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80srockher · 6 years

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Yuri on Ice Re-Watch and Live Commentary, Episode 12: Final Skate: Gotta Super-Super-Supercharge It!!! Grand Prix Final Free Skate

It. Is. FINISHED.

You know that feeling when a fan-nish project is projected to take only a few weeks, during the Summer, mind you, but ends up spanning, oh, about three months? I do, now.

**Begin rant**

Me, too, Vitya! End what, Yuri??

I mean, it's more than a little crazy that he thought this is something Victor would be relieved to here. It's as if they have been existing on different planes of reality.

Listen. Victor has shed tears a grand total of two times in 12 episodes and both incidents involved Yuri. Yet Yuri still doesn't think he’s important enough to merit more of his Victor’s time away from skating. Just. YURI. AUGH!!!

The actor's decision to read this line as if Yuri's revelation has not stabbed Victor in the heart is masterful. There's only so much pretending the man is capable of.

This is hella relatable as someone who also doesn't want to be touched when I'm upset by THE VERY PERSON WHO UPSET ME. Give him a minute to process this, Yuri.

This is just a horrible, horrible cap. Vitya is thoroughly in kicked-puppy-mode.

Um, did you ignore absolutely everything else that occurred afterwards? Including when he straight-up said to your face that he wishes you'd never retire?

Don't fire him, Yuri!

Yuri was really out there listenin' to friends instead of Victor. How many times did Victor ignore the others' entreaties to return to competition to remain his coach? Don't join that Greek chorus. Yuri.

I beg to differ. He's always concerned about your well-being, which is why you gave him an expensive-ass symbol of devotion and put it on his ring finger. Good God, boy.

This inspiration thing goes both ways, Yuri. LISTEN TO VICTOR. He is telling you what HE wants In This Moment. Not what YOU think is best for HIM.

Like hell! You two hash this out right now!

**End rant**

Look, a skater who was popular back when I used to watch. LOL. Stephane L-l-l-l-lambiel!

So, sports reporter Marooka remarks about how Yuri hasn't been seen practicing in public since the day after the short program, which has worried his fans (see, Yuri, you have FANS.) You mean to tell me Yuri and Victor have been at odds with each other for two whole days now?!?!

Cartoon!Lambiel picks up on Yuri and Victor's uncharacteristically low energy.

You don't say, Stephane.

Also: Victor knows Stephane, personally. What a celeb.

At least flag guy has re-energized himself since JJ's short program.

"Don't eff it up."

He eff'd it up.

Wow, shades of Yuri from episode one.

Deep, bro.

Aww! The parents in this show are the best cheerleaders. If only there was time during the season to meet all of them. I'd def like to see Phichit's parents.

So, JJ's dad is reminiscing on some of his son's past coaches. Celestino, then played by Peg Bundy, was one of them.

Also…. I'm really curious as to what JJ needed to say yes to.

Damn you, Mickey Lannister Crispino! Hands off!

Seung Gil! What an awesome cameo.

I don't know much about scoring in figure skating but this seems a mite high for a program that was mostly jumps.

Yay! No other comment needed.

Phichit's ice-show dreams are as adorable as he is. Christophe with a hamster cap is utterly, utterly charming. I would fork over cold, hard blood plasma donation cash to see this in person.

It shouldn't be like this between them; especially not when Yuri plans to end his competitive career, here.

And really, why is Yuri so upset with Victor? I suspect Yuri's selfishness runs deeper than either of them realize. IMO, he's afraid Victor might come to resent him if he retires from skating to coach him, then regrets it.

But honestly, Yuri should know Victor better than that by now.

Despite everything, Victor is still trying to be the coach Yuri needs.

But… Yuri doesn't want Victor to play coach right now.

So tickle his fancy, Victor.

Um…

Victor has an interesting sense of humor.

Also, he did win the one against the teenagers at the local comp. Though I have no idea if a qualifier is considered part of the Senior circuit.

Yeah, katsudon's not the only way to celebrate, Yuri. Victor wants to really give you something worth winning for.

This is just an R&B song waiting to happen.

Hmm… whatever could you mean, Yuri?

I really love how they've cut Yuri's long program with clips of Victor from Yuri's memory. It's a visual culmination of a journey.

Ahh, that's what he meant about making up his mind about his goal. And that's why he wanted Victor to stop playing at being coach. Because he wasn't going to listen to him, anyway. You know, the usual.

Yuri's internal dialogue during his routine reveals his desire to stay in figure skating with Victor forever and his fear of killing Victor's career if he remains Yuri's coach. Victor… have you not shared with the man how competition was already slowly killing you? Might wanna do that sometime in the very, very near future.

Yuri… just loves Victor. He can't always articulate how much, but he can show it. His program is one big tribute to Victor and Yuri's desire to prove everyone how much Victor means to him as a coach and an inspiration.

And Victor gets the message loud and clear.

Mari+Minako are, yet again, Me.

Something I should've wondered by now is how half-blind Yuri can tell where Victor is standing.

The monkey-on-his-back that is Anxiety.

Seriously, you performed to the absolute best of your ability, Yuri. Relax. Relate. Release.

Wowsa, dude.

Sooooo, Victor has just congratulated Yuri on his record-breaking performance and implies that he might come back to competition in the same breath he confesses his pride in both his pupils. The possibility of Victor's return delights Yuri to no-end but gives me pause. A lot of pause.

Victor. My dude. Are you just trying not to ruin the mood? Because quite honestly, one of the very valuable lessons you should've learned on this journey is that a little selfishness can be a good thing. I know you want to make a grand gesture after Yuri's grand gesture but YOU CAN'T BOTH KEEP MAKING GRAND GESTURES. You'll hurt yourselves trying to show the world your love.

Moving on... Chris is on the ice, having serious thoughts about how Yuri, who was rumored to retire after the GPF, beat his personal best. He laments that it won't be as easy for him to win gold as he first thought.

Then he witnesses the happy couple doing their thing.

And gets distracted.

This is in regards to Victor. Chris is rethinking his initial calculation of GPF - Victor = gold for him.

Aww, Chris is Phichit's buddy. Why am I not surprised?

This scene is after Chris decides to change an earlier jump composition to the second half of his program. Can't say he's not a fighter.

Dawww, Minako.

Really? That's it?! By my estimation, that program was better than JJ's. What am I missing?

Boo, this is the last time I'll see my babe, Leo.

But I concur. Go, Otabek! I'm fond of his music choices, skating, and his costumes.

So, Victor finds Yakov to tell him he wants to return to competition. I mean, it couldn’t have waited until after Yurio’s skate, V?

Once upon a time, news of Victor's return may have pleased Yurio. Now, his first concern is Yuri.

And Victor is Not. Happy. About this. He’s about to cry here, tbqh.

Annnnd he requires immediate comfort. This is sad. More than sad, when I consider Victor is letting Yuri call the shots, here. Competing again should be Victor's own decision, as well.

Yeah, that's good advice to pass along, Victor.

I've been debating as to whether or not I should parse out the intricacies of Victor's isolation. Honestly, I think the writers did a well-enough job of it. I suppose I still wonder, as many others have, about his family.

I'll go out on a limb and assume he has or had people in his life that taught him to love like he does and to treat other people kindly. One doesn't learn those sorts of things in a vacuum. However, I headcanon Victor as having been scouted and, once recruited, moved closer to a training facility, a la these athletes.

So, isolated? Yes. Friend-less and family-less? I doubt it, or at least it wasn't always that way.

Meanwhile, Yuri's looking for his man. Perhaps to tell him that he's already changed his mind about retiring? In that case, please, look harder Yuri!

Just needed to slide in this cap of Mila getting sprung by Otabek's skating. Good taste, Mila.

I don't know who JJ has in his pocket on the judging panel, but Otabek just completed a perfect program AND he was ahead of JJ after the short program. Logic would dictate he'd be ahead of JJ now. But, do as you will, YOI.

This is in regards to Yuri. In flashbacks during Yurio's routine, we discover that he was actually impressed with Yuri's prior GPF free skate, despite the errors. It was only after he found Yuri crying in the bathroom stall that he lost respect for him. Must be Yurio's special brand of encouragement: "Stop crying, get better, or get out of the game!" Yeah. That must be it.

Anyway, now Yurio has changed his tune and doesn't want Yuri to retire, at all. Cute.

Lilia is so proud of her angry, pseudo- son.

Yurio completes his most difficult program ever with only one fall. During his skate, it's revealed that part of his motivation was to become a new goal for Yuri to surpass. That's nice and all, but not at the expense of your own health, Yurio.

I don't think Yuri would want that for him, either.

Yurio defeats Yuri by a sliver of a margin. I will admit to initially being surprised by the result before considering (and re-considering, after this re-watch) a few things:

Yurio won because it's entirely possible he may not win again for at least a little while.

His lack of stamina is well-documented, he's in the Senior circuit with grown men who can, and have, beat him already, and he's yet to hit a growth spurt. If the series continues into a second season, then I foresee the writers exploring these very realistic scenarios for Yurio.

This is partially why I don't predict Yurio achieving what Victor has, at least not right away. There's not enough drama in that narrative to fill up an entire season, IMO.

Or, at the very least, they'll use Yurio to address the conflict over becoming as isolated as Victor has during his struggle to maintain dominance in the sport.

Yurio won because the name of the show is 'Yuri on Ice’.

Also, if the writers decide to have Yuri eventually retire (because he is of that age), then they don't even have to change the show’s title. How convenient.

Last, and what I think is obviously implied in this episode: Yurio won so that Yuri would change his mind about retiring.

However… Yuri had already changed his mind. And his biggest motivator in that decision was still Victor, so… kinda wish they hadn't made Yurio go out and suffer like that for no good reason. Honestly, there's little chance of him repeating this performance.

Anyway….

Awww! Yay!

So, Victor's in a teasing mood after Yuri presents him with his well-earned silver medal. Victor insists that he only wants to kiss gold. So, what do you have that would be a suitable substitute, Yuri?

Eff that medal Yuri just unceremoniously dropped to the ground in preference to hopping in Victor's lap. Coach me for another year, Victor!

What a lovely step forward for our boy, Yuri. He didn't win gold but, all joking aside, Victor doesn't care. Yuri’s next gold medal will be a token to Victor, instead of unnecessary proof that he was worth Victor’s time, all along.

Besides, I think he’s already given Victor the only golden item he truly wants.

But, I mean, only if you WANT to, Victor. Are you afraid Yuri will change his mind if you change yours? I hope that's not the case.

Apparently, this is the only payment Victor will accept for coaching Yuri. Ok, so you're going to compete and hopefully earn some sponsorship money to pay your own bills all while coaching someone else for free? Do we need to have a 'Victor on Ice,' a show about Victor re-learning the value of doing one thing at a time?

Roll credits!

How sweet!

The serendipity that is cartoon-world. "I want to coach a skater from another country while also competing for my own country and you can't stop me because I'm animated!"

"I want to do a pair skate with my coach for my exhibition. Know why? Because the writers say I can!! Ha!"

Anyway, this is romantic AF.

Cut to this adorbs face...

Running towards this one, here.

And yeah. WE'D BETTER. Because their story isn’t over!

The End!

If you managed to get through my all streams of consciousness, full of bad screencaps and even worse grammar, then I humbly and sincerely thank you! I enjoyed doing it and hope you enjoyed reading it.

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ricardosousalemos · 7 years

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Green Day: Dookie

When he was 10 years old, long before he sang about masturbation losing its fun, Billie Joe Armstrong lost himself in music. His father had just died of cancer, and in Rodeo, Calif., a smallish East Bay suburb next to an oil refinery, Armstrong retreated into MTV, the Beatles, Van Halen, and a Stratocaster knock-off he nicknamed Blue. He grew close to schoolmate Michael Pritchard, who had his own family grief and who introduced Armstrong to British heavy metal giants like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. Pritchard later earned the sobriquet Mike Dirnt, for his constant dirnting on bass guitar.

In high school, Armstrong and Dirnt smoked pot and played in a band called Sweet Children, finding their tribe in a tiny clique of DIY punks. By 1988, Sweet Children had their first gig at 924 Gilman Street, the Berkeley punk mecca opened the previous year by Maximumrocknroll zine founder Tim Yohannan, and Armstrong told his waitress mother he wouldn’t be graduating. Sweet Children signed to Lookout Records!, changed their name to Green Day, and put out a pair of rough but promising EPs. They brought in Frank “Tré Cool” Wright, a drummer known equally for his musicianship and his mischievousness, and with their sharply improved LP Kerplunk!, Green Day arrived.

As Kerplunk! landed on shelves in December 1991, Nirvana’s Nevermind zoomed to the top of the album charts. A band with Green Day’s momentum and punk pedigree was obvious bait for the major labels. Still, it was Armstrong’s voice, sneering and congested, that initially put one A&R exec off of Green Day’s demo. Luckily, he passed it to his producing partner, Rob Cavallo, whose father had been Prince’s manager circa Purple Rain and who, despite signing respected L.A. pop-punks the Muffs, was sorely in need of a hit.

He found one. Co-produced by Cavallo and the band themselves, Green Day’s Dookie was released on February 1, 1994. To date, the band’s Warner/Reprise debut has sold more than 16 million copies worldwide. Most of those album buyers probably know nothing about its makers’ humble origins. But that story helps to explain the unique series of balances, between showmanship and disaffection, dogmatic punk ideals and romantic stadium dreams, sweetness and scatology, partying and pain, that have turned Dookie into one of the greatest teenage wasteland albums of any generation. Armstrong’s Dookie guitar? His childhood’s trusty old Blue.

What set Dookie apart from the grunge rock bellowers of its day was Armstrong’s voice, foggy and vaguely unplaceable. “I’m an American guy faking an English accent faking an American accent,” he teased at the time. Though Armstrong’s tone was bratty, his phrasing had that lackadaisical quality that left room for listeners to fill in their own interpretations. On Dookie, Armstrong channeled a lifetime of songcraft obsession into buzzing, hook-crammed tracks that acted like they didn’t give a shit—fashionably then, but also appealingly for the 12-year-old spirit within us all. Maybe they worked so well because, on a compositional and emotional level, they were actually gravely serious. Sometimes singing about the serious stuff in your life—desire, anxiety, identity—feels a lot more weightless done against the backdrop of a dogshit-bombarded illustration of your hometown by East Bay punk fixture Richie Bucher.

“Longview,” Dookie’s outstanding first single, smacks of the most extreme disengagement: a title taken from Longview, Washington, where it happened to be played live for the first time; a loping bass line supposedly concocted while Dirnt was tripping on acid; and a theme of shrugging boredom that placed it in the ne’er-do-well pantheon next to “Slack Motherfucker” to “Loser.” Adolescent interest may always be piqued by lyrical references to drugs and jerking off, the way a 5-year-old mainly laughs at the Calvin and Hobbes panels where Calvin is naked or calling Hobbes an “idiot.” But as beer-raising alt-rock goes, this is also exceptionally bleak, with the narrator’s couch-locked wank session transforming into a self-imposed prison where Armstrong semi-decipherably sings, per the liner notes, “You’re fucking breaking.” No motivation? For a high-school dropout hoping to succeed in music, that mental hell sounds like plenty of motivation.

The other singles mix Armstrong’s burgeoning songwriting chops with deceptively lighthearted takes on deeper topics. The opening line, “Do you have the time/To listen to me whine?” is endlessly quotable, but the self-mocking stoner paranoia of the irresistible “Basket Case” was inspired by Armstrong’s anxiety attacks. As late as 1992, Armstrong still had no fixed address, and “Welcome to Paradise” reaches back to those nights crashing at dodgy West Oakland warehouse spaces. It also brashly embodies punk’s trash-is-treasure aesthetic at its most American. But the closest Armstrong came to a pop standard, one that any guitarist who knows four power chords can play at a home and a more established star could likely have made an even bigger hit, was the midtempo “When I Come Around”—a smoldering devotion to the then-estranged lover who would become the mother of Armstrong’s two children. They’re still married.

Elsewhere, the bouncy, brief “Coming Clean” is from the perspective of a confused 17-year-old, uncovering secrets about manhood that his parents can’t fathom; Armstrong has forthrightly related the song to his own youthful questions about bisexuality. “Seventeen and coming clean for the first time/I finally figured out myself for the time,” he declares, in one particularly sublime bit of wordcraft. Teenage angst pays off well: Now he was bored and almost 22. Likewise, the rest of the album tracks often further showed what an accomplished songwriter Armstrong had become. “I declare I don’t care no more,” from breakneck slacker anthem “Burnout,” would be a classic first opener on any album, even though by now we know it contains an element of false bravado. The contrasts that made up the band’s identity also helped elevate Dookie above its shitty name, couching anti-social childishness in whip-smart melodic and lyrical turns. When, on the last proper track, the nuke-invoking “F.O.D.” (short for “fuck off and die”), Armstrong vents, “It’s real and it’s been fun/But was it all real fun,” it’s his Dookie-era way of saying he hopes you had the time of your life.

Critics have been kind to Dookie, but not overwhelmingly so. It’s tempting to wonder how many of these lyrics could’ve been influenced by Robert Christgau’s two-word, two-star Village Voice review of Kerplunk!: “Beats masturbation.” Still, he gave Dookie an A-, and the album made it onto the Voice’s 1994 Pazz & Jop year-end critics’ poll at No. 12. But the backlash against Green Day in the pages of Maximumrocknroll was real and visceral. The June 1994 cover showed a man holding a gun in his mouth with the words, “Major labels: some of your friends are already this fucked,” with Yohannan sniffing inside, “I thought it was oh so touching that MTV decided to interrupt playing Green Day videos to overwhelm us with Nirvana videos on the day of Kobain’s [sic] death.” At Gilman, where major label acts were banned, graffiti on the wall proclaimed, “Billie Joe must die.” So it’s an album many people adore, but like loving the Beatles, proclaiming your adoration for it doesn’t necessarily win you any special recognition. Oh, you were in seventh grade and learned every word of a Green Day album? Duh.

Time has worked on Dookie in strange ways. Most blatantly, the post-grunge alt boom allowed an album like this to exist in the first place. Green Day were masters at pulling stoner humor out of malaise, and that is what the so-called alternative nation needed. One of Dookie’s great light-hearted touches, the image of Ernie from “Sesame Street” on the back cover, has been airbrushed away from later physical editions, ostensibly due to legal concerns. Among the many things streaming has ruined was the old ’90s trick of including hidden tracks on the album buried without notice at the end of the CD, so all digital releases treat Tré Cool’s novelty goof “All By Myself” as its own proper track. The unfortunate “Having a Blast,” about wanting to lash out with a suicide bombing, is understandably absent from most recent Green Day setlists.

Then again, so many of the fights that Dookie started have happily become moot. In 2015, Green Day played their first show at Gilman in 22 years. Whichever Maximumrocknroll readers were mad at Green Day for trying to make it out of their working-class suburban beginnings probably have more adult worries today (the zine, however, hasn’t forgotten). Though Green Day never quite embraced the term pop-punk and certainly didn’t invent it, they were pegged as its popularizers; you could hear their echoes several years ago in records like Wavves’ King of the Beach, but younger pop-punk torchbearers like Joyce Manor, Modern Baseball, or You Blew It! have been more likely to name-check the more tightly genre-fitting Blink-182. In interviews, Armstrong still claims the “punk” mantle, but over the years Green Day emerged as a classic arena-rock band, noted for their pyrotechnics.

These days, Armstrong knows how to fire up crowds by promising them they’ll have a good time. Fans are brought up on stage every night to take their instruments and play a song. A T-shirt cannon is somehow involved. Green Day have matured in all the ways the biggest bands usually mature, and that’s their right. Immature but crafty, punk but pop, American pretending to be English pretending to be, well, whatever, Dookie-era Green Day were, for a time, in a class alone. Call them pathetic, call them what you will. They were all by themselves, and everyone was looking.

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