Figure skating (The Shoot Me Now Chronicles, Vol. 1).

So I was at my in-laws this Sunday and was roped into spending the late afternoon in the living room in front of the TV with the family. No football, although my father-in-law is a fan; there were three figure skating events on their DVR, and someone made the decision to hold a marathon viewing of all three, by which point I was already duct-taped to the sofa and couldn’t escape. As a result, I’m going to try to explain this bizarre series of competitions called the ISU Grand Prix, second only to the BCS in needless complexity.

The Grand Prix comprises six events, one held each weekend for six weeks, to qualify skaters for a seventh event, the Grand Prix final, which moves every year. The six qualifying events are held in the U.S. (“Skate America”), Russia (“Cup of Russia”), China (“Cup of China” – aren’t we so fucking clever), France (named after some French guy), Japan (“NHK Trophy”), and Canada (I forget). There was a German competition until 2003 when the ISU realized that the Germans sucked at figure skating. The Germans should stick to things they’re good at, like killing bloggers. (Or beer. They’d probably rather be known for beer.) Anyway, that’s when the Cup of China started up, although judging by all the empty seats, I’m going to say that figure skating has not quite grabbed the interest of the Chinese public yet.

As an aside, the Grand Prix events are by and large held in really cool places to visit. This year’s qualifying events were held in Moscow, Paris, Harbin, Tokyo, Québec city, and … Reading, Pennsyvlania. Really? That’s the best that we could offer? What, Camden was booked? My wife said Reading was better than Detroit … I’m not sure I have a witty comeback for that. She makes a good point.

So each skater or pair of skaters enters two of the six events, and after all six are held, the ISU looks at the combined points totals (not the actual scores) of all skaters (or pairs) and chooses the top six in each category – men’s, women’s, pairs, and “ice dancing” – not making this up, people – to go to the finals. The winner at each competition gets 15 points. As far as I can tell, the runner-up gets 13, the bronze medalist gets 11, but then at some point the points stop dropping by two for each spot and drop by one. It doesn’t matter if your score led the competition by 0.01 points or by 30 – you get two more Grand-Prix points than the runner-up. No one actually explained this in any of the telecasts, and you can’t tell at any point who’s leading or who has already qualified; if you’ve got 28 points already, you’re in the finals, but I never saw any standings or heard any indication of who had how many points. Then there’s the actual scoring of skating, which is never explained and seems to me to be purposefully obtuse so that casual fans can’t obviously spot official corruption, as they did in the last Winter Olympics (prompting a big overhaul of the scoring system). There’s no such things as a perfect score. The announcers obsess over who got a “personal best,” except that there are no awards for getting a “personal best,” only for getting the best score in the damn competition.

The worst part is that a skater (or pair) who skates in two separate competitions in this series uses the same routine both times. This makes for dreadful television. We were also treated to lengthy explanations of the “meaning” – again, not making this up – of various skaters’ and dancers’ routines. When the (very attractive) Tanith Belbin and her partner started up one of their ice dances, the female announcer started to explain that the routine is about “love and…” which is where I fell asleep, and when I woke up an hour later, she was still explaining what the routine was about. Really? It’s about love? I thought ice dancing was about skating in circles and waving your arms like you’re playing charades and the word is “seagull.” But I could be wrong.

I did learn a few things about what’s important in figure skating and ice dancing:

• It’s important that your skating is “sincere.”
• It’s important to “believe” in your abilities.
• And it’s really important to not fall on your ass. Or, if all of your competitors fall on their asses, just to fall on your ass less often than they do.

Another major problem, at least in terms of getting men to watch skating without having someone prop my eyelids open and tie me to the couch, is the fact that the best female skaters in the world are all either teenagers or just look like them. The top American skaters were Kimmie Meissner, who is about 16 and looks 14; and Caroline Zhang, who is 14, looks about 10, and sounds like she’s 8. Even Sasha Cohen, now in her early 20s (and not in any of these events), still has the figure of a preteen. This is not appealing.

Other than Belben, who is definitely good-looking, the hottest skater in any of the three events I was forced to endure was Finnish skater Kiira Korpi, who’s just 19 but has a great figure and is pretty in that sort of generic-Nordic-blonde way. (Nothing wrong with that.). Sadly, she’s not that good, finishing in 16th in the last Olympics and finishing well out of the money in the two Grand Prix events in which she skater. (To be fair, she suffered from a “stomach ailment” all summer, so she may not be on her game right now. Still looks hot, though.) But she identified, for me, the real reason for the lack of sex appeal at these events: There are no Swedes. Or, for that matter, no Danes, Norwegians, or even Icelandic skaters. If MLB is willing to pour money into China or Africa or South America to try to develop baseball there, shouldn’t the ISU be willing to pour money into the Nordic countries to try to develop some hot female skaters to give (straight) men a reason to watch this crap? The fact is that the countries currently producing skaters are not producing their fair share of attractive female skaters. This must be addressed.