Favorite Figure Skating Performances

With the Winter Olympic Games underway in Torino, Italy, I'm sure I'll be catching my share of figure skating. Over the past few days, I've tried to recollect my favorite performances from this sport, and there are only four that have lodged themselves into my memory. In order of brilliance:

4. Brian Boitano's exhibition performance to the song "Un Amor" (Gypsy Kings). After he won the Olympic gold medal in 1988, he seemed to be everywhere. And one afternoon, while watching some random ice skating exhibition, he performed his routine in an outdoor rink. This performance I remember more for the music, but Boitano's athelticism was in full display. One of the great figure skaters of our generation.

3. Torvill and Dean's Olympic gold medal dance to "Bolero" (1984). Is there anything that matches this? I saw a replay of this a few years ago, and it is still positively stunning. Perhaps because ice dancing is focused on dancing versus pairs which has its focus on jumps and other athletic elements, the timelessness of their performance has not waned.

2. Torvill and Dean dance to "Cecilia" (Simon and Garfunkel). I don't remember the year, but it was an exhibition performance. I believe they were professionals already. Their work that evening was sheer joy, and I can't listen to this great song without thinking about their ice dancing.

1. Philippe Candeloro's Olympic bronze medal performance to "D'Artagnan" (Three Muskateers) (1998). I probably will break down and buy a DVD featuring this performance. Yes, there are technical elements to this routine, but it is also a feat of showmanship that brought the house down. He stages a mock sword fight that features great foot work, and that runs the length the ice rink. I don't remember the silver and gold medal performances; I only remember how great Candeloro skated.

Super Bowl Pick

The line on today's Super Bowl game is for Pittsburgh to win by 4 over Seattle. I read the New York Times piece titled "Dissecting the Line", by Levitt and Dubner over at Freakonomics. Their research suggests "betting the underdog today remains the single best bet of the year."

But Rick the Flip says you gotta go for Pittsburgh. Four points!? C'mon! I think it'll be close, but not that close.

My Wife's Birthday

My wife's birthday is today. Hurray! Happy Birthday, Jenn.

Skip to My Lou

Last summer, I wrote that I was learning fingerpicking on the guitar using DVDs from Homespun Tapes. I've made a small recording of me playing "Skip to My Lou", a very simple song that sounds pretty interesting with the steady alternating bass beat from my thumb. This is the first song off that DVD set.

Skip to my Lou - 696K (44 seconds)

Munich

I watched Munich yesterday. This is the latest film by Stephen Spielberg, and it has been hailed as one of his best. Unfortunately, I don't agree. Spielberg's bests include "Jaws", "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "Schindler's List", "Saving Private Ryan", and "Minority Report".

"Munich" felt disjointed. After a hurried opening to establish the atrocity of the Israeli team's kidnapping and massacre at the Munich Olympic games in 1972, the movie follows Israel's secret "mission" to exact revenge on the perpetrators of this crime. Many scenes follow of assassination after assassination. Killing begets more killing. Revenge begets more revenge. As the main character, Avner (played by Eric Bana), gets deeper into this "mission", he becomes disillusioned and paranoid.

It's a tough plot to "brighten". It's a bleak message. But the film seemed to be heavy handed in its delivery of this dark message. Spielberg does get his points across, but their presentation didn't seem as succinct as Tom Hanks uttering "Earn it."

I suspect that the outpouring of praise for this esteemed director has a lot to do with the subject matter (the parallels between Israel's "terrorist" retaliation and our country's own "war on terror" are plain). But as a movie, it fell short of cinematic greatness.

Your Sunday Bets

Let's pretend for a second that I know something about football (I don't). Let's next pretend that I'm called upon to "comment" on today's betting lines. Here's what I would write, under the moniker "Rick the Flip":

Pittsburgh at Denver, Denver by 3 - Denver by three!? Denver by three!? Take the Steelers! These guys are on a roll. The Steel Curtain is going to, uh, come down on these Broncos, and it's going to be a love fest for Cowher at last.

Carolina at Seattle, Seattle by 3.5 - When I saw the highlight reel of Seattle's win over Washington last week, all I kept thinking about "boy, that's some foggy stadium." Then I saw the wide shots, and Seattle's stadium is downright scary. Take Seattle. This has home field advantage written all over it.

Best Movies Watched in 2005

(This is my fifth such list. I have done this for the years 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004.)

I saw only thirteen movies last year, two of them in the theater. Out of this small set, I really really liked The Interpreter, the Sean Penn/Nicole Kidman movie whose plot revolves around a United Nations interpreter (played by Kidman). The director was Sydney Pollack. The movie has a languid pace, but it ratchets up the tension and suspense in logical ways. In some ways, it reminds me of Mystic River, in that it's a procedural. The movie is set in New York City, and it's photographed so well.

Other areas:

• Best DVD Commentary: Sideways. Paul Giamatti and Thomas Hayden Church are so funny in this commentary that I listend to it multiple times. There's a combination of production reminisces, viewing reactions, and plain old good banter between the two. It's worth checking out.
  
• Favorite Male Acting: Ewan McGregor (Revenge of the Sith).
  
• Favorite Female Acting: Julia Roberts (Ocean's Twelve).
  
• Finally Glad I Watched: Ronin. My Architect. The Polar Express.
  

Best Books Read in 2005

My Previous Best Books: 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004.

I only read twelve books in 2005. One of them was Snow Crash, by Neil Stephenson. I read this book back in its prime (early 1990s), and when I reread it in early 2005, I remember thinking "this is still hip!" This book has a great chapter one. This is a real favorite of mine.

My big book from 2005 was The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. This is a dense book, and it was while reading this book that I made a change in commuting habits, forgoing public transportation for the automobile (I had a job assignment that required car travel). It took me several months to get to the end of this loopy tale of woe. "The Brothers" is complex and dark. There are whole chapters that digress into the pressing issues of the time (religion versus state being one of them). The book brought to mind images of the frozen tundra, and desolate settings of the poor and destitute in Russia. All the humor in the book is dark, and sinister. I kept hearing a cackling laughter during all the parts that were funny, because it was usually at someone's grave expense. This is one of the great works, and it's worth the time to read.

Of all the books last year, I was most pleased with the last book that I read: Solo. Written by an Air Force pilot, Clyde Edgerton guides the reader through his passion for flying. He talks about each of the airplanes that he flew in Air Force training, and later in Vietnam. When he got the flying bug again, he talked about buying a smaller plane and how he ran a very informal shuttle service with it. It's clear throughout that Clyde loves flying, and I was glad he wrote about it.