Love Hurts

Rocket Queen

Well, this is what you get when you give me some positive feedback. ;-) Here is a video of a footwork program I did in 1998 to the intro to the Guns 'n' Roses song, "Rocket Queen." (if you're interested in hearing the rest of the song watch this video)



I have to admit that after 10 years I think it looks pretty good, and I can only wish to be that nimble again.

Mom and Dad Skating Together

Wow, what a wonderful rare treasure I discovered! These videos are from a Christmas show put on at Ober Gatlinburg in December 1982. I have no idea of the name of the little boy is in the "Mommy Kissing Santa" scenes:



And I remember only one of the other ladies skating with my mom in this one:

Take a Bow, Say Goodbye

Just as I did ten years ago when I performed this tribute, I've decided to overcome my critical self-consciousness and share this video:

Unchained Melody

The following video is my dad's 1998 skating tribute to my mom who had died in January 1997. He had retired from his work nine months before and had let his hair grow long. He was 60 at this time, and in pretty good shape. I designed and made his skating shirt. Of course, the music is "Unchained Melody" by the Righteous Brothers, which is best known as the love theme from the movie Ghost, but it had been one of his and my mom's favorites long before that.

Sew Fun: Project Runway 4 Finale Tonight

After my appendectomy and I was laid up in the hospital and in recovery at home last year I got into watching Project Runway on Bravo, the network I've always thought of as the gay man's channel. ;-) At the hospital the channel selection was very limited and most of the shows on daytime TV are really awful. But Project Runway really caught my attention because it is a very well-produced "reality" show and because I've always been interested in sewing and have dabbled in designing, especially skating costumes.

It was nearing the end of the season 3 when I started watching, and I like the way that Bravo frequently repeats its popular shows so that you can catch up on what you've missed. I've seen all of season 4, some episodes many times because it is so interesting, though not all in sequence. The best things are the focus on creative projects and not so much on the interpersonal dramas among the designers. There is a little of that, but it's by far not the focus and purpose of the program. The real meat of the show is the creative process.

Almost all the men on the show are gay which is quite entertaining. Gay men can be so hilarious. And there are many various gay male personalities. If I was a 21 year old gay boy I would probably be a lot like Christian. He's a spunky, cocky little androgenous guy who reminds me a bit of myself when I was a spunky, cocky little college girl who wasn't afraid to be myself whether I annoyed people or not. ;-) But if I was any other gay man I'd really love Rami. He's one of those men that we women say "God, what a waste!" about him being gay. He's pretty hot (masculine for a queer) and a very talented designer too. Actually, after viewing the final collections online I think that he should probably win.

Another kind of odd coincidence about the show is that one of the big sponsors is L'Oreal Cosmetics which I used to work for in my pre-vicious momma days. I was only a lowly part time sales rep/merchandiser, but it was a great job that I really enjoyed. We got lots of perks even as part timers.

Ten years ago I was designing and sewing a skating costume for a routine to the music of Madame Butterfly. But oops, I got pregnant with my daughter and didn't ever get to finish it or wear it for competition/exhibition. I still have it in its incomplete form:

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Well, I've never been a slave to fashion or an especially stylish dresser and I really don't keep up with all the latest big designers and so on. But I have always enjoyed sewing and creating cute things. My mother was a great seamstress and sewing is a way for me to feel closer to her spirit. I think she would have really enjoyed watching Project Runway too.

Tre-flip

My 12 year old landed a "tre-flip" on his skateboard:





As you can see, long hair and tight pants are the style for skaters. ;-)

Robert Unger Eulogy

Robert Unger, one of my former (and likely favorite) skating instructors died last Sunday, Sept. 30. He had been ill for some time, and it has been a couple of years, at least, since I've seen him. He always remembered me which was nice. I wonder if it made him feel old to see people like me who he had known since their childhoods. He never seemed old to me.

Sometimes it was hard to tell if he was angry because of his heavy German accent. It wasn't hard to understand his words, but the intonation always sounded a little upset. Well, I think he enjoyed that all of us little girls were intimidated by his speech because I would often "catch him" turn and laugh when everyone else was too afraid to look at him. But his true annoyance would become more apparent in how red his face became. Sometimes it was as red as a beet. Those were the times I was sorry that I looked. ;-)

Mr. Unger was so smart, and that is why he was my favorite skating teacher. He was the one who taught me about the "physics" of skating, the how and why it works better to do it 'this way' instead of the wrong way. Somehow knowing that made it easier for my body to cooperate with my mind. Other kids, though, didn't care about that stuff. They just wanted to know how to do the tricks. They didn't usually care about how to do them right or better, as long as they could do them. They were often the better skaters though.

And Mr. Unger still encouraged us all regardless of how we learned. That is the heart of why he began the "recreational" skating competitions. He knew that many kids enjoyed skating so much although they might not be the most dedicated or talented ones around. He believed they should have the opportunity to celebrate their love of skating in friendly competitions. But believe me, even in "friendly and recreational" competitions it could still get pretty serious and nerve-racking.

I have many memories of Mr. Unger and my skating youth and later of my few years of adult skating and competing before becoming a mother. Not that mothers can't skate. I did the year after my first, and the Robert Unger School always had several adult students. But I was getting too old and too busy to be able to skate the way I wanted to skate. Sometimes we have to leave childhood things behind.

I hope that in his last thoughts Mr. Unger had the peace of knowing that he had helped improve the lives of so many through his teaching us discipline and achievement as well as the ability to move on the ice.

Oh, yeah, and I almost forgot about his hat. I must try to find a photo of him and that famous hat. He managed and owned the Ice Chalet in addition to being the head instructor of the skating school in his name.

It's All About the Sweet Spot (and some symmetry)

My last competition in my pre-Vicious Momma days. I was 27 and got pregnant with my first child about a month later. The top right photo is a "flying camel" in midair. Below that is a split jump, and the other two are just interpretive moves to the music ("I Need A Man" by the Eurythmics, lol). For comparative purposes here is a photo of Dick Button midair in a flying camel. You can see the difference between an Olympic champion and a recreational skater:




I haven't read any of the articles found on Google about this because I just want to say what I'm thinking about it first. And I'm sure some of those other articles are much more technically adept.

Figure skating could be a kind of real life analogy to some of the problems of theoretical physics. What I mean is that advanced skating requires probably as many considerations to successfully execute a trick as it takes calculations to get to a final answer.


(slightly exaggerated "hollow")

The blade is concave along the bottom (the "hollow") such that there are two sharp edges, and the blade is also not flat longways.



It is slightly curved, sometimes referred to as the "blade rocker." When learning to skate you learn the "sweet spots" on the blade that make jumping and spinning easier and more 'efficient'.



If I were a real physicist I might know how to calculate the speed and curvature of the blade and so on to describe the various jumps and to explain why the "sweet spots" make them easier, but this is one situation where being able to make the calculations on paper doesn't necessarily help you execute the tricks on ice. It is a much more intuitive process that allows you to feel the sweet spots.

Back in the "old" days we still did compulsory figures, or "figure eights." These exercises were ultimately intended to teach and train skaters how to 'finesse' their blades and bodies to perform precision turns and tracings on the ice. We learned how to make slight adjustments in our posture, shoulders, hips, arms, legs, heads, feet, and even toes so that the blades moved through turns in the most "perfect" ways. For example, a "3 turn" when done just right should leave a tracing a like this (below), note the gap at the top which shows the shift from one edge to the other while changing direction (forward to backward or backward to forward).

Another example is a "bracket," a more advanced turn which done right looks like this (above), notice the "rabbit ears" which indicate the change from one edge to the other while also changing directions.

And yet two other advanced turns are the "counter" and the "rocker" which are closely related to the three turn and bracket but in instead of changing edges you change "lobes" on the figure eight and direction but stay on the same edge.



In order to perform these turns and to 'retrace' them we had to learn the sweet spot on the blade and learn how to repeat all the factors that created it. Incidentally, figures blades don't have the bottom toe pick like freestyle blades, and that increases the "rocker" length and how much you can manipulate the blade. This took hours of practice, but I always loved doing figures because it appealed to my detail and perfectionist nature.

Also, perfectly executed turns are supposed to be symmetical. In fact, skating is where I first heard the word "symmetry." I won't tell you how many drawings it took to get close enough to symmetrical in the above illustrations, but it was more than I planned on. If it is hard to draw a nice 3 turn on paper, then just imagine how hard it is to do it with your feet and a blade on the ice!

Most of my skating teachers didn't pay any attention to the tracings of jumps and spins, but I was lucky enough that my last teacher used these tracings as a tool to evaluate jumping and spinning technique. All skaters should learn such things! We referred to this as "physics" of skating, but I really don't know if that is an accurate description. However, it most certainly helped my technique to "read" the tracings and therefore see how the errors in them tranlated into errors in my body position, etc. If your tracings are correct then your trick (jump or spin) will most likely succeed and be good.

There are many skaters at the highest competitive levels who could really benefit from this kind of instruction. Maybe these days it is more common than when I was growing up. I don't know. But I sure do see some very sloppy technique on TV that is most likely a symptom of focusing on the wrong body parts, instead of the feet which are the ones closest to the ice. The best skating is in the feet. Chances are if your feet are doing the right thing the rest of your body will follow, though there are some exceptions and you can't exactly separate the feet and the body and how they interact.

Anyway, skating is probably one of the most beautiful, and technically complex, expressions of the laws of physics in motion. I wish I was clever and smart enough to make deeper analogies about it.