Happy Friday (Or Something)

Whew, the first full week of the new year is officially complete. I don't know about you guys, but over here, it was a struggle. Though it was my second holiday season in "the real world," last year I was unemployed right around this time, so this was the first year that my winter break was only a week and a half. My brain must've thought it still had another three weeks of rest, because all this week I had to fight hard to find any motivation to get anything done. So by the time Friday rolled around, I was more than ready for the weekend.

Have you ever heard of freezing fog? I hadn't, but that's the precipitation that fell on Thursday night, and Friday morning saw me facing the prospect of a slippery drive to work. So I left my apartment, bundled up and grumbling, and proceeded to spend a solid 20+ minutes trying to scrape the damn stuff off of my car. (Seriously, ice from freezing fog is the absolute worst ice I've ever experienced on Buzz.)

Buzz in happier (but dirtier) times.

So when I finally finished, my arms were burning, my fingers were frozen... and when I went to open the door, it wouldn't budge.

I had locked myself out of my running car. And all of my stuff was inside it. Aside from, y'know, my mittens and my scraper.

I've never locked myself out of anywhere before. I was so beyond furious at myself and frustrated that I almost burst into tears, but I composed myself and thought about my options. I could go to the apartment complex office and have them let me back into my apartment, but that would still leave me without a phone. And I needed a phone, and freaking fast, because my car was running. So I decided that it was about damn time I met one of my neighbors, and I marched myself up the stairs and knocked on the door immediately to the right of my own.

After about 30 seconds, a girl wearing a tank top and pajama pants cracked the door open.

"Uh, hi, I live next door and I just locked my keys and everything in my car... Would I be able to use your phone really quick?"

(Great first impression, right? Awesome.)

Well, "really quick" turned into almost an hour and a half and a whole lot of phone calls. (Shout-out to my mom for, once again, saving my butt from over a thousand miles away!) But I seemed to have lucked out in the neighbor department, because Lauren became my ABSOLUTE SAVIOR. Okay I'm probably being over-dramatic, but she let a total stranger in serious need of help into her apartment and was nothing but incredibly hospitable and helpful the entire time. She even asked me if I was hungry! (Oh god I've already completely encroached on your morning, I don't need to take your food too.)

Needless to say, I spent the entire time thanking her profusely and telling her I'm eternally grateful.

By the time the emergency roadside rescue guy arrived, my poor car had been running for almost two hours and I'd basically given myself an ulcer stressing out about it. So this lovely man hops out of his car and proceeds to essentially break into mine, and I had to suppress the urge to koala-hug him. But I DID tell him, quite seriously, "you are an angel."

And then I dove into my car and threw my arms around the steering wheel, as you do.

And then I got to work two hours late and had my most productive day of the week.

So remember, friends: always unlock your car when you leave your keys inside of it, always be nice to your neighbors, and always finish the week on a positive note!

Olympic Things To Look Forward To In 2015

Well, guys, we're no longer in an Olympic year. I don't know about you, but I always get a little pouty when there are no Olympics to be seen in a 12-month radius; Sochi was almost a year ago, Rio is more than a year away... it kind of sucks. However, way back in 2013 I wrote a list of Olympic things to look forward to in that non-Olympic year. And there is, in fact, a whole lot of exciting Olympic things to look forward to this year -- so let's get to it!

1. American bid city for the 2024 Olympic Games will be chosen: TOMORROW?! (Or today, if you're reading this on Thursday!) Holy crap. America hasn't bid for a Games since the Chicago 2016 bid failed, and that process was wrapped up in 2009. So it's been five-plus long years since the U.S. has even had a prayer of hosting the Olympics, and we haven't hosted (winter OR summer) since 2002. I was in fifth grade. I'm now a year and a half removed from college. It's time. And I AM SO READY. Boston? DC? Los Angeles? San Francisco? Can't wait to have a city to support!

2. Gender-neutral four-man bobsledding: winter 2015. If you haven't heard about this, you're missing out. Just a few months ago it was decided that four-man bobsled would be a gender-neutral event, meaning women would be allowed to participate. So a few pioneering badasses named Elana Meyers-Taylor and Kailie Humphries are out there piloting four-man sleds on the world cup circuit for the U.S. and Canada, respectively. I don't know about you, but I LOVE when girls do big things. And this is a big thing. Pay attention to it.

3. 35th anniversary of the Miracle on Ice: February 22, 2015. Ah, 35 is a much less random number than the 33 I celebrated in my 2013 list. :) But seriously, this year, there are all sorts of AWESOME things happening. There's going to be a team reunion in Lake Placid on February 21st (my birthday!), and a fantasy camp coached by a bunch of players at the end of March. I can't afford the fantasy camp (I mean, they should really just hire me to be the event's official blogger), but my goal is to get there for one of these two events. Operation Get Darci To Lake Placid 2k15 is in full effect.

These 10-year-old pictures are WAY overdue to be updated!

4. Jen Kessy's return to beach volleyball: spring 2015. Ah, the intrigue! At London 2012, Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings beat fellow Americans April Ross and Jen Kessy for beach volleyball gold. After the Games, Misty and Jen both retired, and Kerri and April became a team. But just recently, Jen has decided to come out of retirement and go for Rio with a new partner. Jen and April on opposite sides of the court from each other?! Woof. Whether Jen's un-retirement is successful or not, this is going to be fascinating!

5. Rio 2016 qualification processes begin: summer 2015. If you have a favorite sport to watch during the Olympics, start paying attention, because this is the year when competition really ramps up. Depending on the sport, win-loss records and world rankings start to count a year out from the Olympics. (So this is my cue to start watching beach volleyball world tour results like a hawk.)

6. Three year anniversary of London 2012: July 27, 2015. As has become my tradition, I will spend this day watching the opening ceremony and probably getting more emotional than is socially appropriate. How has it been so long?! :(

7. 2022 Olympic Winter Games host city announcement: July 31, 2015. The strugglebus that is the competition to host the 2022 Games will huff and puff to its conclusion this year, as the IOC will decide between Beijing and Almaty. It's been a long and bumpy road to this point, and I for one am ready to just have a host city so people can stop complaining about how few cities are in the race. (I'm also kind of jazzed about the idea of winter sports taking place in Beijing's old summer Olympic venues!)

8. One year out from Rio 2016: August 5, 2015. Pretty self-explanatory, am I right? :) #RoadtoRio

Miracle Monday: USA vs. Romania

Happy first Monday of 2015! And happy first week of being able to say that the 1980 Olympics were 35 years ago. Yikes. That shouldn't make me feel old, since I wasn't alive yet in 1980... and yet, it still makes me feel old. (#logic) But moving on! Do you like wins? Do you like wins by a five-goal margin? (Hint: yes.) Score-wise, this was the U.S. team's best game of the Olympic tournament. So, y'know, you should probably continue reading.

THE SCORE

What: USA 7 - 2 ROM

Who: Buzz Schneider (assists: Mark Pavelich, John Harrington)
         Eric Strobel (assists: Buzz Schneider, Mike Ramsey)
         Mark Wells (assists: Phil Verchota, Ken Morrow)
         Buzz Schneider (assist: John Harrington)
         Steve Christoff (assist: Jack O'Callahan)
         Neal Broten (assist: Mike Eruzione)
         Rob McClanahan (assist: Mark Johnson)

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW

+ This was the first -- and only -- game in the tournament in which the U.S. didn't have to come from behind to win. Seriously, this was the only first period that ended with a U.S. lead. Al Michaels mentions that they "dominated the action," which normally wasn't something that happened until at least the second period. It generally took this team a nice long while to get itself going, so watching them play with a 2-0 lead is a very strange sensation!

+ Before the game, there was some speculation that Steve Janaszak would get the start in goal so Jim Craig could get some rest. But Warren Strelow, the goalie coach, firmly believed in standing behind and showing confidence in your goaltender... and it didn't hurt that Jim flat out refused to be benched. So Herb conceded in order to keep his goalie happy. During the game's commentary, Ken Dryden (himself a former NHL goaltender) said that Jim's personal momentum at this point was more important than rest.

+ At long last, Jack O'Callahan finally gets into a game! He injured his knee at Madison Square Garden just a few days before the Olympics, and while Miracle shows that his first Olympic ice time came against the Soviets, he actually got to play before that. And he even got an assist (his first and only Olympic point) on what I believe was his second shift, so hey, not bad for his troubles!

+ The scoring in this game was kind of fascinating. I mean, first you have Buzz Schneider with his second multi-goal game of the Olympics, so that kind of came as no surprise. But then you've got a lot of goals scored by guys who'd been having a lot of trouble scoring. Steve Christoff and Rob McClanahan were two of the top scorers during the pre-Olympic season (Steve was first in goals scored and Mac was third, and Mac was second in overall points scored and Steve was third), but this was Steve's first Olympic goal and Mac's second. It was also Eric Strobel's first and only Olympic goal, Neal Broten's first Olympic goal, and Mark Wells' second and final Olympic goal. So this game was a really nice stat booster for some of the boys that really needed it!

+ This was the first time, from a broadcast/fan perspective, that the U.S. team finally started to feel like more than an underdog band of misfits that nobody really knew about. Going into this game, its record was 2-0-1 and people were starting to take notice; the arena was standing room only, the crowd was extremely noisy, and for the first time after a game the guys lined up at center ice and raised their sticks in salute to the fans. ABC was also starting to scramble to introduce these unknown players to the TV audience a little bit; they aired a brief little package highlighting some of the players (using these exact photos!), so people could put faces and names to some of the more notable on-ice accomplishments. :)

Baker / Eruzione / Johnson

Schneider / Pavelich / Craig

WHERE CAN YOU WATCH?

Do you want to see Steve Christoff score a goal? Of course you do. You can see that HERE. :)

The Olympics Go Hollywood: Unbroken

Foxcatcher on Wednesday, Unbroken on Sunday. Seeing two new Olympics movies in theaters in less than a week was a pretty amazing thing! :)

Unbroken is the story of Louis Zamperini, a distance runner who competed for the U.S. at the Berlin 1936 Olympic Games. He then fought in World War II, surviving a plane crash, 47 days stranded on a raft at sea, and several years in a Japanese POW camp.

Just like with Foxcatcher, I'd been familiar with Louie's story for the better part of a year thanks to my previous job at the USOC. When Louie was named Grand Marshal of the 2015 Rose Parade in May, I posted that story to TeamUSA.org. And when Louie passed away in July, I posted that story to TeamUSA.org as well. That was actually my last day of work at that job, and the very last thing I worked on. So again, while I haven't (yet) read Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, I knew a pretty decent amount of the movie's storyline. (Let me just say that it was really, REALLY nice to know that Louie lived to the ripe old age of 97, because otherwise I would've sat through the entire movie wondering when he was going to die. Saved me a whooole lot of stress.)

However, unlike with Foxcatcher, I struggled coming up with things to say about Unbroken. During Foxcatcher, I noticed things like sound design and subtle foreshadowing and was constantly making mental notes of things I wanted to comment on. But during Unbroken, I had none of that mental dialogue. It was an amazing movie so I had no idea why I was drawing such a blank, but in writing this post I had to look up other reviews to try and give myself some kind of inspiration.

Luckily I found one on The Wrap that made sense of everything and clarified why I didn't feel much of a spark:

If I describe the superior craftsmanship of “Unbroken” — the stunning cinematography is by the great Roger Deakins, Alexandre Desplat composed the soaring score — in a way that makes the end results seem more like a convertible than a movie, it’s because the film boasts both sheen and efficiency without always delivering an equivalent emotional impact. It’s easier to be awed or impressed by it than moved.

[...] There are powerful moments in “Unbroken,” to be sure, but it also feels like the kind of generically grand-scale movie that five other directors could have made in exactly the same way. 

 BINGO.

Really, the movie was great. The cinematography really was gorgeous (seriously, some of those silhouette shots made me swoon), the cast was phenomenal, and if you've seen the last Harry Potter movie you know Alexandre Desplat can compose a score that makes me weep. And there were moments that had me hiding my face or biting my nails or absolutely awe-struck. But as much as I adored Louie, nothing made me cry. The only time I got weepy was at the very end, when viewers learn what happened to Louie and the other cast of characters after the war. (Honestly, when they showed footage of Louie running in the torch relay before the Nagano 1998 Winter Olympics... let's not even talk about it. *sniffles*) But that was me crying about the real Louie. Movie-Louie didn't get me all that emotional, which SHOCKED me. Things jumped from brutal moment to brutal moment and I spent more time wincing and cringing than anything else.

The resemblance was pretty impressive, though!

Those POW scenes also went on for a very long time, but I guess that's sort of the point, though. For a long time, Louie's life was nothing but torture and nearly being worked to death, after spending a month and a half on a raft in the middle of the ocean. It would've been incredibly hard to have more diversity in those scenes, and the movie did do a lot with very little. I knew one of Louie's raft-mates died during the ordeal but didn't know which one, and I spent the entirety of that portion of the movie trying (and failing) not to get attached to them and absolutely dreading what was going to happen.

I also wasn't entirely sure what to think of Louie's pre-war life being told in flashbacks. I don't think that style particularly added to the storytelling; in my opinion, it would've been just as effective if it had been told linearly. However, I did love how some of the mantras Louie's brother told him while he was training became relevant to him in an entirely new way during the war. "If I can take it, I can make it" and "a moment of pain is worth a lifetime of glory" certainly took on whole new meanings while he was being beaten. It was a really cool way to sort of see the power of sport. Obviously most of the credit goes to Louie's incredible strength of personality, but would he have had that mental stamina had he not become a runner? Sport gives a lot of people strength in other aspects of their lives, and as a sports fan, I really enjoyed seeing Louie revert back to his basic training principles to get himself through his toughest times.

If nothing else, this movie gives you a really good sense of what Louie was all about. As a runner, he was known for his strong final kick and made headlines at the Olympics for his blazingly fast final lap, despite not medaling. He was the same in the rest of his life: he never gave up. He knew how to roll with the punches and somehow managed to stay relatively positive through all of it. He was unequivocally the leader of the group on the raft, and was singled out for abuse at the POW camps but retained his fighting spirit all the way through.

Louis Zamperini was truly a special, one-of-a-kind human being. If for no other reason, see this movie out of respect and appreciation for him and everything he went through. Unbroken might be missing some emotional impact, but it's a beautiful movie and a phenomenal tribute.