BABYL OPTIONS: -*- rmail -*- Version: 5 Labels: Note: This is the header of an rmail file. Note: If you are seeing it in rmail, Note: it means the file has no messages in it.  1,, Path: yale!yale.edu!spool.mu.edu!agate!news.duke.edu!godot.cc.duq.edu!hudson.lm.com!news.math.psu.edu!news.cac.psu.edu!newsserver.jvnc.net!newsserver2.jvnc.net!howland.reston.ans.net!cs.utexas.edu!not-for-mail From: MARRAPODI.TA@a1.rit.edu (Trudi Marrapodi) Newsgroups: rec.sport.skating.ice.figure Subject: Origins of "To Chack" (was: Jekyll & Hyde music) Date: 28 Aug 1995 09:01:30 -0500 Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway Lines: 36 Sender: nobody@cs.utexas.edu Message-ID: <01HULPFHW55Y9VUW9D@a1gate.rit.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: news.cs.utexas.edu *** EOOH *** Path: yale!yale.edu!spool.mu.edu!agate!news.duke.edu!godot.cc.duq.edu!hudson.lm.com!news.math.psu.edu!news.cac.psu.edu!newsserver.jvnc.net!newsserver2.jvnc.net!howland.reston.ans.net!cs.utexas.edu!not-for-mail From: MARRAPODI.TA@a1.rit.edu (Trudi Marrapodi) Newsgroups: rec.sport.skating.ice.figure Subject: Origins of "To Chack" (was: Jekyll & Hyde music) Date: 28 Aug 1995 09:01:30 -0500 Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway Lines: 36 Sender: nobody@cs.utexas.edu NNTP-Posting-Host: news.cs.utexas.edu teresesk8@aol.com (TereseSK8) writes: >Who coined the verb "to Chack"? I love it!! and Sandra Loosemore adds: >I think it was Trudi Marrapodi. It caught on very fast -- we >obviously *needed* a word to describe what happens when TV >producers cut the most interesting bits out of the telecast..... I wonder if Michael realizes how he's been enshrined in our folklore in this way! :-) I admit, I take proud credit for this one. It began when Michael Chack finished third at Skate America--was it in '91?--I seem to recall them showing him that time. So he was becoming a skater of some note. However, when he was part of the Evening of Championship Skating, he became one of those skaters whose performance was not shown, and you look at them coming out during the finale and go "Oh, damn, So-and-So was there, and they didn't show him!" When he finished third in the nationals (was that '93?) and they didn't show him, he got the honor of having the phenomenon named for him for good. "To Chack"--to leave a perfectly good, or very crucial, skating performance out of an edited TV broadcast for no apparent reason. Verb can be transitive ("They're going to Chack him again, I just know it") or intransitive ("I waited all through the show for Brian Orser's performance on 'Canvas of Ice,' but it got Chacked"). At times I have said that a skater whose performance was unusually poor has succeeded in Chacking himself off a broadcast or out of a competition. Trudi tamcmp@rit.edu  1,, Summary-line: 6-Oct loosemore-sandra #Re: Chacked Mail-from: From skatefans-l-request@UDel.Edu Sat Oct 7 00:28:13 1995 Received: from eli.CS.YALE.EDU by nebula.systemsz.cs.yale.edu (8.7/res.host.cf-4.0) with ESMTP id UAA22711; Fri, 6 Oct 1995 20:28:10 -0400 (EDT) sender skatefans-l-request@UDel.Edu for <'sjl@nebula.systemsz.cs.yale.edu> Received: from copland.udel.edu by eli.CS.YALE.EDU (8.7/res.host.bitnet.cf-4.1) with SMTP id UAA04573; Fri, 6 Oct 1995 20:21:40 -0400 (EDT) sender skatefans-l-request@UDel.Edu for Received: from nebula.systemsz.cs.yale.edu (SYSTEMSZ-GW.CS.YALE.EDU [128.36.0.12]) by copland.udel.edu (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id UAA24865 for ; Fri, 6 Oct 1995 20:11:19 -0400 From: loosemore-sandra Received: from FUNCTOR.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU by nebula.systemsz.cs.yale.edu (8.7/res.host.cf-4.0) with ESMTP id UAA22629; Fri, 6 Oct 1995 20:11:16 -0400 (EDT) sender loosemore-sandra@CS.YALE.EDU for Received: by FUNCTOR.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU (Sendmail-8.7/res.client.cf-4.0) id UAA09689; Fri, 6 Oct 1995 20:11:14 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 20:11:14 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199510070011.UAA09689@FUNCTOR.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU> To: skatefans-l@udel.edu In-reply-to: <01HW4MFMTXEA90UTK2@UTSW.SWMED.EDU> (FELTON@UTSW.SWMED.EDU) Subject: Re: Chacked *** EOOH *** From: loosemore-sandra Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 20:11:14 -0400 (EDT) To: skatefans-l@udel.edu In-reply-to: <01HW4MFMTXEA90UTK2@UTSW.SWMED.EDU> (FELTON@UTSW.SWMED.EDU) Subject: Re: Chacked "ERIK W. FELTON" said: You mean Michael Chack was THIRD, on the podium, etc, and they did not show his performance at Nationals? I think I vaguely remember that year. Todd started off with a 3axel/3toe and then didn't do another triple. Mark Mitchell choked, as usual, and Scott Davis did well. I totally forgot who placed third. How could they have done that? Didn't they also show Aren Nielsen? What a joke. Yes, that's exactly what happened. The way it came about was that Chack had jump trouble in the short program and wound up in 6th place, and then for whatever reasons the referee and/or TV people decided there were only going to be 5 skaters in the final group for the free skate. And then something completely unexpected happened: Scott Davis had the only halfway decent performance out of that final group. Mark Mitchell held on to second place, but because both Michael Chack and Rudy Galindo had already turned in terrific performances in the previous group, the two of them managed to bump everyone else completely out of medal contention. Eldredge finished a miserable 6th in the free skate, Nielsen was 5th. So Chack ended up with the bronze medal. But ABC was broadcasting live and had only scheduled enough time to show those last 5 skaters, so they couldn't even fit in some taped pieces of Chack or Galindo skating into the show. (I consider it just as much of a shame that Galindo got "chacked" because this was one of his best performances ever.) But I thought it was really insulting that ABC didn't show Chack on the podium or include him their interview with the other medalists. I'm sure the TV folks knew they'd been caught with their pants down and were just trying to ignore the whole embarassing situation in the hopes that nobody would notice. Ha! -Sandra  1,, Path: yale!news-mail-gateway!daemon From: MARRAPODI.TA@a1.rit.edu (Trudi Marrapodi) Newsgroups: rec.sport.skating.ice.figure Subject: Re: to "chack" Date: 30 Jan 1996 20:06:26 -0500 Organization: Yale CS Mail/News Gateway Lines: 51 Sender: daemon@cs.yale.edu Message-ID: <01I0MTNPM3N495NFUK@a1gate.rit.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: babyblue.cs.yale.edu X-Unparseable-Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1996 00:00:00 -0500 (EST) *** EOOH *** Path: yale!news-mail-gateway!daemon From: MARRAPODI.TA@a1.rit.edu (Trudi Marrapodi) Newsgroups: rec.sport.skating.ice.figure Subject: Re: to "chack" Date: 30 Jan 1996 20:06:26 -0500 Organization: Yale CS Mail/News Gateway Lines: 51 Sender: daemon@cs.yale.edu NNTP-Posting-Host: babyblue.cs.yale.edu X-Unparseable-Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1996 00:00:00 -0500 (EST) atstarr@unix.amherst.edu (Andrew Starr) asks: >Who coined the term "to chack"? Whoever it is could become famous >beyond imagination! Me, and I'm not exactly famous yet. I can, however, document my first printed usage of the term, in my Orser newsletter in December 1993. I just sort of ran it up the flagpole to see who would salute. Once I started using it on the 'net, that turned out to be a lot of people. >Seriously, various dictionaries have files beyond belief on new >words, even if unlikely to make it into the dictionary next year. Whoever invented it, when you feel like blowing off an afternoon, go to your library, look at different dictionaries to get the addresses, and send in your word! >-Andrew, who is in Merriam-Webster's files in Springfield, MA, not >for coining a term, but just as an example of usage of an existing >term. The thing is, it's so specific, I'm not sure how popular it would get. It really is a piece of skating jargon only, or was intended as one. The term is supposed to be used to refer to parts of skating competitions (usually performances of specific skaters) that were especially notable and/or had an effect on the results-- yet were not shown on a TV broadcast of the event. In the case of exhibitions, it's when a prominent or fairly prominent skater's appearance in the cast is not at all acknowledged and you only know from brief glimpses of, say, the opening and closing (or from being there yourself) that he/she was even there! The term was created in honor of Michael Chack, after ABC failed to show his bronze-medal-winning freeskate at '93 U.S. nationals simply because he didn't skate live in the final group. They could have shown it later (as NBC later showed Mark Micthell's fourth- place freeskate from '92 worlds even though he did not skate live on air in the final group)--but they never did. That same year, PBS ran the Evening of Championship Skating and showed performances from every skater there who was of note--except Chack. He was only briefly visible in the closing number. Thus the term "chack" was born. It has a nice, hard, violent sound that suggests something nasty was done to someone for no good reason, and expresses that sense of frustration skating fans feel at TV broadcasts that show only part of the story--and I think that's why it has been such a popular term amongst fans here. Trudi tamcmp@rit.edu  1, filed, edited,, Mail-from: From owner-skatefans-l@UDel.Edu Wed May 29 18:45:37 1996 Received: from eli.CS.YALE.EDU by nebula.systemsz.cs.yale.edu (8.7.1/res.host.cf-4.0) with ESMTP id OAA06435; Wed, 29 May 1996 14:45:34 -0400 (EDT) sender owner-skatefans-l@UDel.Edu for <'sjl@nebula.systemsz.cs.yale.edu> Received: from UDel.Edu by eli.CS.YALE.EDU (8.7.1/res.host.bitnet.cf-4.1) with ESMTP id OAA08865; Wed, 29 May 1996 14:43:20 -0400 (EDT) sender owner-skatefans-l@UDel.Edu for Received: (from majordom@localhost) by UDel.Edu (8.7.5/8.7.3) id OAA09586 for skatefans-l-outgoing; Wed, 29 May 1996 14:40:38 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: copland.udel.edu: majordom set sender to owner-skatefans-l using -f Received: from vaxc.isc.rit.edu (vaxc.isc.rit.edu [129.21.3.3]) by UDel.Edu (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id OAA09566 for ; Wed, 29 May 1996 14:40:35 -0400 (EDT) Received: from a1gate.rit.edu by ritvax.isc.rit.edu (PMDF V5.0-5 #14499) id <01I5A56SKN74C697HV@ritvax.isc.rit.edu> for skatefans-l@udel.edu; Wed, 29 May 1996 14:37:31 -0500 (EST) Received: with PMDF-MR; Wed, 29 May 1996 14:37:28 -0500 (EST) MR-Received: by mta VAXB; Relayed; Wed, 29 May 1996 14:37:28 -0500 Alternate-recipient: prohibited Disclose-recipients: prohibited Date: Wed, 29 May 1996 13:18:00 -0500 (EST) From: Trudi Marrapodi Subject: More on the originl of "to chack" To: "@a1gate.rit.edu:skatefans-l%udel.edu@VMSMAIL" <@a1gate.rit.edu:skatefans-l%udel.edu@VMSMAIL> Message-id: <01I5A56WDTH6C697HV@a1gate.rit.edu> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=ISO-8859-1 Posting-date: Wed, 29 May 1996 13:35:00 -0500 (EST) Importance: normal Priority: normal X400-MTS-identifier: [;82734192506991/1183142@RITVAX] A1-type: MAIL Hop-count: 1 Sender: owner-skatefans-l@UDel.Edu Precedence: bulk Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable *** EOOH *** MR-Received: by mta VAXB; Relayed; Wed, 29 May 1996 14:37:28 -0500 Alternate-recipient: prohibited Disclose-recipients: prohibited Date: Wed, 29 May 1996 13:18:00 -0500 (EST) From: Trudi Marrapodi Subject: More on the originl of "to chack" To: "@a1gate.rit.edu:skatefans-l%udel.edu@VMSMAIL" <@a1gate.rit.edu:skatefans-l%udel.edu@VMSMAIL> Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=ISO-8859-1 Posting-date: Wed, 29 May 1996 13:35:00 -0500 (EST) Importance: normal Priority: normal X400-MTS-identifier: [;82734192506991/1183142@RITVAX] A1-type: MAIL Hop-count: 1 Sender: owner-skatefans-l@UDel.Edu Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I have some additional information on the origins of the term "chack," meaning "to leave an important skater/performance out of a broadcast," now gaining popularity as a term used to describe the elimination of any skater, country, portion of a competition etc., and now sometimes even used to describe preemption of a network broadcast by a local affiliate. In my previous histories I forgot the important role played by a friend of mine in both refining the term and in getting it used in a small group of people, from whence I spread it to the Net. That person is Mary Manchester, a skating fan, Trek fan, and many- other-things fan who has served as the circulation director of my newsletter for lo these many years (about 1990). She is the only diehard skating fan I know in the Rochester area, although she usually draws the line at going out of town to see anything (okay, she's been to Buffalo a few times, but otherwise is not much of a skating Deadhead). She is, alas, an unwired soul (hey, we're talking about a person who only got a VCR last year). Anyway, in 1993 she and I, in our many face-to-face and phone conversations about skating, were the first to make note of the fact that Michael Chack seemed to have an unfortunate piece of luck in getting omitted from TV broadcasts of events in which he was involved--even when his performance was key to the results or it was obvious he was present and just not shown. It began with '93 nationals and sort of went from there. It was from this that I suggested there should be a new phrase to describe this occurrence: "Chacked out." Well, Mary never liked the "out" part. It was she who began using the phrase as simply "chacked"--she thought "out" was redundant-- and we just went from there. Eventually I saw the wisdom of this and the term just became "chacked." (I had forgotten this aspect of the story until she reminded me of it, and then it all came flooding back.) The term spread from us to a couple of people we knew (one of them being Emma Abraham of the Freestyle letterzine, who I believe was actually first to publish it), then I used it in my Orser newsletter and when I became a habitue of the Net, used it there. That was where it seemed to catch on like wildfire. So, I hope Sandra will find room on her Web page for this further elaboration on the origins of the term. I cannot take full credit, because Mary really added the finishing touch by getting rid of the "out." Leave it to a retired schoolteacher to know best. Anyway, that's the whole story, for what any of it is worth. I feel, and she agrees with me, that it's important to make sure the story gets told (even if we can't give dates and times and such) because there are so many interesting words in the English language that no one really can trace the origins of, and if we were going to invent one and it actually ended up catching on, we wanted to make sure its origins were as easy as possible to trace. (We also think it's kind of cool that Michael is enjoying some potential form of immortality, no matter how his skating career goes in the future.) Trudi tamcmp@rit.edu