InsaneJournal

So I'm sitting in the Verizon Center, having just shown mom some vids, including one of Johnny, and they're setting up for the TV broadcast of Kaleidescope, and I'm smiling tolerably through the first of the technical screwups and repeats. The skaters come onto the ice, I'm clapping and cheering, tonight's gonna be a good, good night-and then I realize Johnny isn't in the line-up.
It's about the time Scott's coming out for his Big Return that it occurs to me that since the 10th, when he was still sick, the only peep out of Johnny was a single tweet on the 13th about Lady Gaga, and that such silence isn't usual for him these days, especially if it leads fans to shock disappointments. At that point I'm having nightmares about broken legs or fatal illnesses or who knows what else he would avoid announcing, and most of the performances of the first half fly over my head. My mom really likes Nancy Kerrigan and Meryl and Charlie, and Ashley does a beautiful performance with the synchro team to one of the AI Davids singing "Silent Night" live, and Viktor's a unexpected cowboy hanging around, but the thing I notice most is the extreme hyping of Brandon Mroz by Scott Hamilton. Can we say, next Great Straight Hope? Never mind that noone came to the show to see him.(To his credit, he did skate well. If only he could have managed the jumps).
Around the time Alexe Gilles unexpectedly led off the second half to ye old Beyonce smash(all the singles ladies, lace your boots up!), I wonder briefly if Johnny pulled out of the show ages ago, or maybe just Saturday night/Sunday morning when he more or less qualified for the GPF, and this management was just too incompetent to announce it! Despite the obvious question of why he didn't announce either, I decided to believe this for the sake of my sanity, and enjoyed the second half more. Watching Meryl and Charlie perform the "Music of the Night" portion of their free, I instantly forgave them their choice of music this year and understood why their scores are so damn high. But oh, Ashley. You were the highlight of the night for me, and as my favorites have failed me you must be my favorite now, and cheer me up at Nationals and the Olympics after Johnny doesn't make it to Vancouver and Tanith and Ben fall to Meryl and Charlie. Even if you were skating to Miley Cyrus. Towards the end as the tech screwups began to pile up and the skating was rudely interrupted by AI kids singing unaccompanied numbers, mom and I both began waiting for the show to just end already, but a late treat was Kristi's second number, in which her soft, beautiful skating was pure magic(her first number was kind of fun too, but I was too busy fretting about the State of Johnny at the time to really enjoy it).
Mom is now extremely indignant that we were part of a show that was broadcast on Fox(I admit I didn't really pay attention to which network was doing it; you just assume they're all on NBC these days), and any future televised events held in DC I will probably have to go to alone, but I don't think I would have minded nearly as much, since in skating these days you take what you get, had Johnny just been there, or even if I'd known beforehand he wasn't going to be, and I could have cheered myself better with Ashley and Meryl and Charlie.
And now I wake up to the news of Andrei Lutai's little joyriding adventure.. Perhaps it's evil of me, but right now I'm glad for the laugh.