A random girl's random gymnastics ramblings.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

The Nastia Show: Presented by Oxytrol

 

Another year, another shitty gymnastics and skating "spectacular" to enjoy on a balmy January Sunday, sandwiched in between golf and probably more golf.  

Couple of random teeny-bopper pop stars, the eternal Bart Connor and Nadia Comaneci, and of course, Nastia.  

Always Nastia.  

Oh, and Subway sandwiches.  

So our super awesome, totally not annoying show starts with the inevitable dressing up of the gymnasts like bizarre little Avril Lavigne penguins.  


Nastia was there. 

The gentlemen were wearing some stunning mustard yellow pants.  Whoever the costume designer was for this really needs a raise.  I mean, pink fringe bikinis in 2008, and now this?  Pure genius.  

We'll see the first of much pointing in this show, hereto referred as pointography.  It is the central theme.  The gymnasts point to the figure skaters, the skaters point back to the gymnasts.  Really compelling stuff.  


Everyone does the limbo underneath Catalina Ponor's crotch, and all gather to pose and do some more pointing.  


Oh yeah.  That is some aggressive pointing right there.  Without wasting any time, the Nastia Show finally begins.  


This highly touted routine, choreographed by the great Travis Wall, begins with Nastia taking a snooze on the floor.  


She wakes up, rolls around a little, and begins her morning stretches.  


If Travis Wall can't get this bitch to fix her wrists, I should probably just give up on life.  


I will say that Nastia hits some lovely shapes in the routine, and really has the hairography down.  In terms of actual gymnastics, our princess caps out at some backhandsprings, an onodi, and a cartwheel.  You just know even Travis was a little butthurt by this.  He's like

Travis: "Yes!  An Olympic champion, doing MY choreography!  I can't wait to create a masterpiece!

OK Nast.  Here I'd like to see you do a twirly jump (ed. note: He probably knows the name for this. I do not.) into a side aerial."

Nastia: "Shan't."

Travis:  "Balls.  OK, what will you do?"

Nastia:  "I will give you a cartwheel."  

 I'm sure that's exactly how it went down.  Speaking of getting down, someone who knows a thing or two about it is Miss Beth Tweddle. 


This lovely young lady is singing a song about something or another, when Beth comes strutting out.  And by strutting I mean doing some sort of caveman thing.  

 

I wish I could figure out the gif thing, because this was really too majestic for pictures to do justice.  


But Beth quickly gets things back on track by really being on her pointing game.  


She wraps up her performance with a little grape-vining, and really, who doesn't love grape-vining?


Then she stumbles on the corner of the floor.  We've all been there.  

Jordyn freshens up our palates a bit by busting out some classic Miss Val choreo on beam.  A couple of fancy wrist twirlies, some sassy snapping-


The popular hand slide-


And lest we forget, the POINTING!


I feel as though this routine had a lot of Zamography in it.  Jordyn also had the cajones to actually do gymnastics on the beam.  A back tuck, and a side aerial?  Not too shabby.  

Now it's time for a quick break from all that GYMNASTICS.  Nastia tries to make us believe that she eats Subway for breakfast and lunch every single day of her life.  I would eat my hat if I had solid proof of her eating at Subway once, ever.  And actually eating a sandwich from Subway, not bringing sushi to Subway and eating it there.  


Next up on beam is the divine Catalina Ponor.  Clad in an overcoat and Nastia-heels.


You know Nastia was totally upset that she didn't think of this routine.  Brandon Wynn stars as the Mike Canales to Catalina's Dominique, and Cata saucily strips him down.  


Nothing screams "Oxytrol for Women" like a man wearing a bow tie with no shirt.  Ponor takes a cue from Jordyn and actually does gymnastics, by mounting with an impressive press handstand.  I'll take one of those any day, Progressive shitshow or not.  She does a few leaps, two front aerials, which hey, is better than no front aerials.  She seduces Brandon/Mike Canales by lustfully groping the beam.  


Then Cata and Brandon walk off to the hotel together.  Again, I'm sure that's exactly how it happened.  

Then a tragedy is thrust upon us all.  


Apparently, there is an I Love Lucy museum in whatever town this show was filmed in.  That's just fine.  I happen to be a big I Love Lucy fan.  Lucille Ball was THE comedian of the century.  She was a very physical comedian, back in a day when all the studios were stuffed with pretty women doing pretty women things.  Lucy wasn't afraid to not be pretty, and in that, she was gorgeous.  


So imagine my horror when Nastia shows up, dolled up in some cheap Lucy-wannabe garb.  SHE'S NOT EVEN WEARING A RED WIG.  I cannot even.  I'm going to go ahead and assume that Nastia did not bother to watch even a minute of I Love Lucy, and just figured it was a 50's show about a nice 50's couple.  Hence the skipping around and blowing kisses to her ice-skating Ricky.  AS IF LUCY WOULD BLOW KISSES TO RICKY. 


Fake ass Lucy does some pretty poses on beam, and then races off to the floor to do not one, but two cartwheels in a row.  This is what your tickets paid for, people.  


Well isn't that just spit-on-your-face, kick-you-in-the-crotch fantastic?  


The show mercifully ends with everyone clad in white all pointing at each other.  But not before Nastia, Catalina, and Jordyn rip off Cher's move in Clueless, while wearing white nighties. 


And there you have it, folks.  Fine Craptacular entertainment. 

10 comments:

  1. Not so sorry anymore that I couldn't find this on YouTube. Excellent summary - thank you! Love the visuals.

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  2. I've had an epic bad week so far, and then I found this, and it made me laugh, really hard. Especially the angry cartoon face and circled wrist. You have no idea how much I needed that. Thank you.

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  3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUhSysKCF1k

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  4. Please note that the name of the YouTube user who so graciously supplied us with the taping is "NastiaFan101take10". Of freaking course.

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  5. THANK YOU! Nastia IS NOT on the same level as Lucille Ball, she is not even in the stratosphere of Lucy. She made me so mad with that routine. I wanted to take a flight to NYC and punch her in the face for that.

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  6. Oh God! The Lucy number! I had mercifully scrubbed that from my memory and you've forced me to relive it! What the HELL was Nastia thinking?! What was that even supposed to be?? WHYYYYYYY? [/Nancy Kerrigan]

    Jordyn, Jordyn--I kept thinking you gave up NCAA eligibility for THIS shitshow?!

    The pointing was out of control. Still, two Tweddle numbers (and the hell, she skates too? Nice job, Beth!). Would've liked more Jordyn though--they couldn't at least give us her FX? Even a watered down version?

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  7. I thought the same thing about the NCAA eligibility. A damn shame. This was a crap-tacular of epic proportions. Admittedly i couldn't get through the whole thing- it was just so bad. Thanks for the recap- i might actually go back and watch now to see Beth's caveman dance. Good lord.

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  8. The thing is, figure skaters are used to doing exhibition programs. There is a gala after every major national and international event. This provides the top finishers with a chance to celebrate their achievements by skating easier programs without the pressure of being judged. The top-tier skaters typically plan for a new exhibition program each season (sometimes more than one). There are also professional shows such as Stars on Ice. Exhibition programs are just part of the figure skating landscape. In gymnastics, however, galas are more rare, particularly for U.S. viewers. And gymnasts never perform with spotlights. Most skating galas have spotlights. Since Nastia and other gymnasts aren't used to doing galas, they look like fishes out of water doing them. I did enjoy Nastia's "Young and Beautiful" routine, but the rest of the gymnastics was boring. Not surprisingly, the skaters seemed much more comfortable with the whole atmosphere.

    Do you think Nastia planned the "I Love Lucy" thing or was she "told" to do that? Someone in charge of putting the show together could have asked her to do it. I don't know - just wondering.

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  9. This show was filmed in Jamestown, NY for the second year in a row. Lucille Ball was born in Jamestown. That is literally the only thing the city has in a claim for fame that's been used in almost every advertisement and festival in the area. I'm pretty sure she was told to do I Love Lucy.

    I sat behind the beam roughly three rows back. The little old ladies behind me where in quite the titter over Brandon's shirtless moments (Hell, even my boyfriend was impressed).

    I was hoping you would comment on Beth's 'skating' skills. From the amount of attention the announcers gave to her being a 'two-sport champion,' I assumed that she had some basic grace and skill (or at least a flexible arabesque spiral) to her skating, and being it was 'Dancing on Ice' and not the craptastic mess that is the US attempts at it, I thought she would be better. Oh was I wrong.
    At the end of the show they make the audience stay to fix any major mistakes the athletes have made, and Beth had to go three times on that routine. The finally gave up. What you saw on television was a hodgepodge of them attempting to splice together her spin.

    And if you thought Nastia was bad, feel bad for poor Ryan Bradley (the man skating next to her). He is known as an entertainer, but this was his only moment in the first half of the night. And he literally stood next to a mat and pointed. He looked like he wanted to shoot himself the entire night, and I think that was the reason why.


    I couldn't understand why last year's tickets cost twice as much for horrid seating until I saw this. Excluding men's skaters Ryan Bradley and Kurt Browning, and repeat gymnast Jordyn, everyone was a bit of a downgrade in quality. Unless you count the high bar. Yummy.

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  10. I would rather pay to read a Spannyrecap then pay to watch this event.

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