They’ve got an innovation on this year’s Nationals, which is a sound track I wish they’d put as an alternate to the commentary on every network: they handed out 4000 little radios with a low, near monotone ‘call’ of the moves, level, and points…including ‘count’ on the sustained elements like spins and rotations—for instance, you have to sustain a spiral (lifted leg) 6 seconds for it to count: if the leg drops below your hip before that 6th second, no good. The lifts have grades of difficulty, and you have to do 3 full rotations; you can’t body-check your partner on the exit from the lift. On takeoff for a jump, you have to be on the ‘right’ edge (inside or outside) for that particular jump, and the ‘call’ will say ‘reviewed’, if something is deceptive and needs to be reviewed on tape. Cheating a jump, the famous ‘flutz’ is starting a Lutz jump on the wrong edge, and a lot of American women are being hit hard on this one, because they got away with it young, and now are having to retrain.
If this kind of ‘call’ were available on general channels a lot of people would change their minds about the points being ‘arbitrary’. There’s a lot more going on and the announcer’s ‘beautiful!’ doesn’t nearly cover it.
Just a note: I’ve looked at the numbers, and have reached the conclusion there was no fudge on the numbers—everybody was getting rated a bit low. But in the system, if everybody is rated low, it still works.
I really like hearing the ‘call’. It’s amazingly easy to keep up with. One choreographer really screwed his/her skaters: they’re keeping with the music, but ‘shorting’ 4 or 5 of their elements, incomplete turns, incomplete spirals, you name it. They should have had different music, or should not have ‘packed’ their program. It does you no good at all to ‘pack’ a program with elements, if you’re going to short most of them and get no credit. Doing fewer elements to perfection will get you more points. So the frequent charge that people are having to ‘pack’ their programs I think doesn’t hold up. The plain mathematics of it says if you do that AND short your elements, you should not be getting credit. Period.
You’ll also see long delays in the results coming out. If a skater has no or only one ‘reviewed’ comment, the results come fairly fast. If a lot they’re doing is iffy and requires careful review, it takes much longer. They have to look at each of these moves on tape, and with a counter running to be sure they sustained the move long enough or FULLY completed the last revolution.
If you want an analogy, try watching football or baseball with no markings on the field. That’s what it is to watch figure skating with no ‘call’ . And that’s why, much as I love Dick and Scotty, I’d rather hear that monotone with the numbers.
I wonder if we could start a petition. They could broadcast it on the second audio channel, maybe. For certain they’re not running any second language, there, so what would be the difficulty?
CJ, Lynn and Jane,
I’m back home from Arisia con here in Boston: the last panel I went to this afternoon was “The Pros and Cons of E-Books, very well attended. I spoke up about Closed Circle and following the development of your e-books store and prepping of the manuscripts (can we still call them that, they are hardly scribed by hand anymore?). The conversation by the time I got called on was discussing any singular advantages to readers of e-books, so I made a specific point about e-books being able to provide the storyline the author wished they had been able to publish, as in the Faery in Shadow double versions of the text now. One of the panelists piped up excitedly with “Director’s cut!” I also brought up some of the Closed Circle flyers from the flyers rack in the main lobby which were eagerly gobbled up by panelists and many of the audience alike.
Interestingly, the major con of e-books which came up, aside from the normal can’t pass your copy on to others, get it autographed (you should figure out a way to electronically “autograph” it with a personalized inscription for extra bucks), etc., was that e-books make stories much less memorable. That is to say, people who read them don’t remember what/if they have read the book before or what the plot line was. A couple panelists said that therefore they can read the same book again (this is a plus) easily. Also that you can’t remember where a passage was on the page (as in paper’s “the funny bit was some place on the lower, right hand corner towards the middle). On the other hand, you can search for text so much easier. The two panelists who were most experienced e-book readers (for years) tend to read them on small screens such as I-phones, which we all suspected might well lead to less visual-memory triggering.
And my Edwardian outfit was very well received (being costumed in even a vaguely Come Hither look–I was mostly quite severe/demure, is completely not my normal persona). I just need to figure out how not to step on the back hem of the long skirt in my (completely not normal attire) high-heeled boots.
Neat!
We did have an autograph page, but were advised that this was, security-wise dangerous, so we regretfully excised it. Sigh.
Raesean: It sounds like you did the ladies proud. And that quibble about not knowing if you’ve read a book or not … I’ve been that way for eons. Once I start reading one I can figure it out and am happy to re-read favourites again and again, whether e-books or DTB’s.
Or how about for starters running the ‘call’ on line? Raesean, hope to see photos of the gown soon. ;-D