Michael Weiss: "Put [Nathan Chen] in a pair of Levis and a white T-shirt with fake tattoo arms!"

[WillyElliot]

I was really checked out on skating in the 02-06 quad, so I've never seen this program before. I'm totally loving it.

Shit, this is one of the WTF programs I've ever seen. The frosted tips and facial hair. The tight glorious costume. Those wooden gay march/vogue moves at the beginning. The flying camel salute. The Mike Pike orgasm. And of course, Lisa's outfit!

I've always had a problem with skaters' programs having an overtly patriotic or religious theme. It's so manipulative. But I do feel badly for him here. The choreography is embarrassingly childish, almost like it's deliberately tacky and all done tongue in cheek. And seriously, the "Mike Pike"??? Your basic forward shoot the duck that you see four year olds doing across every public rink in the country? At least someone was really impressed by it. Or was overcome with raw emotion due to Mike's heterosexuality! Some gurls just can't contain themselves! lol

But didn't Mike's son (was he Mikey Jr?) actually have chicken pox at Cleveland Nationals?? Probably not the smartest thing to put him in an arena with thousands of other people, where there were likely many immunosuppressed fans in the building. He was always up for a photo op to show off his straightness. Does anyone remember an up close and personal where he gave a tour of his house and when they got to the master bedroom he said something like "And THIS is where all the action happens!" Eek.

 

[tony]

KVDP wasn’t even attempting the triple axel - I think he had been injured over the summer. The real question is how KVDP even made it to the GPF with that content and the answer was that everyone else was a disaster trying to figure out the COP and Kevin managed to mostly do some clean programs with low content. Amazingly, his disastrous SP at Skate Canada, where he was last after the short, didn’t keep him from qualifying. Taking a look at the protocols, it’s also pretty remarkable that he did that well not even maxing out on allowable jumping content...he did take advantage of the three jump combo to do a triple-triple-triple, but then only did six jumping passes. He maybe could have beat Weiss by throwing more double jumps. He was allowed to do at least one more double axel back then (either the limit was 3 or it didn’t exist) and if there was a limit, he could have done a double lutz.

I believe, from memory, that KVDP did 6 jumping passes at Skate Canada as mentioned and then with the momentum he got there in the LP, he added another double Axel at Lalique and his PCS shot up in a closely contested race for 2nd through maybe 5th place and came away with the silver and a ticket to the GPF in a really weird GP season. He was also in camp Morozov who, at the time, was THE coach/choreo.

I don't think there was a limit on double jumps back then, even with Axels. But I do know people on the message boards were surely noticing all of his 2As.

I remember that Weiss program and I didn't think it was as bad back then as it is on this viewing. I really liked some of his programs and thought he was one of the more complete IJS skaters pre-IJS, and then he never had a lot of success when it transitioned. And yes, who can forget the hummer story? And everybody thinking that it was actually a possibility through the first 2 minutes of his short program.

This (2003) was AFAIK the first Worlds that had a live stream available to the entire world, and I want to say it was via Turkey. The stream was super choppy, but most of us were thrilled with that technology at the time

 

[snoopysnake]

I do think Weiss looked better before he shaved his head.