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The Portlandian, the Internet's premier source of Tonya News
December 30, 2001 Edition - POST CHRISTMAS ISSUE
(C) 2001 Portland Ice Skating Society
http://www.oocities.org/portice
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Greetings, Tonyaphiles. We hope everybody had a merry festive
season. Today, we've got a few belated Christmas gifts to dish
out in the form of Tonya news and photos that we'll bet are
probably better than anything Santa had in his sack on Christmas
Eve.
ESPN TO SCREEN NEW TONYA SPECIAL
First up, we've news of a new TV program that will be of interest
to Tonya supporters.
A couple of months ago, one of our Special Duties operatives in
the Portland area tipped us off that ESPN had approached him for
an interview for "a Tonya & Nancy program" (to use ESPN's own
words). Nothing more was heard, so we assumed the idea was dead,
but recently we have been informed that it will screen on January
6 at 8:00pm Eastern time (on ESPN classics) and again on January
27 at 8:00pm on ESPN's regular network.
One of the people interviewed for what is described as a classic
biography on Tonya's life was Lynda Prouse, the author of Tonya's
recently completed official biography, so hopefully this will be
more than just another lame rehash of the events of '94 like the
1998 Fox special was.
And while on the topic of the book, we have been informed that
there is definite and serious interest from a North American
publisher and that hopefully a deal could be imminent.
NORWEGIAN TONYAPHILES CELEBRATE TONYA'S BIRTHDAY
Long-time Portlandian subscriber Tor Weibye of Norway sent us
this recently:
Mr. Hall!
Short report from Norwegian Tonyaphiles in Eventyrplassen
Vannførelag: Last Sunday we celebrated Tonya's birthday, one
day in advance, with creamcake and Spanish cava. Our own poet
had written a new poem and our president, Mr. Ole Geir
Johansen, held a birthday-speech.
Tor also informs us that they are working on a new web site
featuring some Tonya material that they hope to have on-line
soon.
ECHOES OF JACKSONVILLE
Back a few months ago we covered Tonya's visit to Jacksonville,
Florida, during which she threw out the first ball at a local
baseball game for the Jacksonville Suns and signed a few
miniature baseball bats for fans. While in Jacksonville, Tonya
also stopped by at a local radio station and featured on
something called the "Lex & Terry" show. Well, Lex & Terry have
their own web site, and they've got some photos of Portland's ice
princess on line as she was doing her thing on-air. You can see
them at:
http://www.lexandterry.com/photos-tonya-harding/photos-tonya-
harding.html
Just don't pay any attention to the junk about tonyaharding.com
being an official site - coz there isn't one. But there are
plenty of good ones listed at the bottom of this issue, as
always.
PHOTOS PAGE
Over the years we've accumulated quite a few photos of Tonya that
we've mentioned in the Portlandian. Unfortunately, until now
these images have had no page of their own, which has made
finding them on our site rather difficult. We are pleased to
announce that we have remedied this situation with a photos page
that brings all these pictures together. At the moment, it's just
links, but we hope to develop this page further over coming
months. You can access it at:
http://www.oocities.org/portice/photos.htm
Included are most of our skate oddities and photos of fans and
Tonya-inspired artworks.
2001: SKATE ODDITIES
In the final in our series of Tonya-inspired oddities we bring
you an end-of year assortment of odds & ends.
Sign of the times:
First up is a phony Tonya street sign that was spotted on e-Bay
several months back being sold by someone in Cape Coral, Florida.
Measuring 60 x 15 cm, or 24 x 6 inches, it was described by the
seller as "professionally made from heavy gauge aluminum and
durable vinyl lettering. Makes a great decorator item for your
room, home, club or office and makes a super gift for friends and
family. MATERIAL: Heavy gauge aluminum with baked on green enamel
and vinyl lettering. Comes with holes on sides for easy mounting
or hanging."
http://www.oocities.org/portice/streetsign.jpg
Then there's this one-off Tonya fridge magnet designed by
somebody from Seattle - 6cm or 2.25" in diameter
http://www.oocities.org/portice/tonyamagnet.jpg
Fan clubs:
Many of the oddities we've come across, for obvious reasons, tend
to be bats or clubs of some kind or other. For instance, Sports
Illustrated reported in its February 28, 1994 edition that a
Minneapolis lawyer, David Anderson, was marketing the "Tonya
Tapper", a product he described as a metal baton with a rubber
grip to be used as "a non-lethal defensive device". Along the
same lines, an outfit called Revolution Gifts of Portland filed
this trade mark application with the US Patent & Trade Mark
Office on February 4th, 1994 for the word BATONYA for "toy bats &
balls" in class 28 (which covers toys & games). The application
appears to have been abandoned before it made it onto the
register, probably because of the time lapse involved in getting
it through the USPTO's system meant it was old news:
Word Mark: BATONYA
Goods & Services (ABANDONED) IC 028. US 022. G & S: toy bats
and balls
Serial Number: 74486378
Filing Date: February 4, 1994
Published for Opposition: October 4, 1994
Owner (APPLICANT): Mendez, Michell DBA Revolution Gifts
INDIVIDUAL UNITED STATES 7661 SW Capitol Highway Portland
OREGON 97219
Register: PRINCIPAL
Live/Dead Indicator: DEAD
Abandonment Date: June 28, 1996
And finally, these minibats that Tonya signed at Jacksonville
look awfully like something else...
http://www.oocities.org/portice/minibat.jpg
http://www.oocities.org/portice/minibatsig.jpg
http://www.oocities.org/portice/batsigning.jpg
ROSENBERG RETIRES
It is with great regret that we learned recently that Michael
Rosenberg, one of the skating world's most prominent and highly
regarded agents, has announced his retirement from the skating
business.
Tonya supporters will know that Rosenberg has had a long
association with Tonya; he first acted as her agent back in the
early '90's but resigned from the position after too many hassles
with her loser husband of the time Jeff Gillooly. Three years ago
he teamed up again with Tonya for a successful comeback attempt
that resulted in Tonya's performance at the ESPN Pro
championships in Huntington, West Virginia, in October 1999.
Since then he has continued to be of assistance to Tonya even
after his second break with her in March 2000 in the wake of the
unfortunate "hubcap incident", passing on offers of work and
general advice.
In an article on Iskater.com, Rosenberg is quoted as saying "at
this point in my career, I'm going to work on projects that I've
had to continuously postpone - a book, a movie, a Las Vegas show
and representing stars in the entertainment field. And I'll be
able to spend more time with my family and friends." Whatever new
endeavors he eventually takes on, we wish him the best of luck.
We believe that this is one person whose actions and words
throughout the years show without question he is someone who
really deserves the title of "Tonyaphile".
A TONYA HISTORY LESSON
Google, which bought the DejaNews Usenet archive earlier this
year, has now stuck a huge pile of new (or should that be old)
material on line, some of which goes back to 1981, almost to the
very beginning of Usenet. This represents a major improvement
over what was available before, which only went back as far as
March 1995. This period of the late 80's to mid 90's was
something of a golden age for Usenet; by this time there was a
sufficient diversity of people on line for a wide range of
subject matter of general interest (such as ice skating) to be
discussed in an intelligent way. Prior to this Usenet was still
largely confined to computer geeks debating arcane subjects such
as which version of Unix was best, while as by the late 90's the
jerks and spammers had moved in and wrecked alot of groups,
rendering them useless.
The Internet in the early '90's was rather different from today.
There were few private individuals with access via ISPs; postings
came almost entirely from universities, government departments
and defense or computer-oriented businesses. Private "on-line
services" like AOL and Compuserve were only just beginning to
integrate themselves into what we now know as the Internet. You
could still actually post with your real e-mail address without
fear of being inundated with 200 ads for porn sites or get-poor-
quick schemes. Discussions of skating were different too: there
was initially no dedicated group for ice skating (it was just
dumped under rec.sport.misc), and even when one did arrive in the
form of rec.skate it was shared with skateboarders and roller
skaters. There are some areas, however, in which things haven't
changed: the infamous "Chuckie" Newman was still posting his
drivel, and skating fans were STILL criticizing Dick Button's
commentaries!
In addition to being of general interest, this development is
something that is of especial interest to serious Tonyaologists
as it means that a period of postings from Tonya's heyday are now
available, including stuff from the January 1994 "incident".
Although the archive is apparently rather patchy, particularly in
the early years, the skating groups from the period in question
look to be complete. As a result, for the first time those of us
who arrived on the 'Net after 1994 can now see what the Internet
skating community really thought about the "whack that shook the
world" as it unfolded. Although we've just begun investigations,
already predictable patterns are emerging, with some group
"regulars" of the time (few of whom seem to be still posting
today) being eager to rubbish Tonya and assume her guilt while
others wanted a more cautious view. Many were fortunately smart
enough to recognize and criticize the media circus for what it
was. Some recognized that Gillooly was probably controlling
Tonya.
The first mention of Tonya in the archive appears to be in a post
from 8 February 1990 to rec.sport.misc by Sandra Loosemore,
giving the results from the 1990 Nationals. Tonya came 3rd in the
figures competition, and 7th overall at Nationals that year:
From: "Sandra J Loosemore"
Newsgroups: rec.sport.misc
Subject: US figure skating championships -- early results
Message-ID: <1990Feb8.071547.12799@hellgate.utah.edu>
Date: 8 Feb 90 14:15:47 GMT
Organization: PASS Research Group
Here are some (partial) results from the US figure skating
championships, being held this week here in Salt Lake City:
Championship Ladies compulsory figures:
1. Jill Trenary
2. Holly Cook
3. Tonya Harding
4. Jeri Campbell
5. Kristi Yamaguchi
6. Tonia Kwiatowski
7. Nancy Kerrigan
8. Jennifer Leng
[snip]
In a later posting Sandra explained how Tonya was actually in 2nd
place coming into the free skating but had been ill with the flu
all week and finished 10th after struggling through her program.
Roland Dong appears to be the first to mention Tonya's landing of
the triple axel at the 1991 Nationals. In a posting bemoaning the
lack of skating discussion on Usenet he mentions it in passing:
From: "Roland Dong"
Newsgroups: rec.sport.misc
Subject: Figure Skating, anyone?
Message-ID: <1991Feb24.095932.4970@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 24 Feb 91 09:59:32 GMT
[snip]
Also, if you're interested in this stuff, why don't you post
any-thing?! The US Nationals just happened, and I haven't
heard any-thing about it in the news groups. Anybody have any
thoughts on the Nationals? Personally, I think Kristi
Yamaguchi should have done much better. I just think the
judges were influenced by the fact that Yamaguchi skated
first, and by all the hype over Harding's triple (which she
nailed). okay, so maybe I'm biased because Yamaguchi's a local
girl (Fremont, CA) . . . and because she's a TOTAL KNOCKOUT!!
:)
Well, that's it . . . for now. If you're interested in this
type of stuff, post stuff!! Or mail me stuff at the account
listed below.
Faithfully,
Roland Dong
c162-ep@danube.berkeley.edu
--------------------------------------------------------------
"Citius, Altius, Fortius"
-- Olympic Motto (meaning, "Faster, Higher, Stronger")
"GO FOR THE GOLD, KRISTI!!!!!!"
--------------------------------------------------------------
And last but definitely not least, the honor of being the first
poster to Usenet to mention you-know-what seems to go to Deborah
Sparck of Adobe.com, who on 6 January 1994 at 22:20 GMT posted
this to rec.skate:
Newsgroups: rec.skate
From: "Deborah Sparck"
Subject: Kerrigan attacked??
Message-ID: <1994Jan6.222024.27025@adobe.com>
Sender: "USENET NEWS"
X-Priority: 3
Organization: Adobe Systems Incorporated
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 1994 22:20:24 GMT
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200
Lines: 12
A friend just came by and told me he just heard on the radio
that Nancy Kerrigan had been attacked by a spectator backstage
- had been hit in the leg with "a blunt object". Apparently
she was able to walk but is now in the hopsital.
Anyone else hear anything? Is this true?? (it's 2:20 pm PST,
Thursday)
--
*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*
^ Deborah Sparck sparck@adobe.com Take my advice, ^
* Adobe Systems, Inc. I'm not using it. *
^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^
We'll leave it up to skating fans to find other "firsts", such as
the first mention of ice skating or skating of any type. If
you're interested in checking this resource out, the URL for
searching is:
http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search?hl=en
We'll be back next year with more Tonya news, including more of
Joe Haran's Team Tonya chronicles, and more photos. We can assure
you that the Portlandian is completely Y2.002K compliant!
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VISIT THESE GREAT TONYA WEB SITES:
PortIce - http://www.oocities.org/portice
David House - http://www.tonyaharding.org
Charlie Main - http://www.charliesweb.com/tonya/tonya.html
Puppetboy - http://www.puppetland.com/mirrortony2.html
Valerie Smith - http://www.olywa.net/radu/valerie/LilHam.html
Swan Lake - http://members.tripod.com/~TonyaHarding/index.html
Blades of Gold - http://members.tripod.com/tmhfan/index.html
Pegasus Times - http://www.pegasustimes.com/harding/
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