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The Portlandian, the Internet's premier source of Tonya News
January 25, 2000 Edition - SKATING INTO THE NEW MILLENNIUM
(C) 2000 Portland Ice Skating Society
http://www.geocities.com/portice
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Yes, we know that there are those who say that the new millennium
hasn't really started yet, because the Romans didn't have a
numeral for zero, but who's going to let a bunch of dumb-asses in
togas who don't know how to count tell them when to have a party?
Much as the Tonyaphobes may have hoped, we haven't been wiped out
by the Y2K bug. We're pleased to report that we're still around
and will continue to present the pro-Tonya case for a long time
yet.
SFX OFFICIALLY SIGNS TONYA.
After months of speculation, SFX skating - one of the skating
world's leading entertainment corporations - has announced it has
signed Tonya as a client. Other clients also announced include
Alexei Urmanov, Olympic Champion and current World Professional
Champion; Susanna Rahkamo & Petri Kokko, European Champions and
World silver medalists; Tammy Sear, British National Champion;
Elena Leonova & Andre Khvalko, current World Professional
Champions; Marie-Claude Savard-Gagnon and Luc Bradet, Canadian
Pair Champions; Sara Abitbol and Stephane Bernardis, European
bronze medalists and current French National Champions.
Lee Marshall, President of SFX Family Entertainment and Michael
Rosenberg, the head of SFX Skating Representation Division, noted
"these are spectacular additions to our client roster. Each has
earned national and international acclaim, and we are very proud
and excited to work with them throughout their skating careers."
Check out SFX's Tonya web page at: http://sfxskating.com/harding/
TONYA GOES FOR A SKATE IN HER TRUCK - AND MEETS A RAT
Earlier this month Tonya briefly made the news when she went
skating in a rather undesirable sense after her truck ran off the
road due to hitting an icy patch. Fortunately, neither Tonya nor
her male passenger were injured, though a photograph of them did
land up in some local rag by the name of "The Columbian" the next
day and was reprinted in USA Today thanks to the AP wire service.
It goes without saying that the anti-Tonya brigade instantly
assumed this was some publicity stunt devised by Tonya to get
attention, especially given that it occurred on January 6, the
6th anniversary of you-know-what. If you're after a conspiracy
theory, however, try this one for size: isn't it a bit strange
that a photographer just "happened" to turn up on the scene
immediately after the accident? Could it have been that the
paparazzi were following Tonya hoping for some newsworthy story
about her to mark the anniversary, and that Tonya was trying make
her escape? Shades of Princess Di! Unfortunately we can't read
the photographer's name, but whatever it is we think that Romuald
Rat might be a more appropriate moniker given his actions.
If you want to protest The Columbian's sleazy papparazzo tactics,
then we suggest you go to:
http://www.columbian.com/01062000/clark_co/102153.html
and leave a message saying so on their "hot topics" board.
TONYA MEDIA BLITZ
The past two months have seen quite a number of other appearances
by Tonya in the media, fortunately more favorable:
- On November 12, Tonya celebrated her birthday with a live
appearance on a local TV show, "Good Day Oregon", at the Lloyd
Center rink where she teaches skating. Tonya gave the host a
skating lesson and received a birthday cake from some of her
students.
- on November 17, Tonya flew to the Big Apple to be a guest on
"The Maury Povich Show", which aired on 2 December. About 20 to
25 minutes of material was recorded, though unfortunately only
around 6 minutes was actually used, mainly a sequence in which
Tonya apologized for walking out in the middle of an interview
with Povich's wife Connie Chung several years back. There are a
couple of decent photos, however, which we've put on our site at:
http://www.geocities.com/portice/maury1.jpg and
http://www.geocities.com/portice/maury2.jpg
David House also a has a clip from the show on his site at:
http://www.tonyaharding.org/tonya/movies/index.html
- the 24th of November saw Tonya featured on "Philly After
Midnight", a show that airs in that city. Unfortunately, it only
screens in Eastern Pennsylvania, parts of New Jersey and
Delaware, so we don't know how it came out.
- Tonya was one of a number of top athletes interviewed for a CBS
sports special that screened on December 30.
Tonya articles have also appeared recently in "People" magazine,
the December 25-31 issue of "TV Guide", the current issue of
"Jane" magazine (where Tonya was named as one of ten women who
are seen as truly tough and uncompromising), International Figure
Skating and the January issue of Ladies Home Journal. It's
possible there may be others as Tonya has given a large number of
interviews to various media in recent weeks, too numerous to
count.
A poster on rec.sport.skating.ice.figure also reports that Fox is
screening something on February 2 called "On Thin Ice: The Dark
Side of Skating". It's described as "interviews and special
footage reveal the outrageous stories behind the athletic
endeavors of award-winning figure skaters". It airs at 8pm and
runs for 1 hour. Although there is no specific mention of Tonya
it seems inconceivable that this won't be used as another excuse
to rehash the whole Tonya/Nancy thing again, plus probably other
stuff that anyone who's read any of Christine Brennan's books
will be thoroughly familiar with. So be warned - given that Fox
is the network that gave us "Breaking The Ice" and "Lie Detector"
there's little reason for optimism that Tonya will get a fair
treatment this time around.
Nor are these likely to be the last Tonya items we'll be seeing
in the near future. The "TV Guide" article mentions that Tonya
has been signed up to do a regular syndicated radio show starting
in February, and Linda Lewis informs us that Tonya is working on
her autobiography with an unnamed Canadian writer.
VOTE FOR TONYA
With the U.S. Presidential race now officially under way, it's a
safe bet that we'll be hearing plenty about polls and voting over
the next few months. Well, Tonya's been topping a few polls too!
Tonya was recently chosen by Lifetime Online readers as one of
the 20th Century's most memorable women, along with Hillary
Clinton, Mother Teresa, Catherine Deneuve, Marie Curie and Olivia
Newton-John. Tonya topped the "15 minutes of fame" category,
though Tonya's certainly managed to spin her fame out for alot
longer than 15 minutes! Interestingly, Tonya was one of two
skaters in the list, Ekaterina Gordeeva being the other.
http://www.lifetimetv.com/exclusives/20th_century/frameset.shtml/
harding.html
If you didn't vote in the Lifetime poll, don't worry, here's a
place where you can vote for Tonya as many times as you like!
Shallah's Pasell of Polls, located at:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~shallah/polls.html
is a site almost entirely dedicated to figure skating polls. You
can vote on such topics as most awesome spinner, greatest
footwork, greatest choreographer or even for music you would like
to see skated to (we voted for "My Way" by Sid Vicious - a sorely
neglected track). In some categories you can vote up to five
times a day. So get out and VOTE for Tonya!
CHRISTMAS PHOTO STILL AVAILABLE
Over the holidays Tonya offered two specially autographed limited
edition Christmas photos to her fans. We're pleased to announce
that this offer has now been extended to the end of January.
There are two designs, both of which show Tonya in a very tasty
red evening dress against a snowy Christmas background, one on
her own and one with her dog Koda. Both are 8x10 color, and sell
for $50 each. If you'd like one (or even both), check out the
merchandise page at the Blades of Gold site for details on how to
order these and other Tonya photos:
http://members.tripod.com/tmhfan/merchandise.html
UPGRADE TO OUR SITE
We've been doing a minor upgrade to our "other Tonya web sites"
page. It now includes the option of reading the Tonya newsgroups
via Deja and Remarq.com as well as your local news server (not
that there seems to be much there anyway these days). There's now
a link to Skatesearch, a search engine designed specifically for
searching about ice skating related information. Although it's
still under development at this stage it manages to find on-line
news articles quite well, and is quite useful if you want to
search for info about Tonya without wading through hundreds of
porn sites (which tends to be what you get when you try that with
regular search engines). Finally, we've also added links to a
couple of sites about two other American sports legends who their
supporters say have also been given a bum deal - Pete Rose and
"Shoeless" Joe Jackson. Check it out at:
http://www.geocities.com/portice/tonyaweb.htm
A CHANCE FOR TONYAPHILES TO "BREAKAWAY"
If you've never managed to see "Breakaway", the low budget
gangster movie Tonya had a bit part in some years ago, now's your
chance. Bigstar.com is now offering VHS NTSC tapes of it for
$16:99 - that's a lot better than the prices we've seen anywhere
else, which typically are in the vicinity of $70 to $80. We
suspect that this is a closeout price, so you'd better be in
quick as this may not last long.
TAKE AN ASPIRIN, MORRY - JOE HARAN IS BACK IN TOWN
Several months ago we reported on a speech made by Joe Haran,
former editor of that legendary Tonya 'zine "The Skater", to the
Portland branch of the American Humanist Association. That report
caused a considerable stir, even more so than the stuff on
Clinton in the same issue. Well, we've got good news: Joe Haran
is now on the Net, and he's been providing us with details of his
experience as an inside member of Team Tonya back in 1993/94.
That's good news for Tonyaphiles - and bad news for the skating
establishment and its bourgeois running-dog lackeys on rssif.
We'll be serializing these in upcoming issues of "The
Portlandian" as "The Haran Chronicles". As you'd expect from Joe,
there'll be plenty of controversy that'll be guaranteed to raise
the blood pressure of the skating commissars in Colorado Springs,
and lots of jaw-dropping shock-horror revelations, including new
evidence that supports Tonya's claims of innocence. He's also
sent us more issues of "The Skater" and a whole truckload of rare
Tonya photos, most of which have never been published anywhere
before. Keep an eye on our site for these soon.
For those of you unfamiliar with Joe, in addition to editing "The
Skater" he also had a distinguished career in the print and
broadcast media in the Portland area before ill-health
regrettably forced his early retirement. Prior to this, he
graduated from the University of Oregon School of Journalism in
Eugene, Oregon, and served in Vietnam where he received several
decorations for his military service. His journalism credits
include positions as a staff reporter for "The Oregon Spectator"
monthly newspaper in Oregon City; news director at KGAL-AM radio,
Albany, OR; chief writer at "GrassRoots" monthly news-magazine,
Salem, OR; news editor at "The Stayton Mail" weekly newspaper,
Stayton, OR; announcer and reporter at KOIN-AM and KOIN-FM News
Departments, Portland, OR; news presenter, producer and reporter
for KEZI-TV News Department, Eugene, OR and producer and reporter
for KOIN-TV News Department in Portland.
In addition he has also done freelance work for "PDXS" (a
fortnightly newspaper in Portland), "The Oregon Spectator"
monthly newspaper, Oregon City; CBS New York; "The Lake Oswego
Review" weekly newspaper, Lake Oswego, OR and the weekly
newspaper "The Portland Observer". His voluntary journalism work
includes editing "Welcome Home", a monthly newsletter for the
Steven F. Worley Chapter 392 of Vietnam Veterans of America
Incorporated; reporter for "The ZooDoer" monthly newsletter,
Metro Washington Park Zoo; special correspondent for "The Oregon
Daily Emerald" newspaper, at the University of Oregon and sports
editor of "The Bridge" weekly newspaper, Portland Community
College.
And we'd suggest that all that sure beats the pants off editing
some crappy brochures at an obscure University in upstate New
York.
If you want to read more of Joe's stuff, he's also writing a
regular column for the Puppetland site, which can be found at
http://www.puppetland.com/haran/toncol.html. He's also got his
own home page that includes a picture of himself and Tonya at
http://www.puppetland.com/haran.
Incidentally, Joe has described The Portlandian as "the best
Tonya 'zine since The Skater" - which is surely the highest
possible praise we could ever hope for.
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VISIT THESE GREAT TONYA WEB SITES:
PortIce - http://www.geocities.com/portice
Dave House - http://www.davidhouse.com/tonya/index.html
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
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