(Originally published July 5, 2007)

Fan Is Short for Fanzilla 

Prince once said that he doesn't like to refer to his admirers as "fans" because "fan" is short for fanatic, and he views his supporters as "friends" rather than insane people.  If that's true, then Prince and I are the kind of friends where I buy his products and have to pay at least $75 to be within 1000 feet of him, and we are always separated by large body guards and metal gates.  Come to think of it, I could use more friends like that -- ones who will buy my product and from whom I can be separated by large mens and metal fences.  I'll have to work on that. 

The thing Prince has wrong, other than putting out too many albums and renaming himself as that symbol, and is that many fans are in fact crazy.  There is a little of the crazy in each of us as we deal with our fandom, whether it's watching the blurred images of the Winter Olympics through no reception in a college dorm room, knowing that the Charlotte move that Michelle resurrected was originally from the Sonja Henie era of skating, camping overnight for tickets to anything, or trawling YouTube to find the routines of Klimova and Ponomarenko from the early 1990s.  So, as much as I love When Doves Cry and all of the songs he wrote with Sheila E., Prince has got it wrong -- fan is short for fanatic, and most fans have some crazy fanaticism in them (and some of them are short, too). 

So, here, we will explore the ins and outs of fandom, largely in skating, but also in other venues.  Is there such a thing as non-crazy fandom?  If so, where is the line?  Does it stop at having a small collection of newspaper clippings, or is everything up to devoting all of one's spare time and money to support one's object of admiration fair game?  Also, what is up with Dick Button?   

Important issues all.  Stay tuned.  Also, buy some Embittermints.