Tonight I surprised Shira and myself by getting tickets and attending the 2008 Gymnastics Superstars show. Shira's always been a huge fan of watching gymnastics, and I figured the opportunity to see some of the medalists from this most recent Olympics was too good an opportunity to pass up. I even managed to keep the plans a secret for all of 8 hours, so she didn't quite know what I had in mind tonight.
You might wonder who attends such an event. Well, imagine the Verizon Center, about 1/3 full, mostly consisting of moms and their 8-12 year old daughters. There was the occasional family, but you could see the husband and little brother were mostly along for the ride. This especially made sense when we learned that the entertainment was a recently signed Disney Band.
As for the show itself, I'd break it down like so: 10% Disney concert, 30% gymnastics, 15% circus-like acrobatics and the remaining 45% a gymnastic-themed Chippendales show.
I'm telling you, if the Olympics allowed the men to compete with their shirts off, women would finally have a sport to oggle while the men were watching beach volleyball. Below are some photos. I apologize for the number of shirtless men in them. Shira played photo editor, as you can see.
The show was an awful lot of fun, the tricks were great, and I'd highly recommend it.
Here are some of the gymnasts coming in... look, there were women here!
And here is the 2008 Bronze Medal Winning U.S. Men's Gymanstics Olympic Team
These are the Hamm brothers and Blaine Wilson
The men borrowing one of my moves
Stay tuned for more photos from Shira. Yes, Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson were supposedly the stars of the event, but we just didn't get any good photos...
This really was a great show (and special thanks to Dave for suggesting it to Ben). It was like getting to go the Olympics without a 24 hour flight and not being able to get tickets.
ReplyDeleteI could have done without the teen-targeted Disney musicians.
However, the gymnasts got to really have fun, play to the audience and put on a relaxed show. I will say, the men's team was the absolute highlight. They were superb. And to actually get to see all these folks that you only see on TV was very cool. Shannon Miller even showed up and did a floor routine. Turns out she's just a year younger than me. And she can still do some killer tumbling.
Thanks, Ben, for bringing the Olympics to me!