You Know You're a Figure Skating Fan When...

[skatingfan4ever]

You post in a skater's/team's Fan Fest at least once. Some of them you have posted in regularly. You happily keep a close eye on a few of them. I love reading and posting in Fan Fests. They are such a positive corner of GS! I love them so much!

Some people have even created Fan Fests for skaters/teams who didn't have one, and provided detailed first posts filled with information. This is obviously a labor of love. to you incredible people!

 

[CaroLiza_fan]

I'm starting to think you love M*A*S*H even more than figure skating!

Mmmm. Not sure about that. I am talking a lot about MASH because I am watching a lot of episodes at the moment.

You see, since lockdown I have been watching a lot of series that I have wanted to see for years, but didn't have the opportunity to before. Unfortunately, when one of the channels started showing MASH, they were showing it as 8 episodes at a time on Sunday afternoons. And that didn't suit me, as there are normally motorbike races on on a Sunday. So, I started taping them. And I instead concentrated my watching on other programems that were being shown on a daily basis.

They then abruptly stopped showing the Sunday marathons in the middle of Series 4, and instead started showing double episodes on weekdays, but from the start of the series. That was better for me, but I was still watching a lot of other things so they continued to build up. When the other things finished, I started into the episodes of MASH.

I have been keeping an eye on the amount of space on the hard drive. And although I have been taping a lot, there is a good amount of space left. What I didn't realise was that there is a limit on the number of things that you can tape on my recorder. And I reached that limit a few weeks ago. So, because MASH is the programme that I had the most episodes of to watch, and because the episodes are only 25 minutes long, I am trying to get through as many episodes as I can so that I can continue recording things.

As for finding out about Harry Morgan, that is a funny story. I was watching an episode of "The Chase" over tea time the other day, and one of the players was the absolute picture of what Loretta Swit looked like when she played Major Margaret Houlihan. And that started me wondering what she looks like nowadays. So, I looked her up, and while on her Wikipedia page, I found out that her real surname was Szwed, and that she was from a Polish family. And that got me curious about the backgrounds of the other cast members, so I looked them up too.

Finding out about people's family background and heritage is something that has always interested me. I do the same with lots of people, including skaters.

CaroLiza_fan

 

[skatedreamer]

Mmmm. Not sure about that. I am talking a lot about MASH because I am watching a lot of episodes at the moment.

I was just kidding; sincere apologies if my post upset or offended you in any way!

 

[CaroLiza_fan]

I was just kidding; sincere apologies if my post upset or offended you in any way!

No, not at all. I knew you were joking.

---

Anyway, time to get this thread back on track.

...when you look through the schedules for today's TV, and you spot a film that stars somebody called Eric Lutz. And you instantly think "I wonder if he is in some way related to the skater that invented the jump".

And then your second thought is "I wonder which way Eric pronounces his surname - the proper way, or the American way..."

By the way, I looked up Alois Lutz (AUT), and was shocked to find out that he died from pulmonary tuberculosis when he was only 19 years old. He was just a kid! Now that I know that he had such a short life, I find it really touching that his name has since become immortalised.

CaroLiza_fan

 

[Diana Delafield]

Only discovered this forum a few months ago so am years late for this thread, but:
--You request your vacation time every year in February or March so you can stay home and watch Worlds/Olympics on TV. Your employers love you because they know there will be one senior staff member there reliably all summer (no competitions to watch in the off-season) when everyone else is taking their vacations.

 

[Matthew]

... so you can stay home and watch Worlds/Olympics on TV....

Does this mean you never travel abroad or even leave your home town?

 

[moonvine]

Happened today. We went to have pizza at lunch time from work. I didn't pay any attention to the background music there was played but suddenly I noticed, "Hey, this is Keegans's FS music". Had difficulties not to mention it to people who have no idea what it means to me or who do not much understand my interest to skating.

I blurt it out (or this is Keegan’s SP music…or this is NC’s LP music) in public and people look at me like I’m crazy. Good thing I care not what others think of me.

 

[moonvine]

Mmmm. Not sure about that. I am talking a lot about MASH because I am watching a lot of episodes at the moment.

You see, since lockdown I have been watching a lot of series that I have wanted to see for years, but didn't have the opportunity to before. Unfortunately, when one of the channels started showing MASH, they were showing it as 8 episodes at a time on Sunday afternoons. And that didn't suit me, as there are normally motorbike races on on a Sunday. So, I started taping them. And I instead concentrated my watching on other programems that were being shown on a daily basis.

They then abruptly stopped showing the Sunday marathons in the middle of Series 4, and instead started showing double episodes on weekdays, but from the start of the series. That was better for me, but I was still watching a lot of other things so they continued to build up. When the other things finished, I started into the episodes of MASH.

I have been keeping an eye on the amount of space on the hard drive. And although I have been taping a lot, there is a good amount of space left. What I didn't realise was that there is a limit on the number of things that you can tape on my recorder. And I reached that limit a few weeks ago. So, because MASH is the programme that I had the most episodes of to watch, and because the episodes are only 25 minutes long, I am trying to get through as many episodes as I can so that I can continue recording things.

As for finding out about Harry Morgan, that is a funny story. I was watching an episode of "The Chase" over tea time the other day, and one of the players was the absolute picture of what Loretta Swit looked like when she played Major Margaret Houlihan. And that started me wondering what she looks like nowadays. So, I looked her up, and while on her Wikipedia page, I found out that her real surname was Szwed, and that she was from a Polish family. And that got me curious about the backgrounds of the other cast members, so I looked them up too.

Finding out about people's family background and heritage is something that has always interested me. I do the same with lots of people, including skaters.

CaroLiza_fan

In the US, YouTube TV has a cloud recorder. You can record as many things in numbers and in space as you like. Hopefully y’all get something like that over there.

 

[moonvine]

Only discovered this forum a few months ago so am years late for this thread, but:
--You request your vacation time every year in February or March so you can stay home and watch Worlds/Olympics on TV. Your employers love you because they know there will be one senior staff member there reliably all summer (no competitions to watch in the off-season) when everyone else is taking their vacations.

This was me too.

 

[Diana Delafield]

Does this mean you never travel abroad or even leave your home town?

Not a good traveller, but I go to competitions as a spectator when they're held in my city or nearby. Random events like, um, for instance, the 2010 Olympics? I live in a suburb of Vancouver. The first big event I went to was the 1960 Worlds. They used my own club's arena for that one, so a couple of my lessons got cancelled while it was on.

 

[Diana Delafield]

Mmmm. Not sure about that. I am talking a lot about MASH because I am watching a lot of episodes at the moment.

You see, since lockdown I have been watching a lot of series that I have wanted to see for years, but didn't have the opportunity to before. Unfortunately, when one of the channels started showing MASH, they were showing it as 8 episodes at a time on Sunday afternoons. And that didn't suit me, as there are normally motorbike races on on a Sunday. So, I started taping them. And I instead concentrated my watching on other programems that were being shown on a daily basis.

They then abruptly stopped showing the Sunday marathons in the middle of Series 4, and instead started showing double episodes on weekdays, but from the start of the series. That was better for me, but I was still watching a lot of other things so they continued to build up. When the other things finished, I started into the episodes of MASH.

I have been keeping an eye on the amount of space on the hard drive. And although I have been taping a lot, there is a good amount of space left. What I didn't realise was that there is a limit on the number of things that you can tape on my recorder. And I reached that limit a few weeks ago. So, because MASH is the programme that I had the most episodes of to watch, and because the episodes are only 25 minutes long, I am trying to get through as many episodes as I can so that I can continue recording things.

As for finding out about Harry Morgan, that is a funny story. I was watching an episode of "The Chase" over tea time the other day, and one of the players was the absolute picture of what Loretta Swit looked like when she played Major Margaret Houlihan. And that started me wondering what she looks like nowadays. So, I looked her up, and while on her Wikipedia page, I found out that her real surname was Szwed, and that she was from a Polish family. And that got me curious about the backgrounds of the other cast members, so I looked them up too.

Finding out about people's family background and heritage is something that has always interested me. I do the same with lots of people, including skaters.

CaroLiza_fan

Definitely off topic, but I did the same with the entire cast of "Band of Brothers". Hours of happy research! But, to get back on the ice, so to speak, my specific field when I did my PhD in linguistics was people's names (onomastics, to be precise). Love reading the lists of competitors in any skating event and then researching the etymology and ethnicity of their surnames.

 

[yesterday]

Not a good traveller, but I go to competitions as a spectator when they're held in my city or nearby. Random events like, um, for instance, the 2010 Olympics? I live in a suburb of Vancouver. The first big event I went to was the 1960 Worlds. They used my own club's arena for that one, so a couple of my lessons got cancelled while it was on.

Wow, I'd love to hear about your 2010 adventures

 

[Diana Delafield]

Wow, I'd love to hear about your 2010 adventures

Not much to tell, really. I was able to buy a ticket in the first draw for BC residents before they went on sale to anyone else, so I had a good seat about half way up on the side opposite the judges (I don't like to be rinkside; I like to also get a view of the programs' layouts from above). I only wanted to see the pairs and dance, and don't have the stamina to sit among a crowd all day watching practice sessions as well, so in the daytime I took a city bus to the arena for the events I wanted, and afterwards I took a bus a shorter ride to my brother's house in Vancouver and he drove me home to my suburb from there. The whole experience was rather shadowed by my husband having a slow terminal illness at the time. He hadn't been ill when I bought the ticket, and when I mentioned then selling it to another fan, he insisted I use the ticket and go. I have to look at videos to actually remember what and who I saw skate. I think I would have remembered the men's gold medal hockey game much more clearly -- that my husband and I watched together on TV from home out in the suburbs! But it was fun having so many tourists all over, especially the ones who came kitted out in heavy parkas, etc, and then were shocked by our mild weather. Stores did a brisk business in umbrellas. We had the speedskating oval built in Richmond, where I live, so there were a lot of fans locally for that, and the Vancouver airport is in Richmond which meant many tour parties arrived here and got a bit lost. One day at the mall, I came out of the drugstore and accidentally bumped into a man in a tour party who were listening to a guide explain something in their language. He'd stepped back in my path as I emerged, and I apologized profusely. He was delighted: "Now I know am in Canada! I stepped in the way and hit you, but you say 'Sorry!' You are real Canadian!" The only downside was that we lived a block away from our city's main park and there was a party there every evening that was so loud we could hear every word of the announcers and all the dance music, until someone from the city asked the organizers nicely to turn the volume down a smidge.

 

[yesterday]

Not much to tell, really. I was able to buy a ticket in the first draw for BC residents before they went on sale to anyone else, so I had a good seat about half way up on the side opposite the judges (I don't like to be rinkside; I like to also get a view of the programs' layouts from above). I only wanted to see the pairs and dance, and don't have the stamina to sit among a crowd all day watching practice sessions as well, so in the daytime I took a city bus to the arena for the events I wanted, and afterwards I took a bus a shorter ride to my brother's house in Vancouver and he drove me home to my suburb from there. The whole experience was rather shadowed by my husband having a slow terminal illness at the time. He hadn't been ill when I bought the ticket, and when I mentioned then selling it to another fan, he insisted I use the ticket and go. I have to look at videos to actually remember what and who I saw skate. I think I would have remembered the men's gold medal hockey game much more clearly -- that my husband and I watched together on TV from home out in the suburbs! But it was fun having so many tourists all over, especially the ones who came kitted out in heavy parkas, etc, and then were shocked by our mild weather. Stores did a brisk business in umbrellas. We had the speedskating oval built in Richmond, where I live, so there were a lot of fans locally for that, and the Vancouver airport is in Richmond which meant many tour parties arrived here and got a bit lost. One day at the mall, I came out of the drugstore and accidentally bumped into a man in a tour party who were listening to a guide explain something in their language. He'd stepped back in my path as I emerged, and I apologized profusely. He was delighted: "Now I know am in Canada! I stepped in the way and hit you, but you say 'Sorry!' You are real Canadian!" The only downside was that we lived a block away from our city's main park and there was a party there every evening that was so loud we could hear every word of the announcers and all the dance music, until someone from the city asked the organizers nicely to turn the volume down a smidge.

So you had a bit of everything, FS, other sports, people, encounters, excitement and side effects. Thanks for sharing. I think your husband was right even when it wasn't the most memorable hours for you.

 

[iluvtodd]

When you see a local production of "The Drowsy Chaperone" (we just did last week), and you get excited hearing the song "Show Off," which Jen Robinson skated to in SOI. I really liked her program to it (and was glad she was part of SOI for several years).

 

[FaustinaF]

When you watch tennis players during Tennis matches or Opens on TV and you start seriously thinking: "and if they wore ice skate instead of shoes?? How would it be to play tennis at that high levels on ice?" .. so, you think all this and at the end you start finding some possible "step sequence" made by tennis players during their "fight" to reach the ball, but that way you completely forget about the match!!

 

[CaroLiza_fan]

When you watch tennis players during Tennis matches or Opens on TV and you start seriously thinking: "and if they wore ice skate instead of shoes?? How would it be to play tennis at that high levels on ice?" .. so, you think all this and at the end you start finding some possible "step sequence" made by tennis players during their "fight" to reach the ball, but that way you completely forget about the match!!

...when you see this post, and immediately look up "tennis on ice". And amongst the videos, you find this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e11R3bLJlzM

Fascinating to watch!

CaroLiza_fan

 

[skatedreamer]

...when you see this post, and immediately look up "tennis on ice". And amongst the videos, you find this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e11R3bLJlzM

Fascinating to watch!

CaroLiza_fan

Amazing; thanks for the link!

 

[Weathergal]

...when you see this post, and immediately look up "tennis on ice". And amongst the videos, you find this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e11R3bLJlzM

Fascinating to watch!

CaroLiza_fan

Wow! +5 for creativity!

 

[iluvtodd]

Speaking of other sports on ice, Scott Hamilton skated to a golf related program in SOI. The SOI guys also did a baseball related one in another season. Also, when we were lucky enough to watch a pre-show SOI warm up, the SOI guys were kicking around a soccer ball!