simply put, you have all the sexuality of all those pandas down at the zoo, who refuse to mate.

So, I know I post a buttload of montages.  And I always think each one is the greatest thing I've ever done, because I'm a nerd like that.

But this seriously is the greatest thing I've ever done.

The USA has some ballers coming up.  And while I know we all mourn the loss of "artistry" and all things pretty gymnastics, seeing someone just nail a monster skill can be pretty inspiring.  Dare I say... artistic?

Not to get all Tyra, but these girls are FIERCE.

Bum ba bumm... Ba dah BUM.

i will no longer be carrying around photo id. know why? people should know who i am.

In celebration of the world's biggest shitshow, aka the Sydney Games.

 

 

Awesome.  And now we can make one for the team finals too, since that is all effed up as well.  Worst. Olympics. Ever.  Is there anyone who didn't get seriously screwed up the rump from these games?  

i was at the drugstore and they were having a sale on dep. dep is a hair gel. and once again, i'm making fun of your incredibly stupid hair-do.

Hollie Vise.

The original bars/beam specialist.  Oh wait, syke, she's actually awesome on floor, and can throw the same vault as the 3rd best gymnast in the world. 

Not too shabby.

This weekend was an excellent conclusion to a fabulous career.  Some people might choose to remember Vise for holding her shit together while her dream was ripped apart live on NBC.  Not me.  I choose to remember her for being captivating, inspiring, and super duper talented. 

*insert slow clap here*

So join me, as I pour one out for one of the most memorable gymnasts of the past decade. 

i thought i smelled cookies wafting from the ovens of the little elves that live in your hair...

Gym hair.

I am such a stickler for pretty presentation hair, and this weekend's NCAA finals just about gave me an aneurysm.

I mean whatever.  During workout, wear your hair however you want.  Just keep it out of your face, grips, and coach's face, and you'll be fine.  But during a meet... cmon girls.

I'm not saying get all China and hair clip yourselves to death.

But one or two clips and some hairspray never hurt anyone.

It's maddening.  It really is.  You know what else it is?  Karma.  Because when I was younger, I thought it was super cool to wear my hair in my face, and it drove my poor mother insane.  This is the universe's payback.  Make it "hip" to wear your hair all wackadoo and fro-y to these big meets.

I get it.  The "I don't give a crap" look is in.  People wake up two hours early so they can mold their hair into some mess that looks like they just rolled out of bed.  That's just fine.  But these girls... especially the NCAA ones, kind of defeat the whole look when they top their "I woke up seven minutes ago" look with a face tattoo and 70 hair ribbons.

I know you spent time to look like that.  I know you did.  To me, this is no different than the kids who wear their pants down to their butts, or have the Cousin It look that Justin Beiber kid made so popular.  You look like a tool.  In ten years, you're going to see pictures of yourself, and wonder "what the effing eff?"

Girls, this is the big show.  You have fans, parents, and supporters all watching you.  So why do you allow them to be distracted by your MESSY EFFING HAIR???

Example one.

ASac.  We all know you're cool.  You have as much street cred as any elite gymnast is ever going to have.  You punched a guy out on Youtube.  But does that really make you too cool to do your hair?

I'll give you a pass for the Brown hair, as you were probably just trying to fit in with the other "I think I look awesome" NCAA girls.

But at the Olympics??  Really??

"I'm just at the Olympics, yo.  I'll do what I want.  You tell Martha to take her full ponytail and stick it up her ankle-breaking ass."

Like, I am so not a fan of the Nastia hair poof.

But at least the girl tries.  And I actually quite love the side braid.  It shows that you don't need 400 hair clips and a gallon of glitter to show up for a meet.

Let's touch more on NCAA hair.  Now, if judges are allowed to deduct for leotards and bras and nailpolish, then they sure as shit should be able to deduct for distracting hair.  I'm not saying you should be able to deduct for a Silivas-style makeover.  It's not about preference.  But when the hair is in the gymnast's face, whipping around, I think it absolutely takes away from the overall performance.

Example two.

Kyndal Robarts.  My opinion of Robarts can be expressed best by Santana of the popular hit TV show, and my absolute life obsession, Glee.

"You're about as sexy as a Cabbage Patch Kid. It's exhausting to look at you."

She is so cute, it hurts my face.  I have no doubt that she just defecates sunshine and rainbows.  But the hair.  THE HAIR!!!!  Number one, it looks like she has sideburns.  Two, she's one gasp away from inhaling the ends of said sideburns.  She took the time to do a mini-poof, brand her face and even throw in a cute ribbon.  Did she take extra time to pull the ends out of her bun, and stick them every which way??  Yes she did.

This seems to be the trend.  I might shellac my hair back, but then I'll haphazardly tie an elastic in, and then see how poofy and stringy my hair can become. 

As seen here:

Here:

And here:

Yeah, Utah.  I'm talking to you.

Seriously.  Putting your hair in a bun is so NOT hard.  And if you care at all about body line, your hair should probably be in a bun.  A bun like this:

Not this:

Or this:

Or this:

Although I do give Sloan credit for trying.  She is the first in a long time in elite to stray away from the hair straightener and back towards the bun.  Maybe next time.

This is more than just my curmudgeonly old opinion.  If your hair isn't secured well, it could very well just flop out in the middle of a tumbling pass.  And then what are you going to do?

So girls, in summation, not giving a rat's ass = looking like a rat's nest.

i don't trust a man with curly hair. i can't help picturing small birds laying sulfurous eggs in there, and i find it disgusting.

Well, I went and did it again.

Although this time I was fully cognizant.  I knew what I wanted, and I went out to get it. 

Thanks to Ebay, I now have my hands on the gym dolls that I loved so much when I was a kid!

14 is still a kid.

I mean, what gym fan in her right mind wouldn't want one of these??  They were bendy, and came with their own apparatuses.  THEIR OWN APPARATUSES!!! 

So the bars are a little 70s-ish.  And the beam's a little short.  And I have no idea what that girl is doing on vault.... but that's not the point.  The point is, these are radical toys, and I love them.

Unfortunately, the kind lady on Ebay was only selling two out of the three.  However, since I just happen to have a third on hand, I can still field a whole team!  Because as we all know, it only takes three gymnasts to form a team. 

My first order of business, after ripping them out of the boxes, of course, was to make them some leotards.  I seriously can't stand this unitard bullcrap.

I set off to make my first leo, sewn together out of a pair of my fiance's old boxer shorts (shut up.)  It should go without saying that I am a horrible seamstress, and have little to no experience with sewing at all.

So yeah... the cut is just a tad Ivana-ish.  And the edges aren't what we'd call "even."  So, I fixed it up a bit, added something to cover her boobs, and made some sort of strappy thing in the back to keep her leo from being all ASU-y.

Hmm, in retrospect, that actually makes it MORE ASU-y.  Oh well.  I suppose it's appropriate, seeing as how I went there and all.  That also means I can make fun of them all I want.

Well, that first leo was a bust, so I went on to make my second one.  This time, instead of using old underwear, I want for a crusty old used sock instead.  Luckily, I went through an argyle phase, so I happened to have a ton of these patterned socks.  A couple of snips and some loose thread later, and voila!

Her face is just a tad dirty, but her awesome leo makes up for it.  Now THAT'S how you do argyle, Texas Dreams!

Three girls with fancy leos, and I finally had my team!  Please notice that they all have the requisite Nastia hair-poof. 

The poof, in addition to being the trend de jour, can also aid in balancing.

Oh, the possibilities!  What to have them do first... I could hook them up to the rings/tramp...  but I like this equipment so much more.  I give myself one week before I break the grips on bars.  One of the new girls also needs to sit in her splits for like a month.  Being in that weird high kick position while in the box for the past 15 years has left her rubber bands a little twisted.  Nothing some middle splits won't fix.

Next up: makeovers.

did you know that dolphins are just gay sharks?

Oh Spice Girls.

Making your catchy music, wearing your cheeky outfits...  What was an impressionable sixteen year old girl to do?  Dress up like Baby Spice and parade all around town, that's what.  Also attend not one, but two separate SG concerts.  In different cities.  And by cities, I mean states. 

If more girls did floor routines to Spice Girl music, we'd have a lot more fans.  I'm just saying.

And if they did, it might go a little something like this...

Hit it.

when a new mom hears a baby cry, her you-know-what's fill up with you-know-what, and then her shirt gets, you know... that would be funny.

Oh crazy Youtube.

Michael Scott got it right.  What an incredible waste of time.

Now, I remember the days before Youtube.  If you wanted to see Morgan White's new move on bars, then you had to wait an hour and download the 30 second clip.  And then you kept 700 gymnastics clips on your hard drive, which was only like 512 MB.

Now, before that we used the ancient art of "tape trading" via the GTTC, or the Gymnastics Tape Trading Club.  If you wanted to see Omelianchik's floor exercise, then you got online, found someone with a tape of 1985 Worlds, and then waited three weeks for the copy to be sent to you.

I took pride in my massive tape collection.  I was wise and gymeducated because I had seen all these routines that the normal people had not.  I knew my shit.

Then effing Youtube comes out.  Now, anyone who watched one night of the Olympics can get online and search for videos of their "favorite gymnast", watch a few, and then consider themselves gurus of the sport.

Now, I have nothing against couch gymnasts.  In fact, The Couch Gymnast is like one of my favorite websites.  They can be very knowledgeable, classy and insightful fans.  Then... there are the other ones.

These "fans" have never done gym.  They've never coached, judged, or even been to a meet.  The only thing they've seen is three nights of the Olympics, and of course, NBC tells you what to think anyway.  So then they race to the computer, type in "underage chinese gymnast" and then proceed to leave one billion comments on handstands, start values, and age limits.  Uh, did you know about ANY of that an hour ago?  No?  Oh, you learned it all on the internet in fifteen minutes.  I see. 

Anyway, I blame Youtube for this, a little bit.  At the same time, we can all thank the gymnastics gods for the exposure to routines and gymnasts we'd never in a million years be able to see.  I can spend hours every single day watching routine after routine after routine.

So this is where I get concerned.  Youtube, in all of its techy glory, keeps track of what I watch, and then makes suggestions on what else I might like.  Awesome!  So if I watch lots of beam videos, then surely they'll suggest even MORE beam videos, right??

Not so much.

Instead, I get referred to the most random, bizarre videos of all time.

Chellsie Memmel = crank.  Got it.

So is Lilia Danielle or Goliath?  Or Judge Judy....  I can't stand that woman.  I really, really can't.

Some might argue this is accurate.  Not me though.  I like Sui Lu.  She wears cute socks.

Um.  Ok.

The 1991 World event finals were wild, indeed.  Kim Gwang Suk on bars, anyone??

Now, I'm a lady.  A classy lady.  I have very little urinal experience (when I worked at Circus Pizza, I once mistook one of those urinal cakes for some sort of minty air freshener.  I was very wrong.)  I'm not sure what the rules of etiquette are regarding peeing in public, but I have a hard time imagining they have much to do with Mariya Livchikova's beam routine.

I have like a billion of these.

So yeah.  Crazy, time-wasting Youtube trying to get me to watch videos about sleep walking dogs all because I was interested in the Tkatchev process.  Eff me.

my heart soars with the eagles nest...

 Now, I'm not going to be one of "those people" who walks around saying stuff like "Oh, Britney Spears?  Psssh.  I never listen to that crap.  I'm not really into any of that radio stuff.  I only listen to obscure B sides from Guster..."  I danced around and sang to Britney, and I still do.

I was always a fan of this song, and I'm not sure why.  I don't think I even understand what she's saying.  But I thought the video was sassy, and at the time (circa 2004-ish?) I thought her hair was just fab.  So, in one of Spanny Tampson's top ten BEST ideas, I decided to bring a picture of her from this video down to my hair salon. 

It was bad news.

I don't know what I was thinking.  I thought this...

 ...would be a good look for me.  It was not.  

Fro City.

Despite that nightmare, I still like the song.  So I thought it would be fancy to use it for my Mag 7 montage. 



This just furthers my belief that I will forever be obsessed with the 1996 Olympic team.  And maybe Britney Spears.

*OH*  And I'd also like to give a shout-out to Coach Rick over at http://gymnasticscoaching.com.  He has plugged my blog on his site twice now, which in turn has bumped my views from like five to five hundred!  I've been a fan of his site for a long time, as it always has some of the best gym info out there.  But I'm sure you all know that, since you came from over there anyway.  So here's a big WHAT WHAT to Coach Rick!

...let the bells of dunder mifflin chime out your love!

A lesson was learned today.

Do NOT take Ambien and then get on Ebay.

I'm not going to lie, it was pretty exciting.  After getting my little package-notice thing from the office, I hustled down there to pick it up, because I had NO clue what in the world it could have been and I was all excited.  I haven't much of a life, and I wasn't expecting anything.   But once I saw it was from Washington, I was just all "WHAT the FUDGE?" because I don't even know anyone from Washington.  So I race upstairs and RIP open the box because it was like effing Christmas and I just love presents.  That's when it all came flooding back to me...

Seems I ordered  this Sears Action Gymnastics Set.

Sweet.  Although I was pretty disappointed that the sharp blonde Barbie wasn't included...  but that's alright, since I have my Stacie/Domi doll handy.  I whipped this little set together, which was actually kind of hard because it was just a box full of random pieces, and set Domi to work.

First was the beam. 

The gigantic, thick, orange beam.

It has this handy little slider that you snap these attachments onto, and those hold your doll into wacky, needless positions.

A common gymnastics position.

You can remove the beam, and set up the high bar instead.  And everyone knows that girls do both beam and high bar.  The bar also came with some grippies so that you could hook your girl up, and then use the crank (?) to whirl her around the bar.

We need to work on her shoulder angle.  CHOP CHOP. 

And last, but not least, you have the ever popular combo event of rings/tramp.

If you'll notice the picture from the Sears box, this is how she is supposed to hang from the rings.  Over the trampoline.  Quite accurate. 

She can also just dangle her legs though the rings as well.  Anything goes in SearsVille!

I did have fun playing with the trampoline though.  It has some sort of hammer thing, so you smash the lever, and it flings her up in the air.

Funsies. 

Do I regret my transaction?  Eh, not so much.  I only bid $0.99, and paid maybe $8 for shipping, so it's not like I broke the bank on this one.  I suppose if I kept it in the box and all, I could keep it in the hopes that it would be worth something some day.  But... it's already from the 1970s, and 40 years later it's still only worth $0.99.  And who am I kidding, I'm going to play with this thing like there's no tomorrow.  

Whatever.  Christmas come early at the Tampson household!

you can really see that he is ok taking a picture with me. even though i was there for disciplinary reasons.

HECK YEAH.

OK, I knew that us gymnastics-starved Minnesotans would be able to see the SEC finals on ESPN this coming Sunday.  I was happy enough about that.  So I'm all checking my tivo for anything else with the word "gymnastics," as one does, and sure enough, both the Pac 10 and the Big 12 finals are going to be on FSN following the SECs on Sunday!  That's FIVE HOURS of sweet NCAA goodness! 

What a wonderful day to be Jewish, and not have any family commitments whatsoever.