Isabella Cannuscio & Colin McManus Issue a Challenge
(Isabella Cannsucio & Colin McManus have blogged for IDC separately throughout the seasons, and have now joined forces for a new feature blog on IDC.)
As we were sitting in Starbucks amongst the regular college hustle and bustle, an idea struck us: “Why is Alex Shibutani so gosh darn perfect?!” When you think about it, he’s like Midas, everything he touches turns to gold. Well maybe not literally, but from on-the-ice, to tweeting, to his icenetwork.com blogs, it seems as though Mr. Shibutani can do no wrong. It’s time that someone beat him at something, so here’s where we come in — with our official “Alex Shibutani Throwdown Blog.”
Let’s tackle the world of Twitter first.
As athletes in social networking, we pride ourselves on our relevant and clever posts. One day when it seems we’ve posted the “perfect” status, we sit back and pat ourselves on the back because we’ve shown that even seemingly robotic skaters have personality.
Then up pops a new tweet from Alex.
At first you don’t want to read it out of pure fear that it’s better than yours, but then your eyes creep down and you begin to read. In a matter of seconds you go through such a range of emotions from initial fear, to masochistic curiosity, to laughter — and of course it’s better than any tweet that you could have posted. One would think the initial reaction would be jealousy, but by now it’s more of an acceptance that Alex (the unofficial “King Tweeter”) has once again defeated your futile attempt to be witty.
As some of you may know, individually we have blogged for Ice-Dance.com from our respective internationals — or maybe you didn’t because you were too busy reading Alex’s Ice Network blogs. (Either way, our blogs were fantastic and you should read them.) We both have had great feedback from our readers and naturally began to feel as though we may have had one other talent besides skating. But then we read Alex’s Four Continents blog including the numerous comments below it. One complete stranger said, “Gold medal blog…wonderful”. Sorry Moms, but hands down that beat you telling us that you “enjoyed reading our blogs.” Yes, from one blogger to another, the writing is impeccable and there was the perfect balance of information and humor. When will it be our turn? We realize that he may always trump us on the ice, but we wonder (with our forces combined) if maybe we could outdo him in one aspect.
Returning to our original Starbucks epiphany, we issue this Blog Throwdown. If you wish, we leave you an open invitation to blog us back via Ice Dance or Ice Network. Though we are not denying a little healthy competition, the point of this is to make you aware that we are relentlessly trying to out-blog you. While this seems like a rivalry in the making, you are truly a genuine person and we admire your talents.
That doesn’t mean we accept defeat. Bring it on!
Sincerely,
Your off-ice competition