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Woman Cuts Off Tattoo of Cheating Boyfriend's Name, Mails it to Him

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Woman Cuts Off Tattoo of Cheating Boyfriend's Name, Mails it to Him

This is one way to get (very weird and painful) revenge: A woman who found out her boyfriend had cheated on her removed a tattoo of his name from her arm with a scalpel and mailed the bloody chunk of flesh to his home, which he shares with his new girlfriend.

Torz Reynolds thought her boyfriend, Stuart "Chopper" May, was moving out to take a job in Alaska. But she later found out he was staying in London and moving in with his new girlfriend, with whom he'd been having an affair for six months.

Reynolds, being sensible, decided to extract revenge by sawing off her "Chopper's Bitch" tattoo from her arm with a scalpel and mailing the removed skin to May's new home. The whole process, which also involved tweezers, took about an hour and a half.

When she was cutting out the skin, she placed it in a jar, wrapped it, and addressed it. "I packaged it up so it really did look like a present," she told the Daily Mail. "I even used different handwriting so he'd have no idea that it was me."

She even sent it registered mail, so she could track its movements online and make sure that he received it.

"I can't imagine what his reaction was," she said. "I wish I could have been there to see it."

So far, she's received no response from "Chopper," who refused to comment to the Daily Mail.

[Image via Shutterstock]


The former executive director of Project Veritas, conservative ratfucker extraordinaire James O'Keef

Weir Watch, Day Six: Belle for Leather

Earthbound Skymall catalog store Brookstone is "contemplating a possible bankruptcy," according to t

The Best Halal Cart In NYC

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The Best Halal Cart In NYC

One day, four carts, three guys, one 1973 Volkswagen Baja Bug: it was a quest to find the best halal cart chicken and rice in New York City.

Let me start with outlining the basic details of the trip, inspired by me saying that Halal Guys is the best halal cart in NYC and Jalopnik readers telling me I am a brain dead slob who couldn't tell chicken and rice (unarguably the best street food/drunk food in New York) from trash McDonalds peeled off the Bowery subway station floor. Well, they didn't say all that, but they did tell me three places that were supposedly better than Halal Guys. Naturally, I had to test their claims.

Here are the four spots:

  • Sammy's Halal in Jackson Heights, Queens
  • King of Falafel and Shawarma in Astoria, Queens
  • Tony Dragonas in Midtown, Manhattan
  • Halal Guys in Midtown, Manhattan

On Saturday, the 8th of February 2014, my brother Jacob, my friend Adam, and I crammed into my 1973 Baja Bug and set off for Queens for a four-hour escapade of meat sweats and chili tears.

What we found out was that there isn't a clear best/worst ranking of these four spots. Each of the interpretations were different enough that they can't really be set in a ranked order. That's not to say I didn't have a favorite and a least favorite, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Here are the four, in order of when we ate them.

Sammy's Halal

The Best Halal Cart In NYC

Location: 73rd and Broadway, Jackson Heights, Queens

Food: Chicken and Rice

Cost: $5

Quality: Worth travelling for.

Holy shit this is excellent. Parking in Jackson Heights on a Saturday afternoon is a bitch and a half, with me spending a good fifteen minutes spinning my wheels in the one parking spot left within a few blocks. Seriously, I beach the Baja Bug on a huge chunk of ice, then spend the next fifteen minutes kicking snow, reversing, and grunting with no power steering. My brother tries to help by putting a piece of carboard under a back wheel, but the Baja shreds it like a wood chipper. I give up parked 45 degrees from the curb.

The Best Halal Cart In NYC

At least parking a ways away means we have to walk through a bit of Jackson Heights to get to the stand and, well, the second-story travel agencies and half-dozen ethnic groceries we pass are a solid indicator for how good Sammy's is going to be.

There are two small carts, neither one has a line, and the food comes fast. There's a little pedestrian area right next to the carts, so we have a quiet place to eat across from the world-renowned, famously romantic Jackson Heights subway entrance.

The chicken is red. That's a good way of explaining that this doesn't taste exactly like the chicken and rice you get at three in the morning on 14th street. It's like a cross between tandoori chicken and shwarma.

And it is fantastic, completely deserving the stand's Vendy award. The chicken is so soft it shreds as you mix all the sauces together. The rice is the best I've ever had out of a cart. It's simple, cheap, and fast, but it's not greasy, all the ingredients seem fresh, and it's delicious. Sammy's approaches perfection.

King of Falafel and Shawarma

The Best Halal Cart In NYCLocation: Broadway and 30th St, Astoria, Queens

Food: Chicken and Rice

Cost: $7

Quality: The gourmet option.

The King of Falafel and Shawarma is very nearly in the shadow of the N/Q line and definitely feels like an Astoria place. You get a big portion, you get some weird tasting ingredients, and you get a strong statement of intent from the food.

The chicken and rice is more expensive than at Sammy's, but you get a ton more to eat. There's chicken and sauce piled so high you can't see the rice underneath. The salad on the side has lettuce, but also onion and pickles and pink pickled radish. A sizable piece of falafel is in there, too. The chicken looks absolutely fantastic sizzling on the grill, and it tastes distinctly like chicken, rather than just some kind of indeterminate meat.

The Best Halal Cart In NYC

What's interesting is the yellow sauce. It's a bit sour, lemony, and real thick. Combined with the pickles you could call it, if you were feeling pretentious, piquant.

It's delicious, and it deserves the Vendies awards it's gotten over the years. It's just not for everyone, and if you're just looking for that perfect execution of grimy street food, look elsewhere. If you want to try a gourmet, slightly loose take on the formula, it's excellent.

Oh, and it's the best place to eat in terms of the spot itself. The guys are super nice, chatting with customers in Arabic and handing out free falafel while we're waiting in line (it might be even better than the chicken). There are four fold-up chairs for you to eat at, and their menu posted on the fence of the C-Town parking lot is Engrish in the very best way.

The Best Halal Cart In NYC

The Engrish keeps spirits high as we go through our second meal in an hour. Yeahhhhh babey!

Tony "The Dragon" Dragonas

The Best Halal Cart In NYCLocation: 62nd and Madison Ave, Manhattan

Food: Chicken and Rice

Cost: $7

Quality: Good, but not chicken and rice.

From Astoria it's just a quick run over the 59th Street Bridge into Manhattan. The last time I took this drive, I had a hole in my distributor and had to limp along the road at 14 miles an hour. This time I try and race a middle-aged dad in an Acura crossover. Despite the fact that he does not realize I am trying to race him, I still lose. At least the Baja looks mean parked on Madison Avenue. But not as mean as the face this dude gives me while I take a picture in front of the Armani store.

The Best Halal Cart In NYC

Technically, what Tony Dragonas serves is chicken and rice. There is grilled chicken, and there is rice under it and salad next to it, but it ain't the deeply-fulfilling street food you're thinking of.

Their salad comes with dressing and cabbage and arugula! Arugula.

The Best Halal Cart In NYC

And the chicken comes as a whole sliced breast, grilled with charcoal. Now, it's actually really good — soft, tender, and juicy — but it's not what you're looking for when you go get chicken and rice.

We ate on a bench on Central Park. It was good food, but it just wasn't chicken and rice.

The Halal Guys

The Best Halal Cart In NYCLocation: 53rd and 6th Ave, Manhattan

Food: Chicken and Rice

Cost: $5

Quality: Exactly what you're expecting, only tastier.

The Baja is now in The City proper, and I relish the chance to roar through an intersection with angry Midtown walkers trying to cross against their light. Step in front of this thing, motherfucker, I dare you. A couple stops to take pictures by the car as we park and Jacob once again realizes that it is physically impossible to get out of the back seat on an old VW. He's still there, and is subsisting on leftovers from Sammy's.

I've always called The Halal Guys the best halal cart in the city for the past, what is it now, seven years I've been in New York. My friend Adam's been coming for longer, his friends driving in from Jersey just to eat there. He tells stories of the '90s club scene in Midtown famously spilling out to the Halal Guys and giving the cart its reputation.

The rice isn't fantastic. The salad doesn't have tomatoes like it used to. The line is pretty long. It's not as cool as it used to be, now that everybody knows about it and they're opening up a storefront on 14th and 1st.

The Best Halal Cart In NYC

But sweet jesus their chicken is good. Maybe they brine the it, I don't know. The thing is, it looks like every other kind of halal cart chicken, and it tastes like every other kind of halal cart chicken, only better. More flavor, better texture. You might be sweating because it's so hot, but you don't want to stop eating that chicken.

The Best Halal Cart In NYC

At the end of the day, despite having wolfed down most of three other orders of chicken and rice, I still want to finish my order of Halal Guys. Or maybe I want to take a nap. Hard to tell.

The Verdict

Each of these places is better than just about any rando cart you come across in NYC. Like I said, these four places are so different, you can't really rank them on a best to worst/top four scale. That being said, if they were all next to each other on the same intersection, I think I would have Sammy's just about every time. I'll still eat at Halal Guys, but I'll know out in Queens there's one better.

If you want something that tastes more like real food than street food, go to Tony Dragonas and if you have a bunch of people with fancy tastes, go to King of Falafel and Shawarma. The menu is big, and the atmosphere is the best.

And if you want the ultimate in urban transportation that sometimes breaks down randomly and still gets stuck in the snow even though it's meant for offroading and can't beat a two-ton family car off the line, hey, a Baja Bug could be exactly what you're looking for.

And if you think to yourself that it's a good idea to eat four rounds of chicken and rice in a row, do it, just budget time for more than a little nap afterwards.

Photo Credits: Raphael Orlove/Adam Saiewitz/Jacob Orlove

JFK’s Grandson Is, Unfortunately, Not Gay

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JFK’s Grandson Is, Unfortunately, Not Gay

Gay-themed website Queerty reports that Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of President John F. Kennedy and a junior at Yale, came out as gay in an essay for the Yale Herald before the paper’s editors mysteriously deleted his column and his Twitter account disappeared. Unfortunately for Camelot, the essay—and the Twitter account—are fake.

“The article was written by someone who impersonates me online,” Schlossberg told Gawker via his Yale University email address. “I did not write the article and, for the record, am not gay. Thanks.”

He added: “I believe the link [to the article] was a fake in the first place.”

You never know.

[Photo credit: Associated Press]

Homeless Man Found Dead Outside Jail After Cops Release Him

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Homeless Man Found Dead Outside Jail After Cops Release Him

A homeless man died just steps away from a Mojave Desert jail early Wednesday, after being released by sheriff's deputies who reportedly decided "he was able to care for himself."

The man's name has yet to be released, but the sheriff's department told the Victor Valley Daily Press that the 50-year-old male was "believed to be a transient."

He turned up dead outside the Victorville jail at 2:03 a.m. on Wednesday, just hours after being released. Deputies had brought him in for being intoxicated in public.

Paramedics pronounced the man dead at the scene. Sheriff's homicide detectives are now investigating the man found dead outside the jail, according to the San Bernardino Sun.

Victorville is a sprawling exurb in the high desert, 85 miles northeast of Los Angeles. It's a land of high unemployment and high crime where local jails and the many nearby state and federal prisons are major employers.

[Photo via Google Maps.]

​Watch Ben Affleck and Matt Damon Make Fun of Each Other for Charity

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If you've ever fantasized of thruppling it up with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, now's your chance make dreams a reality. All you have to do is make a $10 donation, and you'll be entered to win a double date with two of Boston's finest exports.

Partnering with Omaze, a charity fundraising site, Affleck and Damon are offering a night out in Hollywood for the lucky winner:

You and your best friend will be flown to Los Angeles to go out with Ben and Matt to a super secret, super cool, Hollywood event. You'll be rubbing elbows with other fancy celebs and athletes as Ben and Matt's VIP guests, and so much more. It'll basically be the most legendary best friend double date in history.

"So much more," huh? We'll see about that. The proceeds from each entry will be split between Affleck's Eastern Congo Initiative and Damon's Water.org.

What will a date with Affleck and Damon be like?

Affleck: "It will be like a best friend double date."

Damon: "Like us hanging out taking selfies, talking about how the Sox are going to do."

Affleck: "Or if you have more sophisticated interests we can talk about 19th century literature or politics in the Middle East ... or we could talk about the movie 'Argo,' which won Best Picture."

Damon: "Or we could talk about 'Good Will Hunting' and who did the bulk of the writing."

Affleck: "Or you could learn about things that are actually true, like how incredibly short Matt Damon is."

Damon: "Or the fact that Ben Affleck's left eye twitches every time you say the word Gigli."

Both men always seems like such good sports, so if you're into paying money to go out with two married dudes who will spend the night teasing each other—not judging—it's probably worth a shot.

[h/t Neetzan]


10 Chicks Heathen Men Should Never Marry

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10 Chicks Heathen Men Should Never Marry

Ladies of class and purity should read this story in the Christian magazine Charisma, "10 Men Christian Women Should Never Marry," warning of "The unbeliever," "The playboy," and other no-good men. But no-good men have their own things to be wary of.

10. The Christian chick

9. The lawyer chick

8. The blogger chick

7. The college professor chick who thinks she's so smart

6. The chick with money

5. The chick whose mom knows your mom

4. The employed chick

3. The chick who has her shit together

2. The chick who thinks she's better than you

1. The chick who turned you down

Just stick with Khrystal, man.

[Photo: Flickr]

Do you have hot skills doing "detailed social media research and analysis" and "on-the-ground native

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Do you have hot skills doing "detailed social media research and analysis" and "on-the-ground native research and analysis"? Do you like foreign travel? Maybe you're the secret military contractor Uncle Sam needs to mine Twitter and Facebook to "identify violent extremist influences."

What It's Like To Get an Abortion in a Country Where It's Illegal

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The focus of this week's episode of the U.K.'s Secrets of South America was Argentina (last week's, featuring the clip of the beauty queen with mesh sewn to her tongue, was Venezuela). The show, a sort of modern imagining of the Prosperi/Jacopetti Mondo movies as hosted by a perky cross between Alexa Chung and Fiona Apple (Billie JD Porter), focused on the seeming contradiction between a society so liberal about sex (Argentina was, for example, the first Latin American country to legalize gay marriage) yet guided by the Catholic church.

Abortion is illegal in Argentina (though according to Porter, about half the country thinks it should be legalized). The most interesting part of the episode focused on this issue. A doctor discusssed the hazardous ways women will perform abortions on themselves, though getting professionals to do it doesn't seem much better: Many who perform abortions are not doctors and have no idea of the patient's medical history.

In the clip above, a woman named Camilla describes her illegal Argentinian abortion, and later there's undercover footage shot at a back-alley "clinic," where a cat roams free and a man gets extremely testy with the undercover reporter. He, too, is not a doctor.

All of this is but one reason why the idea of abortion being banned in places where it's legal (like, say, the United States) is so scary to so many.

Never Forget: Sid Caesar Made a Sexy Workout Video

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Never Forget: Sid Caesar Made a Sexy Workout Video

Pioneering comedian par excellence Sid Caesar died yesterday. Generations of comics who've dabbled in the awkward, the slapsticky, and the absurd owe much to Sid. But he's got another thing on 'em: Well into his seventies, Sid Caesar was buff as fuck.

How do we know? Because he once did a celebrity workout video that's been preserved—and, blessedly, truncated from an hour to eight minutes—by film artist Aaron Valdez:

Titled "Shape Up!", Sid's VHS opus is like the man himself: jokey, weird, and a little creepy. "Make friends with yourself, you're the boss of you," he proclaims, a lot. On its release in 1985, the Chicago Tribune described it thusly:

Video quality is surprisingly amateurish, filmed entirely by one hand-held (none too steadily, either) camera that follows Caesar through his series of exercises. When the camera circles around Caesar during his sit-up exercises, the camera operator`s shadows are visible. And when the camera moves in for close-ups of Caesar doing chin-ups, it gets so close that Caesar has to wave the camera operator away.

According to Caesar, it was all by design. He says that the technical flaws make the video—and its message—more accessible to viewers.

But "Shape Up!" gets the point across, and it comes from an honest place: Caesar was once addicted to alcohol and barbiturates, and it was his workout regimen that helped keep the chemical demons at bay. "I have an addictive personality," he told the Tribune. "So I took that addiction, and changed it. Now I'm as addicted to working out as I was to pills and booze."

It worked. When the old man kicked off yesterday, he was 91. And probably harder than you.

Silicon Valley's Dumbest Party Is Even Better on Video

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What do you do when your startup mixer has been an internet punchline for an entire week? Release a "video recap" of the night's event, of course. Game-changer. Innovate.

Consider all of your biases and presumptions affirmed: there are flashing lights, promotional blondes in Bitcoin t-shirts, adults racing toy cars, a DJ pretending to do stuff with a computer, dubstep, LEDs, and nerds. The new American economy.

10-Year-Old Steals Parents' Car, Crashes It, Tells Cops He's a Dwarf

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10-Year-Old Steals Parents' Car, Crashes It, Tells Cops He's a Dwarf

This kid will go far in life—or end up in jail: Earlier this week, a 10-year-old stole his parents' car, crashed it into a snowy ditch, and then told responding police officers he was a dwarf who'd forgotten his driver's license.

Early Wednesday morning while his parents were sleeping, the kid reportedly put his 18-month-old sister in the car and took off, hoping to make it to his grandparent's house—some 68 miles away from the boy's home outside of Oslo, Norway.

He made it about six miles before driving off the road into a ditch. He was found not long after by a snowplow driver, who called the cops.

"The boy told the snowplow driver that he was a dwarf and that he had forgotten his driver's license at home," said Baard Christiansen, a spokesman for the Vest Oppland police district, according to the Independent. The children were not injured in the crash, and there was no damage to the car.

"The parents woke up and discovered that the children were missing and that someone had taken off with their car. They were pretty upset, as you can imagine," he added. "We have talked to them, and I'm pretty sure they're going to pay very close attention both to their children and to their car keys in the future."

Christiansen said no charges would be filed.

[ht Uproxx/Image via Shutterstock]

Woman Bitten on Breast By Snake Says Snake Lived, Incident Was "Cute"

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You may remember 34-year-old Israeli model Orit Fox from a viral video that circulated a few years ago, in which she openly flirted with a snake and the snake proceeded to bite her on her clearly fake breast and then some guy off camera frantically said a string of non-English words ending on "titty," and everyone laughed despite the horrific snake bite that just occurred because "titty" is universal.

Fox appeared on a special called 200 Nips & Tucks and I Want More!, which ran earlier this week on the U.K.'s Channel 5. She clarified a rumor that circulated with the video that suggested the snake died of silicone poisoning. Animal lovers out there will be pleased to know that Fox's breast did not kill the snake, and Orit Fox lovers out there will be pleased to know that she was not particularly injured from the attack. She likened the bite to a cat scratch and called the incident "cute." She seems to have enjoyed being bitten on the breast by a snake:

It was so funny and amazing because the snake, it bit me on my breast. All the countries talk about my breast all the time and it bit me on this part of my body, exactly in my breast, on my breast.

This woman is a hoot. In the mini-profile that aired on 200 Nips & Tucks, she confessed to an unhealthy obsession with plastic surgery, though her breakdown of what exactly she's gotten done was sort of unclear (I think she said, "I got 10 skin," at one point?). You'll know if Orit Fox is worth getting to know within 10 seconds of the clip above, which opens with her casually raising her hands above her head and saying (in voiceover), "Mens very love my body, it's like a fantasy, it's like a dream."

She ends the segment with some words on preserving her appearance that I think many of us can relate to: "I'm high maintenance like a Ferrari, Lamborghini. I have to take care of myself if I'm gonna be pretty on the road." Feel free to make that your new motto.


​The Blooper Reel for The Lego Movie Is Totally Hilarious

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The Lego Movie has grossed nearly $77.9 million in its first six days of release but it faces stiff competition from RoboCop this weekend. However, does RoboCop have an adorable blooper reel filled with tumbling Legos and Will Arnett's Batman making jokes? I don't think so.

Warner Bros. released the staged, animated "blooper reel" on Wednesday as part of its continued (and effective) advertising toward an older audience. Adults do love a good blooper reel. Based on the film's success, the studio has already hired Jared Stern and Michelle Morgan to write a sequel.

Morgan Freeman—who could read the phonebook and still be cool as hell—definitely makes the best contributions to the video.

[h/t Variety]

Deadspin Let's Go On A NSFW Tour Of The Olympic Village | Gizmodo Why the Comcast-Time Warner Cable

Heroin Smuggler Comes Up With the Worst Cover Story Ever

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Heroin Smuggler Comes Up With the Worst Cover Story Ever

A Virginia man smuggling a quarter of a million dollars' worth of heroin blew his cover making up the world's dumbest alibi.

Jefferson County police pulled a 64-year-old man over for an obscured license plate on the man's GMC SUV on Monday night. The responding officer noticed the man appeared "extremely nervous" and asked him where he was going.

The man said he was on his way to Houston to visit with a sick elderly friend — in a children's hospital. Apparently the first place he could think ofwhen officers asked him where his friend had been hospitalized was Texas Children's Hospital.

Officers then asked to search the car and quickly found a satchel in the back seat with $250,000 worth of heroin wrapped in bundles.

He's being held on $100,000 bail.

[image via Shutterstock]

GOP Donors Respond to Banking Regulations with Homophobic Jokes

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GOP Donors Respond to Banking Regulations with Homophobic Jokes

Today Kevin Roose of New York magazine unveiled his party notes from a bizarre initiation/hazing ceremony held by the Wall Street fraternity Kappa Beta Phi in January 2012, which Roose managed to sneak into and write about in his new (and very good) book, Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street’s Post-Crash Recruits.

The secretive ceremony, held every year at the St. Regis Hotel near Central Park, involves cross-dressing, skits, songs (“I believe that the Lord God created Wall Street / I believe he got his only son a job at Goldman Sachs”), and hilarious jokes aimed at politicians, like former Congressman Barney Frank, who want to regulate the financial sector. Roose writes:

Paul Queally, a private-equity executive with Welsh, Carson, Anderson, & Stowe, told off-color jokes to Ted Virtue, another private-equity bigwig with MidOcean Partners. The jokes ranged from unfunny and sexist (Q: “What's the biggest difference between Hillary Clinton and a catfish?” A: “One has whiskers and stinks, and the other is a fish”) to unfunny and homophobic (Q: “What’s the biggest difference between Barney Frank and a Fenway Frank?” A: “Barney Frank comes in different-size buns”).

According to FEC donor records, Queally and Virtue have donated, respectively, over $300,000 and $55,000 to Republican causes, including a combined $100,000 to Romney Victory Inc., Team Romney’s main fundraising vehicle during the 2012 presidential campaign. (Romney, who amassed his fortune in private equity, heavily courted Wall Street while running for President.) To be fair, this wasn’t a Republican-only event; Roose notes that one of Kappa’s recruits (or “neophytes”) was billionaire Marc Lasry, a strong supporter of Democratic causes.

You can listen—if you dare!—to Queally and Virtue’s routine below:



(Neither Queally nor Virtue responded to requests for comment.)

Roose will be stopping by Gawker to chat about Young Money on Thursday at 2 PM.

To contact the author of this post, email trotter@gawker.com

[Photo credit: WCAS, Getty Images]

Why Does Every Olympian Skate To Les Misérables?

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Why Does Every Olympian Skate To Les Misérables?

There are still two days left of Olympic figure skating, and I have officially maxed out my lifetime tolerance for the Les Misérables soundtrack, something not even Russell Crowe could do to me. Same goes for the score from the 1968 movie adaptation of Romeo and Juliet: I have never seen this film, but in the last week alone I watched six different skaters perform to the music from it. And if another figure skater cues up the Santana during the Sochi Olympics—please God, no—I will seriously lose my mind.

Figure skaters spend years dreaming of their Olympic performances. They expend inordinate amounts of time and money picking out costumes, working on choreography, practicing and mastering their programs. So why, for their big Olympic moments, must skaters all perform to the exact same rotation of, like, 10 different songs?

"Because those songs work," Kristi Yamaguchi, the 1992 Olympic gold medalist, told me, laughing. (Yamaguchi performed her gold medal-winning free skate to the music of "Malagueña," by Ernesto Lecuona, which I have so far heard performed in Sochi only once.) "There are certain standby favorites that pick up the crowd, or have a lot of highs and lows and crescendos that add [interest] to a performance. Those pieces—you know, Carmen, Swan Lake, a lot of Tchaikovsky—you hear over and over again because they have that dynamic, and the skater knows the judges like it."

For skaters—and especially for the elite ones, who are hoping to make it to the major international competitions, where the judges tend to have more exacting standards—there's a lot that goes into the process of selecting program music. Picking the perfect piece isn't just about picking a song you like, or even finding something you'll be able to tolerate after thousands and thousands of repeat listens. You want something that's going to fill up an entire 12,000-seat arena and ramp up audience participation. You want a piece that that feels epic, but not so epic that it overwhelms your performance. You want music that speaks to you. And, most importantly, you want music that speaks to the judges.

"You want a piece that's going to really showcase your strengths and present your skating in the best light," said Yamaguchi. "Because not only does a skater have to really connect with a piece of music, but you also want something that is going to be universally liked. In international competitions, you have judges from all around the world. You don't want to leave anything to chance."

Choosing the old standbys can be a useful crutch for skaters who haven't totally established themselves on the international scene, or who don't have a strong sense of their own artistic tastes. But capitalizing on that advantage is a tricky proposition. Because as much as a piece like Carmen—dramatic, swelling, emotional—can prop up a skater artistically, it will also, inevitably, remind the judges and the audience of other, probably better, performances.

"Skaters get this feeling of, 'I have to skate to these classic pieces in order to be recognized, to be up there, to be in that league,'" said Shae-Lynn Bourne, a former world champion ice dancer and current choreographer, one who's known for working with skaters on choreography that's comparatively unconventional. "But, for example, when people in the skating world hear Boléro, they think of [Olympic ice dancing champions] Torvill and Dean. If you are going to skate to Boléro, you have to do it in such a unique way that you're not being compared to Torvill and Dean—you want to stand out for your interpretation. If you can do that, great. But if not, then I wouldn't try it. Because you're going up against someone who's done something really special with a piece."

When you look at people like Jason Brown, who performs to music from Riverdance for his free skate, it quickly becomes clear how using a piece that's even the tiniest bit unique can really work to a skater's advantage. With Riverdance, Brown has the perfect opportunity to showcase his exuberant, youthful energy, his athletic power, and his original choreography. He's able to express his personality through his performance, so that by the end of the program the audience loves him as much as they love his skating.

"You have to be so present when you skate, because the audience knows when you're scared or you're frozen," said Bourne. "We know because you're not connecting with us. If you're sincere with your performance, and you truly can get into your music and show how much you love to skate, then people will respond to that, and you'll feel their energy coming right back at you. And that kind of response is huge."

The problem is that not everyone can pull off bold, unconventional, artistically challenging programs. The skaters who can really sell the old classics are the same ones who are more likely to do well by taking risks, while an "avant-garde" performance from a mediocre skater will flop much more dramatically than, say, a so-so interpretation of a Beatles medley. (Bourne remembers one men's skater a while back who composed his own program music, an abstract collection of raw sounds, which did not exactly win over the audiences.) And even the top skaters can feel restricted by the judges' preference for more traditional, classically styled pieces.

"There is this feeling like you're working within the confines of the classical music genre," said Yamaguchi. "It's refreshing when you see a risk being taken, but, as a skater, you better make sure that you're prepared to make it work."

Bourne says she encourages her skaters to be as creative as possible within the confines of the judges' expectations, and next year, those expectations will be forcibly upended: For the first time, singles and pairs skaters will be allowed to perform competitively to music with audible lyrics. (Ice dancers have been able to skate to music with vocals since 1997, though that seems to have mostly occasioned the unfortunate ubiquity of programs set to "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend," complete with very literal Marilyn Monroe getups for the women.)

So are we on the brink of a new era in competitive figure skating, in which skaters ditch the Tchaikovsky for, say, Robyn and Beyoncé?

"I don't think that the judges would embrace that, if I'm answering honestly," Bourne said. "To me pop music is a little bit like nursery rhymes: It's easy to hear, it's easy to sing, but it can be easily forgettable, too. … I do realize, though, that we're coming into a place in skating where we have to be creative and bring new ideas, and new music. And that's the wonderful part about being a skater at the top—when you're a leader, you can step out of the box and try new things. And it's usually [those skaters] who are copied by the other skaters."

Until one of those leaders (we're looking at you, Yuna Kim) throws down on the ice with a performance to "Rocket," the rest of the pack will probably have to content themselves with baby steps outside of the mainstream. Ashley Wagner has her Pink Floyd short program; Germany's pairs team, Maylin and Daniel Wende, perform their free skate to the soundtrack from the stoner comedy Your Highness.

Beyond that, they can also look forward to the real moment of liberation: The pro tour circuit, in which skaters can perform to whatever the hell they feel like.

"During my very first tour as a professional—Stars on Ice in the 1992-1993 year—one of my numbers was 'Never Gonna Get It,' by En Vogue," Yamaguchi said. "At the time, people saw me as a 20-year-old, an Olympian, you know, this graceful skater—and I went out there in a bustier, with my hair up, doing hip-hop choreography. That one was kind of liberating."


Lucy Madison is a NYC-based writer and reporter. Her work has appeared at the Awl, the Hairpin, Interview, CBS News, and more. You can follow her on Twitter here. Art by Jim Cooke

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