Excellence #6: Be Hot Johnny Weir

He's the most soulful male skater I've ever seen--as Slate put it, "the Maria Callas of ice skating." Is it silly to still be brooding about his unfairly low Olympic figure skating scores? Yes, but what can I say--the corruption inherent in anonymous judging, the gaping disconnect between the crowd (two standing ovations) and the judges (sixth place?! Lower than three guys who fell during their routines?!) ...it sticks in my craw. How can he beat the bronze medalist on technical scores (newscast idiots, please stop saying he lost because his routine was less demanding) and yet somehow lose on style and artistry? Scoring Johnny Weir low on style is like scoring Dolly Parton low on cleavage.

But I have a theory. It's not just because he's flamboyant and obviously, though not officially, gay that the judges robbed him. It's because he's sexy--Christ, I mean, look at his exhibition skate--and the (mostly male) judges didn't like the electric tingle he sent through their normally dormant crotches. Plushenko they can handle; his mullet and his sometimes obnoxious personality neutralize whatever mojo he might otherwise possess. Lysacek, with his grace and restraint, pleases their eyes--he's a geometric equation gliding across the ice (and he's exactly as boring as that sounds)--without sending the slightest intoxicating shimmer through their nads.

But Johnny Weir? He's out there in a black corset, ornamenting his brilliant skating with hip-flicks and a sultry gaze, his neck arched in ecstasy--and for them it's just too much. The judges, disturbed, cross their legs, uncross them, and cross them again. They can't concentrate. And they punish him, to prove they're not charmed by him. I'm not gay, they say. If I were gay, I'd give him the bronze, or the silver, or--but no, I'm not. I'm not.
So Johnny skates and I think, my god, the world would be a better place if everyone had this much confidence and pleasure in their bodies. But the judges rob him and slink back into obscurity with their anxious, fragile sense of manhood still (just barely) intact. Rhetorical question: who's more comfortable in their own masculinity, them or Johnny Weir?

For your viewing pleasure:
His Olympic short program **Edited to add: Here it is on Russian TV, since NBC in their infinite stupidity are making it hard to watch**
His Olympic free skate

Excellence #5: Quentin Tarantino

The bad boy of 1990s cinema turns out to be a very good man, and for that he gets the honors in the latest installment of my series on everything excellent.

According to this article, a family by the name of Torgan has been showing classic and art-house double features in the New Beverly Cinema (see photo) for more than thirty years. With the rise of DVDs devastating movie ticket sales, they started having trouble making their rent. Enter Quentin Tarantino, who asked them how much they needed every month--the answer was a cool $5000--and started sending them checks to keep the place going. But in 2007 the Torgan patriarch suddenly died, and in the ensuing disarray their evil landlord found a buyer who wanted to turn this classic 1929 movie theater into a discount hair salon--a discount hair salon!--and kick the Torgans out.

Enter Tarantino again. His lawyers went head to head with the landlord, arguing that the Torgans' lease had a right of first refusal clause that let them buy the building themselves or find their own buyer if the landlord ever threatened to sell. The landlord fought back, but ultimately he gave in and Tarantino is now the proud owner of the New Beverly. Everything's back to normal for the Torgans, except that their new landlord is a movie star. Quote from Quentin: "As long as I'm alive, and as long as I'm rich, the New Beverly will be there, showing double features in 35mm."

Yet another example of what my husband once said: "The great thing about being rich is that if you see an injustice, you can just write a check and it's gone."