Live Sports coverage: the Colonial Classic

I just came home from the Colonial Classic. It was great. I watched "Beginner" (that's a link to a beginner group performing last year) and "Pre-Juvenile" groups, both of which featured impossibly tiny little girls (and a few boys) skating better than I could ever hope to skate. I didn't bring my camera, but some quick work on flickr yields tons of photos -- look at this or this (pictures from last year's event) to get a sense of the insane cuteness of little kids in costumes dancing together on the ice. Granted, there was a lot of creepy stage makeup, and I heard at least one mother shrieking at her child, but it really seemed like the kids were having a great time.

For those of you who wish you could have been here with me (you know and I know who you are) I will share my favorite moments below. The rest of you can skip this.

The Skating Club of Boston's Beginner's team took the ice in skating outfits that looked like baseball uniforms (if baseball uniforms had skirts and glitter). Predictably, their music was "Centerfield," a song that you no doubt have heard (it starts with clapping, then "put me in coach, I'm ready to play...."). Immediately, a very young girl sitting near me yelled out "NO FAIR!" and a mother with the group sighed and said "this is the THIRD time!" As the girls gesticulated and expressed their sentiments -- "NO FAIR! NO FAIR!" -- it became clear to me that this group, scheduled to perform later in the program, had prepared a routine to the same song. I watched as a young girl with a painted face scowled and listened carefully while watching the competition. Her comment (my favorite of the day): "It even has the EXACT same words!" I imagine she was hoping that the other team had chosen an alternate version of the song, like maybe "Leftfield" or "Rightfield" instead of "Centerfield."

Most of the performances were choreographed to fairly predictable movie-musical songs. Things like songs from The Sound of Music, (that link was to a performance at last year's Colonial Classic), or medleys of songs from Disney movies were quite popular, as were songs from musicals that were inexplicably re-engineered to include pounding dance beats, as if the musicals ("The Phantom of the Opera" and "Wizard of Oz") were happening at a disco. A lot of the music was lame, which makes me sad. But I see that a lot in figure skating. I wish it wasn't that way. I have a fond memory of watching Kristi Yamiguchi skate to Bjork's version of "It's Oh So Quiet." It is my favorite skating routine ever, in part because the music is so very much fun.

But getting back to the Colonial Classic, my favorite performance of all was the one done to "Walk Like an Egyptian." Awesome. I'm hoping someone else will post a video of it, so I can show you how great it was.

Oh, I also remembered one more Sporting Event we've attended since moving to Lowell:
HUMAN DOGSLED RACING. It happens in Lowell every year; last year we took Lucy. If the weather isn't too awful (February in Massachusetts? Doubtful) we'll try again this year.

Now back to your regularly scheduled blog.