She: Do you know what my favorite sport is?
Z: Neither beading nor scrapbooking is a sport.
She: Is hunting a sport?
Z: Only if the squirrels have guns, too.
She: Then tracking down the exact right shade of Kasumiga pearl at a ginormous bead convention is definitely a sport.
Z: Only if the bead sellers have guns, too.
She: Anyhow, I’m not talking about my favorite sport to play. I’m talking about my favorite spectator sport.
Z: Given that your father was a football coach and you’ve been to a bazillion football games, I’m going to guess: roller derby?
She: Close. Cirque du Soleil.
Z: Again, not a sport. It’s a circus. It’s right there in the name, even if it is in French.
She: It’s totally a sport. Those people are incredible athletic specimens. They’re ripped. I haven’t seen that many muscles in one place since I visited the inside of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s brain.
Z: Just because they’re buff doesn’t make it a sport.
She: True. What does make it a sport is the underlying tension that anything could happen. That’s the beauty of athletic competition: you don’t know how it’s going to end.
Z: I think I would have noticed a JumboTron when we were at the Cirque du Soleil show, IRIS this week. There was no score being kept.
She: But you still don’t know the outcome. You’re never entirely sure that the contortionist who is balancing 20 feet in the air on top of three other contortionists isn’t going to fall.
Z: So it’s like a car race? You’re hoping for a wipeout?
She: No. In the car race, you really are hoping for wipeout, just to break the monotony of watching cars go round in circles. In Cirque shows, you’re hoping there won’t a wipeout; you’re hoping that no one gets hurt. Same kind of tension, different hopes for the result.
Z: That still doesn’t make it a sport.
She: This show had so many nifty new tricks they actually had spotters on stage, waiting to make sure no one died. It’s that same kind of tension as having the paramedics ready with their stretchers at NASCAR.
Z: Again, I’ll give you tension but that still doesn’t make it a sport.
She: Unlike Olympic badminton?
Z: Those guys can bench 400, easy.
She: We even saw a couple of near misses when we saw IRIS.
Z: Which was very stressful.
She: There was that little, yellow bug guy who was getting thrown around by the other bug guys who landed a little sideways when he flipped down 10 feet from the shoulders of the orange bug guy to the shoulders of the green bug guy in the Kiriki number.
Z: Yeah. That makes it sound a lot like a sport. Nothing says sports like garish costumes and loud music.
She: “Are You Ready for Some Football?” Sports are blaring music all the time. At least the IRIS music was written by Danny Elfman instead of Bocephus.
Z: I’ll give you that one.
She: And the costumes are a vast improvement on the ridiculous uniforms that some of those pro teams wear. Basketball short shorts from the 1980s only could have been improved with a few sequins.
Z: Which wouldn’t have made that more of a sport.
She: Besides, I’m guessing that a bunch of the cast in the Cirque show actually used to be Olympic gymnasts.
Z: I’m not saying that they’re not great and skilled performers, who perform remarkable feats of strength and agility. I’m just saying it’s not a sport. There’s no competition.
She: Sure there is. Do you know how many Cirque shows there are now competing for attention? I bet the competition is very cut throat among aerialists these days.
Z: Yes. I heard the cast of The Beatles LOVE is juicing, and challenged the cast of Viva ELVIS to a rumble.
She: Not to mention all of the other competition for our entertainment dollars. Glee was on the night we went to Cirque, and there’s a new Brad Pitt movie playing.
Z: If you put Brad Pitt in one of those bug costumes and had him sing with New Directions? Now that would be sport.
She: Yes, dear.
— Tell She and Z what you think by emailing .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Click here for previous She Said, Z Said columns. Follow Leslie Dinaberg on Twitter.
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