Marilyn's Photos - Feb 10 2026 - Olympic Broken

 

We might be complaining about the Olympics - the strangely complicated events, the quality of judging, the unattractiveness venues, booing of JD Vance at the opening. There’s the backlash against Czech Ice Skaters using AI generated music.  Did the “Minion music”ice skater get to use his music?  If he didn’t that sure is a strange outfit. It’s ok - he got approval.  Skating is getting a lot of attention - this morning’s article on ice dancing by Cathal Kelly in the Globe and Mail: he would not be comfortable dancing on the ice in his underwear in front of 5,000 people. Another comment on the outfits in skating. Perhaps this is the highlight - given the whole point of the Olympics is to win a medal. That makes the headline this morning more arresting than anything else:  “Olympic Medals are falling apart, and we’re not even a week in” Yes, the medals are breaking. The ribbon to break away  and the medals are falling off - that’s what happened to the USA alpine ski racing gold medallist Breezy Johnson. “I’m sure somebody will fix it…It’s not like crazy broken…” I wonder how many medals have broken. Mostly the stories are anecdotal so no total numbers are given. Don’t worry.  “We are fully aware of the situation” says Andrea Francis, who serves as the chief operations officer. I find out this isn’t new news.  The 2024 Paris games had replacement requests skyrocket after athletes returned home and the prizes “began to age.”  That was more than 220 (4%) medals - by luxury jeweller Chaumet. They were tarnishing and chipping. Makes you wonder what you get for a Chaumet watch costing between $2,000 and $180,000. And in search of Olympic medal jokes… What kind of music do Olympians listen to?  Heavy “medal”. My friend Ty came first in the Beijing marathon 5 years ago, but still has not been awarded his gold medal … China refused to acknowledge Ty won. It’s ironic that in 2020 the first gold medal won by the U.S. was for … Shooting That last one doesn’t seem like a joke, but was included in quite a few of the lists and made me laugh.  What about you? This was in my Toronto garden and is Japanese Forest grass - it was so tiny there.  This was its winter version with a bit of colouring to bring out the gold.  Here in Niagara The garden has huge clumps of it.  I’ve noticed it doesn’t all last in my garden, despite the large size it gets to - that’s because the bunnies and voles eat it - maybe right now as I type.

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Marilyn's Photos - Feb 9 2026 - Spring/Summer Fashion

 

The Globe and Mail’s Saturday edition alerted me to a fantastic art show.   It is the spring and summer women’s clothes collections of Chanel and Dior.  So I went online and found the Chanel Show.  The Chanel Runway show video is HERE.  And yes, it is a stunning display of artisan skill and exquisite beauty.  We mock haute couture fashion today, as representing wealth excess and failure to be practical.  In response to that, cynicism, our museums all have clothing collections and displays - historical and present.  Below is an aerial view of the seating pattern of the Chanel Show.  The large decorative mushrooms indicate a major design theme.  There are weeping cherry trees in the background.   The information about the shows tells you the “signature” looks - for Chanel it says 21, 28, 37 and 41.  I hope this works - if you go HERE you can see them all by number.  A striking note to the Chanel show is the presence of a model who is above the 16 to 25 age range - the lead model is 49, something they showcased in the press.  She’s in the photo bottom left. As I researched this, I found out the youngest model for a designer wedding dress was 13 years of age.   Oh dear… or perhaps Yuk is the response. Chanel has ensured it will be the premium creator as it purchased the artisan shops who used to supply them.  That explains the feathers, beading, jewels , embroidery and weaving that is present.   The most common fabric was mousseline - very light ,see-through silk. Here’s the Dior Show - the opposite venue style - darkness with the orchid flowers overhead and straight lines for the show walkways. I thought that these dresses might be called bubble dresses.Again, embroidery, feathers, embellishments so striking and artistic.  I was surprised by what looked like almost a hundred models and hundreds - it said 600 people in the Dior Show.  The report said the Chanel show had 2,300 attendees.  A walking art show. I don’t have pictures of dresses - Ii went looking for this picture from years ago on Queen Street West - white paper folded into fans to make a dress.

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Marilyn's Photos - Feb 8 2026 - Olympics Next Day

 

I watched a women’s ski-jumping sort of thing yesterday.  It wasn’t the “Normal Hill Ski Jumping” listed in the events program.  It was a Ski Slopestyle event.  They went down backwards, and then landed along the way on these various pipes, everyone looking like they were falling off, then did a few flying bits twisting and turning off  jumps.  Here’s the formal description:  “approximately 1,700 feet long with six features and a vertical drop of 290 feet. The top of the course will test the athletes rail prowess with three different rail-based features.  Then the remaining three "booters will show off their jump skills.”  What is a rail?  Is this normal skiing? Sounds definitely in the abnormal range - with straight rails, rainbow rails, kinked rails and transfer rails. Skier “tricks” - that’s their terminology - include grinds, disasters and switch-ups.  (I thought the commentators were referring to real disasters.) And it isn’t finished as an Olympic event - there’s a snowboard slopestyle event.  I found it stressful to watch - every one of the skiers looked like they were falling off the rails and about to land ”splat“ somewhere with the emergency crews out.   This has to be a sport people do.  So if you were extraordinarily inclined and likely well-off, you can go slopestyle skiing at the elite level Livigno, Italy, Are, Sweden, Silvaplana, Switzerland, and in Olympic venues like Genting Snow Park, China. For the rest of the skiiers, major ski resorts have terrain parks with various levels of difficulty.   And how many people do this type of skiing?  “As a niche within the 200 million total skiers, dedicated slopestyle participants represent a smaller, but rapidly growing percentage of that total, particularly among younger demographics.” And what are the “booters” along the course where the skiers show off their skills? That’s the name for the large, man-made jumps.  They can be called “kickers” as well.   Shouldn’t there be some good jokes? Maybe because it is a recent thing and so scary there is nothing to make fun of.  It was in 1979 that freestyle skiing was recognized. Slopestyle skiing was differentiated in the 2000s. This was listed as a joke - I think it is a saying: The Rail Trick: "Ohhhh, that was a sick unanny two-sev on to pretz 540 off!" (Common sarcasm for when a trick goes horribly wrong). Here’s a nice meandering incline of snow.  This is at Peninsula Ridge Winery.

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Marilyn's Photos - Feb 7 2026 - Olympics Over-the-Hill

 

My theory goes like this:  the Olympics are over-the-hill.  That means over-weight in terms of costs to build, repetitively showing similar sport events, hyping themselves to the extreme, and focused on money from corruption within the Olympic organization and from excessive commercialization of the event. That’s what makes it old.  What makes it further over-the-hill are constant issues - logistical nightmares getting to the spread-out events, athlete safety, drug problems, the evolution to a non-amateur sport full of professionals competing, and the perennial scandals. It could well be that being older has led me to the stage of complaining -  that the Olympics are not what “they used to be”.  How will I find out?  I am going to take the easy route - ask AI to summarize all those opinion pieces that have weighed in on the subject.  The AI answer says that the 1960s Olympics - e.g. Grenoble Winter Games - is a matter of preference regarding nostalgia versus innovation. In 1968 it was the first time the Games were broadcast in colour. The stars of the event were Jean-Claude Killy and Peggy Fleming. It was considered an intimate setting and the competitions were held close-by.  (And may I add that there are no scandals listed that year.) In 2026 there are now 116 events with 12 mixed-gender competitions. The amateur vs professional aspect is obvious - 2026 is advertised as having faster and higher levels of performance.  My kind of example of then vs now is as follows.  Snoop Dogg is being paid $9 million dollars for 18 days of the Olympics.  What is he doing at the Olympics?  Are you ready?  He is there to “cheer alongside the athletes, their friends, and families” NBC said.  He is not the only celebrity: Stanley Tucci  (must be his travel series “searching for Italy”) - is serving as a roaming cultural reporter for NBC.  Elmo, Cookie Monster and Grover are involved in NBC coverage.  There are numerous brand ambassadors and “creators” paid for behind-the-scenes content via YouTube, Meta, and TikTok.  This isn’t that new: At the Paris Olympics, NBC spent over $50 million to bring various celebrities to Paris to boost ratings. Returning to my complaint and AI’s response that this is nostalgia vs. innovation.  I am confident that this year’s “innovation” would not have occurred in 1966.  Cathal Kelly reported this in the Globe and Mail today. Men’s ski jumping participants are reported to have injected their penises with acid to make them larger for the uniform fittings.  In other sports reporting babel-speak that’s “injecting their genitals to manipulate suits to make them more aerodynamic.”  When there is a little extra fabric, the travel distance will increase.  Will that be the biggest scandal/controversy at the Olympics?  We can watch it to find out or check out Wikipedia.  I expect it will be updated daily - it is  a reliable, timely source of information.  What we can say for sure is that all “eyes” are on the Olympics this week.

Marilyn's Photos - Feb 6 2026 - Dali-ing Around

 

The side-bar of “Favorites” no longer expands in Safari.  It has to be expanded every time I open up a Safari window.  That’s lots of times a day.  The other day I mistakenly clicked on news.  I hadn’t even opened news before. I got the BBC with the story of Dali and the Flying Cats.   The actual title of the photo is Dali Atomicus.  His famous Atomicus painting is on the right side of the picture. It wasn’t my favourite photo for the flying cats - their frozen in motion poses seemed anguished and injured to me and I envisioned cats making a horrible injured landing.   That was not the case.  I think the cats were owned by the photographer’s daughter working as an assistant on the photo. In an interview many decades after this 1948 picture she told the story of the staging and making of the picture by famous artist Halsman.  “The original, unretouched version of the photo reveals its secrets: An assistant held up the chair on the left side of the frame, wires suspended the easel and the painting, and the footstool was propped up off the floor. But there was no hidden trick to the flying cats or the stream of water. For each take, Halsman’s assistants—including his wife, Yvonne, and one of his daughters, Irene—tossed the cats and the contents of a full bucket across the frame. After each attempt, Halsman developed and printed the film while Irene herded and dried off the cats. The rejected photographs had notes such as “Water splashes Dalí instead of cat” and “Secretary gets into picture.”  That’s demonstrated in the series of photos below. I would like to quote the BBC article but it is nowhere to be found on their website.  This seems to be the passing nature of news on the internet these days.  Here and gone.  But there is always something else - a Youtube video referenced in the article I did find.  This is it HERE.  These two artists made many photos together, and all are strange and wonderful. So it turns out there were 26 takes and 26 catching of the cats and drying them off until that final take. So it turns out that yesterday’s picture of the Cheshire Cat Smile was in tune with the Dali story and not the second photo with my imaginary caption: “Three cats in hospital after famous photo shoot.”   That picture was taken the year I did the planter/pot garden for the Grimsby Animal Hospital to get them a Trillium Award.  You can see the pots at the wall of the building. That’s how Trilliums mostly work - very neat gardens with big bold colour and abundant pot plantings.