Pasha, In Your Dreams

If you want to see a sport that gives new meaning to the term “sport,” you should check out ice dancing.

Ice dancing is not to be confused with pairs figure skating. Pairs skating is the event wherein a man and a woman, both of whom are dressed in some variation of a Tinkerbell outfit, skate around making big moony eyes at each other. Their body language is conveying the romantic message: “We are passionate lovers, and we purchase our clothing at Mr. Pierre’s House Of Spangles.”

So just when you think the ice skaters are about to perform an illicit sex act right there on the ice, suddenly, for no apparent reason, the man hauls off and throws the woman about 25 feet.

You’d think she’d go running straight to the police, but instead she skates back to the man so he can throw her again. She is nothing but his Love Frisbee.

In ice dancing, on the other hand, the man is not allowed to throw the woman. There are big signs around the rink that say, “NO SMOKING OR THROWING WOMEN.”

That is the good news. The bad news is, the sport is fixed. Really. According to every knowledgeable skating journalist I talked to, the judges basically agree, before the competition starts, who they think is the best couple, and the second best, and so on, and that is the order in which those couples finish, no matter how they actually skate in that competition.

In terms of legitimacy of competition, ice dancing makes professional wrestling look like the Boston Marathon.

The current reigning ice dancing champions are a pair of Russians who always win, no matter what. They could compete wearing snowshoes, or carrying live ducks in their armpits, and the judges still would score them the highest.

So the question is: Why bother to hold the competition? Why not just hand the medals to the pre-selected winners?

The answer, as far as I can tell, is that everybody wants to take a gander at Pasha. Pasha - she prefers to be called by just one name, like “Madonna,” or “Godzilla” - is the woman partner in the team that always wins. (The male partner’s name is “The Guy Who Dances With Pasha.”) Pasha is an extremely dramatic, chemically blonde woman who idolizes Sharon Stone and has a reputation for being very … um … let’s say … outgoing.

In fact, one time at a restaurant in Hollywood, another ice dancer grabbed Pasha by the hair and slammed her head against a bar because Pasha had been engaging in acts of outgoingness with the other dancer’s husband.

I went to ice dancing on the night of the compulsory tango. This is a part of the competition wherein every single couple - we’re talking about 24 couples - had to dance to exactly the same song, an Argentine tango. When the long night was finally over, the judges, to nobody’s surprise, shot the guy running the sound system.

No, seriously, the judges, to nobody’s surprise, had Pasha and The Guy Who Dances With Pasha in first place. I watched them dance, and although I personally know very little about the sport, I can pass along this technical observation, which was expressed by a journalist who regularly covers this sport: “She’s not wearing underwear.”

After the competition, I watched as Pasha was interviewed by a group of reporters who were - let me see if I can, using my extensive vocabulary - pinpoint their dominant group characteristic - men. Somebody asked Pasha how she thought her performance went, and she answered, I swear, “I was having problems with my twizzle.”

Twizzle problems! You hate for that to happen, during the Olympics!

Pasha also said she would like to be a famous movie actress.

“I would prefer to have a leading role in a movie,” she said, “but I assume I will have to take some acting lessons. In the next four years, I hope to win an Oscar.”

And I bet she will! Assuming that the Oscar voters are the same people who judge the ice dancing.

So there’s your update on the exciting sport of Olympic ice dancing. I hope to be sending you reports on some of the other Winter Olympic competitions, although a lot of them are being held outdoors, and if you’re not careful, you can freeze your twizzle off.