Comments on Synchro Smackdown

where would one watch of feed of this event?

I always get lost in the tubes when I look for that sort of thing.

oh wow...is synchronized swimming on??? where??? i love that stuff!

compelling stuff, ladies.

I AM ON FIRE. Duh.

What channel is this on? Not 5 or 99. I'm confused. I want to be excited but I don't know how.

so i just got my new silver light plug in rocking.

is it the japanese team in blue and white?

is that where we're at?

I've got women's volleyball. No thanks.

ooh, underwater human-catapult shot in slo-mo!

I'm a fan.

Sycnhro is coming after volleyball, apparently. We will be speaking about the live feed a little. This is chaos! Sorry.

I was totally wondering why there was volleyball. So synchro is coming?

Japan just swam! They're fighting China for a medal, I'm pretty sure. I dunno. They look like a scraggly bunch up there in their blue and white suits. What are those supposed to be? Doves? Back in my day, we didn't have "scenes" on our suits. But we did have themes.

Like NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK.

hit that expand button on that screen and you got a pretty sweet feed.

ooooh, spain.

I am online with my tragic and stupidly named Silverlight. Am I allowed to trash talk in the comments?

I think this is Spain. I can't really hear the music, though...

The NBC website promises that synchro will be a part of this broadcast, but obviously they're going to finish up this Cuba-China volleyball game first. Lame! The Spanish are in the pool on the live feed.

spain has the watermelons on their heads, abby.

i dig the inverted scissor-dancing.

I like their hats.

It's a lot twitchier than I remember synchronized swimming being. Back when I used to watch it in the 1800s.

¡muy caliente!

Is it weird that I think their legs look like arms?

Why do Spain have those African tribal masks on their suits? Also, it's hard to live-blog and watch the feed at hte same time. :P

Oh boy, these look like surly Russians. And yes, there are the fans flying the Russian flag. These guys are the dynasty. From what I just saw, Spain isn't going to touch them. The Spaniards are clearly resting on creativity, but their routine felt messy to me.

Is anybody else being forced to cut to ads at the worst moments?

HEY! Nice split-leg flip into the water.

Sheeet, the Russians are clearly the champions.

can you use the word tchaikovskian to describe synchronized-swimming, Jen?

pleeeeease transition into carmina burana!!!

That swirly hip wiggling was pretty awesome. I feel like I'm watching a different species. Is this an episode of Firefly?

The Russians are totally neat, in a really bizarre kind of way.

Why are the Russian coaches 750 pounds each?

Oh, terrible makeup. Why?

The Russians have very tiny hats, don't they? They must shellac their hair.

Damn. Russia is cleaning the fuck up.

Yes, the Russians seem better than the Spaniards. I liked the flipping and twisting. But their suits are lame. What is with blue and white? There should be more of this underwater camera.

the slo-mo of that opening human-waterspout-into-the-swan bit was pretty amazing.

oh shit. it's over.

99.5? The rest should just go home.

That's all of it? Damn.

obla-dee?

I still find the Spanish outfits inexplicable.

That was IT? Two routines? I feel gypped. Plus, their costumes make me feel funny.

I'm going to go find some fencing highlights.

Whoa, that Russki cameraman dude is almost as huge as his lens.

I'm pretty much in heaven. V-ball on the TV and synch swimming on the laptop. 'Cept now I have to stay up much later to catch the synch teams I missed messing around with Silverlight.

WTF? Are they VOGUEING?

i got three routines out of it.

and some amazing screenshots of the slo-mo replays!

Fnarf! Paulus! Abby! All! God, I love you people.

The points you are making are so the very best.

Fnarf, ALL synchro coaches are 750 pounds. It is a mystery to all of us. The makeup is fucked. I am against it. I am also against smiling. Completely against it. At certain points in the routines, it is so incongruous with the music (not to mention with what is going on in your burning lungs, legs, and arms) that it resembles that perverse McCain grin following his claim that he's chasing Osama to hell. Up. Setting.

Abby, the shellac is gelatin. Unflavored. I'm serious. I threw a party a few years ago where I did this at home so everyone could see, and it is totally awesome. You make the jello, from the box. You put it on your hair and your bun and then it hardens. Super, super hard. Then, you have to shower in nine thousand degree water in order to melt it out of your hair again. At which point your hair has been, like, über-VO5ed and will look all shiny and gorgeous.

Have you noticed that the stands are almost empty for EVERYTHING?

Jen- that's really, truly amazing. Seriously. I would have loved to see that.

(Also, they do not have the fencing highlights I want on this stupid thing. I don't want men's team sabre. I don't like sabre, damn it.)

Shit, I am totally going to do that to my hair. For my birthday.

We're pretty psyched so we're staying up for more synchro on the TV. I really wish I could see Bob Costas try to post-interview those fierce Russians. He's too afraid.

I don't have to watch a GE add, I get to watch a Hilton add, and that is all i get to watch because I don't have cable TV, fuck, if I had cable TV I'd watch TV on my TV

I have to say the live feed is a thousand times better than the network feed; what with all the commercials and icky TV commentators.

I never got the GE commercials on my feed either, just lots of synchro. And no video of the foil or épée gold medal matches, just endless men's team sabre.

The thrilling footage of the pool now on the live feed brings me to mention: no, there's no touching of the bottom of the pool. I'm not sure about the depth of this one (I think I'd heard 3 meters, when all that world-record talk was happening around the speed swimmers), but the ideal synchro pool would be 10 or more feet deep the entire length. The shallow end just gets in your way as you're egg-beatering.

This volleyball is going to go on forever. I've watched so much volleyball at the Olympics, I don't know why.

good job, ladies. that was more multi-tasking than I want to be doing at this hour.

agreed, annie. more underwater cam. I like the refraction.

the crowd noticing themselves on the big screen are adorable.

I think we were getting the annoying ad interruptions because we are putting too much strain on the internets here. Too bad, we're jealous of all you fast people.

no shit, jen, no touching bottom?

that makes the tossing all the more impressive.

Ahh, there's the épée highlights.

Wow, you girls had some focus. I just rode bikes around the neighborhood and threw pinecones at things.

Here's how that tossing happens with the NTB and all, Mister P: The ladies all get very very very close to each other underwater, and usually they gather underneath one woman who is laid out on her back with the woman who is going to be thrown or who is going to stand preparing to get up on top of the laying woman with all the others on her underside, pushing her up. Does that make sense?

Generally, what it means, though, is a lot of other people's knees in your face. This is no big deal, except if you lose your noseclips, which is terrifying.

And that is why there is a bulge in the hip of every synchro swimmer's suit. Because there are spare noseclips in there.

Beach volleyball is kind of lame. I did, however, like those adorable Latvians who beat the Americans guys in their first match.

light as a feather, stiff as a board.

so the noseclips also act as noseguards?

awwww, España dulce.

You know what's a cool, kind of weird sport? Handball. I wish they were showing handball.

I mean, on the TV. I'm watching it on my computer now. It's fascinating.

No, the noseclips are totally stress-inducing, because they get easily knocked off and provide actually no support whatsoever to the nose. But that leads me to ANOTHER weird synchro support system: We glue our noseclips on with clear nail polish.

Getting that shit off after is a pain.

Also, I would like to say, while we are on the subject of noseclip trivia, that one of the American synchronized swimmers doesn't wear a noseclip at all. She just pushes her lip up and blocks her nose. I've only met one other swimmer who could do this.

Hardcore athletes are freaks of nature, sometimes literally I suppose...

This volleyball is taking way too long. I'm sleepy. And I have soccer to watch in the morning.

handball is kinda goofy.

I'm angry at this Little Mermaid prequel I keep seeing ads for. I know that this is what Disney does, but I'm still annoyed.

Annie and I can barely keep our eyes open anymore, or our brains from casbahs. Good god.

I think I fell asleep at the laptop at one point myself, Jen. Zzz.

I hope China wins this set because I think that means this will stop, and there can be swimming before I really do fall asleep at the computer.

All right girls, I'm out.

This has been very illuminating. I'll send you some of the screenshots I took. You won't believe some of the faces.

Let me know when you live-slog the beach handball event.

kisses.

Sleep well, girls! Thanks for this. I'm off to bed too...

TLDR.

Wot a loser of a blog and waste of space......

a casbah is a MARKET.

Jen Graves thinks Dale Chihuly is an artist.

I seen you today Hipster. You had a cigarette in one hand and a Stranger in the other. You smelled like stinking cigarette smoke as you puffed away feeding your loser addiction. Your ear lobes were sagging with ear plugs that went out of style five years ago. And those tats? The colors have faded and they are starting to merge into an ugly blob. Didn't you ever notice what tats look like on older men? You thought those fuckers would forever be in style? Would you like to wear the same fucking shirt every day for the rest of your life? And that tat on your neck-it shouts LOSER to everyone who sees it. But being a loser is your thing right? That's why you read the Slog.