Podcast appearances and mentions of Dorothy Hamill

In Part 1 of Episode 41, I'm joined by Dina Parise, the 2015 IHRA Pro Modified World Champion, and The Confidence Doctor, Dr. Bob Winters. Dina Parise, who grew up on Long Island, was a competitive gymnast in the summer and a passionate ice skater in the winter, idolizing Dorothy Hamill. She turned her love for ice skating into a four-year career performing with the Ice Capades, where she even had the chance to meet her idol. In our conversation, Dina shares stories from that time, including the first time she signed an autograph, meeting her husband Andrew, a champion driver in his own right, and how she got hooked on drag racing. She also reflects on the thrill of winning her first driver's championship and reveals why, in a movie about her life, she'd want Marisa Tomei to play her. In this month's discussion with Dr. Bob Winters, we delve into his pioneering work in junior golf, focusing not just on the swing but on the mental game. Dr. Winters emphasizes the importance of cultivating a positive attitude, focus, and the right mental approach. Recognizing this need decades ago, he developed a program to help young players build the mindset necessary for success. We also explore the concept of “the drive to finish,” addressing why some top players have struggled to close out tournaments recently—a challenge we've all faced. Doc offers insights and strategies to help us overcome that hurdle.

Brian Pedone took up boxing at the age of 13, and by 19, he had started his own boxing gym working with teenagers. Brian holds a BS in Computer Science and was featured by BusinessWeek in 2008 as one of the top 25 entrepreneurs 25 years and under in America. In 2013 he started the concept for Quiet Punch and has been at it now for over 10 years. His mission has been to make boxing accessible for all. He loves working with entrepreneurs and helping others get started.In This Conversation We Discuss:[00:45] Intro[02:10] Quiet Punch: boxing in small spaces[03:18] Brainstorming the Quiet Punch model[04:29] Simplifying things to find the perfect design[05:41] Securing the right manufacturer[06:05] Shifting from boxing equipment to home fitness[07:18] Embracing the idea of a wider market[08:31] Overcoming minimum order requirements[09:28] Negotiating TV plans for mass market appeal[10:41] Prioritizing ownership and independence[11:17] Episode sponsors[13:26] Monetizing efforts for product investment[15:01] Encountering Ecommerce struggles and breakthroughs[16:09] Managing surge in sales and traction[17:00] Recognizing the "We're Onto Something" moment[17:25] Seizing unexpected opportunities[18:00] Sustaining momentum with accidental scarcity[19:00] Capitalizing on sustainable revenue[19:35] Anticipating success and accepting setbacks[20:42] Adjusting from increasing sales to slow growth[21:16] Transforming products into subscriptions[22:24] Building brand commitment through subscriptions[23:32] Testing what customers would like to pay for[24:20] Consumer interest on small group engagements[25:00] Building freemium relationships with customers[25:28] Idea vs. Execution: the critical combination[26:14] Managing expectations on startup successResources:Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on YoutubeSmart home punching bag quietpunch.com/Follow Brian Pedone linkedin.com/in/brian-pedone/Schedule an intro call with one of our experts electriceye.io/connectBook a demo today at intelligems.io/If you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!

The Girl Who Loved to Skate Join us today as we learn about Olympic Gold Medalist Dorothy Hamill Sources: https://www.cwhf.org/inductees/dorothy-hamill  https://achievement.org/achiever/dorothy-hamill  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dorothy-Hamill  https://www.biography.com/athletes/dorothy-hamill  Send us listener mail!  Send an audio message: anchor.fm/inquisikids-daily/message  Send an email: podcast@inquisikids.com   

Inspired by the 4th of July (I guess), we go all the way back to the beginning and take a look at the very first Chickweed strips. Brooke Mac-El-Dee comes right out of the gate with Juliette talking with Edda about physical attractiveness and how that's very important to catch a man. Edda at this point is maybe 12, so this is a TOTALLY NORMAL AND APPROPRIATE conversation for a mother to have. But don't worry. Things get WAY MORE inappropriate pretty quickly. Isn't it comforting to know that this horrible comic strip was horrible in exactly the same ways from the beginning? Following up Juliette's lessons in female attractiveness, pre-teenage Edda already expresses what can only be described as Championship Level Body Dysmorphia. Classic Mac-El-Dee! There's a whole Sunday strip about a fly. Twelve-year-old Amos, who looks either drowned or electrocuted or both, spends an entire strip sniffing Edda...at her request of course. Sophia Loren's "bosom" is described as "proud." Edda shames her mother for not getting boned on a date. Then later the two of them celebrate Juliette finding her boyfriend's "button" and "pushing it." Which I suppose means she had sex. Edda encourages Amos to imagine random adults they're looking at naked. So that's totally cool also. And finally we spend about ten solid minutes trying to figure out what "I'll just serve you a colossal jong-jong" means. The Chickweed strips we discuss this episode: Juliette teaches Edda about the necessity of being attractive and Edda expressing her complicated body dysmorphia ARE HERE (https://twitter.com/9chickweedRAGE/status/1681133741673172992?s=20). A Sunday strip all about a dumb fly and Amos uncomfortably and repeatedly sniffing Edda ARE HERE (https://twitter.com/9chickweedRAGE/status/1681133743338315779?s=20). Sophia Loren's "proud bosom," Juliette's inability to transform a man into a "gelatinous blob of slavering desire," and Amos showing his leg to some other boys ARE HERE (https://twitter.com/9chickweedRAGE/status/1681133745057980417?s=20). Juliette talks to Edda about finding and pushing her boyfriend's button, Edda and Amos imagining adult strangers naked, and the famous colossal jong-jong ARE HERE (https://twitter.com/9chickweedRAGE/status/1681133746786045953?s=20). This gelatinous, colossal episode includes: 4th of July Joey Chestnut Eating harmonicas Christmas Free Will Major League Eating "76 Trombones (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdd6q0pW4DM)" from The Music Man Funnel Cakes Pizza Hut P'Zone Dutch ovens Twinkies International waters Barbie dolls Lauren Bacall Muppets Telly the Monster Dorothy Hamill Scent of a Woman and Al Pacino's catchphrase (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dNeIAxll2A) Sophia Loren Slavering Imagining everyone naked Fast Times at Ridgemont High The Colossal Jong-Jong Talk to Us! Having trouble understanding what's going on in a 9 Chickweed Lane strip you just read? Send it our way! We'll take a shot at interpreting it for you! Or maybe you just want someone to talk to? We're on Twitter: @9ChickweedRAGE (https://twitter.com/9chickweedRAGE)

Tina Turner was a brilliant performer, and an inspiration to millions who left behind a powerful legacy. Ike turner gave us the Dorothy Hamill wig.

James Patrick Dunne joined me and talked about growing up on the same blok with David Hasselhoff; how music drew him in; making piano records in high school; getting hired by Garry Marshall; being given access to all of the Paramount lot; scoring a movie for Dorothy Hamill; being a Phi Beta Kappa; writing "Do the Fonzie" for Happy Days; writing the theme song for Joanie Loves Chachi; writing "Nobody Loves Me Like You Do" for As the World Turns and having it covered by Anne Murray, Jermaine Jackson, and Whitney Houston; writing "Pumps Your Blood" and getting Anson to sing it; it's life as a jingle; changing the lyrics to "Wash Your Hands" during COVID; the Happy Days softball team; going on a 1980 USO show with Cyntha Weil, Anson Williams, and Marion Ross; the greatness of Marion Ross; his over forty year friendship with ex-roomate Ted McGinley; writing "When You Put Your Heart in It" for the 1988 U.S. Olympic Gymnastic Team and getting it covered by Kenny Rogers and going o #2; writing "Chance of a Lifetime" for the 1992 Olympic Track & Field Team, having it covered by Take 6 and winning a Grammy; writing college alma mater's and fight songs; writing "I'm a Big Girl Now" for Huggies; his career

Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 816, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: what's your sign? 1: I'm this sign; my constellation's brightest star is called Hamal, Arabic for "sheep". Aries. 2: Add an "N" to the end of this sign and you get a type of animal. Scorpio. 3: I'm this sign and my name is also an ancient Roman unit of weight. Libra. 4: December 1:Go ahead, take a shot. Sagittarius. 5: The name of this sign begins with the 19th letter of the Greek alphabet. Taurus. Round 2. Category: anatomy 1: The cones in the eye allow us to see colors and these light-sensitive cells allow us to see shades of gray. rods. 2: When fibrogen is converted to fibrin by thrombin, blood does this. clot. 3: A bone that vibrates when it hears "go horsey", or a place for your foot on a saddle. a stirrup. 4: When you toss a drink down the hatch, it goes down this tube to the stomach. your esophagus. 5: In osteoarthritis this tissue disintegrates and bones rub against one another. the cartilage. Round 3. Category: siegfrieds and roys 1: In an 1870s ballet, Prince Siegfried falls in love with one of these graceful birds. Swan. 2: This singer took "Oh, Pretty Woman" to No. 1 in 1964. Roy Orbison. 3: This composer of the opera "Siegfried" also named his son Siegfried. Richard Wagner. 4: Before he became the "King of the Cowboys" on film, he formed the Sons of the Pioneers singing group. Roy Rogers. 5: In a Sir Walter Scott novel, this title character is an outlaw of the MacGregor clan. Rob Roy. Round 4. Category: things to do with carrots 1: Have your mom cut your carrots into these for your lunchbox and you can play a "pick up" game with them. sticks. 2: A man named Mel Blanc crunched carrots while providing the voice of this carrot-loving rabbit. Bugs Bunny. 3: In February 1999 people in Bethel, Maine made one 113 feet tall with an 8-foot-long "carrot" nose. a snowman. 4: This popular dessert is usually topped with a cream cheese frosting. carrot cake. 5: Carrots go into one version of this side dish, shredded cabbage and a mayonnaise-based sauce. cole slaw. Round 5. Category: fads and fashions 1: The bobbed hair style of this skater known for her camel was the rage in 1976. Dorothy Hamill. 2: To be fashionable, F. Scott Fitzgerald's Bernice did it to her hair. bobbed it. 3: Striking a prayerful pose on one knee isn't called Timming but this. Tebowing. 4: The 1950s Davy Crockett craze sent the price of these pelts from 25 cents to $8 a pound. raccoon pelts. 5: In the 1920s folks got all fired up about sitting at the top of these, sometimes for weeks at a time. flagpoles. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia! Special thanks to https://blog.feedspot.com/trivia_podcasts/

Assistant Coach and long-time Sporting News writer Vinnie Iyer joins the bench, teaming with Ede in a highly competitive match against Markkus & David. On script, Ede hates halftime and forgets to read a question, and the game gets to Bingo before the 1st quarter is over. Dan goes old school with a few questions, and also experiments with some extremely David questions. Aside from that, was it *really* Dorothy Hamill who voiced the Joker? #lindseyvonn #sportingnews #readthequestion #toomuchdavid #davidquestions #bingo #oldschool

A Canadian figure skater and choreographer who has won two Emmy Awards for Scott Hamilton: Upside Down and for choreographing the opening and closing of the 2002 Winter Olympics. Kawahara joined the Ice Capades at age 17 and skated with them for seven years. In 1997, she became the first skater to win the Best Choreography Emmy Award. Sarah has choreographed for numerous competitive skaters, including Michelle Kwan, Kristi Yamaguchi, Dorothy Hamill, Peggy Fleming, Kurt Browning, Nancy Kerrigan, Oksana Baiul, Robin Cousins, Victor Petrenko and Tia Babilonia & Randy Gardner. She was coach and choreographer for the films Go Figure, Blades of Glory and I, Tonya, and for the television series Spinning Out. On this episode Sarah tells us when ice rinks were first added to cruise ships and about watching her daughter Hayley Kiyoko perform recently at Kamala Harris's home. 

I don't really believe in obstacles. If there's a wall, you get on top of it and start dancing -Elin Schran Meet Elin Schran, Founder of Joy Skate Productions: joyskateproductions.com. She's passionate about making ice skating accessible to all and spends her days bringing specially designed camps and clinics to rinks that accommodate skaters of every age and every ability, including adaptive/therapeutic skating clinics. For this exceptional woman, ice skating= joy. You see, Elin is the daughter of Olympic Figure Skating Champion Tenley Albright who was the five-time National Champion, two-time World Champion, Silver Medalist at the 1952 Olympics in Oslo, Norway and the Gold Medalist at the Olympics in Cortina, Italy in 1956. In this interview, we hear Tenley's inspiring story through her daughter's loving eyes and learn that Elin was never pressured into figure skating. It's just a sport she couldn't resist. She loves the twirling, the precision, the feeling of freedom and act of flying through the air and it is this joy that she hopes to bring to others through Joy Skate Productions. Now a mother herself, Elin shares her experiences on the ice as a member of Dorothy Hamill's Ice Capades, as the Founder of Boston Ice Theatre and co-founder of Frozen Frog Productions. She believes in manifesting your dreams and goals, which is something her mother taught her when she was growing up: “Put it out into the ether. Let it be, visualize it, and it's going to happen.” In this episode, we come to know Elin as a woman who has spent her life on the ice, while shining her own light, crafting her own unique skating story. For 23 minutes of joy and inspiration on ice, just hit that download button! #joyskateproductions #storybehindhersuccess #figureskating

For Video Edition, Please Click and Subscribe Here: https://youtu.be/QU0-Qz3EePg The Mickey & Judy Show: Two mikes, two stools, and a trunk-load of great songs! Jeff Harnar is familiar to television audiences for his acclaimed PBS specials, “The 1959 Broadway Songbook” and “Remember: Songs of the Holidays” (co-starring KT Sullivan). On A&E he was the Singing Narrator of “Gershwin on Ice” starring Dorothy Hamill. Other television appearances include CBS This Morning and The Charles Grodin Show. Jeff appeared at Carnegie Hall in both the Cole Porter and Noel Coward Centennial Galas, as well as in his own one-man show at Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall. His solo recordings include “The 1959 Broadway Songbook,” “Because of You: Fifties Gold” and “Sammy Cahn All The Way.”  Please visit www.Jeffharnar.com. Shauna Hicks starred on Broadway in the role of Linda in “Blood Brothers” opposite David and Shaun Cassidy with Petula Clarke, Carole King and Helen Reddy. She won the Florida Carbonell award and a Chicago Jeff Award nomination for her performance as Rosemary in the first national tour of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” opposite Ralph Macchio.  A writer as well as a singer/actress, Shauna has written two critically acclaimed one-woman shows: “Shauna Hicks and Her 60's Chicks” (MAC, CAB, Bistro Awards) and “Shauna Hicks and Her 70's Mix.” Recordings include “Unsung Berlin,” “Broadway Sings Bacharach” (Varese Sarabande label) and “The Mickey & Judy Show.” Please visit www.shaunahicks.com.  

This week, the guys have a jam-packed show from insulating concrete, gas line colors, drilling through a foundation and hot garage door talk. Plus, emotional remodels. Thanks for supporting our sponsors: Geico.com JBWeld.com GoDRPower.com MasterSpas.com, promo code: Ace WalkFulton.com, promo code: ACE10 BlindsGalore.com & let them know we sent you

Pat and Mags chatter away as a duet this week and inevitably talk turns to the decaying process, a shark's banana, Dorothy Hamill, a blowpoke and eyebrows, life's great america, gofundshe, weaponizing teens, stern pudding, Vegas ringworm, Subaru murders, an anus person and Lumford Bromley. TW: just two women talking candidly What can you do to save our right to abortion? Visit votesaveamerica.com/roe and donate to local abortion providers at abortionfunds.org. Aunt Pat - Colleen Doyle Auntie Mags - Dana Quercioli Theme Song - The Qs Artwork - Jordan Stafford Mauntras - Carol Doyle Editor - Colleen Doyle Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-babymakers/support --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-babymakers/support

After battling with (and sometimes against) her own curly hair, Kelly Foreman decided to start her own haircare line. This week she shares all about MopTop, her line of hair products made especially for curls. Episode At A Glance:  This week Kelly Foreman joins The SavvyCast to discuss her haircare line MopTop. Anyone with wavy, curly, or coily hair will surely learn something new from her expertise. Kelly shares the science behind her products, tips for caring for your curls, and more! Who Is Kelly Foreman? Kelly Foreman was born and raised in the humidity of the South, a particular struggle for those with curly hair. As Kelly grew up amongst hair trends like the Dorothy Hamill to Farrah Fawcett feathering, she became frustrated with her hair. After having curly-headed children of her own, Kelly decided it was time to find a way to embrace and enhance their natural hair texture. She began by making hair products in her kitchen and later launched MopTop and FuzzyDuck natural product lines in 2005. Today, it is Kelly's mission to help people of all ages, all hair textures, and all ethnicities learn to love their natural hair.  Questions Answered In This Episode:  What can cause hair loss? How do you "reactivate" the hair products 2-3 days after washing your hair? What are MoTop products all about? Should we put silicone in our hair? What is Kelly's hair washing routine? How should we detox our hair? What are the three most important things when it comes to caring for our hair? Where Can I Buy MopTop: MotTop's website: Save 15% with code SAVVY15 Amazon Whole Foods  Select Salons  Connect With MopTop: Instagram @moptophair I hope you enjoyed this episode! In addition, if you have time to rate, review, and subscribe to The SavvyCast on Apple Podcasts, it would be SO appreciated!!! Blessings to you!!! If you like this podcast, be sure to check these out: Why Brows Should be a Beauty Routine Priority + Options for Making Them Beautiful The Best Non-Surgical Skincare Methods With Jacki Despot  

Meg recounts the tragic events of the evening Yusuf Hawkins went to Bensonhurst. Jessica discusses Astor Place Hairstylists, Alphabet City, and Tenax hair gel.

“This means something. This is important.” Damn right, Ricky D - It's Episode 69 of Opening Weekend! This week the boys are going back to February 3, 1978 to make contact with the wide release of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND! Plus their Top 10 Spielberg films.Ba-ba-bum, ba-bwaaa! (Mothership or Hand-Fart? Only tiiime will tell!)February 3, 1978: Wunderkind Steven Spielberg is at it again, and audiences are having their minds blown watching Richard Dreyfuss have a Close Encounter of the Third Kind with tiny aliens.Meanwhile young Jason, Dan, and Fred are having their minds blown watching The Fonz have a Close Encounter of the Nerd Kind with Mork from Ork…and The Hulk…and maybe Scrappy Doo…?As Richard Dreyfuss stares dreamily at the sky wondering, “What is happening up there?”, 5 year old Fred stares dreamily at Dorothy Hamill wondering, “What is happening down THERE?!?!?” What's more fun than a pile of mashed potatoes? How about a stack of Dan's pre-school's Deadly Building Blocks Of Death? Or maybe Jason's “Francois Truffaut” action figure with Curwen Hand Sign Grip! (too esoteric?)And for the first time in podcast history:“Schindler's List” and “Baby's Day Out” together at last!

On what makes an icon and life after skating. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 273, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: Let's Go To A Museum 1: You might find your invitation to her Deerfield, Illinois museum under your pillow, along with a dollar. The Tooth Fairy. 2: This Spanish museum's paintings are displayed in 2 buildings: The Villanueva Building and the Cason del Buen Retiro. The Prado. 3: Check into a motel in Plano in this state, then check out the Cockroach Hall of Fame and Museum. Texas. 4: The Ulster Museum in this capital city dates back to 1890. Belfast. 5: MOMA in N.Y. is the Museum of Modern Art and MOCA in L.A. is the museum of this. Contemporary art. Round 2. Category: Eat Your Veggies 1: Green olives are traditionally stuffed with these red veggies. pimientos. 2: In the early 19th c. George Stephenson began growing these pickle veggies in glass tubes so they'd grow straight. cucumbers. 3: The Dutch type of this is white, as it's grown underground; the American is green, as the spears are grown above. asparagus. 4: Developed in Canada, the Yukon Gold variety of this tuber has yellow flesh. potato. 5: When making a pie with strawberries and this tart vegetable, just use its red stalks; the leaves are toxic. rhubarb. Round 3. Category: Women On Ice 1: Training 6 days a week on her camels and other moves won her the Gold at the '76 Olympics. Dorothy Hamill. 2: At age 10 in 1924, she won the 1st of 6 straight Norwegian figure skating championships. Sonja Henie. 3: In 1984 she and partner Christopher Dean earned 6.0s for artistic impression across the Olympic board. (Jane) Torvill. 4: At the '94 Olympics, this German placed 7th in her attempt to win a 3rd Gold. Katarina Witt. 5: Though she fell on a triple loop in the 1992 Olympics, she still took the Gold. Kristi Yamaguchi. Round 4. Category: Advertising Slogans 1: "When you care enough to send the very best", send one of these. Hallmark Card. 2: "Wouldn't you really rather have" one of these cars. Buick. 3: "I like" this lemon-lime soda "in you". Sprite. 4: This maker of pre-school toys says, "Our work is child's play". Fisher-Price. 5: "Always low prices. Always". Wal-Mart. Round 5. Category: 1993 Movies 1: With a gross of over $330 million, this Steven Spielberg film was the big hit of 1993. Jurassic Park. 2: In his most recent film, this St. Bernard has a girlfriend named Missy and 4 puppies. Beethoven. 3: This Tim Burton movie was made using stop-motion animation. The Nightmare Before Christmas. 4: This sequel was subtitled “Back in the Habit”. Sister Act 2. 5: Anthony Hopkins played the role of author C.S. Lewis in this Richard Attenborough film. Shadowlands. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia!

Our country's Bicentennial hit differently for us GenX kids. For us it was all about pet rocks, Dorothy Hamill, Nadia's Theme, “I'm Just A Bill,” The Bionic Woman, Charlie's Angels, Afternoon Delight, and Holly Hobbie. So grab a bomb pop and join the girls as they revisit many of the pop-culture events that made 1976 so much more than just the nation's 200th birthday!1976 OlympicsAfternoon DelightNadia ComaneciNadia's ThemeSchoolhouse Rock - America RocksCB RadiosMuskrat LoveCaptain & TenilleDonny & MarieCheck out Amy Lively's podcast For The Record: The 70sWatch the Starland Vocal Band sing the real lyrics to Afternoon Delight hereFollow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter & TIkTok

Best of Preston & Steve Show On this episode: Dorothy Hamill & Crew in studio (00:00:00) Office Freebie Area (00:18:25) Jeremy Piven in studio (00:41:17) Items to Take Out of Car in the Cold (01:13:13)  Bizarre Files (01:34:04) Barns Courtney in studio (01:42:01) Keenan Ivory & Shawn Wayans in studio (02:00:23) Bizarre Files (02:24:27) Hollywood Trash & Horrible Movies You Love (02:32:50) 

Want to know about getting kids involved in sumo? This is your episode! We talk with Jake Book of Ohayo Sumo about his sumo training and how he's building a program for kids. Then we switch gears and discuss the Hakuho Cup, a youth sumo tournament that happens in Japan. And, because we are who we are, we also discuss Dorothy Hamill, Wham!, Gene Kelly, Scott Hamilton, and Mark Hamill. For Details on each episode: If you ever wonder where we get our research, check out our Show Notes Where you can find Jake Book: https://www.facebook.com/Ohayosumo/ Where you can find us: Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @SumoKaboom Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0afau4An1hiO69Umr4igKA Check out our ever-changing Sumo Kaboom merch at Red Bubble (https://www.redbubble.com/people/SumoKaboom/shop?asc=u). If you'd like to buy us a coffee each month to keep us going, you can support us here. https://ko-fi.com/sumokaboom Please subscribe or send us a review. It all helps! Thank you so much! Special Guest: Jake Book of Ohayo Sumo.

Intro Song Credit: YAA! Koala @yaakoala Song: Do Mushies Not Coke Outro Sound Credit: YAA! Koala @yaakoala Song: Don’t Stop   In this episode of The BosBabes lifestyle sports podcast, host Brittany Baldi chats with Kim Zayotti— a vibrant ball of energy from Hull Massachusetts that works alongside top notch athletes like Carlton Fisk & Bobby Orr.   Kim’s childhood was out of the ordinary, in a good way! She grew up right near the beach in a town called Hull—in Massachusetts. Her mom really enjoyed the holiday of Christmas, at the start of the show Kim details what it was like having gifts cover every inch of the floor Christmas morning. She also details a super funny family travel story that involves her traveling in the back of a pickup truck on the way to Nova Scotia Canada, when she was in third grade!    Kim was a competitive figure skater for 14 years! She idolized athletes like Dorothy Hamill when she was a kid. Kim’s love for sports and drive for a career in law, lead her to becoming a sports attorney and even working alongside  the NHL great one - Bobby Orr -.   Now, Kim is the CEO and founder of Blue Sky Sports & Entertainment. A female centric based company dedicated to creating awesome experiences for her clients. Blue Sky - is a marketing agency that works specifically with former and current professional athletes like Bobby Orr, Carlton Fisk, Doug Flutie, Marcus Smart, Jerod Mayo, and many more! Kim not only helps her clients develop products (like Flutie Flakes) — but she also helps put on outstanding charity events that help raise a ton of money for the community!   Please listen to the full episode to learn more on Kim Zayotti’s path from competitive figure skater to CEO. You do not want to miss out!   Please subscribe to us on Youtube xo -The BosBabes   Visit www.primaryjane.com and use promo code BOSBABES15 at checkout for 15% off all of their premium CBD hemp products!          

Minnesotan artist Nancy Malay has earned her nicknames of “The Christmas Lady” and “The Halloween Lady.” Early American Life magazine named her as one of the best artists in the country. She’s been published in multiple magazines, including five covers of Better Homes and Gardens Holiday Crafts. She describes her Halloween style as “spooky sweet.”   Nancy loves writing craft tutorials. She strives to simplify the artistic process for beginning creatives and to help them avoid pit falls she’s experienced. She loves when people send her pictures of their creations.   One of the defining aspects of Nancy’s work is her rich, detailed clothing. She got her start in creating doll clothing as a child. Her home ec teacher commissioned her to create dresses. Nancy has worked in a bridal shop and theater costuming.  Nancy enjoys collecting Santas. She’d bring them home and make little improvements to them, inevitably leading her to create her own.  There are many similarities between creating Santas, wizards, and witches. They have pronounced noses, lots of wrinkles, and defining clothing. Nancy says you can have a conversation with her witches over their cauldrons, but if they offer you tea, inspect it before you drink it.   Nancy won a Department 56 Village decorating contest with a spooky water scene. The prize was presented by Olympic Gold medalist Dorothy Hamill and a relative of Charles Dickens. This was the genesis of her spooky scene creation. There’s always a bit of mystery in them – like a door you cannot see behind.   Nancy loves stories. Some of her favorites are Harry Potter, the works of Charles Dickens, Grimm's Fairytales, and the Time-Life Enchanted World book series. Victorian artist John Atkinson Grimshaw’s dark nightscape paintings provide a visual inspiration for her scenes.  She teamed up with artists Joyce Stahl and Laurie Hardin to create the Artistry of Three. They provide each other encouragement and honest feedback and bond over their shared love of chocolate. They have a plethora of collectors in common.   Nancy has two studio assistants, her dog Zoey and a life-size skeleton, Delta Dawn. Delta Dawn was inspired by the country song about a faded southern belle. Unfortunately, Zoey ate Delta Dawn’s rose!   Nancy has been licensed by four companies. The process is time consuming with grueling deadlines but totally worth it. It’s a thrill for her to see her work in stores. She loves meeting collectors at signing events and shows. She is filled with gratitude that people are willing to come see her. She appreciates her collectors because they enable her to do what she loves.  You can find Nancy’s web site at: https://nancymalay.wixsite.com/mysite-1  The Artistry of Three is found at: https://artistryofthree.blogspot.com/  Find the podcast web site at: https://www.halloweenartandtravel.com/ 

This edition of my "Best of" series features my interview with Dorothy Hamill who earned the nickname America's Sweetheart after her Gold Medal-Winning Olympic Figure performance in the 1976 Winter Olympics. Her post Olympics career includes skating with the Ice Capades, winning a Daytime Emmy Award and participating in season 16 of Dancing with the Stars. In 2016 she partnered with bioTheranostics to launch BeWisER+ About Breast Cancer (www.bewiseraboutbreastcancer.org), an educational campaign designed to help breast cancer survivors who are on anti-estrogen therapy learn more about treatment related side effects, ongoing risk of relapse, and information and tools to help personalize a treatment plan.

From hotels to casino, and from AT&T to MCI (RIP), toll-free 1-800 numbers have been in existence since their inception in 1982. A veritable cottage industry of goods and services could be purchased via these numbers. This week, Brian and Angelo dive deep into vintage commercials from the 1980s and 1990s and tempt their luck as they try to see how many are still in service in the year 2020. The results may shock you! Stay on the line for more information.

In this special episode, we talk with agent Gordon Warnock and author Jorjeana Marie about how to reignite your creativity, learn to trust yourself, and stay inspired along the way. We learn how they met (in the slush pile!), why people are pressured to choose just one creative passion (and what you should do about it), and (perhaps most important) how to bring back the joy of creation to your work. Jorjeana Marie is a storyteller. Whether it's as a writer for Disney's “Mickey and the Roadster Racers”, as a voice actress enacting all the roles in the “New Nancy Drew Diaries” (where Nancy now uses GPS to find her criminals and spends her spare time Googling herself!) or as a stand-up comedian touring the nation at The Improv and Catch a Rising Star Comedy Clubs, or as a produced playwright in NYC-she focuses on the fun and funny. As an award-winning narrator of over 250 books, Jorjeana's narrative skills have earned her multiple Earphones awards, Best Voices of 2014, 2015 and 2016 and a prestigious Audie Award for “Salt to the Sea” by Ruta Sepetys. Publisher Weekly calls her “Pitch-perfect” and Audiofile Magazine for “The Assistants” by Camille Perri stated “Bridget Jones meets Working Girl in this audiobook, and holy moly, is it fun. Jorjeana Marie puts this diverse and hilarious cast of New York characters through their many-accented paces like Dorothy Hamill landing a triple axel. In every paragraph. Her warm, bright tone creates just the right mood, and her pacing, balancing humor and looming disaster, is perfect.” Gordon Warnock is a founding partner at Fuse Literary, serving as a literary agent and Editorial Director of Short Fuse Publishing. He brings years of experience as a senior agent, marketing director, editor for independent publishers, publishing consultant, and author coach. He frequently teaches workshops and gives keynote speeches at conferences and MFA programs nationwide. He is an honors graduate of CSUS with a B.A. in Creative and Professional Writing. With a zest for fresh, new voices and a deep love of the classics, Gordon actively seeks out both the timely and the timeless. In that spirit, he establishes involved, long-term working relationships with talented and dedicated authors of many genres.

Rachel and Dave met at McDonalds .... Rachel was a hairdresser and Dave was spotting a mullet and later got a "Dorothy Hamill" cut. They have been married 18 years now 

Eric (@operahockeyguy) and I discuss and/or mention in passing: Nefertiti, Brandon Roberts, Natalie Doliner, Asaad Kelada, Real People, PBS, CBC, Curling, SCTV, Home Box Office, Star Trek 2: The Wrath Of Khan, On-TV, Dynasty, The Fall Guy, Family Ties, Taxi, Buffalo Bill, Very Special Episodes, Yo-Yos, Valley Of The Dolls, Mommie Dearest, Woody Allen, Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman, New York City, Manhattan, Annie Hall, Mariel Hemingway, Ronan Farrow, Brian DiPalma, Roman Polanski, Rosemary’s Baby, Kimberly Craig, Walter Winchell, Dear Abby, Rona Barrett, Susan Blackstone/Rinnell, New York Times, New York Daily, Brooklyn Tribune, Sheldon, Big Bang Theory, I Love Lucy, Happy Days, Three’s Company, Golden Girls, Cheers, Taxi, Seinfeld, Friends, Barney Miller, Mitzi Hoag, Norman Burton, Wonder Woman, Love American Style, We’ll Get By, Bonanza, The Partridge Family, Mannheim Steamroller, Thornton Wilder, Harold Pinter, University Liggett School, Detroit, Michigan State, East Lansing, University of Florida Gainesville, Hockey, Opera, Wagner’s Ring Cycle, Ray Hatch, Orlando Fringe Festival, Beth Marshall, Sleuths Mystery Dinner Theater, Mrs Claus, Mrs. Lovett, Sweeney Todd, Into The Woods, Sunday In The Park With George, Barbara Barrie, Barbara Bryne, Greta Garbo, Dorothy Hamill. www.facethefactspod.com patreon.com/facethefactspod facebook.com/facethefactspod twitter.com/facethefactspod instagram.com/facethefactspod Please SUBSCRIBE, RATE, and REVIEW!

Friend of the pod Katy is back to talk commercials related to Troll 2! With a movie obsessed with pumping iron and special Nilbog milk, our commercial viewing choices were obvious.Image Description: A still from Troll 2 showing Nilbog Milk, Vitamin D Milk. As the shopkeeper says, “Special milk, high in vitamins.” We started with a milk commercial from the 80s, which Geoffrey was uncomfortable with, but which the person who posted this on YouTube thinks is GREAT. The YouTube description is literally: “The best commercial with my name!”Somehow this led to a discussion of whether the reader is supposed to think that the character of Julia in George Orwell’s 1984 is cool and great, or weak and disappointing. Surprise! You thought you were here for pop culture and instead we delivered some assigned homework reading chat??? We also watched this commercial with a young boy trying to attract the attention of an older girl. While we thought there was a possibly nice reading of the first commercial, we’re afraid this one is just about a photo-MRA. However! It led us on a tangent where we explain some of The Richest Cat in the World to Katy. If you like that discussion, do consider becoming a paid subscriber and listening to the whole episode, and its associated After These Messages one!Okay, enough with the milk. What about working out?Image Description: A still from Troll 2 showing Holly pumping iron. There are so many workout commercials to choose from! We started with Cher.We wondered if Cher was wearing “hind tights” from Northwest Fitness… We also watched a Soloflex commercial.And The Power Stretch.Did you know who “Superfoot” was before we made this episode???And of course, the Barbie Workout Center.Among the things we touched upon after this were: a discussion of Katy’s childhood Dorothy Hamill haircut, an ASMR interlude, LSD trips (which none of us know anything about firsthand, but which Geoffrey has Opinions on), and kids’ workout shows. Did anyone out there actually enjoy Mousercise?And if you really want Katy to recommend you some books in which people get eaten alive by rats, let us know, and we’ll make sure she gets the message!If you’re having fun listening to us, please tell your friends about us! Subscribe to our newsletter at thisiswhywerelikethis.substack.com for free, or pay $5/month to get access to two bonus paid episodes each month! We’re also on Patreon if that’s your jam! Rate and review us! follow us on Twitter where we’re @thisiswhy_pod! And, of course, you can always drop us a note at at thisiswhywerelikethis@gmail.com. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at thisiswhywerelikethis.substack.com/subscribe

In this week's episode of The UpBeat Podcast powered by CoachArt, our co-hosts Greg and Roxanne are joined by Denise, an ice skating instructor who's been giving lessons to children with special needs for 22 years at the Oakland Ice Center in Oakland, California. A competitive figure skater growing up, when Denise was 16 she saw Olympic champion Dorothy Hamill conduct a skating program for children with blindness and immediately knew her life had changed. Denise started the adaptive skating program in Oakland and has gone on to help children with special needs in many ways — she's now even an official school inclusion assistant and a certified autism movement therapist. In Denise's interview, she shares her many experiences helping the lives of kids and adults on and off the ice, including the wonderful story of an autistic child's 5-year journey to learn to skate. She has a unique perspective on the benefits of ice skating for special needs children, which we found instructive here at CoachArt, as we strive to provide a range of athletics programs for children in the same situations. For the full blog post and additional resources to find adaptive sporting programs near you, visit our website.The UpBeat podcast is powered by CoachArt, a nonprofit organization that provides FREE art and athletic activities to families impacted by any childhood chronic illness – such as arthritis, asthma, diabetes, cancer, cerebral palsy and more.If you have a child that may qualify for CoachArt programs, visit: CoachArt.org. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Love of Honor So turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians, Chapter 4, be looking this morning at verses 1-5. And as I pray just a moment ago, 1 Corinthians 4 is a marvelous chapter in which we're going to be swimming in the mindset of the apostle Paul as he talks about his own view towards life, and his own view toward ministry. And we're going to begin by looking at Verses 1-5. And as I did this morning as I was praying about this text, and about what I was about to preach, I was consumed by a kind of a unifying theme here to introduce. And that is, I want to ask you the question, just think about human life, what is the fuel that propels the drive for greatness among people? What is the fuel that propels a drive for excellence in every field of human endeavor? What makes an aviator get in a single engine, single seat plane and fly for 33 and a half hours (Charles Lindberg), across the Atlantic to arrive near Paris, France? What motivated him to do that? What motivates a pharmaceutical researcher to spend long hours in lab, pursuing a cure to a disease like the common cold or cancer? What motivates all of those hours? What motivates an explorer, to be the first to stand on the North Pole? Wherever that is. And one after the other said, "I got there." And then science said, "No, you didn't." Then the next one guy, "I was the first." "No, you weren't." But anyway, that's another journey for another day. But what motivated all of those explorers to be that one? Or what motivates a physicist to sit in a patent office and scribble out formulas that would change the way that people saw physics for the entire 21st century? What was the motivation behind that? Or an Olympic athlete? Imagine a female figure skater that gets up way before sunrise and goes again to the rink, and works again on the quad, again and again, hitting the ice more times than she can count, more bruises, more cuts. What is the motivation behind all of that suffering? There are many motives, but there's one I have that dominates my mind and that is the love of honor. Love of honor. It's one of the major drives in human experience toward amazing achievement and excellence in every field. I read some time ago, Napoleon when he was traveling en route to his final destination to the remote island of Saint Helena where he would die, after he had led armies 600,000 strong and more marching over the battlefields of Europe and he built a French empire that dominated continental Europe, and men fanatically followed him across the snows of Russia. Even into burnt out Moscow itself and then on to the blood soaked battlefields of Waterloo. What motivated their loyalty? And he was musing on this, and he said, this, "A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon." For a bit of colored ribbon. Well, it's not the ribbon, but it's the honor that it represents. That's why his soldiers made those kinds of sacrifices. Charles Lindberg, when he landed, after 33 and a half hours, landed to tens of thousands of cheering Frenchmen. And I know you'll say a $10,000 prize. So you're saying that was some of the motivation, but I don't think that's what really moved him. In 1921, Albert Einstein was paraded through the streets of New York with a ticker tape parade. The most famous physicist of our day, of their day. Many Olympic gold medal winners have done so to complete that perfect gold medal winning performance, and just stand there, the music's over and the cheers just come cascading down and then she gets to climb up to the top podium and bend over and receive the gold medal. There's just honor in all of that. A Twisted Aspect Now, there are twisted aspects of this. Our love of honor can be perverted. It can be twisted and it all started with Satan's love of his own honor recorded for us, the primordial movement in Heaven, recorded I think in Isaiah 14, where he said, "I will ascend to Heaven. I will raise my throne above the stars of God… I will make myself like the most high." And then his servants, human servants, followed in his footsteps with the same mentality. We see it again and again in Scripture, but my mind was led this morning to Genesis 11, the men of the Tower of Babel, who said, "Come let us build ourselves a city with a tower in it that reaches up to the Heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves." The culmination of this twisted wicked self-focused love of honor, we see in Satan's temptation of Jesus in the desert where he says to Jesus, "If you are the son of God, tell these stones to become bread." But then just minutes later, he shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and their honor and splendor. And said, "I'll give all of this to you if you will bow down and worship me." Now, how in the world does a creature like Satan was... Creature is a created being, get to the point where he's saying to his Creator, "Fall down on the ground and worship me." So that's the twisted, sick aspect of love, of honor or ambition, would be another way to talk about it. Thomas Brooks, the puritan said this, "Ambition is a gilded misery, a secret poison. Ambition is a hidden plague, the engineer of deceit, the mother of hypocrisy, the parent of envy, the original vice of the angels, and of Adam and Eve. Ambition is the destroyer of virtue, the blinder of hearts. High seats are never but uneasy, and every crown is stuffed with thorns." A Holy Love of Honor Well, that's Thomas Brooks, the puritan talking about ambition. So one would think that all ambition is evil, all love of glory or love of honor is corrupt, but not so. The apostle Paul used the word, translated ambition, three times in his writing. The original Greek is literally, "love of honor." In Romans 15 he said, "It's always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not named so I would not be building on someone else's foundation rather as it is written. 'Those who were not told about him will hear and those who have not heard will understand.'" The overwhelming ambition of Paul's apostolic life, and ministry was to preach the Gospel in uncharted territories. The word literally is love of honor. "I wanted the honor of doing it." That's what Paul's saying. But then you get a different use of the word in 1 Thessalonians 4:11, where he writes to Thessalonian believers, very average brothers and sisters in Christ, who are not called on to be frontier, trail blazing apostles to the gentiles, but just to lead normal lives, he uses the same word, "Make it your ambition, [have the love of the honor] of leading a quiet life, minding your own business, and working hard with your own hands so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and you won't be dependent on anybody." Same word, love of honor different calling though. Very different calling. And then the one that binds them all together, 2 Corinthians 5:9, Paul says, "So then whether we are at home or away from the body, we make it our aim, or we have the ambition, to please Christ." My ambition... I would love the honor of pleasing Christ every moment of my life. Love of honor. Now if the motive is that Christ will honor us for serving him and that Christ will be pleased with us in everything that we do, actually that motive is not evil, it is not twisted. I would say it's required. The alternative here is not live a life with no ambition at all. Too many people are doing that. We're surrounded by them every day. They seem to live for nothing. But instead that we would have a burning ambition and the apostle Paul is probably the best in church history to point the way on how to do that. What are the mindsets of servant hood? What are the mindsets that lead to a life that's going to be lavishly honored and praised by God? But I would say it's required and there are many texts behind this. For example, Hebrews 11:6, where it says, "Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists, and that He rewards those who diligently seek Him." In other words, if you diligently seek Him every day, He will reward you. And actually you can't please him if you don't think like that. Or again Romans 2:7-8, the Apostle Paul is describing in Romans 2, two different ways to live and this is what he says. In Romans 2:7-8, he says, "To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, to them He'll give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking, who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger." Those are just the two different ways to live in this world. So the Christian life is a life of people who by persistence in doing good work seek glory, honor, and immortality. Now, we're not seeking that God would be immortal. He already is. So therefore, it's immortality for us that we would live forever. That we would seek to live forever. So then the other two are self-referential as well. That we would seek to be glorious in Heaven, to shine like the sun, and that we would seek the honor that God will give to faithful servants. That's the way you should live your life. Now, I believe that we are still corrupted in our sin nature. We're still tempted toward vain glory. We're still tempted towards selfish ambition, and so we need to be very careful about this topic. But this is really how I see it. It really just has to do with the vertical axis and the horizontal. If your focus is continually vertical and you're saying at every moment, "All I want is to please and glorify and honor my heavenly Father," He will reward you and honor you. But if you are focused, horizontally and saying, "What I want is to please this audience, or that audience, the others. I want tens of thousands waiting for me outside of Paris, cheering me when I land my plane. I want a whole stadium of people cheering me when I finish my routine. I want the ticker tape parade where everyone sees that I'm the greatest physicist that has ever lived." Now that is the twisted and sick aspect. I'm not saying that any of those individuals did feel that. I don't know what Charles Lindberg thought when he was landing. I think he was straight exhausted, been awake for 55 hours and he just needed to get to a hotel room and go to bed. And I don't know what Dorothy Hamill or Peggy Fleming thought when they won the gold medal. I don't know. I don't know what Albert Einstein was thinking as he's driving down surrounded by a ticker tape swirling. I don't know. But my concerns with your hearts and mine, so we have to be careful. We have to be that, like Paul says of the true Jew, the one whose circumcision is not physical, but spiritual by the Holy Spirit. Such a person's praise is not from men, but from God. Praise from God? Is that... Yeah, that's what we're talking about today. That you, as a servant would live your whole life seeking to please your master so much so that he will say at the end of your life, not just once but many times and not just once, but for all eternity. "Well done, good and faithful servant." That's what we're talking about. I. Christ’s Servants: Stewards of the Mysteries of God And so Paul is our role model. Now, this is the first of three sermons in 1st Corinthians 4, that's going to set Paul up as a role model for us. And so we're going to look and sit at his feet, and we're going to just basically follow his example, so we desire to be faithful servants. We're going to walk through what it means to be a faithful servant of Christ and we're going to begin at verse 1, Paul servant... Sorry, Christ's servants are stewards of the mystery of God. Mysteries of God. Look at verse 1. "So then men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God." So the question in front of us in verse 1 is, how should people regard us? Now the us is not us first. We need to stay in the text. It's how should we regard Paul and the other apostles and the fellow servants of the word of God. That's what that word us means there. But then we're going to try to follow him and try to imitate his example as best we can. So how should people regard Paul? Paul here I think has been walking a tight rope. Remember the problem in 1 Corinthians 1 through 3 has been their overwhelming love for human agency, human servants and workers and all that. They love eloquence, they love gifts, and all that sort of stuff. And so, they were saying, "I follow Paul…I follow Apollos…I follow Cephas…" and all that kind of thing, and Paul's trying to strip that away, and he does it very vigorously in Chapter 3, where he says very plainly, verse 5, "What after all is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered, but God made it grow so neither he who plants, nor he who waters is anything, but only God who makes him grow." So if you take all that and boil it down, Paul is saying, "I am nothing. God is everything." But on the other hand, like I said, he's walking a tight rope. He has to go the other way and say, "Yes, but however, I am the apostle to the gentiles, and I am a conduit of God's truth and of the mysteries of God. And you need to not think too lowly of me either." So don't think too highly of me, I am just a servant, but don't think too lowly either and say, "I can't hear anything from Paul." So he's got to say, "Yes, but I've got a special role to play." And so he has to work against Satan's work to slander Paul and this is going on all the time. Paul was one of the most slandered people that's ever lived. And so they're saying like, "I can hear the word from Apollos and I can hear it from Peter, but I just can't hear it from Paul. I'm done with Paul." Paul's shut down. He's like, "Don't do that. You need to regard me properly. And how would you regard me? Well, you have to regard me, us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. That's how you should look at me." So he wants them to know that he is a servant, but he really isn't their servant. He is Christ's servant. He's answerable to Jesus. And not ultimately them. It's really important to understand that. Some churches I think need to understand this more than they do. Now, I thank God that FBC Durham is not one of them. I think this church has a very healthy esteem for elders and teachers of the Word and pastors and I'm grateful for that, but not every church does. There's some churches who treat their pastors like employees and though they may not say it, they say, "Look, we pay your salary. You're answerable to us." Paul would say, "Nothing could be further from the truth. I'm not answerable to you or to any human court at all. I am answerable to Christ who called me on the road to Damascus, who could have struck me dead on the road to the Damascus, but didn't. Instead now said, "Now get up and go into the city and you'll be told what you must do." I'm answerable to Him. My life is in his hands, my calling is I am Christ's servant." That's what he's saying. So people ought to regard us. That's how you ought to see us. Apostles, me, as would Paul say, the apostle, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God, we serve Christ. He is the master to whom we're going to give an account on Judgment Day. We're going to stand before Jesus and tell him everything that we did in the body, whether good or bad. We're going to talk to Jesus about that, 7 Corinthians 5:10. Not to you. So Christ is the master and we are faithful ministers of the Word and we have to answer to him. And ultimately, Paul says we are also stewards of the mysteries of God. Now, a steward is a servant in a household who manages the master's material possessions. The stuff that the steward manages doesn't belong to him. It's not his stuff. He is under the master managing his money, managing his kegs of wheat, barrels of wheat or of oil, olive oil or wine, whatever it is. He's managing but it's not his stuff. It belongs to the master. But he has to give an account for his management. He's going to give an account. Stewards of the Mysteries of God And he says, we are "stewards of the mysteries of God." Now we have sung some hymns this morning that have just melted my heart and I just wept, praise God for your gifts, just we're swimming in the mystery of the cross. How can we fully understand Almighty God dying for us? I mean, do we have the ability to plumb the depths of that mystery? Do we understand the mystery of the incarnation? Paul says, beyond all question the mystery of Godliness is great. He appeared in a body and was worshipped by angels. How do you figure that out? Christianity is a religion of mysteries. What that means is, things hidden in the mind of God, but then at the right time revealed and made known through the ministry of the Word. And so, there are mysteries that are unfolding in Christianity, things that we wouldn't know any other way, and they focus on Christ. In Christ are hidden all the mysteries of wisdom and knowledge. All of it's wrapped up in Him. Christ in us, the hope of glory is called a mystery. There are mysteries about the future that we don't fully understand, like Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, "Behold I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed." So there is a future generation of people who will not die physically, they'll be alive when Jesus returns at the second coming of Christ. But they will be transformed, because flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, and so they have to have resurrection bodies. That's all a mystery. We are stewards of these mysteries, the mysteries of God. The greatest mystery of all is, what's this all about, what's the purpose of all of this? He says in Ephesians 1:9-10, "And he made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He first purposed in Christ to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment, that's the end of everything, to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head even Christ." That's a mystery, that's what this is all about. So these mysteries will take the rest of our lives and we still won't plumb the depths of them. Paul says, "You ought to see us as servants of Christ and stewards of these mysteries. So don't think too lightly or lowly of me, because you're going to miss some of the mysteries, you're going to miss some of the instruction. You need to stay under my teaching as I continue to be a faithful steward of the mysteries of God." II. Christ’s Servants’ Requirement: Faithfulness Secondly, Christ servants requirements is faithfulness. What do we... What does Christ want out of us? Faithfulness. Look at Verse 2, "Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful," that's all that Christ wants of his servants, faithfulness, faithfulness. I'm going to set you up each of you, my sons and daughters, I'm going to set you up in a ministry, in a life and it's going to be in some ways very common and similar to others, but in some way unique to you, tailor-made for you. I'm going to set you up in a calling, and I want one thing from you, be faithful to what I gave you to do. Be faithful. If you're a husband, be faithful, be a faithful husband. If you're a wife, be a faithful wife. If you're a mother, be a faithful... Be faithful to being a mother. If you're a father, be faithful to being a father. If you're a pastor, be a faithful Shepherd. Be faithful to what I gave you to do. Faithfulness. Now for me, faithfulness, just means obedience, just do what I told you to do, you can't do any better than what Christ commanded you to do. This just destroys all worldly ambitions. There's so many ambitions that men and women have. It's like, I want this and I want that and I want to do great, it's like, you can't do any better than what Christ wants you to do. That's the highest calling you can ever have. I actually reject what Martin Lloyd-Jones and some others say, the highest calling is preaching the Word. I actually don't think that's true. The highest calling for any servant is what the master called you to do. There is no higher calling than that for you. So just be obedient. What that means is, you're a soldier, you're put at a post, stay at your post. Do what your commanding officer told you to do, and don't get lured by temptations toward treason or cowardice. Stay at your post, don't give yourself over and become a traitor, having been bought with gold and silver, worldliness. Don't become a traitor to Christ and don't be a coward when the bullets start flying, stay at your post and do what you're... Even if you have to die, that's what courageous soldiers do. Stay at your post, don't give yourself... Be faithful to what I've told you to do. Paul met this criteria in amazing ways. He said to King Agrippa, "So then King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision," "I did what Christ wanted me to do. Everywhere I go, I'm beaten up for the Gospel, and I'm still at my post, I'm still doing what Christ called me to do on the road to Damascus." What is Your Calling? So the question before all of us, just right in the middle of the sermon, I just want to apply this. How about you? What is your calling? What are your spiritual gifts? Where are you positioned? Are you being faithful? Are you being faithful? Now, you may be in a process of preparation, you may not really know what your spiritual gifts are, you might be a teenager, for example, you know Christ as your Lord and Savior, but you don't know what your spiritual gifts are yet. I understand that, there's a process, but you know... And it could be even beyond that. You still don't know, but in the end, what are you gifted, what are you called to do and are you being faithful to your calling? That's all that the Lord requires of us. III. Christ’s Servants’ Freedom: Concern Over Human Judgments Now, Paul's clarity on this, frees him up entirely from human evaluation. It brings us to point 3, Christ servant's freedom is concerned over human judgments. This is a very bold Verse, I love it. 1 Corinthians 4:3, Paul says this, "I care very little if I'm judged by you or by any human court." There are a lot of ways I could rephrase that. I'll try to be careful, not give him an attitude he really didn't have, but "I don't give a flip what you think about me." We are at that point now, I really don't care. The funny thing is, he clearly does care in other ways, but he doesn't care like we think he cares. He writes basically, almost all of 2 Corinthians to defend himself and his ministry against the super Apostles, so he does care very much what they think about him, but not in the way you and I, through our ego-maniacal ways would, not like that. He says, "I care what you think about me in that I want to be certain you can continue to receive the Word of God from me." But in an ultimate sort of sense, I have seen the resurrected glorified Jesus. I've seen Christ. I know I deserve to die on the road to Damascus. Paul wrote the words, "If anyone destroys God's church, God will destroy him." "I deserve to die. So my death sentence is a suspended sentence and I'm walking under that and I realize that my life, for the rest of my life, isn't mine anymore. It was bought with a price. I am a servant of the king. So putting it a little more gently, I care very little what you think about me, and frankly, I care very little what any human being thinks about me." It's a very powerful thing. Because we are so dominated by concern about other people's opinions. I remember watching years and years ago, one of my first children was a little baby getting a little bit older, starting to be aware of other human beings did something that everyone in the room thought was funny. And he liked that so much, he did it again and again and again until it wasn't funny anymore, alright? But I was just thinking about that feedback loop from infancy, how we care about facial expressions and expressions of pleasure. And I like you and I'm happy with what you're doing. And then we become addicted to that. And we have to have that severed in some very vigorous ways in order to serve Christ as faithfully as we can. So Paul says, "I care very little if I'm judged by you or by any human court." Now, no one was in my opinion, I don't know anybody in church history that was arraigned before more human courts than the Apostle Paul. I mean, it's almost like the last third of the Book of Acts it is court trial after court trial, after court trial. That's just Paul on trial. So he knew what it was like to be arraigned before human tribunals. But he said, "I'm actually freed up. I'm freed up from what they think, I'm freed up from what Agrippa thinks about me, or Herod thinks about me. I'm freed up from what any of the Romans think about me. I'm freed up from what the Emperor Nero thinks about me, I'm freed up from that. And I'm freed up Corinthians from what you think about me. I care very little. It's a light thing." Their judgment of him will mean literally zero on Judgment Day. Do you understand that? Literally nothing. What anybody thinks of you, any other human being will vanish into nothingness when you stand before Christ. As Paul wrote in Romans 8:31, "If God is for us, who can be against us?" Or you could it say this way, "If God is for us, who cares who's against us." Or "If God is for us, what does it matter what anybody is either for or against us?" None of it matters. All that matters is God is for us. But so, also, when it comes to evaluation, all that matters is what God, what Christ thinks about us. Even Our Conscience Cannot Vindicate Us And you know, it's interesting, Paul here includes himself in this. He says, "I don't even judge myself." "I don't even evaluate my own life in ministry. My own evaluation of my life, my deeds, the seeds I planted, the harvest that came from it, I don't know." Frankly God hides most of our fruitfulness from us. We are called on to broadcast seed sow, and just sowing and sowing and sowing, and sowing. We don't know. I have no idea how fruitful I've been. And I'm pretty convinced God doesn't want me to know, because I'm pretty convinced that I can't handle it if it's good. If I find out, I've been incredibly used by God, I will become an egomaniac, and none of you will want to be around me. So God does a lot of things to humble me, and he does a lot of things to humble you. Now I believe in heaven we'll be able to handle the truth and we will see our full harvest of righteousness then. But it won't matter at all, what any human audience thought or what I thought about myself. All that will matter is what Christ thought about me. Now he says, "My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent." Do you realize how important a statement that is? Hey, I have a clear conscience. I have a clear conscience. People say that. I have a clear conscience, as though that's the final word. Friends, it isn't. Your opinion about yourself is not the final word on you. Christ's word is the final word on you. And so, just because you have a clear conscience doesn't mean you're innocent. Now, don't go too far. Conscience is important, it's part of the original equipment that God gave us in the image of God. It's that internal part of you that presses you to do right and not do wrong, and then evaluates you after the fact of whether it thinks you did right or wrong. And it's a good thing. And so Paul says, "there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked, so I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man." It is a very good thing to have a clear conscience. It's not a bad thing. As a matter of fact, as a Christian, I can say, I think almost 100% of the time, if you violate your conscience, you have sinned. So don't violate your conscience, don't do something your conscience tells you not to do. Now, if you press me and say, "Pastor, what's the difference between the voice of conscience and the voice of the Holy Spirit?" I'll say, "Let's have a long discussion over coffee. I don't know that I can tell the difference. But I do know that our conscience can be corrupted and hardened, but then it can be healed and redeemed, and the Holy Spirit can use it. So Paul mentions it positively. All he's saying is, his clear conscience is not the final word on his life. Christ's evaluation is all that matters. IV. Christ’s Servants’ Judgment: Secrets Exposed, Rewards Given Fourthly, Christ servant's judgment secrets exposed, rewards given. Look at verse 5, "Therefore, judge nothing before the appointed time. Wait till the Lord comes, He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of people's hearts." Well, since human judgments mean nothing, he's saying to them, "Stop evaluating my ministry. Stop weighing it." Now listen, it is essential that Paul be proven as a faithful minister of the Word of God, that's essential. And all congregations should evaluate their teachers, their pastors, their elders continually in some sense. Because it is possible that elders, pastors, teachers of the Word can be wolves in sheep's clothing. But keep in mind, Jesus said, "By their fruit, you will recognize them." He taught that you would be able to identify wolf-ish behavior and be able to see the snarling teeth under the sheep clothing. So it is important to evaluate the teachers of the Word, and also Luke in Acts 17:11 talked about the Bereans, you remember the Bereans? He said, "Now the Bereans were more noble-minded than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness, and then examined the scriptures daily to see if what Paul said was true." Let me ask you a question, do you think I'm going to be offended if I find out that you guys went home today and read over 1 Corinthians 4:1-5, to see if what I said was true? No, please do it. Please go back over the Scripture and see if what I said is true, see if this is what Paul is teaching about how a faithful servant of Christ should be. If on some point you think differently, let's talk about it, etcetera. But that's exactly what Bereans should do. But once you've settled, if the pastors are faithfully expositing the Word of God and are faithfully teaching the Word of God, then be thankful for them. And keep receiving the Word from them. That's what Paul's zealous about here. However, ultimately only Judgment Day when Christ returns will we be able to see the final truth. Like was said of George Whitfield, he said he wanted this in this tomb, here lies George Whitfield, what sort of man he was that day will reveal. In other words, that's all there needs to be said about George Whitfield. At the second coming of Christ, wait till the Lord comes, and on that day, everyone's works are going to be tested, and there'll be gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay and straw, there's going to be all of that, all of that will be revealed on that day. Final analysis. The Lord alone then can read the human heart. Christ is going to lay bare all of our hearts, he's going to lay bare our motives, why we did what we did. Some people, we will find serve the Lord from pure motives, as much as sinners can ever do that, love for God vertically, love for others horizontally as best as we can do it, never perfect. Our works all need to be purified. But the motives, why we did what we did will be laid bare. Jesus said to the church in Revelation 2:23, "I am He who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds." So he's going to test our motives. Why we did what we did? And our works, what we did? So the Psalmist says in Psalm 1:39, "O Lord, You have searched me and You know me." I think one of the best things we can do as servants of Christ to say, at the end of the Psalm, "O Lord, search me and know me. Try me, and test me and show me myself, and see if there's any hurtful way in me, any unrighteous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." Psalm 139:23-24, do that. Just say, "Oh God search me, give me a fore taste of that judgment, so I can do a course correction." V. Christ’s Servants’ Reward: Praise from God Christ servant's reward ultimately is praise from God. Now, we come full circle to where I began. 1 Corinthians 4:5 is, in my opinion, one of the most important Verses in the Bible on rewards. If you were to ask me, what are the rewards, what are we getting? I want to boil it down to these three words, in one of the translations. Praise from God. ESV has commendation, that's fine, but I just like simply praise from God, not praise for God, we'll be doing that for all eternity, giving God the praise, giving God the glory. No, this is something else, this is God praising us. And this is not in the sense of fall down and worship me, it's not that. It's the sense of a pleased father commending a beloved son, or daughter. This is good fathering, we'll talk about this at the end of the chapter. But Godly fathers commend their children and say, "Well done." And so Godly master say, "Well done, good and faithful servant." And I love the rest of that statement. Not so famous, but I've talked about it so many times. "Well done, good and faithful servant. You've been faithful of a few things. I'm going to put you in charge of many things, enter into the joy of your Master." That's the reward. Come, you and me, Father, Heavenly Father, and adopted son or daughter, let's the two of us share together the joy that I had over that particular good work. Let's have a relationship over the time you went into your room, closed the door and prayed to your Father as unseen and I will reward you with how much that pleased me. The time that you gave to the poor and needy, and no one knew what you did, no one knew what your right hand or your left hand was doing, you just did it to please me, I saw it, well done. Enter into my joy over that. That's the reward, praise from God. And my feeling is, this is the very thing that Jesus told you to store up in heaven. When he talked about your giving and your praying and your fasting, none of those things should be seen by others, to be praised by them. You should do them all vertically that God would see you and praise you and He will and then he said, "Do not store for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal, for where your treasure is there, your heart will be also. Store up, praise from God. Store it up, store it up, every day, store it up this afternoon. Store it up tonight, store it up tomorrow morning, that God would praise you, praise you, praise you, praise you for what you did. Such as, I'm pleased with you, I'm pleased with you, I'm pleased with you. So many Scriptures teach this. Paul says in Ephesians says to find out what pleases the Lord. Don't you think the implication is to do it. Find out what makes God pleased with you, and just for you to have a father-centered life, and say, "I just want everything I do to please you Father, all the time," and he will express it to you. And actually, Hebrews 11:6 says that you must believe that He will express it to you some day. VI. Applications Alright, so that's 1 Corinthians 4:1-5, let's apply it. Let me just start by speaking to you, who are as yet perhaps unbelievers. Maybe you're invited here today, maybe you came in off the street or maybe you've been coming to church for a long time, but you know that you're not a Christian. Here's the thing, the Bible makes it very plain in Romans Chapter 2, that we're either storing up praise from God or storing up wrath from God. One or the other. There's no third option. Every single day, if you're an unbeliever, you're storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. But here's the beauty of the Gospel, we've already sung it, we praise Jesus for this. God sent His son to stand under His righteous justice and wrath against you and take it from you on the cross, so that He, Jesus stands before you and says, "Give me all of your sin and guilt and I will absorb the wrath of God for that and you'll be free, there'll be no condemnation for you." And all you need to do for that is trust in Him. No good works will merit him doing that for you, He just offers that to you freely by grace through faith. So trust in Christ. And once you do that, once you trust in Him, you will immediately flip and start storing up treasure in Heaven, start storing up praise, praise from God in heaven. That's a whole different way to live. Secondly, let me just speak to you who are already redeemed. You came in here, you're believers, you've been listening, I just want to set before you an ambition. Just have an overwhelming ambition all the time. 2 Corinthians 5:9 tells us to please God every moment of your life. Don't live a flaccid, lazy, pleasure-seeking, indulgent kind of... I could keep going and will next week, American life that seeks a truce with the surrounding Christ-hating world and seeks a lazy, pleasure-seeking, sodded way of life that is so endemic here in the west. Let's not live like that. Let's instead live a life of ambition, a life of fiery ambition. I don't know, some of you might be like Paul called on to go overseas and preach the Gospel where Christ has never been named. There's still unreached people groups. Others of you may be more called like 1 Thessalonians 4:11 to lead a quiet life, mind your own business, work hard with your hands and live a glorious life. There's an honor in that too, but whatever God's calling you to do, live every moment, a life of ambition. I want to please my master every moment. In order to do that, finally I just would urge you more and more free yourself from care about what other people think about you. What difference does it make what your acquaintance in the cubicle over there or the person sitting next to you on the plane, or the neighbor diagonally across the street or your unsaved relative thinks about you? What difference does it make? If that's hindering you from sharing the Gospel with them, get over it. It doesn't matter what they think about you. Free yourself up and then say, "Lord," vertically, "All I want in each of these relationships is to please you," and God will give you power to share the Gospel with each of them. Close with me in prayer. Father, thank you for the Apostle Paul, thank you for the things that he taught us, thank you for the example that he is to us. And Father, I pray that you would please strengthen each of us, free us up from fanatical commitment to self. Free us up from caring too much what people think about us. Free us up O Lord, to do the river of good works that you have prepared in advance for us. Help this church to be on fire for Christ, to be on fire for souls, to see more and more people in the community and even to the ends of the earth, brought over into safety and salvation through faith in Christ. Strengthen us Lord, and fill us with your spirit. Thank you that you've loved us enough to tell us the truth in Jesus's name, Amen.

Maria and her BFF Missy have know each other since they were 11. Safe to say that Missy is an expert in all thing Maria and they are hilarious together. Missy used to be a social worker and she's now an all round momspiration, graphic designer and writer for East Texas Moms Blog.If you want an insight into the life of Maria, the self confessed 'cool nerd' then this is the episode for you. Seriously, it's hilarious, they are hilarious, we're all just hilarious!If you haven't heard the story of the Dorothy Hamill haircut then listen on. You won't regret it!

 As I think about the direction this podcast is going, I realize I want it to be more story driven and less Op/Ed. Sure, I like to put my thoughts out there as a little cud to chew for the readers and listeners, but I’m finding I get plenty of that on social media already and maybe this show ought to veer toward interesting stories. I’ll finish giving you the articles that are already written, even if they’re my opinions, but after that, it’s going to be all great stories. And that’s why I’m asking you up front to help me out a little by sending in your own stories - stuff you think would be interesting to tell to the whole world. So stick around at the end of the episode and I’ll tell you how to get those to me. Right now, though, I’m Michael Blackston and I’ve got a few things to tell you about my own Funny Messy Life.  ____________________  You’ll be able to tell right away that this first one was written a while back, but I thought it was an interesting piece, since it mentions an element of my life that happened at the same time my sister and I were building that dang float I told you about in episode 10 called, Sister Sister. It’s a peek into how crazy my life was at that time and why there was ...  No Sleep For Me  Here we are only a couple of weeks away from curtain and I can’t sleep one stupid wink. The little clock in the bottom right corner of my laptop says 2:50 am and just above it a tiny, bug-eyed paperclip stares back at me inside of his pink square. We, the paper clip and I, are the only people in the world not asleep right now.  Sleepless nights are nothing new to me. I go through a few days of mild insomnia about three or four times a year and I can usually deal with those. A little late night house cleaning and a few crosswords on the iPad while I wait for the Nyquil to kick in and I’m good. But there’s a unique thing that happens every now and then when sleep becomes a stranger and there’s only one good explanation for it - Showtime is approaching.  It’s called “Thespio-Insomnia”. Thespio – as in having to do with the dramatic arts, and Insomnia – as in you’d be willing to use those little black metal clips to clamp your eyelids closed while listening to a speech by Al Gore on the history of tax documentation if it’d promise just a little bit of sleep.  It’s a phenomenon I just made up that presents whenever I’m directing a live show and get to around two weeks from curtain. I’m sure it happens to others, too - actors preparing for their roles, Prop Masters who are in charge of making sure nobody touches the props in a show full of kids, - but as the Director of the program, it’s an all out war waged on the mind, body, and spirit in the middle of the night. It’s a cruel demon that pushes a crazy cart with a wobbly, squeaky wheel in my head all night long. That cart is spilling over with set designs, staging issues, cast problems, deadlines, and any number of other considerations that seemed to be simple on paper, but have become the stuff of nightmares as opening night gets closer.  A typical night in the worst of it goes like this:  I come home from a rehearsal, placing one exhausted foot in front of the other, zombie-like, toward the bathtub where lies the sweet promise of water hot enough to soothe my back and make my fingers look all wrinkly and gross.. My back wants it, my feet yearn for it, and my heart needs it. While I’m in the bath, the residue of the issues from the latest production might - I said Might - fade into the back of my mind and I’ll start to relax. For some insane reason, I’m fooled into a state of euphoria that tells me that upon my next move to the bedroom, I’ll find the sweet restoration of a good night’s sleep. I slide into the bed under blissfully crisp tubbins (Tubbins are my family’s word for covers and the explaination for that deserves its own piece) and I actually do fall asleep. Let’s say this happens around 11 pm.  At 11:15 pm my eyes fly open and every nuance of every problem with the show seems like a mountain that’ll be impossible to climb. I’m suddenly inundated with the madness of the cold, hard, truth. The lighting is nowhere near ready, the sound is anything but complete, the set is way behind schedule, the cast is waaaaayyyyyy behind schedule.  And we’re supposed to be off book by now … HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Crap, I forgot to mention that costume issue to them tonight! We don’t have all the props we need! I mean, where in the world am I supposed to get an 18th century bamboo pigmy lantern shaped like a monkey head?! (I knew I should have snagged that one I saw last year at that thrift store!)  So and so refuses to project. Such and such projects too much! AND WE OPEN IN TWO WEEKS!  Such is the life of the director of a show.  Every time I do one, I get to this point and I have to ask myself why I continue to be involved with such nonsense. I already know the answer because the answer never changes. It’s in the blood that courses through my veins. All the issues that need to be dealt with are nothing compared to the thrill of a stage awash in lights and an audience just barely able to be seen beyond them. It’s the craft as a whole thing - it can’t be sectioned off in pros and cons, you savage! And it’s the end game. It’s a performance that pleases the crowd.  But this particular show is a bit different from the stuff I normally direct. Months ago I mentioned the inclination to put together a Christmas production as a thank you to the theatre and the city for all the hard work and expenditures that had gone into a major remodel and renovation that broadened our local theatrical capabilities. The idea for the show was accepted and scheduled and I’ve been excited to bring it together.  In my mind, it should’ve hardly been stressful at all. It was to be a concert style affair. That meant that no real staging or blocking needed to be done. The set would be quaint, but minimal, using the brand new fancy pants lighting they just installed to set the mood and three simple microphone stands placed across the stage. The cast was hand-selected - not auditioned - and rehearsals would be a cinch.  I thought I’d be spared the interruptions in my sleep patterns, but I was wrong, Jack! I've got to face some things about the show and they ain’t pretty. There’s stuff to be done and I mean quick.  A couple of nights ago, the same old drunk demon got behind the wheel of the crazy cart in my head and started screeching down the nightmare road. Sleep became unsettled and tonight is worse. I’m wide awake. The actual times were: To bed and finally asleep at 1 am. Jolted awake at 2:30.  And it always starts the same way.  “Be GONE, demon,” I command.  The nasty little imp just laughs and wheezes and weaves his cart with the funky wheel over the center line. He’s singing a really bad version of For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow. So not only is he drunk and singing way off-key, but he’s also WRONG!  “Be gone in the name of JESUS!” I mentally shout and in reality just angrily flop over in the bed, my jaw set in defiance, or more accurately, a pouty face. But since this isn’t really a demon, just my mind being an idiot, it laughs even harder and starts singing an off-key version of How Are Things In Glocca Morra from Finian’s Rainbow with a bad Irish accent. At least now it’s a showtune.  Next I resort to pleading.  “Plu-huh-huh-heeeze let me sleep and stop thinking about all the theatre-y stuff. Give me rest and dreams about chocolate cookies and the white kitty from CATS!” (I think her name’s Victoria. Yes, my wife knows she’s my favorite kitty.)  Now the inebriated incubus stops the cart and has gone quiet, but only just long enough to make me think he’s giving up at last, only to suddenly sing louder and more off-key in an even worse caricature of an Irishman. Same show, different song.  “Look, look, look to th’rainbow!”  Come to think of it, this just might all be the details from a dream I had after eating too much taco pie right before bed one night. Seems like a too-much-taco-pie dream. And I’m also starting to think the demon is really just the little guy from the Lucky Charms commercials.  Anyway, it ought to be an interesting day. I have a CD of the performance music to finalize, a large sign to paint for the parade float that’ll help promote the show, a script to write for what little narration we’ll have, a lighting plan to put into place, emails with update info to send to the cast, an audio recording project to work on, and several other things I can’t remember now but that will, I’m sure, pop happily into my head around 2 am tomorrow morning with the distinctive voice of a leprechaun. In other words, plenty of wine to keep that evil demon drunk while he kicks his heels and pushes the crazy cart down the windy road of my brain.  The good news is that I can usually function okay on days like the coming one will be. And I do have the option of a nap this afternoon if I need one.  But odds are that I’ll start going down the list, feverishly trying to get as much done as I can before I’m off on a business trip that’ll be the cause of me missing an entire week of rehearsal.  I can do this as surely as I’ve done it so many times before on a much larger scale. And I wonder how much fun it would really be if we got to the end and I thought to myself, “Well, that wasn’t a difficult process at all.” I think I’d probably feel like something was missing because there’s nothing like a job well done when the work’s been hard.  I have the coffee pot ready to brew, but I won’t push the button just yet. I think there’s something in the bible about not brewing the morning’s coffee before 6 am.  I hear my daughter in the other room calling for her juice, so I think I’ll check in and see if I can be of any assistance to my wife, you know, since I’m up and all.  Why do I do this to myself?  Because I love it, that’s why. ____________________________________  We’ve all had those days when we really want to get going, but stuff - call it lack of focus, not awake enough, being a moron, whatever - keeps making us spin our wheels in the mud. My wife will tell you how angry I get when that happens, so I thought I’d try to put a comical spin on one of those times when ...  I Just Wanted To Leave  I’ve been so busy lately that I nearly forgot to put this episode together. For a plan-your-work / work-your-plan type of person like me, that can be stressful. It had to be done, though, because there were other things that took priority over the podcast - things that revolve around the care of my family and things that create income for said family. Mama raised me right; God and family come first, then income, then peripheral stuff like blogging, podcasting, or the Punkin Chunkin’ World Championships.  What are the Punkin Chunkin’ World Championships? I don’t have time to tell you. There are other things that take priority over that, but the name ought to be enough to get you close anyway.  I will say that some things are negotiable in the priority chain of command based on their monetary values, but no price can be placed on the family portion – no price.  You can make me an offer and we’ll see, but it’s probably not gonna happen.  Make me an offer.  JUST KIDDIN’! Calm down, you! Save your anger for a post called maybe, Is It Possible To Sell Out Your Family And NOT Go To Hell?. The answer, by the way, is a resounding “no.”  My hobbies aren’t the only things that have suffered due to my mind being occupied by other stuff and I think that adult readers will relate to the morning I’ve had. First, for the past few days, I’ve been hosting an abnoxiously angry tooth. It’s one of the molars in the back. I mean, I wouldn’t say it’s exactly PO’d. I’ve dealt with angrier teeth. But this one has definitely got its dander up.  Aside from the tooth, there’s also been a ceremony or a concert or a party of some sort my son has had to be a part of on several nights for the last two weeks. We're also preparing a trip to Disney World. I have a very young daughter – enough said, and a teenage son.  Due to all of this on my mind and more that I won’t mention because getting to the point is a priority, I had a hard time getting out of the house this morning.  It started in a fashion common to adults, especially those stepping out into their Monday morning commute, but I was trying to keep from waking everybody in the house. I’ll try to give an accurate account while leaving out a few of the details that aren’t a priority.  My wife woke me in the middle of the night by asking a simple question.  “What time did you set your alarm for?”  She knew that I had to be in Clinton, NC to meet a client at 9:30 am and the drive is 5 hours, not counting the necessary stops to pee, fill up the gas tank, and, depending upon whether or not the light was on, hit the drive thru at the Krispy Kreme. The problem was not as much her question as it was the way I, in a dream state, interpreted it. In reality, it was a simple question born of a much more tolerable situation I was yet to understand. In my mind, however, I assumed I must have slept right through the alarm into Thursday and would have some “splainin’ to do.”  My heart leapt from my chest and I told her my alarm was set for 3:45 am. Then I added, “What time is it?!” in a tone that suggested it might be opening day of college football season and I had missed a kickoff.  “Calm down,” she said. “It’s only midnight, but the power is off. I’ll set my phone alarm for you.”  Whew.  Now I could go back to sleep, only with a tinge of anxiety playing a bad rendition of, If I could Turn Back Time, on an out of tune accordion in my head.  When the alarm woke me at precisely 3:45, I hopped out of bed like I normally do the morning of a commute and into the bathroom. One flushing of the toilet and a few sounds I made previous to that, and I was ready to get dressed, but I couldn’t find my shoes. Where were my shoes? I’d put them right there! I could explain where right there was, but … priorities.  I found my shoes under three baby dolls and a magna doodle and, after putting them on, kissed my wife and my daughter, who was sleeping beside her, on the cheeks. The face cheeks.  I typically give myself about 15 minutes before the time I actually need to leave to get everything together and get out of the house, but today I needed more than that.  I started to grab the stuff I put in my pockets on a daily basis, but realized everything was fuzzy. I’d forgotten to put in my contacts. I tiptoed back through the bedroom to the bathroom, opened the case, and began wrenching my right eyelid open wide enough to jam a plastic disc on it. I closed the lens case and trotted myself back out of the bedroom, stopping for one more kiss on each of the ladies in the room’s cheeks. The face cheeks.  Now I could leave. I packed up my computer, which I had almost walked out without, and went outside.  Stuff was still blurry. I had only put in one contact and that just wouldn't cut it. I had to unlock the front door and go back into the house to remedy that. Once I could see, it was back out the front door.  My phone. I forgot my phone.  Unlocking the door, I went back inside and slipped into the bedroom to retrieve it from the nightstand beside my bed. I took that moment to wonder why I didn’t just set my own phone alarm, but whatever. I kissed the ladies on the cheeks once more for good measure. Face cheek … at least on one of them. My daughter had turned onto her stomach and twisted upside down in the bed and I got the wrong set of cheeks. It was dark.  I went through the door at the front of the house and exited toward the car, noticing it was quite chillier than it should have been in mid-May. That’s when it occurred to me that I had not grabbed my pocket stuff from the top of the microwave. I unlocked the front door and entered the house again, found myself greeted by two cats who I could swear were calling me an idiot with their eyes, and went to grab my pocket stuff.  Problem. No pockets.  I’d forgotten pants.  I needed to be wearing pants and I was not wearing pants.  Pants are a priority.  I performed a pantsless prance back into the bedroom and put on some jeans, almost got another set of kisses but thought better of it, and left the house for the final time.  Ten miles down the road, I couldn’t find my phone, even though I knew I had put it right there, and decided I had to turn around. It only took a mile heading back in the direction of the house before I found it in the little cup under the door handle.  It’s important to keep your priorities in order and try not to get so overwhelmed with everything you’ve got to do that you forget to wear pants.  And now that I think of it, I hope Walmart’s having a sale on underwear. *Some of the details in this narrative are true and some have been exaggerated for comic effect. I would tell you which are which, but … y’know … priorities. ___________________________________  Life is fleeting and can be interrupted at any time without the courtesy of checking with you first to see if it’s alright. I found out the hard way that a car is hard to control once it starts doing things that aren’t covered in the driver’s manual and all you can do is hang on for the ride. That’s the theme of this last story. I’m going to give you a behind-the-scenes look into ...  My Wreck  A vehicle accident will make you do some thinking. There was me on the interstate, a car that wasn’t built for water sports, and as luck would have it, enough rain falling all of a sudden that when it was all over and the trooper was done taking notes, My Hyundai Elantra was presented with a bronze medal for the backstroke.  Once the rain got bad enough, I decided that pulling over to wait it out would be the best course of action. I was unaware that my car was also a competitive figure skater, complete with those sweet spins and whatnot, and had made a decision without consulting me to try one out at that precise moment. One will not usually win an argument of wills with an automobile unless they are a demigod with an awesome hammer or were created from clay by Zeus. In that light, anyone with a basic working knowledge of physics will understand that I was to be on a carnival ride for a few seconds and completely at the mercy of the mighty Elantra.  She fishtailed left to start the routine, then balanced the act by switching direction and going into a full Dorothy Hamill spin toward the embankment.  Unfortunately, she was not a professional and needed a lot more practice because she pitched backward down that steep embankment and came to rest with a crash at the direct center of the trunk into a tree. I was not amused.  “Don’t do that again,” I told my Elantra with the same voice I use when I tell my son to quit smacking his food, but there was no reply. She was dead.  It occurred to me that I’ve taken some things for granted while I driving in the past and I’ve re-evaluated my commitment when it comes to some of them.  For instance, from now on, I will:   Wait to stop before completely changing clothes. Ever put on pants at 60 miles an hour?  Not apply eye liner or any other makeup while actively driving. Yes, I am a manly man (no comment from those who would comment) and yet, I have done that. I do stage shows and sometimes I run late for dress rehearsal. Speaking of shows, I will …  Only sing YouTube showtunes with songs I know the lyrics to. Googling the lyrics and reading them as you sing and drive is just as bad as texting while driving. Maybe worse.  Keep my eyes open while driving and singing YouTube showtunes. But them passionate “in-character” ballads, though.  No longer completely organize the interior of my automobile at a high rate of speed. (Okay, ANY rate of speed) I realize now that the trunk can wait.  Not play “Peep-Eye” with babies, cute dogs, or old people in the cars next to me. Peep-Eye requires both hands to be effective. Driving requires at least one hand on the wheel or at least a knee.  Not extend any individual fingers to anyone for more than three seconds. While it may seem necessary to emote in such fashion for an extended period of time to insure that communication is properly received by your intended, more than three seconds may incite loss of motor control. And also, Jesus is watching.  Forego counting and rolling coins above 50 miles an hour. A five dollar roll of dimes just ain’t worth crashing over. Probably.  I’m sure I’ll uncover more dangerous activity on my part while I drive that I never realized I was practicing. Until then, I’ll be making sure this new vehicle is better rehearsed with that camel spin.  It’s definitely a female. I’m calling her LaFawnda after the woman in Napoleon Dynamite. She’s a Mazda 5 minivan, buster and you better respect! She may be unassuming, but like LaFawnda, she’s got sass.  She’s also got junk in the trunk, but that’s just me being a slob.  Actually, I can’t call her LaFawnda. That character was a lady. My van stays dirty and sees the parking lot of a whole bunch of motels.  My van is a harlot, so I need to think of a harlot’s name.  Trixie? No. Too cliche. Dottie McGladbags? No.  I’ll think of it sooner or later, but for now, I need to focus on staying in between the lines while I drive and being super conscious of what’s going on around me.  Thank goodness Georgia recently passed the hands free act that makes it not only illegal to text and drive, but also to have anything in your hand while operating a motor vehicle, so I guess I ought to stop writing these scripts while I’m behind the wheel. I’m kidding. I joke - I’m a joker.  Joker ....  HARLEY QUINN! I’ll call my van Harley!  Nailed it. _________________________________  I’m looking forward to writing some fresh, new stories to add to the show and I can’t wait for you to hear them. They’ll be true, too - well - mostly. So until next episode, I’m Michael Blackston and you may now exit the ride. Watch your step and we’ll catch you next time for my Funny Messy Life.

Dorothy Hamill is a gold medal-winning Olympic figure skater who wowed America with her amazing moves on the ice "Hamill Camel" and her signature bobbed haircut became a style trend for thousands of women and young girls.  Dubbed by many as "America's Sweetheart", we talk about how she got started in ice skating, her time at the Olympics and the fame that followed.  We about her partnership with Nature's Bounty and how she's living a healthy lifestyle taking vitamins and her exercise routine.  She tells us how she wants to inspire others to live a healtly lifestyle.  We also get her picks for this year's Winter Olympic Skating competitions.

Two of the greatest figure skaters to ever grace Olympic ice explain why winning a gold medal was not the absolute triumph you might think. For both Hamill (’76) and Hamilton (’84), skating offered relief from painful childhood circumstances; when their Olympic dreams were reached, the future seemed suddenly uncertain. Listen to these stories, both heartbreaking and victorious, and you will never watch the Olympics the same way again.

Another huge Olympic Show with Ej and Lisa. Gold Medalist from the 1976 Olympics Dorothy Hamill comes on to talk about her Olympic experience and gets up close and personal with Lisa. Noelle Pikus-Pace took Silver in the Skeleton and she and Ej talk about her experience in Sochi and what's next in her life and how important being a Mom and her family was to her success. Finally, Ej and Lisa chat with the first ever Americans to win Gold in the Ice Dancing competition, Charlie White and Meryl Davis, and how being friends for so long has helped them be so successful. Thank you to Kelloggs and the Great Starts campaign for all the help in bringing all these special athletes to the show!

February 2014An interview with the legendary Dick Button. What hasn't he done? He's practically the father of our sport (if Jackson Haines were Grandfather). The two-time Olympic Gold medalist invented many of the jumps and spins we see today, and he invented figure skating commentary. He's a skater, producer, commentator, actor, truth-seeker, hall-of-famer, stirrer-upper, and figure skating's biggest fan. This first episode focuses on his new book Push Dick's Button, a fantastic book that is a really wonderful conversation on skating. 55 minutes, 50 seconds. [display_podcast] AM: Allison ManleyDB: Dick Button AM:  Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Manleywoman Skatecast. I'm your host, Allison Manley, and this is Episode 73, an interview with Dick Button. That's right!  You heard it, here it is! Any longtime fan of my podcast knows I have been chasing this interview for years. Years! And it only took writing a poem, some polite stalking, a pinch of begging, and quite a bit of persistence and tenacity — and let's face it, it doesn't hurt that he was trying to spread the word about his new book. All I know is that I'm thrilled to have been finally able to interview him. So, in case you don't know his many accomplishments, I'm going to list them off first. Here is the general overview of what Dick Button has done for this sport. He was the first skater to have won the men's novice, junior and senior titles in three consecutive years. He was the first skater to land a double axel. He was the first skater to land a triple jump, which was a triple loop, and the first male skater to perform a camel spin. And he was the inventor of the flying camel spin, also known as the Button camel. He's the only American to win the European title. He's the first American world champion, the first American to win the Olympic title in figure skating, the first and only American back-to-back champion. He is the first and only American skater to simultaneously hold all of the following titles: national, North American, European, World and Olympic. That's five. He's the youngest man to win the Olympic title in figure skating, at age 18, and it shocks me still that this record stands today. He is the winner of the Sullivan Award. In the 1960s he began doing television commentary, and has been gracing our television sets for decades since. He was inducted into the World Skating Hall of Fame in 1976, which was the initial class. He won an Emmy Award in 1981 for outstanding sports personality/analyst. He was a producer of skating shows including The Superstars, which was the first of the reality shows. He starred in movies and on television, and on the stage. The autobiography he wrote in 1955 is a fount of knowledge, and is incredibly well written. I highly recommend that you all find a copy and give it a read. And, of course, he is the author very recently of Push Dick's Button, a fantastic book that is a really wonderful conversation on skating. Dick and I decided to do this interview in two parts. The first will be focused on his book and all the ideas within. The second part will focus more on his career and life in skating, and will follow at a later date to be determined.  Anyone who knows my podcast knows that I've been dying to capture his voice on tape for the fans. So, ladies and gentlemen, may I present — Dick Button. ----- AM:  All right, Dick Button, are you ready? DB: I am. AM: So, thank you so much for your book. It's wonderful. I have to ask, why did you write it at this time? DB: And my question to you is, what do you mean by “at this time”? Are you saying that I'm a very old poop [laughs] and therefore don't have any understanding of what the hell is going on in today's world? Or are you asking it because it's been a long time since I have written? I wrote a book in 1952 or 1954, when I was a very young person, and then I did one other paperback kind of book a couple of years later. I don't understand the question “at this time”?  I mean, that does that mean? Am I missing something? AM: I guess it is curious that it has been such a long time. I do actually have the book from the 1950s, and I think it's interesting that the book that you chose to release now, rather than being a biography or an autobiography, is such a conversational book. So I suspect that you felt the need to have this conversation, so that's why I'm asking. Is skating frustrating you to the point where you felt like you had to tell these opinions? DB: I'll tell you what it really is. Number one, it was in the past exceedingly difficult for me to write. The advent of the computer and the lectures that I give on gardening introduced me to an entire new way to write. If you write on your computer, you can erase things, you can change things, you can move things around, and you don't have to rewrite painfully every single word. So the system and the ability to write was exceedingly pleasant. Then I also have a very good friend who had gotten me a major contract ten years ago, that was with Simon and Schuster, and I had a great opportunity to write a very good book at a very high-priced contract. And that was at the same time that I had gone skating on New Year's Eve, and fell and fractured my skull, and got concussions and lost the hearing in my left ear. And I also had a co-writer with me, and it didn't work. We just didn't work out. In other words, it was too much. I couldn't handle it at that time. It took me about two or three years to really get my act together and to recoup from that fall. So the important thing was, this same lady, who is a great friend of mine and who got me that contract, her name is Pat Eisemann-Logan — I finally said to her, Pat, what can I do for you? And she said, I'll tell you what you can do. I would like it if you would come and sit on the couch next to me and tell me what the heck is going on with what we are watching. So I sat down one day and I just wrote out a couple of things, a few chapters, and she said, yeah, that's terrific. And I love it because, number one, it doesn't have to be The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire of Skating. It is a simple conversation. Conversations are meant to be interrupted, to have answers, to have somebody kvetch about it. Conversations can range from any subject to any subject, and that's why I like the idea of this. I did not want to do a history of skating, which others have done before this, and I did not wish to do a biography. I think there's far too much more of great interest around the world of skating. I wanted to do what subjects came up to my mind, what it is to watch for at the Olympics, and most of the questions you've asked me about this are  all in that book. So it was a very pleasant experience for me, I enjoyed it no end, and I'm happy to have done it and done it the way I did. Although I will tell you that there are three books that you write and three skating programs that you skate and three pictures that you paint.  They are, number one, the book you plan, number two, the book you do, and number three, the book you wish you'd done [laughs]. So if you can put up with that, you're a good gal. AM: It does seem to have worked out that this is the book you wish you had done. You seem very pleased with it. DB: Oh, yes, but there's a lot of things that I . . .  listen, if I had started with all the things I made notes of, I would have had six more volumes [laughs]. I don't think so. AM: Well, I do love the fact that even though it's not biographical, that you have a lot of sprinklings of your history in there. I mean, I think that's a great addition to the opinion pieces that are in there, because there's definitely opinions in there as well. DB: Well, it's a conversation. It covers whatever's on your mind. The one chapter that many people have criticized, they say, we know what jumps are, you don't have to put a chapter in there saying the different jumps. But my doctor said to me, "Dick, my daughter skates and we all really like watching the skating, but I can't tell one jump from another, how can I do that?" And it annoyed him. So I put in this brief explanation, if you don't know what a jump is, there's three or four or five or six pages of it, and if you already know which jumps are which — skip over it! This is not the end of the world book. This is not the end of the world subject. It is a conversational piece. And I hope like the devil that people can figure out that they can learn something from it. Because I enjoyed very much doing it. AM: Well, great. And I do want to ask you some questions about it, obviously without giving away too much, because people should buy it and read it, of course [laughs]. DB: [laughs] Well, we don't have long enough on this conversation, so go ahead and spring your questions. AM: Well, one of the things you are concerned about is losing the theatrical part of skating. And I wonder, from a competitive standpoint, how you think it can be preserved. There are a lot of people trying to preserve it outside of competition, but in the competitive arena, what are your thoughts on that? DB: Let me also start out by saying that competition, the Olympic Games which we're about to start into in another day or two — they get the most audience. Figure skating and dancing, they're kissing cousins, and figure skaters have the opportunity to become instantly famous and household names. Dancers don't have that. So if a figure skater has that opportunity, and the Olympic competition is there, it's marvelous that they take part and do it. However, figure skating is a complete sport. It's a sport that has music, choreography, costuming, performance level, story level — it has so many different aspects that are intimately intertwined with each other. Figure skating is theatre, and I don't care who tells me that it's not. The head of the ISU, the head of the Olympic Committee, and a lot of guys get all honked about it and say it's not a sport. Well, don't watch it! If you think it's not a sport, don't watch it, and I couldn't care less. However, the point is very simply that it is all of these things. It is theatre, it always has been theatre, and it will always continue to be theatre. And that is the very reason that makes it so popular at the Olympic Games. Now the reason I'm saying this is, there's an old saying that Oleg Protopopov used to tell me all the time, and that was, “Deek! Deek! You cannot have artistry without technique. But neither can you have technique without artistry”. The old votes, the old judging system had two marks. They were for technical merit and for artistic impression. The new marks, in essence, if you really want to see what the icing on top of the cake is, the subterfuge of it all, is they have all the marks that you get on your point system first, and then they have the component scores. Have you ever read the component scores? AM: I have. DB: Then you know that they mix together choreography, step sequences, footwork, et cetera, et cetera, and they have something like 27 or 28 different criteria to figure and allot to a skater's program within about two seconds. That's almost an impossible thing. And also, you will never know what it's about because it's secret. All I'm saying is that yes, there are many other organizations — there's Disney on Ice and Stars on Ice and individual singles skating here and there, and there's ensemble skating with the Ice Theatre of New York, and there's synchronized skating, and there's all kind of things. But it's the theatrical performance level that mesmerizes us. I mean, why did we look at Katarina Witt? Not only was she sensational looking, but she had personality and pizzazz. Let me ask you a question. Why is Evgeni Plushenko such a hot subject? I'll tell you why. Because he has personality. He's a great jumper, not a great spinner. But he has personality. He has pizzazz. And you can't take your eyes off him, watching what he's going to do. He will bamboozle you with his wrist movements . . . AM: He'll make you think he's skating with those wrist movements [laughs]. DB: Of course, I've seen him do that half a dozen times. He stops and does a bunch of fancy wrist movements around his belt line, and that's supposed to be great theatrical skating or something. Let me tell you something. Who is it that you want to watch at this Olympic Games? Who is it they are looking forward to watching? AM: Jeremy Abbott and Jason Brown. DB: You mean you want to see the competition between them. AM: The competition between them, but I think both are so wonderful. They bring something so different. DB: Absolutely right. And so do half a dozen of these skaters. I think what you really want to see also is Davis and White and how they impact the show. And who do we remember out of the past? Come on, you remember the stars that had pizzazz, that had presence, that grabbed you. There's a whole chapter in my book there about entrances and exits, and it's all about the difference between an Irina Slutskaya entering the skating arena — the first thing she does is skate over to her coach, takes a swig of water, high fives her coach, and adjusts the pants on her dress. And the next thing she does is blow her nose. Now, come on, is that theatre? That's not a humdinger of an entrance. The point is that, how does Katarina Witt do it? She doesn't lose for one moment the presence, the theatre aspect of it. And the gal we remember most of those two has gotta be Katarina Witt. And that's why there's a chapter in the book called "Where Are You When We Need You, Katarina Witt?" And . . . what else can I tell you? [laughs] This is my favorite rant. AM: You're passionate and I love it. I love every minute of it. DB: Well, come on, you know, it's a fun activity. It's a very complicated activity. It has so many elements to it that you simply cannot avoid any one of them. And the level of performance is one of those characteristics. AM: Yes. Well, you are a vocal critic of the judging system, but I am curious because you have said that there are parts of it that you think are worth preserving. What parts would that be? DB: Well, for example, I think you should always have a markdown if you fall. Right now what we are seeing is — how many people fell in the last [2014] National Championship, both men and women, in the different parts. How many people fall down? AM: Not a lot this year, actually. DB: Well, Ashley Wagner, she did. But you're being rewarded if you do a quadruple jump and you fall down but you're rotated almost enough to complete the thing in the air. This is all part of Ottavio Cinquanta's desire to — if he had his way, he would not have any judges there at all, and it would all be based on points and timing. I would like the fact that there would be no reward at all for a fall. And a deduction if you fall down.  I write about this in my book, there was a communiqué from the ISU explaining what falls were. You don't know what a fall is, I don't know what a fall is, certainly. But this rule came out and then three months later, there was — I mean, the question was, what part of the body was the fall on, was it on your bottom, was it on your core, and if you were on your fanny, were you on one buttock or another buttock or were you on both buttocks [laughs]. And then along came three months later this explanation, this clarification, and then changes to the rule that explained what a fall was [laughs]. So you have to read all that to understand the sense of the nit-picking. Now listen, let me tell you something else, and I write about this in the book . I challenge you to count — take one of the ladies anywhere, not necessarily Ashley Wagner, but start with a young lady and start counting the number of times when they're doing step sequences and all of those wonderful things, where they raise either one or the other or both arms over the level of their shoulders. And if you start counting, my bet is that you will get to 20 very, very quickly, and then you can stop. They're like flailing windmills. That's exactly the point. That does not augur well, in my book. First of all, there's just gotta be less talk about it. Why do you have to have something that is exactly two minutes with so many seconds on either end of it? That isn't the way. You should have one program that is your technical program, and one program that is your creative or other program, but neither one should be acceptable or be able to be marked well unless it has the qualities of the other one. One should be of technical merit and one should be of — the old judging captions, artistic impression, they are in a sense that way now, they're just called something different, it's technical marks and the program components. AM: So I wonder, you do outline at the end of the book your wishes and suggestions for better scoring, and they do include that the two programs should be different and that there shouldn't be a time limit. DB: Put it this way, there should be a time limit, but a generous one. I mean, during the World Professional Championships, we recorded the length of time of every skater, and only once did somebody ever go over, I think, maybe four and a half or five minutes.  So if you have three and a half minutes or four minutes, a generous thing — what difference does it make? Why do you just have to limit yourself? This is just the one program, not the technical program, the artistic impression program. AM: Well, I'm curious, what do the powers that be think about your ideas? Have you gotten any feedback? DB: No, I don't have feedback, because they . . . Ottavio Cinquanta does not want any subjective judging there. Remember, he is a speed skater, and all he can see — number one, he has two goals to his agenda. And once you understand a man's agenda, you will understand what he will do. His agenda is to have, number one, to never have another scandal like we had in Salt Lake at the pairs skating competition. And number two, he's all for eliminating anything subjective about the sport. He would like it to be like speed skating. You get over the line first, you've won. Now that is not figure skating. And besides he's said it too many times, and he's the one who put the new rules system in. My chapters go into all of that and show the chicanery that was involved with it. And now because he [laughs] made a contractual offer and placed every officer in their position for an additional period of time, he will now remain as head of the ISU until the year 2016. It's a chapter in the book as well. AM: You have always been an advocate for great spinning. You've talked about Dorothy Hamill, Lucinda Ruh, Ronnie Robertson, so I have to wonder, that in the new judging system, it has to be nice that at least you see the spins getting rewarded even if you don't always love the positions. DB: Well, I find that the multiple levels — you know, everything that you look at, there's a grade of execution, there's a level of difficulty. If you add more moves and turns into your spin, you get more points. But nobody gets points for blurred spinning. Nobody gets points for the things that used to make the audience stand on their feet and cheer. Spinning is just as important as jumping, and it's one of the two major technical elements in skating, the other being jumping and then of course there's spinning. And when you see somebody moving from position to position and changing their edges, all that sort of thing, you're not looking at the spin. At least have one spin that reflects the total true quality of a fast, delayed, long lived spin, where everything counters on the centering and everything counters on the blurring of it and on the finishing of it. Look, I don't have to have everything that I like, it's what other people like too, but I will tell you, there's very little to cheer for when you get a 243.8 personal best score. That doesn't give the average person an understanding of what the heck the score is all about, except that somebody else can get 283.9. And I trust that was more than the first number I gave [laughs]. AM: Well, I've actually always wanted that. I've always wanted there to be at least one spin that was skaters' choice, if you will, that they could do just for choreographic effect. Just like they've finally done with the step sequences, where you can just do one that you don't have to do without so many turns and flailing and windmilling, but it's one that just works with the music. DB: Well, there's very little — you can't really create things that are unusual or unexpected or different and expect to get anywhere under the current judging system. AM: Well, you have of course mentioned before that the ISU needs to be split, that skating shouldn't be run by a speed skater any longer. It's going to be a while, of course, since Ottavio wrote his own contract . . . DB: Well, of course he did, and nobody stood up to him. Nobody was able to stand up to him because he has cultivated so many federations which are all speed skating federations which get their money from figure skating. So what do they care? Why would they care what the rules for figure skating are, any more than a figure skater would care less whether the speed skating race is another 50 meters or not?  That's up to the speed skaters to understand that. And the very fact that they — did you know that there are over 80 federations in the world of skating? AM: I didn't know there were that many. DB: Over 80, and most of them all — the majority either are speed skating or joint speed skating and figure skating. And they get money from figure skating, the ISU pays them money from figure skating. And the end result is that of course they're going to do what he wants. AM: Do you think there's anyone out there right now who can challenge him, who can be the next great leader, to separate the two? DB: I think probably everybody is scared beyond belief. You see, the impact of the Olympic Games is always the most publicized event, but I can guarantee you, even the world championships which are taking place after the Olympic Games, they're not going to be on live. They're going to be in about two weeks in a summary program on NBC. Now maybe there's some obscure cable system or Ice Network that will show them, but you have to buy that cable system. I'm sure there will be recordings of it. But [laughs] here's a world championship that will be coming up a month later than the Olympic Games. Wouldn't you think it should deserve — and it used to always be very much of a highlight. Now it's sloughed off and it's shown a week or two weeks later after the world championship is over. I don't like that. AM: I don't either. All right, well, let's move on from the judging and talk about which skaters for you right now are really exciting. You've mentioned Davis and White. DB: Well, look, let me tell you something. My book covers a point about to wilt or not to wilt. When you have somebody who simply does not wilt, that in itself is exciting. And many a time, those people that can rise to the occasion, and suddenly pull together a program that is phenomenal — it's what you want to see. I mean, I found myself rising out of my seat when Jason Brown performed, because he in a sense broke the rules. It will be very interesting to see how he fares in this international competition, when he has competition from not only Jeremy Abbott but from Chan, Plushenko, Denis Ten, Javier Fernandez, and the Japanese skaters. It'll be very interesting to see how he compares in that to them. Remember, the national championship is one where it's a single country. And there aren't countries that are vying to improve their lot because that's the way they get money from the ISU. It's a different situation. I hope like the devil that he does brilliantly. I find him a fascinating skater and I was entranced by the choreography. And the choreography was done by Rohene Ward. I remember talking to him a couple of years ago, saying, you are going to keep on skating, aren't you? And he said, no, I'm not. And I felt that was a great loss. I'm very happy now to see him back in force as a choreographer. AM: Yes. And I'm happy to see someone, that he has a student that can interpret that choreography so well. Because, you know, Rohene was a very unusual talent, and oddly enough Jason has a lot of the same qualities, with his extreme flexibility and his showmanship. DB: Wait a minute. Are you telling me that that flexibility can't be gained by other people? They can, if they would understand what that is and follow that. AM: No, but I think Rohene was very unusual for a male skater to be able to use it to choreographic effect. DB: Why as a male skater? AM: Well, because most men, if they could do the splits like that, they certainly wouldn't lower themselves on the ice and pull themselves back up and do a lot of — Johnny Weir could lift his leg all the way up before a lutz, too, just like Jason and Rohene can, but it is unusual. DB: Well, that's because they don't follow that either. If you look at the number of skaters among the ladies that – well, look, there's a totally developable way. Guys can learn. You see it in gymnastics, for heaven's sake, If they do it, why can't figure skaters? Look, this is called the development of the — right now, I can guarantee you there's very, very little of the component score voting for some of the stuff that Jason Brown did. He was marvelous in the fact that he did not open his program with the single most difficult jump that he could. I'm really fascinated to see how the international version of this will work out, the international competition coming up in the Olympic Games. AM: So you did mention that he is a bit of a rule breaker in that sense, and you have said in your book that rules are made to be broken. And you did use Torvill and Dean as a perfect example of that, of course, from 1984. Is there a rule that you see right now that you wish someone would break, or push a little more? DB: Yeah. If you look at the rules of the component scores, you will see that, number one, they include skating skills, transitions/linking footwork and movement, performance and execution, choreography, and composition. Now what is the difference between choreography and composition, and transitional and linking footwork and movement, et cetera? I mean, aren't these the same things? AM: To me they are. To me it's semantics. DB: That's right. And isn't it better to have a skater develop that through their own intelligence rather than having to control those step sequences through it? And the linking movement and the linking footwork? And the transitions and the linking movement? [laughs].There was a wonderful English lady who would always comment on English television, and she had a very high voice, and when it came out, linking movements, we were all happily amused [laughs]. AM: Well, that's a good challenge for the next person listening to this, to try to push those boundaries a little bit per Dick Button's request. All right. So, you have a chapter on music choices, and there are a lot of choices as you know that are constantly overused and that we are all tired of hearing about. So is there a piece of music that you have never gotten tired of hearing, that you feel is underutilized? DB: Look, these pieces of music are time-honored pieces of music. So if you look at, for example, Swan Lake, I still will go, when I go to the theatre in the winter time, I still will go to New York City and see Swan Lake. I mean, it doesn't stop any more than certain songs that you get tired of. It is the way they're developed, and I do a whole thing in this book on the development of music by the skater, and whether they understand what the music is saying. And when you pick a piece of music like Carmen or Swan Lake, it comes with over a hundred years — one comes with much more than a hundred years and one comes from close to a hundred years — of very fine history and development and interpretation. Are you telling me that because six skaters do it within a two-year period of time that you're tired of it? I find it's that the skater hasn't developed it. We're always seeing different interpretations of dance, and if you get tired of Swan Lake being done, then try to bring a great quality into it that makes it sing. Swan Lake is wonderful for skating because it has long sweeping movements. It is not Irish clog dancing or step dancing. AM: Well, I think if you're going to pick, and this is my opinion, but I think if you're going to pick one of the commonly used pieces, you better make it good and different and that's what I think — Samantha Cesario, I don't know if you saw her program, when she did it this year at Nationals I thought it was fantastic. And I am not a fan of using Carmen because I think that after Debi Thomas and Katarina Witt had the battle of the Carmens, you'd better leave Carmen pretty dead. You know? [laughs] DB: But one of the things is, you have to understand what the music is. I write about this in the book, and I talk about Mao Asada who is a lovely skater and a very nice person. But she had all the white feathers and all the music, et cetera, but there was no understanding of the movement of a swan in that. There was no understanding of the history of Swan Lake. I mean, you can't have a program that has been performed for more than one hundred years now, nearly one and a half centuries, in great companies with great choreography and great sweeping music, and not understand what that performance level is. You must understand the music, you must be able to — and there are different interpretations of the music, different orchestrations, there are many times different ones. Whatever the piece of music it is that you choose, you can find sometimes more than one interpretation, and unfortunately we don't hear about that on the commentary, I don't think. AM: Is there a piece of music you would like to hear more? DB: Look, that's like saying is there a great skater that I'd like to see more of. Always! Always.  I like great skating. That's all I'm saying, I like the best. And I want to be — it's theatre, it's athletic ability, it's competition, it's technical demands, it's music, it's choreography, it's costuming, it's the whole kit and caboodle. And I guarantee you, do you think they're going to cut out — I wouldn't be at all surprised, if Ottavio Cinquanta had his way, that he would make everybody wear the same costume for the team competition. AM: They were talking about that. One of the articles this week was talking about putting all the athletes in Nike outfits [laughs]. DB: Yeah, yeah, yeah, remind me of one event I don't want to see if that's the case [laughs]. Oh, gawd. If you have a great product, don't mess with it. Skating was a great product. Now we've messed with it so completely and for so long that it's very disheartening. Remember, you're not a member of the rules committee if you're not making rules. If you're a rule maker, you have to be making rules or otherwise you're not a rule maker. AM: [laughs] They got a little over-zealous. All right. Your commentary is epic. People still talk about it, they miss hearing you, your catchphrases have inspired a drinking game and compilations on YouTube. And you have gotten some heat for your comments such as “refrigerator break”. DB: I'd like to address that. What the heck, would it have been better if I had said, it will give you an opportunity to make a toilet break? I don't think so. A refrigerator break — you know, I think I got over 1100 letters from people saying that I had only said that, I wouldn't have said that if this, that, and the other thing. And I wrote each one of them back and I said, look, Angela Nikodinov was a very talented skater, but she was skating against Michelle Kwan, and there is no problem coming in second behind Michelle Kwan, but she was coming in fifth, fourth, second, third, fourth, that sort of thing, floating around. But what she allowed you to do was to lose your sense of concentration on her. That's where performance level comes in. She was a gorgeous, lovely skater, with wonderful technique and very, very beautiful on the ice. But she allowed you to lose your sense of concentration. She allowed you to switch off and take a refrigerator break. And after I answered that, I never heard anything more about it. AM: But she did listen to you, though. Because she came back amazing the next year. She made you pay attention. DB: [laughs] Well, that's my gold medal. My gold medal is when I hear, when I make a criticism of somebody and then I see later that they have either improved it or changed it. One of the things I always said about Evgeni Plushenko was, way back in 2002, I said, he's a wonderful jumper but he's a lousy spinner. And the next year, or two years, I was at a championship, and he said, how are my spins? Are they better? So he was listening, and he made it good. And his spins were better. And that's a great compliment to me, when somebody does that. AM: So how many skaters would you say have come up to you and talked to you about your comments about their performance? DB: Well, I had a lot of skaters say, can you point it out to me. One of them was Jason Dungjen and his partner, Kyoko Ina. Kyoko Ina had exquisite posture and stretch and arching of the back, and Jason was like a nice all-American skater without that same stretch. So when they did a pair move, hers was extended beautifully and his was not parallel to it. As soon as I pointed that out to him, he understood exactly what I was talking about, and I think they worked hard on it. So that was a great honor to me. That is my gold medal, my reward, when a skater will do that. And look, you really only criticize, I say this in the book, you really only criticize a skater if they're talented. If they're not talented, it doesn't spark comment. AM: Would you say the refrigerator break comment was the largest reaction you've gotten over the years from fans, or was there another one? DB: It was one of them. Another one of them was when I commented one time about, I think it was crossing the street in New York, and everybody said, oh, you wouldn't have said that if the skater that I was referring to wasn't black. And come on, I encourage my kids to cross the street, I say, stop and look in both directions, otherwise you'll get run over and then you'll look like a pancake on that road. It's about an awareness of your surroundings, and you've got to be aware of the surrounding effect in an arena. How many times do you see — go back and look at programs. That's why some day I would like to see a great media museum of skating. Because if you go back and you look at these performances and you consider them, then you will never forget that. And it will apply itself, it will be another basis for another understanding of what it is that you're doing. Every position you take on the ice should be thought out. You cannot just do these positions where you see the skater come out and they take their position and the free leg toe is pointed behind and to the side of the skating leg — you know, the kind of position you take where one foot is flat on the ice and the other is on a point behind you. Look at the number of times you see, what is the position of that foot? Is it turned under, or is it not in an elegant position? If you want to see proper position, look at Oleg and Ludmila Protopopov, and John Curry, and Janet Lynn, and Peggy Fleming. And Dorothy Hamill, who became an infinitely better skater after she had won the Olympics. I was a better skater after I had finally learned, long after I had retired, and learned from — there's a whole chapter in this, it's called "Open Your Eyes, Dummy." And it was my opening my eyes which led me finally to understand what the heck skating was all about. AM: Well, I would love it if we finally had a media museum with all those performances. DB: There is the museum in Colorado Springs, but it doesn't have any money. US Figure Skating is not really going to support it because they want to support skating today. But sometimes the education, the media education is imperative. AM: Yes. Well, I am hopeful that one day will come to fruition, that there will be a central place where all that is housed, and it's not just Youtube [laughs]. So, all right, your book, I sort of felt like as I was reading it, and this is sort of getting heavy here, I really felt that it was a metaphor for living a balanced and fulfilling life. It talks about centering yourself, breaking the rules, having a solid foundation, fighting the good fight, not wilting under pressure, and having a whole lot of fun. Do you view skating that way? DB: Yep. You know, skating is no different than gardening, than painting, than anything else. You know, I hope you'll come some day and see my garden lecture [laughs]. Then you can do a conversation on that for a different sport. But all of these things intertwine. Why do you dress the way you do? Why do you speak the way you do? Why do you live in a house, if you have the opportunity to live in a house, why do you choose the style of house you do? All of these are inherent in skating, and they are inherent in everything else. It is called not only what the eye beholds, it's what the eye registers. One of my pet peeves is watching skaters take position in the center of the ice, when they skate down and they're on one foot, and the other knee is bent. Time after time, you look at that particular entrance move on one foot, and it's not a beautiful move, but yet there is every skater doing it. What is that move, what is that position supposed to be? If you ask the skater, what are you trying to express by that, are you expressing a welcoming moment to the crowd? You don't have to be on one foot to do that. Take a look at it yourself, and I urge all your listeners to take a look at that, and take a look at the number of times an arm flings above the shoulder. And question each and every one. Peggy Fleming, always, I would see her in front of a mirror at a rink, constantly checking out the way she finished a turn or a pirouette, or made a turn, and how the dress worked with it. She was constantly looking at that. And you will find that she does not make a move even today without knowing exactly what that position is, whether she's on skates or not. Ludmila and Oleg Protopopov, and I talk about this in the book, I went up to Lake Placid where they were getting a lifetime achievement award, and of course the Lake Placid club or whoever it was didn't have any money for publicizing it, and it was an almost empty arena. However, the Protopopovs skated in it as if they were skating for the King and Queen of England. And Oleg took an opening position with Ludmila, and you take one look — without them moving one inch, they took a position, and I said, that's it, that's their whole performance right there in that position.  They were stunningly beautiful in that position. And they're well into their 70s, and there was the story, right there. My problem is, I can't look at skating — that's one of the sickening things with having watched it for so long, is that I've seen extraordinary performances, Belita Jepson-Turner, Noffke and Schubach, pairs skaters who were champions of the US in the 40s, the movement, their parallelism of their moves was extraordinary. They couldn't do throw axels and they couldn't know what triple side-by-side jumps were and so forth, but their pair skating quality was without compare. I mean, it was just extraordinary. All I'm asking the skaters to do, and everybody else to do, is to look at it, and say, why are we doing this? Each step, what is it supposed to do, and is it? Does it interpret the music and does it interpret — John Curry, we did a thing with Ice Theatre of New York, Dance on Camera, at Lincoln Centre over the weekend, and it was all about, it was a great deal of comment and production in the John Curry film of what he was teaching skaters and the way he was making them look at film. Slavka Kohout used to do that. She would take all her dancers in to see the ballet, or any other production that had dance movement in it. It wasn't about seeing it, it was about registering it. And that's the important thing. If there's only one thing I hope for in this book, with a little bit of tomfoolery that you don't get stuck into something serious, and, number two, that it opens your eyes. AM: I love that. All right, I just have one more question for you, then, since we are just days away from the Olympics. I am curious what you think about the new team event. DB: Oh, I don't really think much about it at all one way or the other. I think if they want to do it, that's fine. It gives a secondary skater a secondary choice, and it gives somebody who may not win a medal another chance to win a medal, and I'm fine with that. I don't have any great problem with it. You know, God bless them, what they're doing is trying to get another set of television exposure, and that produces money and blah blah blah. The one thing, though, that I did understand was that when the rules were not quite set in Budapest, at the European championships, the newspaper people were asking Ottavio Cinquanta what was the rule about such and such, and he said he didn't know. He said, you have to ask the Russians about that. Well, hello! Are the Russians the ones that are controlling the sport? I mean, the Russians are a hell of a good skaters, and very efficient, and they've got a wonderful team going, but are they the arbiters of our sport? That's my complaint. “I am a speed skater, I know nothing about figure skating.” AM: I know, it's incredible. Well, I agree with you that it's wonderful that there's another opportunity for skaters to get medals, because there's just been the one chance all these decades. But I also don't think that it was done for any reason other than ratings and money. I'm cynical enough for that. But I'm glad to see the skaters get another opportunity. DB: Right. But you've also got to remember that that's why figures are no longer with us. They didn't bring in any money, nobody watched them, they took a lot of time, they were expensive, and they didn't add anything to the income. So this is another one that adds to the income, and it really doesn't change anything. I'm sure they'll all do their same programs that they will do again. They're not going to create a new program now. They might for another year. AM: Maybe for the next round. But we'll see. To be determined [laughs]. Well, I am going to take you up on your offer and invite myself to one of your garden lectures someday. DB: [laughs]. All right. I just finished one at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and one at the Botanic Garden in Arizona, and I've done several in the New York area, in the New York and Connecticut area, and maybe there'll be one in the early spring or so in a nearby city to New York. So I'll let you know. AM: Please! And as we've discussed I'm hoping to come out and see you in a couple of weeks, and do another interview more about you. DB: Good. AM: And I hope that you'll let me come up and take a look at your fantastic art collection of skating art. DB: Oh, you're more than welcome. AM: I would love it. DB: You're more than welcome. You have a good one, my dear, and keep the faith. AM: You too. Enjoy the next couple of weeks of good television. DB: Thank you, ma'am.   AM: And there it is. I have finally had my dream of interviewing Dick Button. I can now die happy. I think. Although, as you heard, he did want to have another conversation later. So we will plan to do that. And until next time —May you be a pioneer with whatever you choose to do. May you be as opinionated and passionate about your life's work as Dick Button is about his life's work. And as he says in his new book Push Dick's Button, on page 46, and yes, I'm paraphrasing just a little bit: don't skate to Carmen. Bye-bye!

Four-time U.S. National Champion, Four-time World Champion and Olympic Gold Medalist Scott Hamilton is interviewed about his 13th Annual cancer Scott Hamilton & Friends fundraising ice and music spectacular at Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena; this year starring Five-Time Grammy Award winner Wynonna Judd and a skating cast of Olympic Gold Medal legends including Dorothy Hamill and Peggy Fleming. In studio guests include writer/director/producer/author Bruce Kimmel (The First Nudie Musical, Kritzerland Records, Out of the Box web series) who discusses his career and monthly Kritzerland concerts at Sterling’s Upstairs at The Federal in North Hollywood. Standup Comedian, TV, film and theatre actor Richard Tanner talks about the world premiere of his one-man show Small Parts at the Flight Theatre in Hollywood. Kimmel and Tanner share awkward career moments. Sponsored by Breakdown Services (http://www.breakdownexpress.com/)