TTTTT H H EEEEE
T H H E
T HHHHH EEEEE
T H H E
T H H EEEEE
PPPP OOOO RRRR TTTTT L A N N DDDD I A N N TM
P P O O R R T L A A NN N D D I A A NN N
PPPP O O RRRR T L AAAAA N N N D D I AAAAA N N N
P O O R R T L A A N NN D D I A A N NN
P OOOO R R T LLLLL A A N N DDDD I A A N N
*****************************************************************
The Portlandian, the Internet's premier source of Tonya News
November 12, 2006 Edition - SPECIAL COMBINED BIRTHDAY/TENTH
ANNIVERSARY ISSUE
(C) 2006 Portland Ice Skating Society
http://www.oocities.org/portice
*****************************************************************
Welcome to our annual birthday edition of "The Portlandian", the
Internet's leading source of Tonya news. Today's edition is a
double celebration; not only is it Tonya's 36th birthday, but it
also marks an important milestone for "The Portlandian": it's our
tenth anniversary. On this very day back in 1996 our very first
issue made its way onto the Internet. Since then we've spent the
past ten years kicking the skating establishment's ass and
providing a pro-Tonya viewpoint that has largely been absent from
the mainstream media.
TEN YEARS OF AGGRESSIVE PRACTICE
In the intervening decade there have been many changes for both
Tonya and ourselves. We now have our own website, which has grown
to provide a comprehensive source of information about Tonya and
her skating career and the "whacking" incident that destroyed it,
correcting the many misconceptions that are circulated by the
popular media. During that time we've been keeping you up to date
about Tonya's post-skating activities, while exposing a few
phonies along the way and giving the crooks & hypocrites at the
USFSA, ISU and IOC the good hiding they deserve.
The past ten years have seen big changes for Tonya as well. She
has attempted two comebacks, saved an old lady's life, been
abducted, appeared in a movie and in many TV and radio
interviews, made numerous public appearances (ranging from
signing miniature baseball bats to appearing with drag queens)
and reinvented herself as a boxer, a career that neither she nor
her fans would have even dreamed of in 1996.
There have also been many people who have helped both us and
Tonya over the past ten years. In particular, we'd like to
mention David House of tonyaharding.org, Leo, Mike and the others
at the tonyaharding.org forum, Charlie Main at charliesweb.com,
Paul Dizadji at the Puppetland site, Joe Haran for supplying us
with his inside knowledge of his time at Team Tonya and numerous
photos, Michael Rosenberg and his staff for supporting Tonya and
feeding info our way and Linda Lewis, Tonya's godmother, for
keeping us up to date with Tonya's activities. Plus our many
subscribers and people who have given us bits of information over
the years.
We hope that Tonya has a happy birthday. And perhaps we may still
be around in another ten years.
DOWNSIZE ME, AND TONYA WINS CAR TROPHY
There hasn't been an awful lot of news from the Tonya camp
lately, but Linda has supplied a photo of Tonya at a car show
back in late July where she won a trophy for her Jeep, but
unfortunately she says that Tonya doesn't want it published. We
can reveal, however, that she has noticeably shed alot of weight
since the last photos we saw of her. Although she still looks
somewhat on the heavy side compared to her skating days she's a
far cry from looking like Jabba the Hutt's stunt double like she
did earlier this year during the Olympics. No doubt she's
probably lost more weight since the photo was taken, so hopefully
she'll soon be back down to the slender, normal-sized Tonya we
know. Linda also says that Tonya sends her best wishes to all her
fans.
NEW PREVIOUSLY UNSEEN TONYA PHOTOS RELEASED
The Special Duties Section is pleased to announce the release of
a number of photos of Tonya from her skating days that I can
confidently say have never been seen on the Internet before.
The story behind these pictures is itself interesting. They were
part of a set of photographs that were sent to us a number of
years ago by Joe Haran, prominent Tonyaphile and former editor of
"The Skater", the official magazine of Elaine Stamm's original
Tonya fan club in Portland in the early 90's. Unfortunately, Joe
had earlier loaned some of his best photos of Tonya to a TV
station which promptly "lost" them, which is a sad loss for
Tonyaphiles. It also meant that the only stuff he had left to
send us was in many cases outtakes that weren't of very good
quality. Many of these images, particularly of Tonya's skating,
were fuzzy, grainy, or badly under or overexposed, and when we
first scanned them, the results were in many cases even worse.
At this point, there were two choices: we could upload the crummy
scans on the basis that any Tonya is better than no Tonya, and
then remaster them later when a better scanner became available,
or we could wait until we had the facilities to do the job
properly. We decided to do the latter, despite the fact it could
mean a lengthy delay. We believe that only the absolute best is
good enough for Tonya, and we felt that having poor quality
images of her on line - which would likely continue to circulate
for decades even if later replaced by better copies - would not
show her skating as it deserves to be seen. I think that it's
safe to say that the increase in quality achieved has made the
wait well worth it.
The first batch of photos shows Tonya skating in Portland in
December 1992. Most of these were taken at the Portland stop of
the Ice Capades tour, where Tonya was the headlining act. They
can be viewed at:
http://www.oocities.org/portice/haranphotos.htm
Too often Tonya is seen by the public as just a tragic joke.
These images serve as a timely reminder as to what a great skater
Tonya was in her heyday, with the crowd going wild over her
routines.
We have approximately 35 or so other photos that we hope to add
in the next few weeks. Many of these show rare behind-the-scenes
views of the fan club and also Tonya's attempt at developing a
pairs routine in the months following the Whacking.
We would like to thank Joe for generously sharing these with us.
THE T-FILES: PART 4 - RINKSIDE P2P NETWORK
In this section, we continue our series about potential sources
of Tonya skating footage.
Peer to peer (P2P) file-sharing networks have without doubt been
one of the biggest innovations on the Internet in the new
millennium. Names such as Gnutella, Kazaa, eDonkey, BitTorrent
and the infamous Napster have constantly been in the news, mostly
for all the wrong reasons - like record companies trying to shut
them down because of all the pirated music they contain. However,
such networks also have legitimate uses, and can be a valuable
source of footage for skating fans, much of which cannot be
obtained anywhere else.
One network that is of particular interest to Tonyaphiles is the
Rinkside Hub, located at http://www.rinkside.org/. This private
network is specifically dedicated to figure skating and uses the
Direct Connect protocol to share files. Connection is most easily
obtained using the DC++ P2P client software, an open-source
program that is available from http://dcpp.net/ both as C++
source code for the computer geeks out there and as pre-compiled
Windows binaries for the rest of us. Installation and setup is
somewhat time-consuming but a detailed set of easy-to-follow
instructions are provided on the Rinkside site.
The results are well worth it, as we found several exhibitions of
Tonya's, mostly from her NHK and early Skate America performances
that we've not seen on any other video sharing site so far. The
downside: P2P sites rely on having a constant connection to the
internet and are pretty much useless if you don't have broadband,
particularly in the case of large video files. They are therefore
much more of a problem for dialup users than with YouTube, where
you can simply hit the "pause" button on the player and wait
while the file loads before playing it.
ROSENBERG INTERVIEW
We recently came across this interview with Michael Rosenberg,
Tonya's former agent, which was conducted for Event Talk Radio,
an internet station devoted to event management, on Nov 3rd last
year:
http://podcast.avalar.com/WorldTalk/shows/etr/etr051103b.mp3
(6 megs)
http://podcast.avalar.com/WorldTalk/shows/etr/etr051103c.mp3
(4.5 megs)
The Rosenberg interview starts about halfway through the first
part, in which he discusses his life and career (which is in
itself quite interesting). In the second part he talks about Rudy
Galindo and briefly about Tonya. Apparently he's also working on
his autobiography which will mention her.
AT THE BOOKSTORE: ANDREW JENNINGS CRIES FOUL! AT FIFA
If you've read "The Portlandian" for a few years you'll recognize
this name - he's the investigative reporter who blew the lid off
sleaze and corruption in the IOC way before the mainstream media
got onto the story in 1998. Now he's taken on FIFA, soccer's
governing body, in his latest book, "Foul!", released back in May
on the eve of the World Cup:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0007208111/026-3997353-
3499609
What he's found isn't pretty, with massive bribery and ticketing
scams being uncovered. But not for much longer. The Swiss police
are moving in and it looks as if several prominent FIFA officials
could be getting the red card very shortly.
There's also an interview with him here from a conference on
sports corruption in Copenhagen, Denmark last year:
http://medianet.djh.dk/sites/conferencepulse/folder.2005-11-03.1808955164/plonearticle.2005-11-08.9177021234
Jennings was out here in NZ back in June for a conference on
sports corruption and was interviewed on local TV. You can watch
the clip here:
http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/410965/764444
He also has a web site up to promote his book:
http://www.transparencyinsport.org/
Now, if only this guy would do a book on figure skating. Although
the incompetence and corrupt judging has been exposed in books
such as "Cracked Ice" and "On Edge", there's still plenty left to
investigate, like the money and crime aspects that have never
really been fully documented. For instance, people have been
trying to dig up dirt on Speedy for years but nobody has ever
come up with anything really solid on him (the WSF lawsuit
claimed he was taking kickbacks relating to TV coverage, but no
evidence was ever made public). And the full story of the Russian
Mob connection to the SLC dance scam has never been fully
explored. Plus, it would be interesting to know what happens to
the USFSA's huge budget, little of which seems to be spent on
skaters according to Jon Jackson. We're sure that if anyone could
get to the bottom of things, Andrew Jennings could.
COMPULSORY FIGURES: A YEN FOR A SKATING RIPOFF
Japanese skating official Katsuichiro Hisanaga usually had a
smile on his face when he visited Canada, according to an article
by The Canadian Press.
It's a pretty safe bet that he isn't smiling any more. The 75
year old Hisanaga and two others were last month charged with
bilking the Japanese Skating Federation out of the equivalent of
around $US50,000 in an expenses scam. The swindle involved a
company that was set up to run the 2002 World Championships in
Nagano overbilling the Federation for accomodation and other
expenses.
Hisanaga served as the Federation's president for six years as
well as heading its business committee until resigning in June
2004 supposedly for health reasons. However, suspicions about
problems with the accounts had started to surface the previous
year. Indeed, police suspect that the Nagano scandal may be just
the tip of the iceberg and that other bills to the federation
might have been doctored over the years to provide over
$US400,000 in "special benefits" to committee members. Eight
federation directors also resigned in April.
The ISU has responded by suspending him, though we suspect it's
only because Speedy, the biggest sleazebag in skating at present,
doesn't like competition rather than because of any ethical
concerns. "Since the investigation of Mr. Hisanaga is reported to
be for the embezzlement of funds directly connected to his
international activity in the sport of figure skating, the (ISU)
council decided to suspend the ISU honorary membership of Mr.
Katsuichiro Hisanaga pending the outcome of the investigation,"
the ISU press release stated. "The council will take further
action upon receiving the final decision of the Japanese
authorities having jurisdiction in the matter."
What will that "further action" be? Well, if he escapes jail
we'll bet that he'll probably be put in charge of judging, given
that his skills in creative accounting rival those of Arthur
Andersen.
PLUTO: THE TONYA HARDING OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM?
We guess that by now everybody has heard that the International
Astronomical Union (sounds suspiciously similar to "International
Skating Union", doesn't it?) has decided to give Pluto the boot
as a planet. Yes, it's been demoted - downgraded from planet one
day to little more than a piece of space junk the next.
It appears that Tonya has alot in common with Pluto: in addition
to now being an outcast, apparently it's mostly ice, so it's
probably the one place left where Tonya would still be welcome to
skate. And according to astrologers (who don't pay much attention
to all that astronomy crap anyway), it's quite important in the
lives of Scorpios like Tonya. For instance, this horoscope
http://www.adze.com/Celebrities/TonyaHarding.htm?page=11
for Tonya says that:
"Pluto represents trust and violation of trust, control,
obsessions and power struggles... In addition, Pluto
represents "living hell" stories, second chances, rising up
from the ashes and resurrections".
which certainly applies to Tonya.
And the circumstances of Pluto's ousting from the planet club
sound exactly like the sort of thing the ISU or the USFSA would
think up: only the handful of astronomers who attended the IAU's
meeting in Prague were entitled to vote - no proxy voting
allowed, it seems.
Apparently alot of people are upset about it. Could we perhaps
see the emergence of a new terrorist group, the P.L.O. (Pluto
Liberation Organization) kidnapping scientists if Pluto isn't
reinstated?
TONYA QUIZ: BREAKFAST AT TONYA'S
Leafing through the newspaper we noticed that a local cinema out
here is showing the classic movie "Breakfast At Tiffanys"
starring Audrey Hepburn. Which made us think of a question that
any Tonyaphile should have no trouble answering: what's the
connection between this movie and Tonya? Answer next issue.
*****************************************************************
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.tonyaharding.us/tonya/
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
*****************************************************************
Back to Portlandian index
Back to PortIce Home Page
This page hosted by
Get your own Free Home Page