Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Ice Queens With Broken Crowns

I awoke to a cloudy, damp morning. Started off the day with breakfast and Lost In Boston IV. Another Verase Saraband release, this is the last of four CDs that cover songs cut from shows that made Broadway or off-Broadway. My favorites here include "Thirty Weeks of Heaven," a hilarious number on traveling the vaudeville circuit that's funnier than most of the songs that made it into By the Beautiful Sea, three devastating character numbers from the 1978 show Ballroom, the lovely "A Green and Private World" from the 60's flop Drat! The Cat, and "Hots Michael at the Piano," dropped from the 70's revue Working. (Singer, musician, and writer Rupert Holmes performs the last-named.)

It was still just cloudy, windy, and humid when I headed to work this morning, and has pretty much stayed that way the rest of the day. We were extremely dead the whole time. It never got even close to steady. Almost everything that needed to be done - trash, recycling, returns, carts, bathrooms - was finished by me or the head manager within the first two hours or so of my arrival. I spent most of the rest of the day gathering baskets, bagging, and trying to look busy.

Went straight home after that, hoping to avoid bad weather that never came. Spent the next few hours writing. A jealous Harry joins Laurence and Leia as they discuss Yasmin Hutt owning the Sword of Wisdom. Harry had been the showgirl-turned-gangster's lover until a few months before. She wants him back. He'll work for her, but he's not interested in jumping into bed with her anymore, as he explains to an annoyed Leia as he pulls her out onto the dance floor.

Broke for dinner at 6:30. Listened to Sugar Babies as I ate leftover tacos with sliced Jersey tomatoes and cucumbers for dinner. This 1979 revue revived the burlesque tradition of the early 20th century - basically, what we now refer to as the variety show. It's the family-friendly version of the more familiar burlesque from the 30's and 40's with the strippers and low comics. Mickey Rooney was the top banana; Ann Miller was the headlining dancer. (Ann Jillian was apparently the original soubrette, but this recording was made four years later, and she was replaced by Jane Summerhays.) Alas, my LP isn't complete and is missing a lot of the vocal routines and a few numbers, but what is there is a lot of fun, especially the Jimmy McHugh Medley towards the end.

The complete CD recording of this is out of print on Amazon as of this writing, and it doesn't seem to be on YouTube. Your best bet may be to look around for the record and cassette and piece together your own version of the nostalgic crowd-pleaser.

Went into the bath, even as the recording was ending. Ahhh. It's been a long time since I had a real bath. I had enough time to look at vintage Wilton cake decorating magazines while I relaxed.

Finished the night on a far darker note with I, Tonya. Figure skater Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) is a fighter. Raised in a broken home in a poverty-stricken town by her abusive and potty-mouthed mother LaVonda (Allison Janney), she's pushed into the rarefied world of professional figure skating at a very young age. She's one of the most technically gifted skaters of the late 80's and early 90's, but her homemade costumes, jangly rock music, and surly attitude grates on many judges who disapprove of her unladylike behavior. She marries Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan) at a young age to get away from her mother's constant abuse, but he ends up abusing her as well.

Despite her troubles. she manages to become the first female skater to hit the difficult triple axel move in competition in 1991...but things quickly fall apart after that. She divorces Jeff and does poorly at the 1992 Winter Olympics, coming in fourth. Her former coach (Julianne Nicholson) convinces her to train for the 1994 Winter Olympics. She moves in with Jeff again...and becomes shaken after receiving a death threat. Hiring Jeff's dumb-as-a-post buddy Shawn (Paul Walter Hauser) as her bodyguard was probably not the smartest move, especially after he and a bunch of his friends attack her rival Nancy Kerrigan (Catalin Carver). She finds herself in the center of a media circus that does more damage to her career and life than the poor placing at the Olympics ever could.

This is one of the rare historical movies I can actually claim to have been around for. I was a big figure skating fan from around 1992 to 1995, to the point where I convinced several sympathetic teachers to record most of the Lillehammer Olympics for me, as well as a few other world and US championships. I remember many of the events discussed here, up to and including the knee incident, very well.

Even as a teenager (I would have been two months shy of turning 15 in February 1994), I thought the whole thing was bizarre and a little sad, and at least some of that is reinforced here. Janney won an Oscar as the foul-mouthed, pushy, and nasty LaVonda, who only cares about her daughter's winning tournaments, not her well-being (no matter what she claims). Robbie and Stan were also excellent as the combative and angry Harding and her controlling hubby, and Hauser gave a great portrait of a basement-dwelling loser who thinks he's the smartest guy in the room.

I will add that this is not an easy movie to watch, especially if you're a survivor of real-life abuse like Harding and me. The abuse scenes are violent and harrowing, as they supposedly were in real-life. While it's hilarious to watch Shawn and his equally dopey buddies try to pull this off, the movie lets you draw your own conclusions as to what actually happened and how involved Tonya was. Some critics thought the movie made her a tad too sympathetic, especially given that she wasn't the most stable person at the time and Kerrigan was the actual victim.

If you're a figure skating fan or a fan of the cast with any memories of Harding and Kerrigan and what happened in 1994 and can handle the violence and heavy swearing, you may find this tale of talent overshadowed by notoriety as fascinating as I did.

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