There Is A Minions-Related Crisis At The Winter Olympics
Let him skate.
The Winter Olympics are kicking off as I type this newsletter, which is pretty exciting to me, a person who loves the Olympics. I tend to prefer the summer games, if only because of the variety of events and the general vibe of summer, but I also see the allure of watching a bunch of maniacs fling themselves down a mountain at speeds that could be charitably described as reckless. A week or two ago, I learned that there’s a world-class freestyle skier named Mac Forehand, which is the kind of information you really should never discount in a sporting event.
While I’m not usually a big figure skating guy, a series of events that developed throughout this week has me fully invested in at least one aspect of this year’s competition.
Background will help. There is a figure skater competing on the men’s side this year named Tomàs-Llorenç Guarino Sabaté. He is from Spain. This brings us to the important part of our discussion...
This season, Guarino Sabaté competed with a short program that featured a medley of "Universal Fanfare" sung by the banana-loving yellow creatures, "Vicious Funk" from "Minions: The Rise of Gru," "Freedom" by Pharrell Williams and, finally, "Papaya (Minions Remix)" all while dressed in signature Minion attire: a yellow shirt and overalls.
"Dammit, Brian," you say. "You can't just tell us an Olympic figure skater dresses up like a Minion for his routine and not show it to us." I know that. I'm doing it right now. Give me a second. Jesus Christ.
All of which is great. Or at least it was great. Until DISASTER struck. And by “disaster,” I mean “the lawyers.”
In an Instagram story Monday, the six-time Spanish national champion said he had submitted the music for approval in August and had used it in competition throughout the season, but learned just a few days before the Games are set to begin that it wasn't cleared.
What the hell??!!!
It’s been a long time since I took a class on Intellectual Property in law school (2009, A-), so I’m not fully up on any new developments in the field, but I do think, if there’s not one already, we should work on adding some kind of “duuuuuuuuuuude come on” exception for situations like this. You shouldn’t even have to take it in front of a judge. You should just be able to present it to some dude named, like, Verne, and get it cleared with a wordless nod or a thumbs up. Any dude named Verne. Snap a pic of his thumb pointing up and move along. No paperwork needed. Problem solved.
Guarino Sabaté was, as you can imagine, devastated.
“Finding out about this ... so close to the most important competition of my life, was incredibly disappointing,” Guarino Sabaté wrote in his post sharing the initial news. “This season I competed with my Minions short program to bring joy and playful style to the ice while still meeting every required element to show that skating as a male Olympic figure skater can be fun. ... Nevertheless, I will face this challenge head on and do my best to make the best of it.”
I was actually really mad about this. Like, it was bothering me. I didn’t even know this man existed before this week and I was ready to yell at anyone I had to in order to get this Minions routine cleared. Luckily, both for him and for me (I feel like doing something about this on my end would have required going outside and it is very cold), he posted an update a few days later with good news.
“There are still a couple things to be tied up with the other 2 musics of the program but we are so close to accomplishing it!” Guarino Sabaté wrote in his update thanking his supporters. “I’m so happy to see that the minions hitting Olympic ice is becoming real again!! I’ll keep you posted!”
To recap:
- A man wants to win a gold medal through a process that involves dressing up like a Minion and skating around in circles for a while
- Our legal system has yet to create a way where Verne can just handle this on his own, which feels like a real failure on all of our parts
- Disaster appears to have been averted
I wish I had a gavel to bang. That would be a satisfying end to this. I will work on that after the Olympics.
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STUFF I CLICKED ON
— Liz Shannon Miller listed the 69 horniest scenes in Bridgerton, an important public service
— an incredible blog about the slew of insane vertical video dramas that are out there
— the new season of The Night Manager is missing the Le Carre magic
— I read the old story about Gregg Popovich building team unity through good food and great wine again, so yup, gonna share it again, too
— the new Muppet Show special with Sabrina Carpenter debuts this week and Kermit went on Kimmel to promote it
— Dan McQuade died last week, which sucks tremendously. I was not close with Dan personally, or at least not close in the way a lot of other people grieving him were. (Jen Miller's tribute is lovely.) We never met face-to-face despite over a decade of trading emails and running in the same Philly-based internet circles, which I am super bummed out about now. The last time we emailed, he was checking in to be sure I had a clip of the part in “Rockin Around The Christmas Tree” where it sounds like Brenda Lee says “fuckin pie” instead of “pumpkin pie” for the post I do every holiday season, which feels kind of right in a way. He was a solid dude and a great blogger, always writing stories where you'd get done reading them and think “dammit, I wish I had thought of that,” and then realize that you were never going to think of them anyway because you weren't Dan. My favorites were the time he traced the entire route Rocky ran on his jog through Philly in Rocky II and the time he did a remarkable amount of journalism to investigate a fake quote attributed to Ed Harris at a New Jersey rest stop. I feel kind of guilty going from this sincere paragraph into a series of links to silly new stories, but weirdly, I feel like he would appreciate the stupidity of that, so we press on. Rest in peace.
— a man broke into a Little Caesars and started making pizzas and selling them, which feels like a no-harm, no-foul situation to me
— Ryan Coogler loves mixing sodas
— bless Alexander Skarsgard’s weird, handsome little heart
— I’m just glad someone finally gave Marshawn Lynch a sword
Okay, that’s it for this week. Please share and subscribe and let the man skate to the Minions.
