I got back into skating fandom in 1999 after Scott Hamilton and Katarina Witt got together and brought a skating show to Anchorage Alaska. I got online, looked up all I could on the sport... and found a great friendship with several people on a little skating board called Skate Forum (one of the original skating centric boards that is now gone. I miss it.)
Anyway in a round about way I'm getting to the main topic of this rambling. I met "Binky" on skate forum on my first day, and she was so sweet and it wasn't long before we were IMing each other, emailing, and sharing random inside jokes on the board. One of our main topics that we had MANY inside jokes about was none other than Kurt Browning. Yes, I'm going to talk about him again. If you're shocked, well, I don't know how you could be.
Last night while I was converting old tapes to DVD I came across a competition where Evgeny Plushenko (you know, that Russian skater who's still P.O.ed that he wasn't just handed the gold medal in Torino.) skated to Nyah from the Mission Impossible soundtrack (you know, that movie with another stuck up celebrity as it's main character - ie Tom Cruise, he knows medicine better than Matt Lauer, cuz he reads books).
That got Binky all fired up as the ONLY skater allowed to skate to that music is, of course, Kurt Browning - who has a signature piece with that very music. It was choreographed by a dancer who is in the same Ballet Company as Browning's wife... and it's quite possibly the closest a skating routine will ever come to actual DANCE on the ice.
Thank you, Sonia Rodreguez-Browning for making your husband go to the gym and bulk up. In the words of my 'sister': Mmmmm. Shoulders. ;)
But this program is NOT the one I want to gush about... at least not tonight. No, tonight I do not want to talk about the Artist Browning... but the Playboy Browning. In his 'role' in SOI Kurt normally found himself as 'the playa' or playboy of the troupe. Most women (and some men) didn't complain, we'd take all we could get. One of Kurt's 'big break' numbers was to the song "Brickhouse". The show's costume designer, Jef Billings, went all Saturday Night Fever for the number putting Kurt in a flowing cut down to there polyester white shirt... with midnight blue SKIN TIGHT pleather pants. All the girls swooned and a professional star was born.
My brother used to know all of the choreography by heart and would 'skate it' on the kitchen floor in his socks. Duane absolutely ADORED Kurt growning up, and still considers him a sports hero (doesn't hurt that Kurt sent him a gift for his birthday in 2006 - no one is more genuine than Kurt).
But, still, that is not my most swoon worthy. No. A few years after the Brickhouse sensation (and a score of memorable numbers such as Serenade to Sonia, Summertime, and Antares... to name a few) came "Brickhouse 2" which was skated to "Play That Funky Music (White Boy)". It's teh first program I can remember drooling to. I was 13 or 14 at the time and had just - apparently - discovered what made all of the ladies on TV start screaming and swooning the minute Kurt took the ice.
There were those midnight blue pleather pants (but with a brown cut down to there polyester shirt). Oh. my. word. It's probably the most swoon worthy - for me - of all of his pieces (ok, swoon is not the word. Let's face it, when I watch this program I am in full out lust mode. Especially when the butt wiggle happens lol). He can play sweet, sassy, masculine... he can do it all... but he took it to a whole new level with Funky Music.
Oh... those... pants.
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