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Sexism and Sports: Just the Way We Want It.

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Sex, Size, and Money: the three reasons men and women rarely face one another in a sports arena.
Sexism, Prejudice, and Stodginess: the three reasons things won’t change even if they could.

Due to the general differences in physical stature and strength, it makes sense in many sports for men and woment not to compete head-to-head.
Yes there are some women who are taller and stronger than some men, but for the sake of this argument let’s rest on actually percentages.
Hockey, track and field, basketball, soccer, as well as a host of other sports would give an unfair advantage to the physically stronger sex should they compete against each other.
There are, however, inequalitites, which defy logic.

I was watching sweat drip down the backs of competitors in South Carolina during the PGA Championship. Poor guys aren’t allowed to wear shorts.
The women of the LPGA are permitted skirts and shorts.  One explanation for that may be organizers and sponsors hope more leg will translate to more viewers. It’s no secret that beautiful athletes (both male and female) are more likely to be chosen as spokespeople for their sport.
No, Vijay Singh’s hairy legs will not translate into a higher viewership…but would they drive viewers away? Or rather just allow a Fijian’s kneecaps to breathe a little.

Men’s major tennis tournaments incorporate 5-set-matches instead of three. Why? Men’s tennis draws more viewers than women’s, largely due to the speed of the men’s game (due as well to Roger Federer who, like Tiger Woods of two years ago, attracts viewers through his sheer dominance of his sport).
Viewership increases as Andy Roddick enters his 4th  and 5th sets. Apparently Neilsen has decided 3 sets is enough for the ladies, even Maria Sharapova.

Olympic diving? Men perform 6 dives, while the women stop at 5. Yes, a forward 4-and-a-half is more dizzying than a 3-and-a-half; but with the men fielding 32 athletes, do I really need to watch either sex plummet off a platform one-hundred and ninety-two times? While the male divers were more spectacular, more was not necessarily better.
Similarly with figure skating – the men perform longer routines. A quadruple is flashier that a triple, but when they spend a extra forty-five seconds in the middle of their long programme gliding to Pachebel while they catch their breath, who wins? Not the viewer.

An extra ten metres is tacked onto the hundred-meter hurdles when it’s the men’s turn to crouch at the start line. Maybe the excuse this time is physics: men have longer legs, ergo require more track….like larger airplanes.
Both men and women compete in a Heptathlon (though not against one another).  Decathlon? Men only, please.
Why? How many advertising dollars are gained by truncating the women after the seventh event?

The blame is often put on men, since we tend to occupy most executive positions on Olympic Committees and Network Boards of Directors. We make the decisions.
But, in media, one factor influences the direction of content more than any other: money. Despite the testorone in the boardroom, ratings show that women enjoy watching men more than women enjoy watching women. Add those female viewers to the majority of men who also gravitate to male athletics, and it becomes a no-brainer: when it comes to sports, men sell.

This phenomenon extends to movies and television shows. Tom Cruise earns more than Gwyneth Paltrow. Why? Largely because women prefer Tom.
This phenomenon does not explain why poor Vijay is stuck in slacks when its forty degrees out….or why I can’t wear a summer dress to a summer wedding.
I hate suits. Maybe I’ll dig through my closet for one of my old figure skating outfits. While the teasing I was subjected to wasn’t easy; the outfits had their perks – lycra breaths beautifully in the summer heat. And for a 7-year-old boy in lycra – the fewer viewers the better.

 

Photo—Mai Techaphan from Shutterstock

The post Sexism and Sports: Just the Way We Want It. appeared first on The Good Men Project.


My Life as a Male Figure Skater

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In the Eighties, Kenny Bodanis endured homophobic jeers for his love—of the challenge, camaraderie, and spotlight—of life as a male figure skater.

My decision to devote full-time hours to competitive ice dancing was made during what is a volatile period in anyone’s life: my early teens. These years also coincided with the peak of male stigma against this graceful but controversial sport—the early 1980s. The word “gay” was itself just coming out; the AIDS scare further fed homophobia. The assumption was: male figure skaters are gay, and gay is bad.

“Just look at them with their tight outfits and their Baryshnikov routines.”

I was constantly defending my heterosexuality; I wasn’t mature enough yet to know better, and to not care.

As desperate as I was to defend not only myself, but my sport as well, I was just as reluctant to invite even my closest friends to watch practices.

Ice dancing is enigmatic even to insiders. For the ignorant spectator—especially my teenage peers—little separates it from ballet. It didn’t help that part of my training routine involved working with a dance stylist, and ballet and ballroom specialists. I was ashamed that anyone interested in watching a workout would, instead of seeing the powerful jumps most associated with figure skating, watch me practice stretches, and run through off-ice work designed to perfect upper body movement.

If you weren’t doing triple axles, laymen couldn’t understand the work involved.

By the time I stopped competing and became a professional coach, I was nearly two decades removed from the reasons I signed up for my first group lesson: friendship, fun, and the awe of watching skating at its best.

♦◊♦

I was drawn to the sport after watching my cousin perform at a local show.

Alone on the ice, followed by four spotlights, he skated to Kermit the Frog’s “Rainbow Connection.” His outfit was green Lycra, with a sequins rainbow sewn from one shoulder to the opposite hip. He had the ice—as well as the attention of a few hundred spectators—all to himself. Between musical verses, all you could hear were his blades against the ice.

I was 7 years old, and enraptured.

As a beginner, my first few years were spent learning to skate in much the same way hockey players do: on two feet; on one foot; frontwards; backwards; weaving around little orange cones placed in face-off circles. The only difference was the equipment. I had no pads, no team logo on my knitted sweater, and my skates cost my parents triple the money laid out by hockey parents. I also didn’t wear shin pads covered by socks bearing team colors; I wore stretchy pants which were held under my boot by Velcro. As a figure skater, your form is as important as your speed.

While my outfits were relatively tame (one of my favorites was my one-piece jumper: black pants, white top, with my initials sewn in black sequins on my left chest), the young goalies, forwards, and defensemen waiting in the hallway were relentless. The taunts, the nudges, the ‘accidental’ trips in the corridor became so routine they were tiresome. My saving grace was my twenty-odd Figure Skating Club colleagues waiting in our changing room. Together, we ignored the goons. To them I wasn’t a “male” figure skater, or even a figure skater; I was their childhood friend.

Practice routines consisted of gathering in the changing room fifteen minutes before ice time and chatting about the stuff important to 10-year-olds: school, siblings, parents, and “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. On ice, a short warm-up was a gateway to sixty minutes divided haphazardly between private lessons; repeating jumps and spins until they were either successful or you just didn’t feel like falling anymore; performing routines to the soundtracks of “Chariots of Fire”, “Endless Love” (or, my choices: the themes from “Magnum P.I.” and “Hill Street Blues”); and everyone’s raison d’être: gossiping along the boards.

Our relationships would last for a decade. My on-ice friendships would provide the support I needed to deflect the ridicule facing a twelve year-old boy stuffing his figure skates into his 7th grade locker. The hallway teasing couldn’t erode the joy of sneaking onto the ice at 6am with two or three friends to glide around a half-lit rink for forty-five minutes before class started. It was an exhilaratingly secretive beginning to a school day.

As safe and respected as I felt among my peers, participating in year-end shows often pitted me against the clubs administrating adults. The battle between the Male Skater and the Degrading Costume was an annual affair. Being part of group numbers, matching costumes were given to all of us. While usually a fair effort was made to supply male-centric versions of the outfits to the boys, occasionally the experience bordered on emasculation. The worst scenario had me wear transparent stockings, and a leopard-skin patterned Speedo with a matching top which didn’t even cover my navel. It was demoralizing.

The outfits arrived the day before the show, sight unseen. My choice was to join my friends and their costumes and be part of the show, or drop out and sit in the stands. My love for performing and my devotion to those friendships pushed me to participate. That group photo is safely buried somewhere.

This fight for my fashion pride would follow me throughout my career. Even with my socially-slanted practice regime, I won a few silver medals in local and provincial competitions. While this may seem impressive, so few boys entered the sport there were often only three or four of us competing. Finishing second meant you were in the middle of the pack.

Eventually, my adolescent body would alter my career path. My bones grew faster than my muscles, and my knees paid the price for the hundreds of hours of jumping and landing. I was diagnosed with Osgood-Schlatter disease; the tops of my tibias were shattered. My life as a future Men’s Singles champion was over.

The option of becoming a Pairs competitor was equally bleak. While Pairs skating incorporates less complicated jumping maneuvers than Singles, the jumps are still there. Also, lifting a one-hundred pound female partner over my head as I traveled along the ice surface at twenty miles an hour would do my tibias no favors.

It was then I turned to the equally challenging, but far less jarring discipline of Ice Dancing. Simply put, it’s ballroom dancing on skates. The emphasis is placed on intricate footwork, rhythm and power, all while rarely straying more than a couple of inches from your partner. Jumps are reduced to hops, the height of lifts is restricted, and you are never allowed to throw your partner (although sometimes you really want to).

My knees would be used as supple springs instead of landing pads.

♦◊♦

If I was to be forced to give up not only the jumping and spinning involved with skating solo routines, but also to leave behind ice time spent with my closest friends (Ice Dancers and Singles skaters don’t share practice schedules), I decided to fully devote myself in this new discipline. I was paired with a dance partner, and together we trained full-time for elite competition.

At the National Ice Dance Centre, gone were the hockey players taunting me from behind the glass, but also gone were the hours of gossiping about parents and school work.

Our eight-hour daily routine included ballet, ballroom dancing, strength and condition, and visits with a sports psychologist (where was he when I was negotiating the leopard-skin Speedo?). Despite being immensely proud of the hard work: thirty hours a week; the injuries—treated with Tylenol, ice packs, and foam padding shoved into my skates; and the success: we were eventually among the elite junior ice dancers in the province; I still kept my sport and my personal life separate. As open and accepting as my closest friends were, they were human. There were aspects of ice dancing which too easily opened themselves to ridicule, and—even at nineteen years-old—I didn’t need the hassle.

It didn’t help that the required competition rhythm that year was the polka. As much as I couldn’t fight the regulations which dictated I dance to an accordion with maracas accompaniment; I again desperately fought the costume choice: spandex leiderhausen. Ice Dance judges, however, are sticklers for tradition; wearing something other than what was expected would cost us valuable points.

My arguments backstage protesting the costume and the make-up (never let them see you sweat) only hinted at someone who could be difficult to work with. I was told to shut up and deal with it; it’s part of the the sport of ice dancing.

And so, few of my friends would ever see me skate.

As crippling as the mockery from outsiders could be, it was the pressure from within the sport which finally made me walk away from competition. The camaraderie which bound me to the sport as a youngster disappeared completely as the events became more important. Chatting with potential adversaries was frowned upon, despite the dozens of hours we spent on the ice together. The joy of performing eroded into the pressure of competing against a glass ceiling; a judging system partial to veterans assured newcomers a place at the bottom of the ladder. I had to either choose to commit several more years and hope for success, or get out. I decided to lose my amateur status, and teach professionally.

When any elite athlete chooses to leave competition, they rarely ever leave the sport entirely.

Once I became disenchanted with the pursuit of Olympic glory, teaching skating became a natural part-time job to bolster my income. Skating instructors, like tennis pros, earn an excellent hourly wage. Many former champions—some of whom used to be my competition—make extravagant salaries as full-time coaches, consultants or choreographers.

Thanks to my knees, I had never developed into a world champion as a Singles skater; thanks to my eventual lack of competitive will, I was never part of a world champion Ice Dance team.

Not only did I feel this lack of success limited my marketability as a full-time coach, I was also reticent to devote the rest of my life to the sport. While I loved figure skating, I found it difficult imagining a retirement-age me following 10-year-old around a face-off circle. Instead, I used the healthy part-time coach’s salary to lean on while I attempted to figure out what I wanted to do when I grow up.

♦◊♦

I loved working with young skaters. I recognized their enthusiasm; identified with their attraction to leaving their school-work and classmates behind for a couple of hours and glide powerfully around an ice rink.

As my coach was for me in my early teens, I became my students’ sympathetic ear as they negotiated the trials of adolescence. I was their trainer, brother, and counselor for fifteen to thirty minutes a week. Whenever they cried after failing a test, or became frustrated with the sport, I would remind them to keep their sense of humor about them. Skating is a choice you make because of the joy it brings you, I’d say, and because of the friendships you build. As soon as the fun is gone, the sports’ purpose is lost.

My sense of humor is how I deal with most difficult situations now; difficult people as well. I’m sure it was honed thanks to those relentless young goalies, forwards, and defensemen waiting in the hallway a few decades ago.

I don’t regret never becoming Patrick Chan. Sometimes I do miss the performances, and the camaraderie, and especially the student-teacher relationships. But, that life provided me with the confidence and security I don’t think I would have otherwise developed.

Still, nearly twenty years later, I notice I’m reluctant to talk about my life as a male figure skater. I shouldn’t care. The sport—and that sport psychologist—gave me the tools and the sense of humor to deal with ignoramuses; and yet … .

I wear hockey skates on public rinks, now. Even as I write this post, I’m sure to hide the title when I’m in a café or other public area. Defending the male figure skater is no great cause, unless you’re facing a 7-year-old boy enthralled with what they’ve just witnessed at their local rink.

The courage to sign up has to come from somewhere. Even twenty years after I began, there is only a boy or two practicing among the girls—outnumbered 10 to 1, as we always were.

After practice, he’ll head to school and stuff his skates into his locker. When someone asks him what’s in the bag, he’ll probably tell a joke and quickly change the subject, as I always did.

 

Read more on Smashing Male Stereotypes on The Good Life.

Picture—A5ForFighting/flickr

The post My Life as a Male Figure Skater appeared first on The Good Men Project.

You Don’t Know Jack

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Greg White

Greg White recalls his brief meeting with the legendary Jack Nicholson via a mutual and legendary friend.

—-

If you watch the metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a butterfly, when the beautiful creature flutters off you might think you have seen the whole story. But that butterfly still has a journey. I try to keep my eyes on one as it dances from bush to bush with the rapidity of a carny swapping out shells. Even when it’s gone, the privilege of seeing that butterfly stays with me.

Ice skating superstar Tai Babilonia never puts her skates in the closet, as if she’s keeping her wings ready for a new flight. She has floated across the ice with her partner Randy Gardner since 1968, won the 1979 World Championship and competed in two Olympics. Not one to rest on her laurels, she breezes through life honestly, accepting challenges and personal hardships with the same grace as she celebrates triumphs.

Her latest fun endeavor is sugar-coated—a new confectionery line: Tai Treats.

I’ve known Tai & Randy for over twenty years. They are fun and wonderful to watch on and off the ice. That they still loyally and proudly skate together is a touching testament to dedication. My great-grandmother taught me that you have to dance with the one that brung you. After all of these years hoisting her over his head while on razor sharp blades and on thin ice, I imagine him whispering tenderly into her ear as he is about to lift: You better help….

♦◊♦

Once, after a spectacular show at the LA Forum where they dazzled everyone, I, along with ten friends including actors David Youse and Jack Nicholson , was waiting in the Green Room for Tai & Randy to slip into something a little less sequined and come out and grab our roses. We were all chatting with each other, Jack included, about the show and their skating and that Julie Newmar had so sweetly and practically carried her very excited son, who has Down’s syndrome, to his seat so they both could clap and cheer.

For that entire half hour we waited backstage we talked with Jack as if he were part of our posse, and he responded as such, but safely hidden behind his omnipresent dark glasses, clamped on his head as a cloaking shield of scoundrelocity.  The moment Tai walked in the room, Jack jumped up, extended his right hand and at the same time his left hand flew up to sweep the sunglasses off of his face like he was revealing the Wizard: a legend meeting a legend, a gentleman meeting a lady. He dropped us like a hot rock, and flirted Tai into privately coaching his young daughter to skate.

♦◊♦

Time flies beautifully by when you are gliding on the ice. The TV movie about her life was in 1991, now she’s working on a new book that will bring us up to speed. You can take a sneak peek into her latest chapter, with the debut of new a line of hand-made chocolates called Tai Treats.

The candies are made by Frank Sheftel, owner of The Candy Factory, Los Angeles’ own Willy Wonka. He is famous for, among other creations, the life-is-a-box-of-chocolates that were held out by Forrest Gump.

Tai is still going for the gold, literally, since the Candy Factory’s Oompa Loompas sprinkle some of the candies with 24K dust. She puts her own hands in the chocolate, overseeing and approving everything. As a young athlete she wasn’t allowed this kind of decadence, so now she’s a grown up kid in a candy store.

Few of us know what it’s like to be a professional competitive athlete like Tai; however, we all race through our own, one life. I certainly believe in endurance as I try to remember when eating a long meal, that I live a marathon not a sprint.

♦◊♦

She did coach Jack’s daughter, Lorraine, now a working actress. That Lorraine Nicholson followed in her father’s footprints-in-cement rather than flee the Hollywood scene means that she liked what she saw in her own father’s career. You’ve seen him transform into a role and play delightfully devilish characters, but you don’t know Jack. The one part we didn’t see him play was the one I saw him prep for that day he met Tai, and the one we all probably have a hard time imagining. Jack, lacing up his five-year old daughter’s skates, beaming as she learned to skate.

Every time she took to the ice, Tai Babilonia’s intent was to skate her best. With this latest endeavor she is proving that her life is a gold medal inside a box of chocolates.

A butterfly can’t fly unless she opens her wings.

The post You Don’t Know Jack appeared first on The Good Men Project.

Ghosts

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Some stories are haunting, in the very best sense of the word, and that is how I feel about this story by Michael Rowe. It gets at the very essence of all we talk about at The Good Men Project – men and manhood, identity, sexuality, fathers and family, violence, and that eerie place where the past and present collide. It’s all very grounded, very real, yet I’ve read this several times, and each time it gives me goosebumps – not a little wimpy, prickly back of the spine tingle, but a full body sensation that is hard to shake off. –– Lisa Hickey, publisher, The Good Men Project

♦◊♦

I saw you standing just inside the wrought-iron fence around the graveyard at the corner of Winchester and Sumach this evening when I was out with the dogs, right around sundown.

I waved, but you didn’t wave back.

Two 14-year-old boys went right by you on skateboards through a cloud of dead autumn leaves. I didn’t see their faces under their helmets and untidy dark hair as they flew past through the lengthening shadows.

Remember in the 70s when we were kids and no one ever wore a helmet for anything? We used to make retard jokes about kids whose parents made them wear helmets, even for skating. Isn’t it odd how something that sounds so cruel today seemed so funny back then? I never wore a helmet for hockey. You never played hockey.

Remember that time I teased you about how you should be wearing white skates with black heels and done figure skating with the girls? Dad always told me to shut up when I teased you. Once he even slapped the back of my head, hard. I pretended that it didn’t hurt, but it did. I hated you when he did that.

But he was right. It was a mean thing to say. You couldn’t help the way you were, but I could probably have helped being an asshole about it.

You didn’t even look at the boys on the skateboard. I figured they reminded you of the guys we grew up with in Auburn—guys like I was: guys who played hockey, who chased girls, who weren’t afraid to get into fights.

I wonder if they even saw you? I wonder if they might have felt a sudden cold as they thundered past the cemetery. What would they have seen if they’d looked up?

But still, I wish you’d waved.

♦◊♦

This week, I drove west on the 401 to Auburn, like I always do at the end of October, to see Dad. We don’t talk much anymore, but he likes it when I check in. Since Mom died, he doesn’t do a lot around the house. There’s a widow lady from church, Mrs. Normoyle, who has a thing for him. She’s always bringing him food and tidying up. He tells me she’s annoying, but I think he’s a lot happier she’s there than he likes to let on. It’s lonely up in that big house on the Milton Escarpment with nothing but memories, especially in October.

It’s the month of ghosts, especially family ghosts.

The rooms seem darker now that Mom is gone. Maybe Dad turns the lights on less, or maybe he keeps the blinds drawn more than he used to. Dad always says Mom took the light with her after when she died, after 40 years. Even though he didn’t mean it literally, the other day I remembered that another word for ghost is “shade,” which made me smile. It also made me switch on a couple of lamps in the living room next to Dad’s chair.

In the lamplight, pictures everywhere. On the walls. On the tables.

Mom and Dad’s wedding. Mom holding me in her arms when they brought me home from the hospital. Me, at 5, reaching up to touch you when they brought you home from the hospital. Birthdays. Disneyland. Hockey pictures—me, not you. You, at your modern dance class recital. You, gently holding Maven when she was a puppy. Maven licks your face with her pink tongue. The colours have faded, but Maven still looks like a small bundle of soft black mink. Your smile is beautiful in that picture. You’re cradling her in your arms like she was your baby.

“I know,” Dad says. I didn’t hear him come up behind me. He puts his hand on my shoulder. “Never a day goes by. A handsome boy.” His voice sounds unbearably old all of a sudden. “It was easier when your mother was alive. It’s against nature. It should have been she and I. You two boys should have outlived us both.”

“I’m still here, Dad.”

“I know,” he says. “I know you are. I wish you had . . .” His voice trails off. The bitterness has mellowed over the years like old brass. It’s still there, but it gleams dully.

“Dad, stop it. Not now. It’s not fair. Not after all this time.”

“I’m sorry, Robert. I didn’t mean it that way.”

When I look at him, there are tears in his eyes. Old-man tears. I touch his shoulder. I want to hug him, but I know he’d rather not have the human contact right now. So I squeeze his shoulder, the way real men do. Fucking real men. Jesus.

“Yes, you did, Dad,” I whisper. “You did mean it that way. But it’s OK. I agree with you. I wish I’d been there that night with Scotty too.”

♦◊♦

Brothers. Loaded term. Born of the same parents, raised in the same house. One normal, one—well, different. We knew you were different, but we never talked about it as such. Mom called you “sensitive.”  When you were little, you’d follow me around everywhere. You drove me crazy with your love. Later, you embarrassed me with your mincing and prancing. My friends laughed at you. I joined in their laughter. My girlfriend, the incredibly hot born-again Christian to whom I lost my virginity, asked me if you were an actual fag, or if you just acted like one.

Dad was angry with me when you came home with your latest black eye.

“Why can’t you look after him? He’s your brother. He’s the only brother you’ll ever have. You’re stronger than him. You need to protect him.”

I said I’d rather have no brother at all than an embarrassing queer one.

Dad slapped me across the face. “Be a man, Robert. It’s time for you to grow up and act like a man.”

I told him that I hated him, and I hated you more. I stormed out of the living room. When I saw you crying in the doorway to the kitchen, I passed you without a word. You held out your hand. You touched my elbow as I went by.

“Robbie, I’m sorry. I—”

“Fuck you, Scott. I hate you. I wish you were dead.”

Three years later, when I was home from university, you told us you were moving to Alberta with some guy you were “in love with.” Mom cried. Dad went to his workshop and locked the door. I told Mom and Dad that I was done pretending.

I drove back to school. In my dorm, I threw the only framed family photo across the room. It shattered against the wall, spraying shards of broken glass across the floor.

Dad called me from the hospital in Calgary. My girlfriend woke me up and passed me the phone. It was 3:00 a.m. At first, I didn’t recognize his voice at all. It was the voice of a man nailed to a cross.

“Your brother’s been hurt,” he said.  “We’re in Calgary. Mum and I. Can you come right away? We’re at the hospital.”

“Dad? What happened to Scott?”

“They hurt him,” he said. “They beat him up. He’s in intensive care.”

“Who?” I asked stupidly. “Who hurt him?”

“Who else? The same ones that always hurt him.” Dad was crying now. “Damn them.” He was silent for a few moments, trying to compose himself. “Your brother needs his family with him now. You have to come.”

“Dad—”

“You come now, Robert. I mean it. It’s time for you to be his brother again. It’s past time.”

Then he told me what they’d done to you in that alleyway outside the bar.

♦◊♦

Three hours later on the plane to Calgary, I dreamed horrible, unformed, crimson-tinted dreams. I heard the terrible crunch of bones cracking beneath the weight of fists and boots. I saw the puddles of congealing blood. I must have cried out because the flight attendant asked me if I was all right. I told her I was. She handed me a napkin. I reached for it, suddenly embarrassed to have allowed this woman see me cry, even in my sleep.

I landed in Calgary on the bluest October morning.  The houses across the street from the hospital had carved pumpkins by the front door. Of course, I thought. It’s Halloween morning.

“We did everything we could,” the doctor had said, holding a clipboard under the fluorescent light. “I’m so sorry.”

Perhaps his clinical choice of words had been intended to be anesthetic—blunt force trauma, massive head injuries, persistent vegetative.

As the machine measured out your remaining heartbeats in flattening spikes of green light, I touched your broken fingers and promised myself—and you—that I would be strong for Mom and Dad.

When it was over, we stepped out of the hospital into the sunlight. Across the street from the hospital, two little boys displaying the effortless familiarity of brothers raced along the sidewalk to school, laughing. One was draped in a bed sheet, a ghost. His brother wore a pirate costume. The older of the two, the pirate, reached out and took his younger brother’s hand, pulling him joyously along the sidewalk towards school.

It had taken me exactly 17 minutes to break my promise not to cry.

♦◊♦

These days, I can quantify my remaining decades. I can measure them out in life-events. I can gauge my value as a man by who I’ve loved, who has loved me, and by the ones I didn’t love nearly enough. My marriage didn’t last, of course. No one was surprised.

But our son, Scott—named after you—is the one thing we did right. He’s away at Western this fall. He’s your age. The age you were when . . . well, when whatever.

I believe in ghosts. And I see you everywhere.

The first time was just before I turned on the soft nursery light, the night we brought Scott home. You were standing over his crib, a familiar shape in the dimness.

Scotty, I whispered. Then I turned on the light.

The room was empty except for my sleeping son. I felt no fear, just the gentle spectral aspect of something peaceful and benevolent.

But you were there. I know what I saw.

♦◊♦

I’ve seen you many other times over the years, sometimes more clearly than others. I’ve seen you in my son’s handsome sensitive face as he’s grown. I’ve felt your spirit in his sweetness, his trusting nature. I’ve heard your voice beneath his.

I feel your spirit moving in me when I react with patience and kindness to the fact that he’s not like me, and in fact couldn’t be more like you in many, many ways.

And in loving that in him, in knowing that he might someday tell Susan and I what you told Mom and Dad that terrible afternoon 30 years ago, I’m granted some sort of absolution, a redemption I don’t deserve, in knowing I’ll know how to love him at the moment he’ll need my love the most.

In my dreams I see you rising out of that bloody alleyway on a fountain of radiance like some sort of immortal angel full of fire, full of power, full of light.

But other times, like tonight, by the graveyard in late October when the daylight is short and the night chill settles in early, I see you very, very clearly.

I wave. And I wish you’d wave back. Just once.

photo Flickr/AdamSelwood

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Lutz or Flutz? The Tricky Physics of Figure Skating

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skate

Figure skating is at once artistic, athletic and breathtaking. Here’s a glimpse into the science that makes it so entertaining.

By Deborah King, Ithaca College

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Figure skating is always the highlight of the Winter Olympics. With the introduction of a team competition this year, there are five figure skating events. And we’ve already seen much drama with records broken and the retirement of veteran showman Evgeni Plushenko. He pulled out after badly landing a triple Axel – one of the sport’s signature jumps.

Spectators often take the grace and beauty of figure skating for granted. But many don’t realise the speed, power and strength needed to complete the jumps and spins. Gliding across the ice and then springing into the air to rotate three or four times before landing lightly on a single tiny blade and gliding off again is an exact science. There are many types of jumps and each jump may be done in combination with another, but two fan favourites are the Axel and Lutz.

The Axel

This is my favourite jump. The Axel is the only jump where the skater faces forward as they take off the ice. They start by gliding backward, but then step forward and jump into the air, driving forward and upward with their arms and leg. It is a powerful jump where athletes gain great heights.

The Axel jump.

Because they are facing forward at take-off, the skaters have an extra half revolution to do before they land (all figure skating jumps land backward). So a triple Axel is really three and a half revolutions in the air. To turn so many times it is critical that skaters pull their arms and legs into a tight pencil like position. Crossing their ankles, pressing their legs tightly together and holding their elbows and hands tight against their chest, this minimises the resistance they create with the air.

The tighter a skater is, the faster they can rotate. If an arm or foot is sticking out, the mass of the arm or foot is too far from their axis of rotation and slows down the spin. Easy in principle, in reality they have to fight to keep their arms and legs in tight. Skaters must use their muscles to create centripetal force, which pulls objects towards the axis of rotation, keeping them on a circular path. If they relax, their arms and feet will want to keep moving straight and will get flung outward.

Men tend to perform triple Axels, women normally doubles. But look out for a triple Axel from Japan’s Mao Asada. She was the first woman to land a triple Axel in competition and plans to nail it again this year in pursuit of gold in the women’s free program.

David Jenkins does a triple Axel for the cameras in 1957

The Lutz

Mao Asada mid-Lutz. Shizuo Kambayashi/AP

You will see triple and quadruple Lutzes. A feature of the Lutz that makes it challenging from a scientific standpoint is the entry. Skaters must do a long backward glide on the outside edge of one foot as they approach the jump, causing them to arc clockwise if they are on their left foot and anticlockwise if they are on their right. Then, they reach back with the other foot, tap the toe-pick into the ice and vault off it, turning in the opposite direction to the arc in the air.

This initial “counter rotation” helps skaters gain angular momentum for the jump. This is the rotational momentum of the skater about their axis of rotation – the imaginary line that runs up and down the centre of the body, which skaters spin around while in the air. Skaters get angular momentum from a twisting push off the ice as they rotate their body and arms when they jump.

In a Lutz, the counter rotation can increase the range of motion the skater turns through helping create more angular momentum for the jump. While this sounds advantageous, there is the added difficulty of staying on the outside edge as they start the counterclockwise rotation. A common problem is a “flutz”. If the skater falls or rolls onto the inside edge, it is not a true Lutz and points will be deducted.

A quadruple Lutz

As you watch the games, listen to the announcers and see if you can identify the Axel and Lutz. Look for the arm and leg drive in forward take-off Axel that helps create power and jump height. Look for the long backward glide of the Lutz and the skater using the arms and rotation of the body to create angular momentum and rotation speed while staying on the outside edge leaning away from the rotation of the jump.

Deborah King has received funding from United State Figure Skating and the United States Olympic Committee.

–This article was originally published on The Conversation.
–Read the original article.
–Photo: AP

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A Lesson in Figure Skating and Black Men

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Adam Dyer Squaw Valley

Adam Dyer in Squaw Valley demonstrating an off ice spiral…silly boy!

Adam Dyer knows full well what it’s like to be a black guy obsessed with figure skating.

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This post is a response to a recent article that appeared in the Washington Post

Dear Robert Samuels of the Washington Post,

Although I appreciate the observations in your recent article “I’m black.  I’m a guy. And I’m obsessed with figure skating” - Washington Post Online, January 30, and I also appreciate how challenging it is to be a man of color working for the Post, your perspective as a black man loving figure skating is neither newsworthy nor unique. You are definitely not the first black man to be a fan of figure skating.  In fact, in addition to other black men being fans, there have been and continue to be black men and women actually in the sport. But I have to also realize that you, along with many others may not be aware of the depth and breadth of the history of blacks in figure skating in America. So, with all good intentions, here are a few of my own observations as a fan for over 45 years.

Today, in Culver City Californa, an era comes to an end. On February 2, 2014, Culver City Ice Arena will close. Along with it, the dreams of many a child who usually wouldn’t have access to even knowing about skating of any kind.  I discovered Culver City Ice when I moved to Los Angeles in 2000. I had started skating (as an adult) while living in Toronto in 1996 and had managed to keep up the sport.  My first impression of Culver City Ice was that it was run down (the ice had a distinct dip toward one end.) But there was a charm that is summed up by the “Sweetheart of the Ice” sculpture that adorns the roof and by the warmth of the instructors, some who had been teaching there since its opening in 1962.  The other thing that spoke to me were how many kids of color were on the ice.  It was the first time in all of my years of following figure skating that I had seen that many kids of color on the ice. One of the first people I met was Catherine Machado, US National Bronze medalist (1955, 1956) as well as the first Latina national champion (Junior, 1954.)  She was funny and wry and so unassuming, I didn’t realize her history.  I remember her telling me that one reason she loved this rink was that, although she loved all her students, Culver City attracted the kids who looked and sounded like her and it was important for them to see a role model. But I digress…

Culver City Ice was not only where I first landed an axel jump (thank you Gary Visconti) but where I met Atoy Wilson, the first African American National Champion (Novice, 1966) and the first African American to skate in the National Championships (1965) and former star of Ice Follies, Holiday on Ice and numerous appearances on television.  He introduced me to a world of black figure skaters who to this day continue to be sidelined by a sport that is plagued by both racism and economic elitism. Through him, I learned about and was fortunate to meet incredible athletes: Franklyn Singley, Sheliah Crisp, Derrick Delmore, Aaron Parchem, Andrea Gardiner, Rohene Ward, just to name a few…not to mention legendary figures like Debi Thomas, Richard Ewell and  Tai Babilonia. These skaters, represent some of the most phenomenal talent to ever land on the ice.  At a 2002 gala in Cleveland, I saw them perform spins and jumps that don’t even have names in the mainstream sport; I witnessed a level of athleticism and artistry with these skaters that puts anything that most of our national competitors do to a sorry shame; and I encountered a passion for the sport that transcended the cultural barriers that were routinely put in their way by “the establishment.”

The most important introduction, however, that came to me from Culver City Ice Arena was my introduction to Mabel Fairbanks. Fairbanks was a black skater and coach who came up in a time when it was impossible to be a black woman and be a skater, let alone a black woman from Jacksonville, Florida. Arriving in New York City in the 1930′s, she saw figure skating, most notably the movie “One In a Million” with Sonja Henie, and was hooked.  Although she was most likely in her early 20′s when she started, she found a way to teach herself and wangle lessons with then US Champion Maribel Vinson Owen and eventually create small ice shows around herself in Harlem using all local children as talent.  After some important publicity in New York, the prospect of a movie career called her to Hollywood, but due to racism and questionable management, it was not to be so.  But this didn’t stop Mabel.  She began performing a “tank show” (small patch of portable ice), created an international tour with skaters of color and most importantly started coaching.  She worked with the children of many celebrities through the 1950′s and eventually went on to coach Atoy Wilson who I mentioned above.  She was the reason he broke the color barriers at both the Los Angeles Figure Skating Club and US Figure Skating Nationals.  It was around this same time that she looked at a little white boy and a little Filipino/black girl and said something to the effect of “I think they would make a nice pair” and put Randy Gardner and Tai Babilonia on the ice together.  Needless to say, the rest is World Champion history.  Due to her failing health at that time, I only had the chance to speak directly to Mabel briefly on the telephone, but I will never forget her delicate and determined voice even in illness saying how important it was to make sure that ALL the skaters get a chance.  She died in 2001.

I could go on, but there is a more important element to this story.  I started by saying that with Culver City Ice closing, so are the hopes and dreams of many skaters who won’t have access to the sport of skating whether that be figure skating or hockey.  Most of those kids are of color…and most of them don’t know the depth of the history of skaters of color outside of those of Japanese, Korean and Chinese decent (all of whom are phenomenally talented and deserve all the praise they get…Mirai Nagasu!)  Culver City Ice is on the border of several poor communities where one of the only low cost fun family, teen activities is ice skating.  What a loss.  I remember being a child in New York City after seeing Peggy Fleming skate at the Olympics and wanting more than anything to “do that.” My parents indulged me briefly by taking me to the Sky Rink once, but it was too far away and too costly. The message was clear.  Little boys…particularly little black boys, don’t figure skate.  How lucky the kids of Culver City have been, to skate in the home of the All Year Figure Skating Club in a place that was easy to get to on a bike or by bus.  There might have been some little black boy skating there thinking “I’m going to be the one to stand on the top of the Olympic podium.” Now we will never know.

With Peggy Fleming in 2011

Adam Dyer with Peggy Fleming in 2011

While I was at Culver City, not only did I have the chance to skate with National Champion, Gary Visconti and Olympic Champion Bob Paul, but I had the chance as a former Broadway dancer to share my love and knowledge of dance with a few young skaters of color. I am insanely proud that I had the chance to work with the young Tetona Jackson who later went on to be the first to portray Disney’s first black princess, Tiana, in Disney on Ice.  The legacy of black and brown skaters continues even today despite the barriers that remain both through finance and through the limited vision of many judges and coaches in the sport.

So, Mr. Samuels, again, I support you as being passionate about the sport of figure skating. So am I. So are all the people I mentioned above.  So are many, many other people, men and women, boys and girls, all of them people of color in this country and abroad…and all of us are considered outsiders.  Our voices have been crying into the wind and being unheard for years.  They de-fund our learn to skate programs, they keep us off the podium (or at the very least off the top spot…hello Surya Bonaly!) and they close our rinks.  The real story here is not about a black guy who likes to watch figure skating.  The real story is about all of the black guys who have been shut out of being on the podium or even in the competition throughout the history of the sport.  Let’s hear about that huh?

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Sports Explained: Figure Skating

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Wai Sallas asks himself what *would* Brian Boitano do, as he explains the glitz, glamour, and power . . . of Figure Skating.

“Figure skating is theatrical. It’s artistic. It’s elegant. It’s extremely athletic. And there’s a very specific audience for that.” — Johnny Weir
We’ve brought baseballfootballsoccerrugbyultimate Frisbeegolf, and lacrosse under the Sports Explained microscope.  We’ve rolled on bowling and stayed out of the gutter, and let hoops dream.  We now venture into the glitz and glamour of figure skating.
 
We are all guilty of being sucked into the beautiful vacuum that is figure skating.  It is our national past time every 4th winter.  
 

Is it the theatrics?

Is it the combination of grace and power?

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Figure skating is all of it and a lot more.
When skaters start gaining speed while heading into a jump, they reach up to 20-30 miles per hour.  In Men’s Health,  Lucinda Ruh, often called the greatest spinner in the history of the sport, said she routinely spun so fast–a physicist once calculated that the G force to her brain was akin to a fighter pilot–that she suffered mini concussions and had lingering effects, including vertigo and severe headaches.
The scoring system is a bit muddled and even the best can be caught dumfounded by a judge’s arbitrary score.  It’s safe to say though, with the music, the costumes and the artistry, there is something for everyone.
At the end of the day, there aren’t enough spins, salchows, double, triple or quadruple axels, double toe loops to give you a definitive picture of how much work and effort goes into figure skating.  So if you think you got it,  ask yourself one question:

What WOULD Brian Boitano Do?

Photo Credit: flickr/zhem_chug

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The Best of “Sports Explained . . .” for 2014

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If you make only one resolution in 2015, make sure you resolve to checkout our “Sports Explained…” series every week. We promise you’ll flip over them— you’re welcome!

Let’s face it, sometimes the nuances of sports can be confusing. From the squeeze play to college football playoffs – who can keep pace with all the 24/7 happenings in the wild world of sports???

That’s where  our “Sports Explained…” series helps. Each week we take a light-hearted look at some of the more humorous aspects of athletics. Below is a recap of our 2014 line-up.

If you like any of them make sure you don’t miss a single installment in 2015. We promise it will be one resolution you’ll want to keep. Your funny bone will thank you!

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Baseball: The complex simplicity of America’s pastime.

Football: Sports Goofy helps us explain.

Basketball: From Fletch to Bedazzled to the stars of the NBA.

Soccer: Jason Sudeikis and The Minions help us explain.

Rugby: An international blend of sports you are familiar with.

Ultimate Frisbee: It started in a small New Jersey town in the 1960s….

Golf: From Happy Gilmore to Caddyshack.

Lacrosse: A native american sport, coopted by prep schools.

Bowling: From The Big Lebowski to Kingpin.

Figure Skating: What would Brian Boitano do?

Weightlifting: With an assist from Saturday Night Live and some helpful memes.

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Join us! If you have a favorite sports quote or a sport you want us to cover in ‘Sports Explained,’ please send us your submission via email to anyone on the GMP sports team: Mike at mkasdan@gmail.com, Kimanzi at kconstable29@gmail.com, or Tor at torconbooks@gmail.com. You can also connect with them via Twitter @torcon, @KimanziC and @michaelkasdan using #GMPSports.

Photo: Koji Kawano/Flickr

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Sexism and Sports: Just the Way We Want It.

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Sex, Size, and Money: the three reasons men and women rarely face one another in a sports arena.
Sexism, Prejudice, and Stodginess: the three reasons things won’t change even if they could.

Due to the general differences in physical stature and strength, it makes sense in many sports for men and woment not to compete head-to-head.
Yes there are some women who are taller and stronger than some men, but for the sake of this argument let’s rest on actually percentages.
Hockey, track and field, basketball, soccer, as well as a host of other sports would give an unfair advantage to the physically stronger sex should they compete against each other.
There are, however, inequalitites, which defy logic.

I was watching sweat drip down the backs of competitors in South Carolina during the PGA Championship. Poor guys aren’t allowed to wear shorts.
The women of the LPGA are permitted skirts and shorts.  One explanation for that may be organizers and sponsors hope more leg will translate to more viewers. It’s no secret that beautiful athletes (both male and female) are more likely to be chosen as spokespeople for their sport.
No, Vijay Singh’s hairy legs will not translate into a higher viewership…but would they drive viewers away? Or rather just allow a Fijian’s kneecaps to breathe a little.

Men’s major tennis tournaments incorporate 5-set-matches instead of three. Why? Men’s tennis draws more viewers than women’s, largely due to the speed of the men’s game (due as well to Roger Federer who, like Tiger Woods of two years ago, attracts viewers through his sheer dominance of his sport).
Viewership increases as Andy Roddick enters his 4th  and 5th sets. Apparently Neilsen has decided 3 sets is enough for the ladies, even Maria Sharapova.

Olympic diving? Men perform 6 dives, while the women stop at 5. Yes, a forward 4-and-a-half is more dizzying than a 3-and-a-half; but with the men fielding 32 athletes, do I really need to watch either sex plummet off a platform one-hundred and ninety-two times? While the male divers were more spectacular, more was not necessarily better.
Similarly with figure skating – the men perform longer routines. A quadruple is flashier that a triple, but when they spend a extra forty-five seconds in the middle of their long programme gliding to Pachebel while they catch their breath, who wins? Not the viewer.

An extra ten metres is tacked onto the hundred-meter hurdles when it’s the men’s turn to crouch at the start line. Maybe the excuse this time is physics: men have longer legs, ergo require more track….like larger airplanes.
Both men and women compete in a Heptathlon (though not against one another).  Decathlon? Men only, please.
Why? How many advertising dollars are gained by truncating the women after the seventh event?

The blame is often put on men, since we tend to occupy most executive positions on Olympic Committees and Network Boards of Directors. We make the decisions.
But, in media, one factor influences the direction of content more than any other: money. Despite the testorone in the boardroom, ratings show that women enjoy watching men more than women enjoy watching women. Add those female viewers to the majority of men who also gravitate to male athletics, and it becomes a no-brainer: when it comes to sports, men sell.

This phenomenon extends to movies and television shows. Tom Cruise earns more than Gwyneth Paltrow. Why? Largely because women prefer Tom.
This phenomenon does not explain why poor Vijay is stuck in slacks when its forty degrees out….or why I can’t wear a summer dress to a summer wedding.
I hate suits. Maybe I’ll dig through my closet for one of my old figure skating outfits. While the teasing I was subjected to wasn’t easy; the outfits had their perks – lycra breaths beautifully in the summer heat. And for a 7-year-old boy in lycra – the fewer viewers the better.

 

Photo—Mai Techaphan from Shutterstock

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My Life as a Male Figure Skater

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In the Eighties, Kenny Bodanis endured homophobic jeers for his love—of the challenge, camaraderie, and spotlight—of life as a male figure skater.

My decision to devote full-time hours to competitive ice dancing was made during what is a volatile period in anyone’s life: my early teens. These years also coincided with the peak of male stigma against this graceful but controversial sport—the early 1980s. The word “gay” was itself just coming out; the AIDS scare further fed homophobia. The assumption was: male figure skaters are gay, and gay is bad.

“Just look at them with their tight outfits and their Baryshnikov routines.”

I was constantly defending my heterosexuality; I wasn’t mature enough yet to know better, and to not care.

As desperate as I was to defend not only myself, but my sport as well, I was just as reluctant to invite even my closest friends to watch practices.

Ice dancing is enigmatic even to insiders. For the ignorant spectator—especially my teenage peers—little separates it from ballet. It didn’t help that part of my training routine involved working with a dance stylist, and ballet and ballroom specialists. I was ashamed that anyone interested in watching a workout would, instead of seeing the powerful jumps most associated with figure skating, watch me practice stretches, and run through off-ice work designed to perfect upper body movement.

If you weren’t doing triple axles, laymen couldn’t understand the work involved.

By the time I stopped competing and became a professional coach, I was nearly two decades removed from the reasons I signed up for my first group lesson: friendship, fun, and the awe of watching skating at its best.

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I was drawn to the sport after watching my cousin perform at a local show.

Alone on the ice, followed by four spotlights, he skated to Kermit the Frog’s “Rainbow Connection.” His outfit was green Lycra, with a sequins rainbow sewn from one shoulder to the opposite hip. He had the ice—as well as the attention of a few hundred spectators—all to himself. Between musical verses, all you could hear were his blades against the ice.

I was 7 years old, and enraptured.

As a beginner, my first few years were spent learning to skate in much the same way hockey players do: on two feet; on one foot; frontwards; backwards; weaving around little orange cones placed in face-off circles. The only difference was the equipment. I had no pads, no team logo on my knitted sweater, and my skates cost my parents triple the money laid out by hockey parents. I also didn’t wear shin pads covered by socks bearing team colors; I wore stretchy pants which were held under my boot by Velcro. As a figure skater, your form is as important as your speed.

While my outfits were relatively tame (one of my favorites was my one-piece jumper: black pants, white top, with my initials sewn in black sequins on my left chest), the young goalies, forwards, and defensemen waiting in the hallway were relentless. The taunts, the nudges, the ‘accidental’ trips in the corridor became so routine they were tiresome. My saving grace was my twenty-odd Figure Skating Club colleagues waiting in our changing room. Together, we ignored the goons. To them I wasn’t a “male” figure skater, or even a figure skater; I was their childhood friend.

Practice routines consisted of gathering in the changing room fifteen minutes before ice time and chatting about the stuff important to 10-year-olds: school, siblings, parents, and “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. On ice, a short warm-up was a gateway to sixty minutes divided haphazardly between private lessons; repeating jumps and spins until they were either successful or you just didn’t feel like falling anymore; performing routines to the soundtracks of “Chariots of Fire”, “Endless Love” (or, my choices: the themes from “Magnum P.I.” and “Hill Street Blues”); and everyone’s raison d’être: gossiping along the boards.

Our relationships would last for a decade. My on-ice friendships would provide the support I needed to deflect the ridicule facing a twelve year-old boy stuffing his figure skates into his 7th grade locker. The hallway teasing couldn’t erode the joy of sneaking onto the ice at 6am with two or three friends to glide around a half-lit rink for forty-five minutes before class started. It was an exhilaratingly secretive beginning to a school day.

As safe and respected as I felt among my peers, participating in year-end shows often pitted me against the clubs administrating adults. The battle between the Male Skater and the Degrading Costume was an annual affair. Being part of group numbers, matching costumes were given to all of us. While usually a fair effort was made to supply male-centric versions of the outfits to the boys, occasionally the experience bordered on emasculation. The worst scenario had me wear transparent stockings, and a leopard-skin patterned Speedo with a matching top which didn’t even cover my navel. It was demoralizing.

The outfits arrived the day before the show, sight unseen. My choice was to join my friends and their costumes and be part of the show, or drop out and sit in the stands. My love for performing and my devotion to those friendships pushed me to participate. That group photo is safely buried somewhere.

This fight for my fashion pride would follow me throughout my career. Even with my socially-slanted practice regime, I won a few silver medals in local and provincial competitions. While this may seem impressive, so few boys entered the sport there were often only three or four of us competing. Finishing second meant you were in the middle of the pack.

Eventually, my adolescent body would alter my career path. My bones grew faster than my muscles, and my knees paid the price for the hundreds of hours of jumping and landing. I was diagnosed with Osgood-Schlatter disease; the tops of my tibias were shattered. My life as a future Men’s Singles champion was over.

The option of becoming a Pairs competitor was equally bleak. While Pairs skating incorporates less complicated jumping maneuvers than Singles, the jumps are still there. Also, lifting a one-hundred pound female partner over my head as I traveled along the ice surface at twenty miles an hour would do my tibias no favors.

It was then I turned to the equally challenging, but far less jarring discipline of Ice Dancing. Simply put, it’s ballroom dancing on skates. The emphasis is placed on intricate footwork, rhythm and power, all while rarely straying more than a couple of inches from your partner. Jumps are reduced to hops, the height of lifts is restricted, and you are never allowed to throw your partner (although sometimes you really want to).

My knees would be used as supple springs instead of landing pads.

♦◊♦

If I was to be forced to give up not only the jumping and spinning involved with skating solo routines, but also to leave behind ice time spent with my closest friends (Ice Dancers and Singles skaters don’t share practice schedules), I decided to fully devote myself in this new discipline. I was paired with a dance partner, and together we trained full-time for elite competition.

At the National Ice Dance Centre, gone were the hockey players taunting me from behind the glass, but also gone were the hours of gossiping about parents and school work.

Our eight-hour daily routine included ballet, ballroom dancing, strength and condition, and visits with a sports psychologist (where was he when I was negotiating the leopard-skin Speedo?). Despite being immensely proud of the hard work: thirty hours a week; the injuries—treated with Tylenol, ice packs, and foam padding shoved into my skates; and the success: we were eventually among the elite junior ice dancers in the province; I still kept my sport and my personal life separate. As open and accepting as my closest friends were, they were human. There were aspects of ice dancing which too easily opened themselves to ridicule, and—even at nineteen years-old—I didn’t need the hassle.

It didn’t help that the required competition rhythm that year was the polka. As much as I couldn’t fight the regulations which dictated I dance to an accordion with maracas accompaniment; I again desperately fought the costume choice: spandex leiderhausen. Ice Dance judges, however, are sticklers for tradition; wearing something other than what was expected would cost us valuable points.

My arguments backstage protesting the costume and the make-up (never let them see you sweat) only hinted at someone who could be difficult to work with. I was told to shut up and deal with it; it’s part of the the sport of ice dancing.

And so, few of my friends would ever see me skate.

As crippling as the mockery from outsiders could be, it was the pressure from within the sport which finally made me walk away from competition. The camaraderie which bound me to the sport as a youngster disappeared completely as the events became more important. Chatting with potential adversaries was frowned upon, despite the dozens of hours we spent on the ice together. The joy of performing eroded into the pressure of competing against a glass ceiling; a judging system partial to veterans assured newcomers a place at the bottom of the ladder. I had to either choose to commit several more years and hope for success, or get out. I decided to lose my amateur status, and teach professionally.

When any elite athlete chooses to leave competition, they rarely ever leave the sport entirely.

Once I became disenchanted with the pursuit of Olympic glory, teaching skating became a natural part-time job to bolster my income. Skating instructors, like tennis pros, earn an excellent hourly wage. Many former champions—some of whom used to be my competition—make extravagant salaries as full-time coaches, consultants or choreographers.

Thanks to my knees, I had never developed into a world champion as a Singles skater; thanks to my eventual lack of competitive will, I was never part of a world champion Ice Dance team.

Not only did I feel this lack of success limited my marketability as a full-time coach, I was also reticent to devote the rest of my life to the sport. While I loved figure skating, I found it difficult imagining a retirement-age me following 10-year-old around a face-off circle. Instead, I used the healthy part-time coach’s salary to lean on while I attempted to figure out what I wanted to do when I grow up.

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I loved working with young skaters. I recognized their enthusiasm; identified with their attraction to leaving their school-work and classmates behind for a couple of hours and glide powerfully around an ice rink.

As my coach was for me in my early teens, I became my students’ sympathetic ear as they negotiated the trials of adolescence. I was their trainer, brother, and counselor for fifteen to thirty minutes a week. Whenever they cried after failing a test, or became frustrated with the sport, I would remind them to keep their sense of humor about them. Skating is a choice you make because of the joy it brings you, I’d say, and because of the friendships you build. As soon as the fun is gone, the sports’ purpose is lost.

My sense of humor is how I deal with most difficult situations now; difficult people as well. I’m sure it was honed thanks to those relentless young goalies, forwards, and defensemen waiting in the hallway a few decades ago.

I don’t regret never becoming Patrick Chan. Sometimes I do miss the performances, and the camaraderie, and especially the student-teacher relationships. But, that life provided me with the confidence and security I don’t think I would have otherwise developed.

Still, nearly twenty years later, I notice I’m reluctant to talk about my life as a male figure skater. I shouldn’t care. The sport—and that sport psychologist—gave me the tools and the sense of humor to deal with ignoramuses; and yet … .

I wear hockey skates on public rinks, now. Even as I write this post, I’m sure to hide the title when I’m in a café or other public area. Defending the male figure skater is no great cause, unless you’re facing a 7-year-old boy enthralled with what they’ve just witnessed at their local rink.

The courage to sign up has to come from somewhere. Even twenty years after I began, there is only a boy or two practicing among the girls—outnumbered 10 to 1, as we always were.

After practice, he’ll head to school and stuff his skates into his locker. When someone asks him what’s in the bag, he’ll probably tell a joke and quickly change the subject, as I always did.

 

Read more on Smashing Male Stereotypes on The Good Life.

Picture—A5ForFighting/flickr

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You Don’t Know Jack

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Greg White

Greg White

Greg White recalls his brief meeting with the legendary Jack Nicholson via a mutual and legendary friend.

—-

If you watch the metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a butterfly, when the beautiful creature flutters off you might think you have seen the whole story. But that butterfly still has a journey. I try to keep my eyes on one as it dances from bush to bush with the rapidity of a carny swapping out shells. Even when it’s gone, the privilege of seeing that butterfly stays with me.

Ice skating superstar Tai Babilonia never puts her skates in the closet, as if she’s keeping her wings ready for a new flight. She has floated across the ice with her partner Randy Gardner since 1968, won the 1979 World Championship and competed in two Olympics. Not one to rest on her laurels, she breezes through life honestly, accepting challenges and personal hardships with the same grace as she celebrates triumphs.

Her latest fun endeavor is sugar-coated—a new confectionery line: Tai Treats.

I’ve known Tai & Randy for over twenty years. They are fun and wonderful to watch on and off the ice. That they still loyally and proudly skate together is a touching testament to dedication. My great-grandmother taught me that you have to dance with the one that brung you. After all of these years hoisting her over his head while on razor sharp blades and on thin ice, I imagine him whispering tenderly into her ear as he is about to lift: You better help….

♦◊♦

Once, after a spectacular show at the LA Forum where they dazzled everyone, I, along with ten friends including actors David Youse and Jack Nicholson , was waiting in the Green Room for Tai & Randy to slip into something a little less sequined and come out and grab our roses. We were all chatting with each other, Jack included, about the show and their skating and that Julie Newmar had so sweetly and practically carried her very excited son, who has Down’s syndrome, to his seat so they both could clap and cheer.

For that entire half hour we waited backstage we talked with Jack as if he were part of our posse, and he responded as such, but safely hidden behind his omnipresent dark glasses, clamped on his head as a cloaking shield of scoundrelocity.  The moment Tai walked in the room, Jack jumped up, extended his right hand and at the same time his left hand flew up to sweep the sunglasses off of his face like he was revealing the Wizard: a legend meeting a legend, a gentleman meeting a lady. He dropped us like a hot rock, and flirted Tai into privately coaching his young daughter to skate.

♦◊♦

Time flies beautifully by when you are gliding on the ice. The TV movie about her life was in 1991, now she’s working on a new book that will bring us up to speed. You can take a sneak peek into her latest chapter, with the debut of new a line of hand-made chocolates called Tai Treats.

The candies are made by Frank Sheftel, owner of The Candy Factory, Los Angeles’ own Willy Wonka. He is famous for, among other creations, the life-is-a-box-of-chocolates that were held out by Forrest Gump.

Tai is still going for the gold, literally, since the Candy Factory’s Oompa Loompas sprinkle some of the candies with 24K dust. She puts her own hands in the chocolate, overseeing and approving everything. As a young athlete she wasn’t allowed this kind of decadence, so now she’s a grown up kid in a candy store.

Few of us know what it’s like to be a professional competitive athlete like Tai; however, we all race through our own, one life. I certainly believe in endurance as I try to remember when eating a long meal, that I live a marathon not a sprint.

♦◊♦

She did coach Jack’s daughter, Lorraine, now a working actress. That Lorraine Nicholson followed in her father’s footprints-in-cement rather than flee the Hollywood scene means that she liked what she saw in her own father’s career. You’ve seen him transform into a role and play delightfully devilish characters, but you don’t know Jack. The one part we didn’t see him play was the one I saw him prep for that day he met Tai, and the one we all probably have a hard time imagining. Jack, lacing up his five-year old daughter’s skates, beaming as she learned to skate.

Every time she took to the ice, Tai Babilonia’s intent was to skate her best. With this latest endeavor she is proving that her life is a gold medal inside a box of chocolates.

A butterfly can’t fly unless she opens her wings.

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Ghosts

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gravestone ghosts

Some stories are haunting, in the very best sense of the word, and that is how I feel about this story by Michael Rowe. It gets at the very essence of all we talk about at The Good Men Project – men and manhood, identity, sexuality, fathers and family, violence, and that eerie place where the past and present collide. It’s all very grounded, very real, yet I’ve read this several times, and each time it gives me goosebumps – not a little wimpy, prickly back of the spine tingle, but a full body sensation that is hard to shake off. –– Lisa Hickey, publisher, The Good Men Project

♦◊♦

I saw you standing just inside the wrought-iron fence around the graveyard at the corner of Winchester and Sumach this evening when I was out with the dogs, right around sundown.

I waved, but you didn’t wave back.

Two 14-year-old boys went right by you on skateboards through a cloud of dead autumn leaves. I didn’t see their faces under their helmets and untidy dark hair as they flew past through the lengthening shadows.

Remember in the 70s when we were kids and no one ever wore a helmet for anything? We used to make retard jokes about kids whose parents made them wear helmets, even for skating. Isn’t it odd how something that sounds so cruel today seemed so funny back then? I never wore a helmet for hockey. You never played hockey.

Remember that time I teased you about how you should be wearing white skates with black heels and done figure skating with the girls? Dad always told me to shut up when I teased you. Once he even slapped the back of my head, hard. I pretended that it didn’t hurt, but it did. I hated you when he did that.

But he was right. It was a mean thing to say. You couldn’t help the way you were, but I could probably have helped being an asshole about it.

You didn’t even look at the boys on the skateboard. I figured they reminded you of the guys we grew up with in Auburn—guys like I was: guys who played hockey, who chased girls, who weren’t afraid to get into fights.

I wonder if they even saw you? I wonder if they might have felt a sudden cold as they thundered past the cemetery. What would they have seen if they’d looked up?

But still, I wish you’d waved.

♦◊♦

This week, I drove west on the 401 to Auburn, like I always do at the end of October, to see Dad. We don’t talk much anymore, but he likes it when I check in. Since Mom died, he doesn’t do a lot around the house. There’s a widow lady from church, Mrs. Normoyle, who has a thing for him. She’s always bringing him food and tidying up. He tells me she’s annoying, but I think he’s a lot happier she’s there than he likes to let on. It’s lonely up in that big house on the Milton Escarpment with nothing but memories, especially in October.

It’s the month of ghosts, especially family ghosts.

The rooms seem darker now that Mom is gone. Maybe Dad turns the lights on less, or maybe he keeps the blinds drawn more than he used to. Dad always says Mom took the light with her after when she died, after 40 years. Even though he didn’t mean it literally, the other day I remembered that another word for ghost is “shade,” which made me smile. It also made me switch on a couple of lamps in the living room next to Dad’s chair.

In the lamplight, pictures everywhere. On the walls. On the tables.

Mom and Dad’s wedding. Mom holding me in her arms when they brought me home from the hospital. Me, at 5, reaching up to touch you when they brought you home from the hospital. Birthdays. Disneyland. Hockey pictures—me, not you. You, at your modern dance class recital. You, gently holding Maven when she was a puppy. Maven licks your face with her pink tongue. The colours have faded, but Maven still looks like a small bundle of soft black mink. Your smile is beautiful in that picture. You’re cradling her in your arms like she was your baby.

“I know,” Dad says. I didn’t hear him come up behind me. He puts his hand on my shoulder. “Never a day goes by. A handsome boy.” His voice sounds unbearably old all of a sudden. “It was easier when your mother was alive. It’s against nature. It should have been she and I. You two boys should have outlived us both.”

“I’m still here, Dad.”

“I know,” he says. “I know you are. I wish you had . . .” His voice trails off. The bitterness has mellowed over the years like old brass. It’s still there, but it gleams dully.

“Dad, stop it. Not now. It’s not fair. Not after all this time.”

“I’m sorry, Robert. I didn’t mean it that way.”

When I look at him, there are tears in his eyes. Old-man tears. I touch his shoulder. I want to hug him, but I know he’d rather not have the human contact right now. So I squeeze his shoulder, the way real men do. Fucking real men. Jesus.

“Yes, you did, Dad,” I whisper. “You did mean it that way. But it’s OK. I agree with you. I wish I’d been there that night with Scotty too.”

♦◊♦

Brothers. Loaded term. Born of the same parents, raised in the same house. One normal, one—well, different. We knew you were different, but we never talked about it as such. Mom called you “sensitive.”  When you were little, you’d follow me around everywhere. You drove me crazy with your love. Later, you embarrassed me with your mincing and prancing. My friends laughed at you. I joined in their laughter. My girlfriend, the incredibly hot born-again Christian to whom I lost my virginity, asked me if you were an actual fag, or if you just acted like one.

Dad was angry with me when you came home with your latest black eye.

“Why can’t you look after him? He’s your brother. He’s the only brother you’ll ever have. You’re stronger than him. You need to protect him.”

I said I’d rather have no brother at all than an embarrassing queer one.

Dad slapped me across the face. “Be a man, Robert. It’s time for you to grow up and act like a man.”

I told him that I hated him, and I hated you more. I stormed out of the living room. When I saw you crying in the doorway to the kitchen, I passed you without a word. You held out your hand. You touched my elbow as I went by.

“Robbie, I’m sorry. I—”

“Fuck you, Scott. I hate you. I wish you were dead.”

Three years later, when I was home from university, you told us you were moving to Alberta with some guy you were “in love with.” Mom cried. Dad went to his workshop and locked the door. I told Mom and Dad that I was done pretending.

I drove back to school. In my dorm, I threw the only framed family photo across the room. It shattered against the wall, spraying shards of broken glass across the floor.

Dad called me from the hospital in Calgary. My girlfriend woke me up and passed me the phone. It was 3:00 a.m. At first, I didn’t recognize his voice at all. It was the voice of a man nailed to a cross.

“Your brother’s been hurt,” he said.  “We’re in Calgary. Mum and I. Can you come right away? We’re at the hospital.”

“Dad? What happened to Scott?”

“They hurt him,” he said. “They beat him up. He’s in intensive care.”

“Who?” I asked stupidly. “Who hurt him?”

“Who else? The same ones that always hurt him.” Dad was crying now. “Damn them.” He was silent for a few moments, trying to compose himself. “Your brother needs his family with him now. You have to come.”

“Dad—”

“You come now, Robert. I mean it. It’s time for you to be his brother again. It’s past time.”

Then he told me what they’d done to you in that alleyway outside the bar.

♦◊♦

Three hours later on the plane to Calgary, I dreamed horrible, unformed, crimson-tinted dreams. I heard the terrible crunch of bones cracking beneath the weight of fists and boots. I saw the puddles of congealing blood. I must have cried out because the flight attendant asked me if I was all right. I told her I was. She handed me a napkin. I reached for it, suddenly embarrassed to have allowed this woman see me cry, even in my sleep.

I landed in Calgary on the bluest October morning.  The houses across the street from the hospital had carved pumpkins by the front door. Of course, I thought. It’s Halloween morning.

“We did everything we could,” the doctor had said, holding a clipboard under the fluorescent light. “I’m so sorry.”

Perhaps his clinical choice of words had been intended to be anesthetic—blunt force trauma, massive head injuries, persistent vegetative.

As the machine measured out your remaining heartbeats in flattening spikes of green light, I touched your broken fingers and promised myself—and you—that I would be strong for Mom and Dad.

When it was over, we stepped out of the hospital into the sunlight. Across the street from the hospital, two little boys displaying the effortless familiarity of brothers raced along the sidewalk to school, laughing. One was draped in a bed sheet, a ghost. His brother wore a pirate costume. The older of the two, the pirate, reached out and took his younger brother’s hand, pulling him joyously along the sidewalk towards school.

It had taken me exactly 17 minutes to break my promise not to cry.

♦◊♦

These days, I can quantify my remaining decades. I can measure them out in life-events. I can gauge my value as a man by who I’ve loved, who has loved me, and by the ones I didn’t love nearly enough. My marriage didn’t last, of course. No one was surprised.

But our son, Scott—named after you—is the one thing we did right. He’s away at Western this fall. He’s your age. The age you were when . . . well, when whatever.

I believe in ghosts. And I see you everywhere.

The first time was just before I turned on the soft nursery light, the night we brought Scott home. You were standing over his crib, a familiar shape in the dimness.

Scotty, I whispered. Then I turned on the light.

The room was empty except for my sleeping son. I felt no fear, just the gentle spectral aspect of something peaceful and benevolent.

But you were there. I know what I saw.

♦◊♦

I’ve seen you many other times over the years, sometimes more clearly than others. I’ve seen you in my son’s handsome sensitive face as he’s grown. I’ve felt your spirit in his sweetness, his trusting nature. I’ve heard your voice beneath his.

I feel your spirit moving in me when I react with patience and kindness to the fact that he’s not like me, and in fact couldn’t be more like you in many, many ways.

And in loving that in him, in knowing that he might someday tell Susan and I what you told Mom and Dad that terrible afternoon 30 years ago, I’m granted some sort of absolution, a redemption I don’t deserve, in knowing I’ll know how to love him at the moment he’ll need my love the most.

In my dreams I see you rising out of that bloody alleyway on a fountain of radiance like some sort of immortal angel full of fire, full of power, full of light.

But other times, like tonight, by the graveyard in late October when the daylight is short and the night chill settles in early, I see you very, very clearly.

I wave. And I wish you’d wave back. Just once.

photo Flickr/AdamSelwood

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Lutz or Flutz? The Tricky Physics of Figure Skating

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Figure skating is at once artistic, athletic and breathtaking. Here’s a glimpse into the science that makes it so entertaining.

By Deborah King, Ithaca College

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Figure skating is always the highlight of the Winter Olympics. With the introduction of a team competition this year, there are five figure skating events. And we’ve already seen much drama with records broken and the retirement of veteran showman Evgeni Plushenko. He pulled out after badly landing a triple Axel – one of the sport’s signature jumps.

Spectators often take the grace and beauty of figure skating for granted. But many don’t realise the speed, power and strength needed to complete the jumps and spins. Gliding across the ice and then springing into the air to rotate three or four times before landing lightly on a single tiny blade and gliding off again is an exact science. There are many types of jumps and each jump may be done in combination with another, but two fan favourites are the Axel and Lutz.

The Axel

This is my favourite jump. The Axel is the only jump where the skater faces forward as they take off the ice. They start by gliding backward, but then step forward and jump into the air, driving forward and upward with their arms and leg. It is a powerful jump where athletes gain great heights.


The Axel jump.

Because they are facing forward at take-off, the skaters have an extra half revolution to do before they land (all figure skating jumps land backward). So a triple Axel is really three and a half revolutions in the air. To turn so many times it is critical that skaters pull their arms and legs into a tight pencil like position. Crossing their ankles, pressing their legs tightly together and holding their elbows and hands tight against their chest, this minimises the resistance they create with the air.

The tighter a skater is, the faster they can rotate. If an arm or foot is sticking out, the mass of the arm or foot is too far from their axis of rotation and slows down the spin. Easy in principle, in reality they have to fight to keep their arms and legs in tight. Skaters must use their muscles to create centripetal force, which pulls objects towards the axis of rotation, keeping them on a circular path. If they relax, their arms and feet will want to keep moving straight and will get flung outward.

Men tend to perform triple Axels, women normally doubles. But look out for a triple Axel from Japan’s Mao Asada. She was the first woman to land a triple Axel in competition and plans to nail it again this year in pursuit of gold in the women’s free program.


David Jenkins does a triple Axel for the cameras in 1957

The Lutz

Mao Asada mid-Lutz. Shizuo Kambayashi/AP

You will see triple and quadruple Lutzes. A feature of the Lutz that makes it challenging from a scientific standpoint is the entry. Skaters must do a long backward glide on the outside edge of one foot as they approach the jump, causing them to arc clockwise if they are on their left foot and anticlockwise if they are on their right. Then, they reach back with the other foot, tap the toe-pick into the ice and vault off it, turning in the opposite direction to the arc in the air.

This initial “counter rotation” helps skaters gain angular momentum for the jump. This is the rotational momentum of the skater about their axis of rotation – the imaginary line that runs up and down the centre of the body, which skaters spin around while in the air. Skaters get angular momentum from a twisting push off the ice as they rotate their body and arms when they jump.

In a Lutz, the counter rotation can increase the range of motion the skater turns through helping create more angular momentum for the jump. While this sounds advantageous, there is the added difficulty of staying on the outside edge as they start the counterclockwise rotation. A common problem is a “flutz”. If the skater falls or rolls onto the inside edge, it is not a true Lutz and points will be deducted.


A quadruple Lutz

As you watch the games, listen to the announcers and see if you can identify the Axel and Lutz. Look for the arm and leg drive in forward take-off Axel that helps create power and jump height. Look for the long backward glide of the Lutz and the skater using the arms and rotation of the body to create angular momentum and rotation speed while staying on the outside edge leaning away from the rotation of the jump.

Deborah King has received funding from United State Figure Skating and the United States Olympic Committee.

–This article was originally published on The Conversation.
–Read the original article.
–Photo: AP

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A Lesson in Figure Skating and Black Men

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Adam Dyer Squaw Valley
Adam Dyer Squaw Valley

Adam Dyer in Squaw Valley demonstrating an off ice spiral…silly boy!

Adam Dyer knows full well what it’s like to be a black guy obsessed with figure skating.

—-

This post is a response to a recent article that appeared in the Washington Post

Dear Robert Samuels of the Washington Post,

Although I appreciate the observations in your recent article “I’m black.  I’m a guy. And I’m obsessed with figure skating” – Washington Post Online, January 30, and I also appreciate how challenging it is to be a man of color working for the Post, your perspective as a black man loving figure skating is neither newsworthy nor unique. You are definitely not the first black man to be a fan of figure skating.  In fact, in addition to other black men being fans, there have been and continue to be black men and women actually in the sport. But I have to also realize that you, along with many others may not be aware of the depth and breadth of the history of blacks in figure skating in America. So, with all good intentions, here are a few of my own observations as a fan for over 45 years.

Today, in Culver City Californa, an era comes to an end. On February 2, 2014, Culver City Ice Arena will close. Along with it, the dreams of many a child who usually wouldn’t have access to even knowing about skating of any kind.  I discovered Culver City Ice when I moved to Los Angeles in 2000. I had started skating (as an adult) while living in Toronto in 1996 and had managed to keep up the sport.  My first impression of Culver City Ice was that it was run down (the ice had a distinct dip toward one end.) But there was a charm that is summed up by the “Sweetheart of the Ice” sculpture that adorns the roof and by the warmth of the instructors, some who had been teaching there since its opening in 1962.  The other thing that spoke to me were how many kids of color were on the ice.  It was the first time in all of my years of following figure skating that I had seen that many kids of color on the ice. One of the first people I met was Catherine Machado, US National Bronze medalist (1955, 1956) as well as the first Latina national champion (Junior, 1954.)  She was funny and wry and so unassuming, I didn’t realize her history.  I remember her telling me that one reason she loved this rink was that, although she loved all her students, Culver City attracted the kids who looked and sounded like her and it was important for them to see a role model. But I digress…

Culver City Ice was not only where I first landed an axel jump (thank you Gary Visconti) but where I met Atoy Wilson, the first African American National Champion (Novice, 1966) and the first African American to skate in the National Championships (1965) and former star of Ice Follies, Holiday on Ice and numerous appearances on television.  He introduced me to a world of black figure skaters who to this day continue to be sidelined by a sport that is plagued by both racism and economic elitism. Through him, I learned about and was fortunate to meet incredible athletes: Franklyn Singley, Sheliah Crisp, Derrick Delmore, Aaron Parchem, Andrea Gardiner, Rohene Ward, just to name a few…not to mention legendary figures like Debi Thomas, Richard Ewell and  Tai Babilonia. These skaters, represent some of the most phenomenal talent to ever land on the ice.  At a 2002 gala in Cleveland, I saw them perform spins and jumps that don’t even have names in the mainstream sport; I witnessed a level of athleticism and artistry with these skaters that puts anything that most of our national competitors do to a sorry shame; and I encountered a passion for the sport that transcended the cultural barriers that were routinely put in their way by “the establishment.”

The most important introduction, however, that came to me from Culver City Ice Arena was my introduction to Mabel Fairbanks. Fairbanks was a black skater and coach who came up in a time when it was impossible to be a black woman and be a skater, let alone a black woman from Jacksonville, Florida. Arriving in New York City in the 1930’s, she saw figure skating, most notably the movie “One In a Million” with Sonja Henie, and was hooked.  Although she was most likely in her early 20’s when she started, she found a way to teach herself and wangle lessons with then US Champion Maribel Vinson Owen and eventually create small ice shows around herself in Harlem using all local children as talent.  After some important publicity in New York, the prospect of a movie career called her to Hollywood, but due to racism and questionable management, it was not to be so.  But this didn’t stop Mabel.  She began performing a “tank show” (small patch of portable ice), created an international tour with skaters of color and most importantly started coaching.  She worked with the children of many celebrities through the 1950’s and eventually went on to coach Atoy Wilson who I mentioned above.  She was the reason he broke the color barriers at both the Los Angeles Figure Skating Club and US Figure Skating Nationals.  It was around this same time that she looked at a little white boy and a little Filipino/black girl and said something to the effect of “I think they would make a nice pair” and put Randy Gardner and Tai Babilonia on the ice together.  Needless to say, the rest is World Champion history.  Due to her failing health at that time, I only had the chance to speak directly to Mabel briefly on the telephone, but I will never forget her delicate and determined voice even in illness saying how important it was to make sure that ALL the skaters get a chance.  She died in 2001.

I could go on, but there is a more important element to this story.  I started by saying that with Culver City Ice closing, so are the hopes and dreams of many skaters who won’t have access to the sport of skating whether that be figure skating or hockey.  Most of those kids are of color…and most of them don’t know the depth of the history of skaters of color outside of those of Japanese, Korean and Chinese decent (all of whom are phenomenally talented and deserve all the praise they get…Mirai Nagasu!)  Culver City Ice is on the border of several poor communities where one of the only low cost fun family, teen activities is ice skating.  What a loss.  I remember being a child in New York City after seeing Peggy Fleming skate at the Olympics and wanting more than anything to “do that.” My parents indulged me briefly by taking me to the Sky Rink once, but it was too far away and too costly. The message was clear.  Little boys…particularly little black boys, don’t figure skate.  How lucky the kids of Culver City have been, to skate in the home of the All Year Figure Skating Club in a place that was easy to get to on a bike or by bus.  There might have been some little black boy skating there thinking “I’m going to be the one to stand on the top of the Olympic podium.” Now we will never know.

With Peggy Fleming in 2011

Adam Dyer with Peggy Fleming in 2011

While I was at Culver City, not only did I have the chance to skate with National Champion, Gary Visconti and Olympic Champion Bob Paul, but I had the chance as a former Broadway dancer to share my love and knowledge of dance with a few young skaters of color. I am insanely proud that I had the chance to work with the young Tetona Jackson who later went on to be the first to portray Disney’s first black princess, Tiana, in Disney on Ice.  The legacy of black and brown skaters continues even today despite the barriers that remain both through finance and through the limited vision of many judges and coaches in the sport.

So, Mr. Samuels, again, I support you as being passionate about the sport of figure skating. So am I. So are all the people I mentioned above.  So are many, many other people, men and women, boys and girls, all of them people of color in this country and abroad…and all of us are considered outsiders.  Our voices have been crying into the wind and being unheard for years.  They de-fund our learn to skate programs, they keep us off the podium (or at the very least off the top spot…hello Surya Bonaly!) and they close our rinks.  The real story here is not about a black guy who likes to watch figure skating.  The real story is about all of the black guys who have been shut out of being on the podium or even in the competition throughout the history of the sport.  Let’s hear about that huh?

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Sports Explained: Figure Skating

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 weir

Wai Sallas asks himself what *would* Brian Boitano do, as he explains the glitz, glamour, and power . . . of Figure Skating.

“Figure skating is theatrical. It’s artistic. It’s elegant. It’s extremely athletic. And there’s a very specific audience for that.” — Johnny Weir
We’ve brought baseballfootballsoccerrugbyultimate Frisbeegolf, and lacrosse under the Sports Explained microscope.  We’ve rolled on bowling and stayed out of the gutter, and let hoops dream.  We now venture into the glitz and glamour of figure skating.
 
We are all guilty of being sucked into the beautiful vacuum that is figure skating.  It is our national past time every 4th winter.  
 

Is it the theatrics?

Is it the combination of grace and power?

♦◊♦
Figure skating is all of it and a lot more.
When skaters start gaining speed while heading into a jump, they reach up to 20-30 miles per hour.  In Men’s Health,  Lucinda Ruh, often called the greatest spinner in the history of the sport, said she routinely spun so fast–a physicist once calculated that the G force to her brain was akin to a fighter pilot–that she suffered mini concussions and had lingering effects, including vertigo and severe headaches.
The scoring system is a bit muddled and even the best can be caught dumfounded by a judge’s arbitrary score.  It’s safe to say though, with the music, the costumes and the artistry, there is something for everyone.
At the end of the day, there aren’t enough spins, salchows, double, triple or quadruple axels, double toe loops to give you a definitive picture of how much work and effort goes into figure skating.  So if you think you got it,  ask yourself one question:

What WOULD Brian Boitano Do?

Photo Credit: flickr/zhem_chug

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The Best of “Sports Explained . . .” for 2014

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If you make only one resolution in 2015, make sure you resolve to checkout our “Sports Explained…” series every week. We promise you’ll flip over them— you’re welcome!

Let’s face it, sometimes the nuances of sports can be confusing. From the squeeze play to college football playoffs – who can keep pace with all the 24/7 happenings in the wild world of sports???

That’s where  our “Sports Explained…” series helps. Each week we take a light-hearted look at some of the more humorous aspects of athletics. Below is a recap of our 2014 line-up.

If you like any of them make sure you don’t miss a single installment in 2015. We promise it will be one resolution you’ll want to keep. Your funny bone will thank you!

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Baseball: The complex simplicity of America’s pastime.

Football: Sports Goofy helps us explain.

Basketball: From Fletch to Bedazzled to the stars of the NBA.

Soccer: Jason Sudeikis and The Minions help us explain.

Rugby: An international blend of sports you are familiar with.

Ultimate Frisbee: It started in a small New Jersey town in the 1960s….

Golf: From Happy Gilmore to Caddyshack.

Lacrosse: A native american sport, coopted by prep schools.

Bowling: From The Big Lebowski to Kingpin.

Figure Skating: What would Brian Boitano do?

Weightlifting: With an assist from Saturday Night Live and some helpful memes.

If that made you happy, you might like a daily dose of Good Men Project awesomeness delivered straight to your inbox. Once a day or once a week, your choice. Join our mailing list here.

Join our community at the The Good Men Project Sports Facebook Page.

Join us! If you have a favorite sports quote or a sport you want us to cover in ‘Sports Explained,’ please send us your submission via email to anyone on the GMP sports team: Mike at mkasdan@gmail.com, Kimanzi at kconstable29@gmail.com, or Tor at torconbooks@gmail.com. You can also connect with them via Twitter @torcon, @KimanziC and @michaelkasdan using #GMPSports.

Photo: Koji Kawano/Flickr

The post The Best of “Sports Explained . . .” for 2014 appeared first on The Good Men Project.

Hockey Goalie Takes a Break, Does Some Beautiful Figure Skating

Sexism and Sports: Just the Way We Want It.

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Sex, Size, and Money: the three reasons men and women rarely face one another in a sports arena.
Sexism, Prejudice, and Stodginess: the three reasons things won’t change even if they could.

Due to the general differences in physical stature and strength, it makes sense in many sports for men and woment not to compete head-to-head.
Yes there are some women who are taller and stronger than some men, but for the sake of this argument let’s rest on actually percentages.
Hockey, track and field, basketball, soccer, as well as a host of other sports would give an unfair advantage to the physically stronger sex should they compete against each other.
There are, however, inequalitites, which defy logic.

I was watching sweat drip down the backs of competitors in South Carolina during the PGA Championship. Poor guys aren’t allowed to wear shorts.
The women of the LPGA are permitted skirts and shorts.  One explanation for that may be organizers and sponsors hope more leg will translate to more viewers. It’s no secret that beautiful athletes (both male and female) are more likely to be chosen as spokespeople for their sport.
No, Vijay Singh’s hairy legs will not translate into a higher viewership…but would they drive viewers away? Or rather just allow a Fijian’s kneecaps to breathe a little.

Men’s major tennis tournaments incorporate 5-set-matches instead of three. Why? Men’s tennis draws more viewers than women’s, largely due to the speed of the men’s game (due as well to Roger Federer who, like Tiger Woods of two years ago, attracts viewers through his sheer dominance of his sport).
Viewership increases as Andy Roddick enters his 4th  and 5th sets. Apparently Neilsen has decided 3 sets is enough for the ladies, even Maria Sharapova.

Olympic diving? Men perform 6 dives, while the women stop at 5. Yes, a forward 4-and-a-half is more dizzying than a 3-and-a-half; but with the men fielding 32 athletes, do I really need to watch either sex plummet off a platform one-hundred and ninety-two times? While the male divers were more spectacular, more was not necessarily better.
Similarly with figure skating – the men perform longer routines. A quadruple is flashier that a triple, but when they spend a extra forty-five seconds in the middle of their long programme gliding to Pachebel while they catch their breath, who wins? Not the viewer.

An extra ten metres is tacked onto the hundred-meter hurdles when it’s the men’s turn to crouch at the start line. Maybe the excuse this time is physics: men have longer legs, ergo require more track….like larger airplanes.
Both men and women compete in a Heptathlon (though not against one another).  Decathlon? Men only, please.
Why? How many advertising dollars are gained by truncating the women after the seventh event?

The blame is often put on men, since we tend to occupy most executive positions on Olympic Committees and Network Boards of Directors. We make the decisions.
But, in media, one factor influences the direction of content more than any other: money. Despite the testorone in the boardroom, ratings show that women enjoy watching men more than women enjoy watching women. Add those female viewers to the majority of men who also gravitate to male athletics, and it becomes a no-brainer: when it comes to sports, men sell.

This phenomenon extends to movies and television shows. Tom Cruise earns more than Gwyneth Paltrow. Why? Largely because women prefer Tom.
This phenomenon does not explain why poor Vijay is stuck in slacks when its forty degrees out….or why I can’t wear a summer dress to a summer wedding.
I hate suits. Maybe I’ll dig through my closet for one of my old figure skating outfits. While the teasing I was subjected to wasn’t easy; the outfits had their perks – lycra breaths beautifully in the summer heat. And for a 7-year-old boy in lycra – the fewer viewers the better.

 

Photo—Mai Techaphan from Shutterstock

The post Sexism and Sports: Just the Way We Want It. appeared first on The Good Men Project.

My Life as a Male Figure Skater

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In the Eighties, Kenny Bodanis endured homophobic jeers for his love—of the challenge, camaraderie, and spotlight—of life as a male figure skater.

My decision to devote full-time hours to competitive ice dancing was made during what is a volatile period in anyone’s life: my early teens. These years also coincided with the peak of male stigma against this graceful but controversial sport—the early 1980s. The word “gay” was itself just coming out; the AIDS scare further fed homophobia. The assumption was: male figure skaters are gay, and gay is bad.

“Just look at them with their tight outfits and their Baryshnikov routines.”

I was constantly defending my heterosexuality; I wasn’t mature enough yet to know better, and to not care.

As desperate as I was to defend not only myself, but my sport as well, I was just as reluctant to invite even my closest friends to watch practices.

Ice dancing is enigmatic even to insiders. For the ignorant spectator—especially my teenage peers—little separates it from ballet. It didn’t help that part of my training routine involved working with a dance stylist, and ballet and ballroom specialists. I was ashamed that anyone interested in watching a workout would, instead of seeing the powerful jumps most associated with figure skating, watch me practice stretches, and run through off-ice work designed to perfect upper body movement.

If you weren’t doing triple axles, laymen couldn’t understand the work involved.

By the time I stopped competing and became a professional coach, I was nearly two decades removed from the reasons I signed up for my first group lesson: friendship, fun, and the awe of watching skating at its best.

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I was drawn to the sport after watching my cousin perform at a local show.

Alone on the ice, followed by four spotlights, he skated to Kermit the Frog’s “Rainbow Connection.” His outfit was green Lycra, with a sequins rainbow sewn from one shoulder to the opposite hip. He had the ice—as well as the attention of a few hundred spectators—all to himself. Between musical verses, all you could hear were his blades against the ice.

I was 7 years old, and enraptured.

As a beginner, my first few years were spent learning to skate in much the same way hockey players do: on two feet; on one foot; frontwards; backwards; weaving around little orange cones placed in face-off circles. The only difference was the equipment. I had no pads, no team logo on my knitted sweater, and my skates cost my parents triple the money laid out by hockey parents. I also didn’t wear shin pads covered by socks bearing team colors; I wore stretchy pants which were held under my boot by Velcro. As a figure skater, your form is as important as your speed.

While my outfits were relatively tame (one of my favorites was my one-piece jumper: black pants, white top, with my initials sewn in black sequins on my left chest), the young goalies, forwards, and defensemen waiting in the hallway were relentless. The taunts, the nudges, the ‘accidental’ trips in the corridor became so routine they were tiresome. My saving grace was my twenty-odd Figure Skating Club colleagues waiting in our changing room. Together, we ignored the goons. To them I wasn’t a “male” figure skater, or even a figure skater; I was their childhood friend.

Practice routines consisted of gathering in the changing room fifteen minutes before ice time and chatting about the stuff important to 10-year-olds: school, siblings, parents, and “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. On ice, a short warm-up was a gateway to sixty minutes divided haphazardly between private lessons; repeating jumps and spins until they were either successful or you just didn’t feel like falling anymore; performing routines to the soundtracks of “Chariots of Fire”, “Endless Love” (or, my choices: the themes from “Magnum P.I.” and “Hill Street Blues”); and everyone’s raison d’être: gossiping along the boards.

Our relationships would last for a decade. My on-ice friendships would provide the support I needed to deflect the ridicule facing a twelve year-old boy stuffing his figure skates into his 7th grade locker. The hallway teasing couldn’t erode the joy of sneaking onto the ice at 6am with two or three friends to glide around a half-lit rink for forty-five minutes before class started. It was an exhilaratingly secretive beginning to a school day.

As safe and respected as I felt among my peers, participating in year-end shows often pitted me against the clubs administrating adults. The battle between the Male Skater and the Degrading Costume was an annual affair. Being part of group numbers, matching costumes were given to all of us. While usually a fair effort was made to supply male-centric versions of the outfits to the boys, occasionally the experience bordered on emasculation. The worst scenario had me wear transparent stockings, and a leopard-skin patterned Speedo with a matching top which didn’t even cover my navel. It was demoralizing.

The outfits arrived the day before the show, sight unseen. My choice was to join my friends and their costumes and be part of the show, or drop out and sit in the stands. My love for performing and my devotion to those friendships pushed me to participate. That group photo is safely buried somewhere.

This fight for my fashion pride would follow me throughout my career. Even with my socially-slanted practice regime, I won a few silver medals in local and provincial competitions. While this may seem impressive, so few boys entered the sport there were often only three or four of us competing. Finishing second meant you were in the middle of the pack.

Eventually, my adolescent body would alter my career path. My bones grew faster than my muscles, and my knees paid the price for the hundreds of hours of jumping and landing. I was diagnosed with Osgood-Schlatter disease; the tops of my tibias were shattered. My life as a future Men’s Singles champion was over.

The option of becoming a Pairs competitor was equally bleak. While Pairs skating incorporates less complicated jumping maneuvers than Singles, the jumps are still there. Also, lifting a one-hundred pound female partner over my head as I traveled along the ice surface at twenty miles an hour would do my tibias no favors.

It was then I turned to the equally challenging, but far less jarring discipline of Ice Dancing. Simply put, it’s ballroom dancing on skates. The emphasis is placed on intricate footwork, rhythm and power, all while rarely straying more than a couple of inches from your partner. Jumps are reduced to hops, the height of lifts is restricted, and you are never allowed to throw your partner (although sometimes you really want to).

My knees would be used as supple springs instead of landing pads.

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If I was to be forced to give up not only the jumping and spinning involved with skating solo routines, but also to leave behind ice time spent with my closest friends (Ice Dancers and Singles skaters don’t share practice schedules), I decided to fully devote myself in this new discipline. I was paired with a dance partner, and together we trained full-time for elite competition.

At the National Ice Dance Centre, gone were the hockey players taunting me from behind the glass, but also gone were the hours of gossiping about parents and school work.

Our eight-hour daily routine included ballet, ballroom dancing, strength and condition, and visits with a sports psychologist (where was he when I was negotiating the leopard-skin Speedo?). Despite being immensely proud of the hard work: thirty hours a week; the injuries—treated with Tylenol, ice packs, and foam padding shoved into my skates; and the success: we were eventually among the elite junior ice dancers in the province; I still kept my sport and my personal life separate. As open and accepting as my closest friends were, they were human. There were aspects of ice dancing which too easily opened themselves to ridicule, and—even at nineteen years-old—I didn’t need the hassle.

It didn’t help that the required competition rhythm that year was the polka. As much as I couldn’t fight the regulations which dictated I dance to an accordion with maracas accompaniment; I again desperately fought the costume choice: spandex leiderhausen. Ice Dance judges, however, are sticklers for tradition; wearing something other than what was expected would cost us valuable points.

My arguments backstage protesting the costume and the make-up (never let them see you sweat) only hinted at someone who could be difficult to work with. I was told to shut up and deal with it; it’s part of the the sport of ice dancing.

And so, few of my friends would ever see me skate.

As crippling as the mockery from outsiders could be, it was the pressure from within the sport which finally made me walk away from competition. The camaraderie which bound me to the sport as a youngster disappeared completely as the events became more important. Chatting with potential adversaries was frowned upon, despite the dozens of hours we spent on the ice together. The joy of performing eroded into the pressure of competing against a glass ceiling; a judging system partial to veterans assured newcomers a place at the bottom of the ladder. I had to either choose to commit several more years and hope for success, or get out. I decided to lose my amateur status, and teach professionally.

When any elite athlete chooses to leave competition, they rarely ever leave the sport entirely.

Once I became disenchanted with the pursuit of Olympic glory, teaching skating became a natural part-time job to bolster my income. Skating instructors, like tennis pros, earn an excellent hourly wage. Many former champions—some of whom used to be my competition—make extravagant salaries as full-time coaches, consultants or choreographers.

Thanks to my knees, I had never developed into a world champion as a Singles skater; thanks to my eventual lack of competitive will, I was never part of a world champion Ice Dance team.

Not only did I feel this lack of success limited my marketability as a full-time coach, I was also reticent to devote the rest of my life to the sport. While I loved figure skating, I found it difficult imagining a retirement-age me following 10-year-old around a face-off circle. Instead, I used the healthy part-time coach’s salary to lean on while I attempted to figure out what I wanted to do when I grow up.

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I loved working with young skaters. I recognized their enthusiasm; identified with their attraction to leaving their school-work and classmates behind for a couple of hours and glide powerfully around an ice rink.

As my coach was for me in my early teens, I became my students’ sympathetic ear as they negotiated the trials of adolescence. I was their trainer, brother, and counselor for fifteen to thirty minutes a week. Whenever they cried after failing a test, or became frustrated with the sport, I would remind them to keep their sense of humor about them. Skating is a choice you make because of the joy it brings you, I’d say, and because of the friendships you build. As soon as the fun is gone, the sports’ purpose is lost.

My sense of humor is how I deal with most difficult situations now; difficult people as well. I’m sure it was honed thanks to those relentless young goalies, forwards, and defensemen waiting in the hallway a few decades ago.

I don’t regret never becoming Patrick Chan. Sometimes I do miss the performances, and the camaraderie, and especially the student-teacher relationships. But, that life provided me with the confidence and security I don’t think I would have otherwise developed.

Still, nearly twenty years later, I notice I’m reluctant to talk about my life as a male figure skater. I shouldn’t care. The sport—and that sport psychologist—gave me the tools and the sense of humor to deal with ignoramuses; and yet … .

I wear hockey skates on public rinks, now. Even as I write this post, I’m sure to hide the title when I’m in a café or other public area. Defending the male figure skater is no great cause, unless you’re facing a 7-year-old boy enthralled with what they’ve just witnessed at their local rink.

The courage to sign up has to come from somewhere. Even twenty years after I began, there is only a boy or two practicing among the girls—outnumbered 10 to 1, as we always were.

After practice, he’ll head to school and stuff his skates into his locker. When someone asks him what’s in the bag, he’ll probably tell a joke and quickly change the subject, as I always did.

 

Read more on Smashing Male Stereotypes on The Good Life.

Picture—A5ForFighting/flickr

The post My Life as a Male Figure Skater appeared first on The Good Men Project.

You Don’t Know Jack

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Greg White

Greg White recalls his brief meeting with the legendary Jack Nicholson via a mutual and legendary friend.

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If you watch the metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a butterfly, when the beautiful creature flutters off you might think you have seen the whole story. But that butterfly still has a journey. I try to keep my eyes on one as it dances from bush to bush with the rapidity of a carny swapping out shells. Even when it’s gone, the privilege of seeing that butterfly stays with me.

Ice skating superstar Tai Babilonia never puts her skates in the closet, as if she’s keeping her wings ready for a new flight. She has floated across the ice with her partner Randy Gardner since 1968, won the 1979 World Championship and competed in two Olympics. Not one to rest on her laurels, she breezes through life honestly, accepting challenges and personal hardships with the same grace as she celebrates triumphs.

Her latest fun endeavor is sugar-coated—a new confectionery line: Tai Treats.

I’ve known Tai & Randy for over twenty years. They are fun and wonderful to watch on and off the ice. That they still loyally and proudly skate together is a touching testament to dedication. My great-grandmother taught me that you have to dance with the one that brung you. After all of these years hoisting her over his head while on razor sharp blades and on thin ice, I imagine him whispering tenderly into her ear as he is about to lift: You better help….

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Once, after a spectacular show at the LA Forum where they dazzled everyone, I, along with ten friends including actors David Youse and Jack Nicholson , was waiting in the Green Room for Tai & Randy to slip into something a little less sequined and come out and grab our roses. We were all chatting with each other, Jack included, about the show and their skating and that Julie Newmar had so sweetly and practically carried her very excited son, who has Down’s syndrome, to his seat so they both could clap and cheer.

For that entire half hour we waited backstage we talked with Jack as if he were part of our posse, and he responded as such, but safely hidden behind his omnipresent dark glasses, clamped on his head as a cloaking shield of scoundrelocity.  The moment Tai walked in the room, Jack jumped up, extended his right hand and at the same time his left hand flew up to sweep the sunglasses off of his face like he was revealing the Wizard: a legend meeting a legend, a gentleman meeting a lady. He dropped us like a hot rock, and flirted Tai into privately coaching his young daughter to skate.

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Time flies beautifully by when you are gliding on the ice. The TV movie about her life was in 1991, now she’s working on a new book that will bring us up to speed. You can take a sneak peek into her latest chapter, with the debut of new a line of hand-made chocolates called Tai Treats.

The candies are made by Frank Sheftel, owner of The Candy Factory, Los Angeles’ own Willy Wonka. He is famous for, among other creations, the life-is-a-box-of-chocolates that were held out by Forrest Gump.

Tai is still going for the gold, literally, since the Candy Factory’s Oompa Loompas sprinkle some of the candies with 24K dust. She puts her own hands in the chocolate, overseeing and approving everything. As a young athlete she wasn’t allowed this kind of decadence, so now she’s a grown up kid in a candy store.

Few of us know what it’s like to be a professional competitive athlete like Tai; however, we all race through our own, one life. I certainly believe in endurance as I try to remember when eating a long meal, that I live a marathon not a sprint.

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She did coach Jack’s daughter, Lorraine, now a working actress. That Lorraine Nicholson followed in her father’s footprints-in-cement rather than flee the Hollywood scene means that she liked what she saw in her own father’s career. You’ve seen him transform into a role and play delightfully devilish characters, but you don’t know Jack. The one part we didn’t see him play was the one I saw him prep for that day he met Tai, and the one we all probably have a hard time imagining. Jack, lacing up his five-year old daughter’s skates, beaming as she learned to skate.

Every time she took to the ice, Tai Babilonia’s intent was to skate her best. With this latest endeavor she is proving that her life is a gold medal inside a box of chocolates.

A butterfly can’t fly unless she opens her wings.

The post You Don’t Know Jack appeared first on The Good Men Project.

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