Sunday July 25th I had really hoped to get something useful done. Though I had a couple ideas for a blog I could have been working on instead, I decided to concentrate on updating a chapter of a Fanfic I am working on. I find I make more progress on whatever I am writing if I start by writing it out longhand first. I then recycle the paper I wrote it on once it is typed up. I started typing up what I had already written out longhand Sunday; but I should have known I would not get very far beyond what I had already written down.
Whenever I try to make some progress on my stories something always comes along to distract me. That 'something' has often involved one John G. Weir; three time U.S. National Men's Figure Skating Champion ; two-time winner of the Michelle Kwan Reader's Choice Figure Skater of the Year Award; star of the Sundance Channel televison show Be Good Johnny Weir; blogger extraordinaire; two-time Olympian (2006 and 2010); 2008 World Bronze Medalist and on and on. He even had a minor planet named after him by his Russian fans given to him as a 26th birthday gift. There are many more accolades I could list for Johnny, however in the interest of not embarrassing anyone...
The point I am trying to make anyway is that Johnny constantly seems to manage to find a way to distract me from whatever it is I need to get done or be doing that day.
Of course I never have any other distractions from my time. It is always Johnny's fault, never anyone else's!
Thursday July 8th, I was driving my nephew to school at Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Institute in Scottsdale, Arizona when we were rear ended by another car on Indian School Road near 82nd Street. I spend several hours standing around half dressed trying to deal with the other driver, the state the car was in and what to do next. However, Johnny even managed to distract me from this situation. He chose this partiucular day to announce from Japan he was taking a year off from competition. I managed to complete a blog that day regarding Johnny's announcement, despite the travails of my accident earlier in the day. It wasn't a completely unexpected announcement, but it certainly was a distraction; and the discussion of it that ensued amongst Johnny's fans and others completely distracted me from whatever it was I had planned to accomplish that evening.
In subsequent days while Johnny was still in Japan doing three shows, several interviews, and shooting pictures for a new Art Book due to be released in October; little tidbits such as pictures and short videos kept being provided to fans, eliciting discussion, and causing me even more distraction.
Of course, as previously mentioned, Johnny Weir is not the only distraction I have had. Friday July 9, I had to accompany my mother to the emergency room because of some problems she has been having with ongoing leg pain that became too much for her to deal with. She is doing much better now, and even Johnny could not distract me from eight hours in the emergency room at Banner Desert Hospital with my mother.
And then we have the Arizona Diamondbacks, my favorite baseball team. I've often found myself keeping score of the game, while looking at Twitter and Facebook and sometimes working on a Blog all at the same time. However last Wednesday, July 21st, the team just had to go into extra innings versus the New York Mets. The game lasted fourteen innings and four hours and forty-five minutes, ending after eleven p.m. local time. Because Arizona does not observe Daylight Savings Time, and most weekday home games begin at 6:40 p.m., we are often the last MLB team playing. Fans all over the world are sometimes watching over the Internet via MLB.tv. This game obviously ran later than usual, and the announcers were receiving e-mail from fans all over the United States and in several other countries indicating they were viewing the game. Needless to say, despite the fact I try to be a world class multi-tasker, during Diamondbacks games they are a little bit distracting.
But back to Johnny Weir, the King of Weirlandia, and also the King of distraction. First, on Friday night July 23rd both he and his agent Tara Modlin managed to disrupt me by first tweeting Tara was waiting for Johnny in Salt Lake City because his flight was first delayed from taking off, then lost an additional ten minutes in the air. Even though Tara managed to get Delta Airlines to delay the connecting flight, Johnny still missed it and he and Tara spent the night in Salt Lake City. Johnny tweeted he was sitting on the tarmac and later that a hotel in Salt Lake City had taken good care of he and Tara.
The next morning Tara graced us with an amusing Twitpic of she and Johnny on the plane to Sun Valley, and Johnny later sent us a Twitpic of a shop he had managed to get in some shopping at. I spent much of Saturday afternoon and evening drooling over pictures and video of Johnny and the other skaters practicing in Sun Valley; and was further distracted later that night by fan provided reviews, pictures and video of the actual performances and fans meeting Johnny after the show.
Since Johnny had already told his fans he was traveling to Los Angeles from Sun Valley Sunday July 25th on business, I didn't think there would be much to distract me that evening. As it turns out, I was wrong.
At approximately 1:41 p.m. Sunday afternoon, before actually leaving Sun Valley, Johnny tweeted his fans he was planning on hitting Soho House in West Hollywood that evening for some fun.
At 11:20 p.m. Evan Lysacek sent this Tweet to his followers:
Six minutes later at 11:26 p.m. Johnny Weir sent this Tweet to his followers:
At 11:47 p.m. Perez Hilton sent Johnny Weir this Tweet:
Sixteen minutes later at 12:03 a.m. Johnny responded with this Tweet:
Within minutes both Johnny and Evan's tweets were part of a Blog post (and likely many more that I did not see), and being bandied about the Internet like a couple of tennis balls. I was sent the link to a post including the two tweets, and I first looked at it a mere twenty-six minutes after Johnny Weir had first sent his tweet. The post already had 225 comments at that point. I only read the first page of comments; however it was clear the fun people were having with these tweets. Some fans were seeing sarcasm in Johnny's tweet in reference to running into Evan Lysacek at Soho House. Others felt Evan had shown up just because he knew Johnny was going to be there. Some even felt he was being rather obvious about it. Unless it was buried in the comments, I did not see any mention of Perez Hilton's Tweet to Johnny in this particular discussion. However, it's clear Perez either thought Johnny was being funny or saw the possibility he was being sarcastic. Johnny mentioned being at the Voyeur Club in his Tweet to Perez, however he was not there for long. A little over an hour later he Tweeted he was going to bed:
Soon after Johnny sent the above Tweet I went back to the same discussion and posted my only comment. At that point, less than two hours after Johnny had sent the first Tweet about running into Evan there were 617 comments. Again, I did not read any of them. I posted my comment telling everyone Johnny was going to bed and signed out of the discussion immediately.
Johnny's Tweet about running into Evan at Soho House came ten hours after he had first told his fans where he was going. Some people felt since Evan had shown up the same place as Johnny he should have apologized to him for the disparaging remarks he had made about him a few months earlier. While I certainly agree Evan Lysacek owes Johnny Weir an apology; I am not personally sure I believe Evan was 'stalking' Johnny and planned to show up at the same place the same evening just to be there the same time he was for publicity or whatever reason. It's not out of the realm of possibility, but at the same time it seems a little silly. As one fan at Facebook pointed out, Johnny and Evan move in a lot of the same circles both on and off the ice, and it was entirely possible they both just happened to show up on the same night. Soho House is membership only, and both men would have to be either members or invited by members. There is a Soho House in Manhattan, and while I don't know if Johnny is a member there, if he is he could probably get into the one in West Hollywood as well. He was in Los Angeles in the first place for business reasons; something his fans knew about well in advance of his trip to Idaho and California. Even if he is not a member at Soho House, he could have been there with someone who was. After all, he certainly knew in advance he was going to be there.
I had fun talking to a few people on Twitter and Facebook about this whole issue, and within minutes of Johnny's Tweet several Twitter members who follow Johnny were creating funny Hashtags in relation to Johnny's use of the word 'dapper' in his Tweet. Here are some samples:
#dapper
#Dapperisthenewbitchslap
#dapperisthenewboring #dapperisthenewdorky
#Dapperisthenewgeeky
#definitelynotdapperhere
#warningdappernessmayseverelyloweryourcoolfactor
In addition one of my Twitter friends started referring to 'dapper' as the 'new back handed compliment word for the day'. Still another Twitter friend added the #dapper hashtag to every Tweet she sent for the rest of the evening.
Monday not too long before I started working on this Blog I checked the same discussion I had posted my comment to Sunday night, okay early Monday morning just after one a.m.; and there were now 852 comments. There was one direct reply to my comment; the responder thought it was funny. It was supposed to be funny, and I'm glad it was taken that way. I did not read any more of the comments, and have no desire to get involved in any further discussions of this topic with anyone but fans I know I can have a sane, rational, even humorous discussion with. We don't have to agree, we just have to be reasonable about disagreeing.
What do I really think of this entire 'dapper'/#dapper comment from Johnny Weir? As previously stated, I'm not sure I'm ready to believe Evan Lysacek was stalking Johnny's Tweets and deliberately showed up at the same restaurant he was at just because he knew he was going to be there. However, it is not outside the realm of possibility. It's possible he wanted to talk to Johnny, and even to apologize to him, or at least get back on some sort of a normal footing with him. After all, Johnny and Evan have known each other a long time and Johnny has said numerous times in the past they usually have gotten along even though they were rivals and Evan seemed to be favored over Johnny by the USFSA. His reaction to Evan's comments about him was angry at the time, since he had just been told about them a few minutes prior and had had no time to digest them or think about whether Evan might have meant what he said the way it came out, etc. He reacted the way anyone in his situation would have reacted, and frankly he reacted better than most of us would have. He said in his recent Bluefly.com Chat 'I have nothing to say to Evan Lysacek' in response to a fan asking what he would say to Evan if he could. Who could really blame him? I think Johnny might hold a little bit of a grudge, and no one could blame him for that either.
Do I think he was being sarcastic about Evan being 'dapper'? Was he being funny? I don't know. I can't read Johnny Weir's mind, especially from several hundred miles away. It's possible he thought Evan looked good, but it's also quite possible he was being funny or sarcastic, just as many fans seem to think he was being. I certainly wouldn't blame him if he were. Frankly, despite the fact I didn't previously have much against Evan until he bad mouthed Johnny, I think Evan deserves the sarcasm whether it is intentional or not.
Whatever Johnny meant by the Tweet he sent, and whether he really meant Evan looked 'dapper'; he certainly knew his Tweet would be read by every one of his 63,063 followers, not to mention any Twitter member who cared to check his feed or had his Tweet 'retweeted' to them. Therefore he knew it would probably be discussed and endlessly speculated on, whether discussion and speculation was warranted or not. I'm sure Johnny and many other celebrities might often wish everything they said and did wasn't subject to endless speculation, and that they could just make a comment without it being dissected.
I don't think this has blown up into much of anything, and I really think most people don't think much of it. Personally I think it's all pretty damn funny!
BTW, this is 'dapper':
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