Play that funky music, white boy

The impending end of the holiday season means just one thing: televised figure skating! In the late 1980's through the 1990's, I was a skating nut. I mean, NUT. I knew who all the skaters were, what their strengths and weaknesses were, the difference between a lutz and an axel, and why footwork was just as hard as jumps. I even took lessons for a while, but just couldn't manage to master right-over-left crossovers.

But Jonny Weir notwithstanding, the crop of world-stage skaters in the post-Tonya Harding hangover years has been uninspired, to say the least. So over this weekend, thanks to YouTube, we're going to take a stroll down memory lane to some memorable performances from the good old days.

First, to honor James Brown, here's Scott Hamilton from 2001's Stars on Ice show:

And here's a still-young Kurt Browning's infamous Commodores "Brick House" program from 1995:

And the no-longer-so-young Kurt Browning's self-parody of that program in 2005:

Heh. Don't let him fool you. He's still got it at age 40 in 2006:

Note especially the footwook sequence around 2:50 in. Awesome. I can't do that. Can you?