Saying Cheese?

I was interested to see SI.com's list of The Best Smiles in Sports . There were a number of good sets of chompers in there, but my favorite was Tanith Belbin.

I don't know who the heck Tanith Belbin is, but she is definitely one of my favorite athletes (or, at least NOW she is).


I would like to at least ask what kind of a name 'Tanith' is? At the risk of being impolitic, may I assume that one of Tanith's parents has a horrible lisp? And perhaps the nurse at the hospital where she was born mis-heard her mom (or dad) trying to pronounce the name Janice?

I'm trying to think of additional explanations.

Nope. I'm out.

It's somewhat amazing that Tanith was able to recover from the frustration she must have felt as a young child, in the drugstore searching in vain for her name on one of those little license plates. Yet, she fought back from that and ended up becoming a renowned (I'm assuming) athlete of some sort - it looks like she's holding an Olympic medal, so I'm going to guess gymnast or figure skater.

(What's that? Yes, I *AM* too lazy to do fifteen seconds' worth of research on The Internets in order to find out more detail).

One of the Best Smile choices that I did NOT agree with was their selection of tennis player Rafael Nadal as one of the Pearly-White Few.


The guy is a bit scruffy looking, isn't he? Two thoughts come to mind when I look at this picture:

1) Dude seems to badly need bottle of Pert Plus with Conditioning(TM). Looks like he has more split ends than a 400-year old werewolf.

2) As soon as I saw this photo, I was immediately reminded of the movie 'The Road Warrior'... remember the Feral Kid? The little kid with a bladed boomerang who took Toadie's fingers off with a well-timed throw? Doesn't Nadal look exactly like Feral Kid?

By the way, I refused to research Tanith Belbin, but I *DID* go to IMDb to check out the name of Feral Kid - and it turns out that not only was the character in the movie listed in the credits as "FERAL KID", but the actor's name who played him is: EMIL MINTY.

I take back everything I said above about Tanith Belbin's name.

"Emil Minty"?

How would it be going through life with a name that sounds like a snooty French adjective? Or some kind of chef's technique?


---JohnnyUnitas