"Maimonides, What Say You?"

I love the Olympics! I am actually one of those crazy people who watch skeleton, biathalon, and luge. For the same reason that I watch badminton, track and field, & archery. The pageantry. The sportsmanship. The artistry. The athleticism. I am in awe. And having trained and completed my first (only?) endurance event this year, I have an even greater appreciation for the athletic pursuit.

Of all the sports, I have always love ice skating the most. My laundry list of reasons are no different from anyone else's list [poetry in motion, dazzling spins, Ice Castles, etc.]. Except for this -- my favourite childhood babysitter was an ice skater. And her teacher, if my memory has not been warped by the passage of time, skated on the Donny & Marie show. And that was just sooooo cool!! We even had a picture of my sitter in a blue skating dress posing in front of a winter background. I loved that picture and I loved that sitter. [For the record, my former sitter's son will become Bar Mitzvah in six months, and I'll be on the bimah for it. Who would have thought??]

Whether watching Kristi Yamaguchi skate to gold in Lillehammer from my hotel room in Paris (1992) to watching the 1995 World Championships at Beit HaNasi (Jerusalem) to watching Tara Lipinski skate to gold in Nagano in the Cooks' family room in Rockville Center. I am enthralled with this sport and secretly dream of taking lessons and learning how to skate.

Thanks to TiVo, I have been able to watch every blessed moment of figure skating from Turino. Some of the moments have been breathtaking. And some, well... Is it just me or does skating sometimes bring out the oddity in people?

I have two words -- Johnny Weir. Here's a third word -- excessive. And if you don't think that owning 40 pieces of Louis Vitton luggage is excessive, just read the rest of the Washington Post article.

The RamBaM said it best:

a wise man will carefully avoid excess, lest he give the impression of haughtiness. (Yad: Deot, 1180, 5.7)

Too late.