For dedicated readers of the AMI blog, you know we enjoy our humor. Whether its commentary on stupidity, spoof news, or our hatred for Dave Navarro, most often we keep it relatively light with a few notable exceptions.

If you are a fan of Will Ferrell films, you may appreciate this actual New York Times feature on figure skating, which almost seems to replicate Ferrell's Chaz Michael Michaels and John Heder's Jimmy McElroy in the flick "Blades of Glory." For the story on the Times web site, visit here, or just read below where we've underlined some plumb quotes, like this one:  

Enjoy. Some things are so ridiculous to the mustached American that they have to be true. This story is one of them:
 

Figure Skating Rivalry Pits Athleticism Against Artistry

by Alan Schwarz
The New York Times
March 18, 2008 

One stands 6 feet 2 inches, wears panther black and dates ESPN’s Hottest Female Athlete. The other weighs an avian 125 pounds, favors sequined swan outfits and coyly brushes off patter about his sexuality.

One skates with precision and adrenalized power, wants figure skating in the X Games and wears several days of stubble during competitions. The other adores skating’s operatic performances, is asked if his eyelashes are real and announces that they are.

One is accused of being robotic and rehearsed. The other is the one doing the accusing — saying “I just don’t like him,” before buttoning his fur coat and grabbing his Louis Vuitton bag.

Evan Lysacek and Johnny Weir share nothing — except their status as the top two figure skaters in the United States. The closest they ever hope to be is on a medal podium.

Lysacek, who fashions himself a hard-core athlete, has won the last two United States national titles. Weir, an athlete into hard-core fashion, won the previous three. Lysacek favors skating’s jumps and stunts and can do without all the pomp, while Weir is one of the most hypnotically graceful male skaters.

Yet the two are so close in overall talent that at the national championships in January they finished tied, with 244.77 points apiece, before the title went to Lysacek on a tie breaker.

Lysacek and Weir were set to face off again this weekend at the annual world championships in Goteborg, Sweden, but Lysacek had to withdraw after injuring his arm in a fall last week. They remain on a collision course for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver — accompanied by growing gaggles of fans who believe that loving one means hating the other, giving figure skating a rivalry of uncommon passion and depth.

In the normally placid enclave of figure skating, supporting either Evan Lysacek the Athlete or Johnny Weir the Artist has become a virtual referendum on matters from skating style and personal style to sexuality itself.

“If he doesn’t want to skate to music that’s pretty and wear a pretty costume, then go rollerblade or skateboard or do one of those extreme sports,” Weir said of Lysacek.

Used to the outspoken Weir needling him from afar, Lysacek did not take the bait, and kept driving his truck down a Los Angeles highway.

“It’s a distraction,” he said, “but Johnny doesn’t affect how I skate and how I push myself. If this is what it takes for figure skating to attract some attention, I can live with that.”

Quite certainly, figure skating officials are doing triple axels over Lysacek and Weir. David Raith, the executive director of the United States Figure Skating Association, said, “Anybody who says figure skaters now are looking the same, just go out there and look at those two and tell me that.”

Lysacek, 22, grew up outside Chicago wanting to be a hockey player like Chris Chelios, then a hardnosed defenseman for the Blackhawks. Lysacek gravitated to figure skating for its physical demands and daring, and he remains so loyal to those roots that he still chafes at his sport’s forced flamboyance. All things being equal, he would rather skate in sweat pants.

Most figure skating enthusiasts, Lysacek said, “think the definition of being dressy or dressing up is like having glitter all over you; to me that’s just such a joke.” He added that skating’s theater detracted from its athleticism: “Sometimes it’s a little frustrating when people are like, ‘It’s a show — you’re in a show, right?’ Like Ice Capades. That’s the same thing to them.”

Lysacek would not mind being ice skating’s Tony Hawk. He has spoken with Raith and other officials about spinning off an ice-skating competition more like skateboarding’s halfpipe, where skaters focus only on jumps, flips and still-undiscovered tricks — with no music in the background, except maybe hard rock.

“There’s a whole dimension of skating that hasn’t been broken into,” Lysacek said over a post-training dinner last month. “Not just on a flat surface. Something way crazier. Maybe more like aerial skiing.”

Upon hearing these ideas, Weir shuddered.

“I’d love to see a 6-foot-2-tall, skinny man doing a halfpipe on figure skates,” said Weir, calling music the most important part of his sport. “That’s not figure skating. You can have a different name, but that’s not figure skating.”

For someone so protective of skating’s traditional roots — he considers himself a performer, not a competitor — Weir takes great delight in flaunting his personal eccentricities. He owns at least 10 fur coats, did a magazine fashion shoot wearing six-inch heels, and calls Russia “my motherland” despite being from Pennsylvania Amish country. He has called himself “princessy,” and once described a costume as “Care Bears on acid.”

Weir’s outfits often sparkle like disco balls; in his short program he pretends to be a seagull. His total package has not only led to assumptions that he is gay — something not as taboo in figure skating as in other sports — but a controversy over his not being the right type of gay. During a figure skating broadcast last year, the announcer Mark Lund, who is openly gay, said, “I don’t think he’s representative of the community I want to be a part of,” and, “I don’t need to see a prima ballerina on the ice,” before praising Lysacek’s masculinity.

Weir, 23, declined to end the speculation in an interview at the facility where he trains in Wayne, N.J. As far as he is concerned, masculinity sometimes arrives in fur.

“There are some things I keep sacred,” Weir said. “My middle name. Who I sleep with. And what kind of hand moisturizer I use.”

Getting more serious, Weir continued: “If I was out to please 10-year-old girls and their 45-year-old mothers in Boise, Idaho, I could play the game and be nice and make my voice deeper. But I don’t see the point. I’m not alive for 10-year-old girls and their 45-year-old mothers in Boise, Idaho — or Colorado Springs, Colo.”

Weir was referring to the United States Figure Skating Association, which is based in Colorado Springs. He has claimed the federation has promoted Lysacek over him as a subtle form of punishment for his behavior.

Raith denied the accusation, but Weir’s resentment might have something to do with his performance at the 2006 Olympics in Turin, Italy. In second place after the short program, Weir missed the bus before the long program and had to scramble to the rink 90 minutes before he took the ice. Once there, he did not perform some of the elements of his program. Weir finished a disappointing and somewhat befuddling fifth.

“He left some points on the table — he left some elements out,” said Charlie Cyr, a U.S. skating official. “He said, ‘It wasn’t in the moment. I don’t worry about points.’ He has to pay attention out there. We’ve had that conversation many times.”

Weir’s loss of focus continued throughout 2007, when Lysacek swooped in and took the national title, asserted himself as the better skater and almost made Weir a forgotten iconoclast. But last spring Weir switched coaches to Galina Zmievskaya, whose taskmaster style had prodded former pupils Viktor Petrenko and Oksana Baiul. His tying Lysacek at January’s nationals breathed renewed life into their rivalry.

Fan clubs for each skater have sprouted on the Internet, with groups tending to have as much love for one as enmity for the other. Lysacek’s supporters appreciate his all-business approach, his ferocity on the ice and that he dates Tanith Belbin, a champion ice dancer. Meanwhile, Weir’s fans — known as Johnny’s Angels — adore him for his musicality and self-expression.

“If you like one, it’s hard to like the other,” said Laura Signer, who skates on the University of Michigan club team. “Johnny is not afraid to be who he is. He has incredible artistry. Evan, he’s more in your face and severe.”

Weir is even less diplomatic. He said he respected Lysacek’s talent, but he was clear that he disliked his rival’s personality. “I think he’s very choreographed and very rehearsed,” Weir said. “He has the big white teeth, really tan. It’s just a little too fake for me.”

Lysacek responded, “I respect him like I respect all the other competitors,” and left it at that.

When Lysacek returns from his injury, he and Weir will continue to compete not only against each other, but against Daisuke Takahashi of Japan, Brian Joubert of France and Stéphane Lambiel of Switzerland for the title of best in the world. Weir will wear his fur to the arena, Lysacek his all-black sweats. And on the ice, Lysacek will keep wowing the crowd with his feats, Weir with his flair.

“Oooh, if you could just get a mix of Evan and Johnny,” said Zmievskaya, Weir’s coach, interlacing her fingers. She dreamily licked her lips. “Perfect.”