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Adios, pilates. Gone are the slow, structured "I doubt I've worked off the calories in a stick of Carefree gum" workouts emphasizing a yoga-based spirituality, and in their place is the latest "it" exercise. Martial artist Billy Blanks created Tae-Bo, the fast-paced, super-sweaty stepchild of kickboxing. Popularized by a sleek advertising campaign heavy on late-night infomercials, and garnering the support of Carmen Electra and Sinbad, Tae-Bo now constitutes a veritable alterna-robics empire. Blanks himself is on the way to superstardom, having appeared on a recent episode of "ER" in which he schooled...
...very least to your television set. Tae-Bo marketers shell out about $2 million weekly to air his 30-min. infomercial across the country. Lose weight! Kick butt! Free your spirit! All that is yours simply by buying a set of four videos for three easy payments of $19.95. And Blanks has crossed over into free TV too. He turned up on ER last month and spent a week with Oprah in the Bahamas. No wonder Tae-Bo videos have grossed some $75 million and placed in the top five of both the Billboard and Amazon.com charts last week. Consider...
...booming enterprise, however, has been dogged by legal problems. His business partner, Paul Monea, who produced the infomercial, is facing two separate lawsuits: one by Sugar Ray Leonard, who contends that his name was used without permission in the Tae-Bo infomercial; and another by Seth Ersoff, an entertainment manager who claims he introduced Monea to Blanks and was later denied a share of the profits from Tae-Bo. Monea's lawyer declines to comment on the allegations. But his client's track record isn't reassuring. In 1997 an Ohio court ruled that Monea's company could not sell...
...Using a mirror to learn the moves and correct for his impairment, he remade himself. He won scores of karate titles, appeared in a string of B movies and was born again--in that order. He is a preacher in an athlete's body, and Tae-Bo is his one true gospel. "Tae-Bo is the only exercise that will give you everything you want," he says...
...tell that to Marsha Boysaw, 37, an attorney who works out to Tae-Bo four times a week. Her abs jut out below a damp sports bra as she discloses that she lost 38 lbs. in her first six months of Blanks' vigorous workouts. Jackie Gradinger, 30, a veteran of the treadmill and step aerobics, proclaims Tae-Bo "the hardest workout I've ever done." She too is impressed by its effect on her waistline, but she adds, "I do it mostly for my mind." Lynne Devlin, 37, a preschool teacher who ordered the tapes in January, finds the mind...