrary. To pick a well known example, many mesoamerican societies saw time moving in interlocking circles so you have a cycle of years that move forward until they hit a specific point which turns the big multi-year-cycle further on and resets the short cycle to zero and on until the multi-year cycle gets back to its starting point and hits 0.

    The whole bruhaha about the Mayan calendar and the end of the world is because one of the better known of these cycles-within-cycles calendrical systems resets to 0 in December.

  42. 42.

    hep kitty

    @TheMightyTrowel: That said, my dad retired about 25 years ago. Because he worked all the time when I was a kid, I was concerned about how he would handle it. Up until recently, he and my mom started taking trips and enjoying life and I wouldn’t take anything for that!

  43. 43.

    Raven

    @TheMightyTrowel:

    – Murder’s immoral.

    – Immorality is subjective.

    Yes, but subjectivity is objective.

    Not in a rational scheme of perception.

    Perception is irrational.

    It implies imminence.

    But judgment of any system

    of phenomena exists

    in any rational, metaphysical or

    epistemological contradiction

    to an abstracted empirical concept

    such as being, or to be, or to occur

    in the thing itself, or of the thing itself.

    Yeah, I’ve said that many times.

  46. 46.

    hep kitty

    @TheMightyTrowel: The thing that is absolutely terrifying, for me, is that things that happened to me 20-30 years ago seem like yesterday.

    My niece is now 27 and I can still see her, a little black-haired infant, in my mind’s eye as her parents bring her across the lawn, the first time I ever laid eyes on her, and to me, that was like a couple of years ago.

    For me, “time flies” is an understatement!

  47. 47.

    TheMightyTrowel

    @hep kitty: I have cousins that are like little sisters to me. they’re in their early 20s now and I still think of them ca. age 8 & 10.

  48. 48.

    hep kitty

    Good Lord, listening to Mitt yesterday in CO yesterday on CSPAN. He just drones on and on. (eye roll)

    His audience has no clue that the Obama campaign just bashed him over the head like a mallet busting a watermelon.

  52. 52.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Omnes Omnibus: And happy birthday to you too, OO! Yes, realized earlier that I am exactly double Tom Brady’s age today.

    @JPL: What a lovely offer! I would accept with pleasure, but I have a meeting this morning and a conference call in the afternoon, and I also have a strong suspicion that my colleagues have planned … something. Thanks, though. We should get together again sometime soon anyhow.

    Off to work with me. Later, all.

  54. 54.

    Another Halocene Human

    @arguingwithsignposts: Parental health insurance when not everyone had it, after you fall and crack a few things while filming an “epic” slalom downhill.

    Now that Obamacare is here it will probably lose its cache. I mean, have you ever tried to ride a single-gear bike up and down hills?

    Oh, I forgot to mention that removing the brakes for looks is popular in “fixie” culture. It’s no longer street legal but if you’re a rich white kid you don’t have to worry about coppers pulling you over on a bicycle for not having brakes or lights, except in NYC, maybe.

  55. 55.

    Rosalita

    I can’t wait for the RG events! that level of body control is just amazing and beautiful. As a figure skater who at least has the ice to glide on, I am IN AWE of the balance they have to do all that.

  56. 56.

    JR in WV

    Did the Obama campaign really hit him on the head if no one knows about it?

    Referring to the remark about Mittster’s sppech above.

    I mean, I know he got hit, hard, and you know it. But if the “crowd” doesn’t know it, what does it mean?

    Scary! Maybe they’ll watch the news tonight and find out!?

  59. 59.

    Mnemosyne

    @Raven:

    What if someone else called her a beast?

    Then that would be bad. Kind of like how I can call myself a bitch, but no one else gets to.

  60. 60.

    Mnemosyne

    @arguingwithsignposts:

    The only person I know that has one is really into fitness (he does that X stuff, whatever it’s called) so he likes going up giant hills with only one gear.

    Otherwise, as AHH said, it’s hipsters imitating bike messengers. Your usual upper-class “isn’t the working class cool?” stuff.

  61. 61.

    different-church-lady

    I don’t think RG is easy. I just wonder why they choose to to this instead of, say, becoming dancers. I mean, hell, I’d pay ood money to see some of that on a stage. But at the Olympics, you can’t get me to flip the TV on.

  62. 62.

    Mister Harvest

    @arguingwithsignposts: If you are riding time-trials on a closed flat track, a fixie reduces weight, which might help.

    Otherwise? It’s the stupidest possible thing to ride, ever. A Penny-Farthing makes more sense.

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