Best Things on the Internet: September 2013

This hilarious review of Patrick Rothfuss's book, A Wise Man's Fear: BEST REVIEW EVER. If you haven't read the first two books in Patrick Rothfuss's Kingkiller Chronicles, well, do that. Then read this. It is absolutely spot on.

This amazingly awesome MarioPaintComposer version of "Get Lucky": I didn't know people even stil had Mario Paint Composer! HOLY SHIT! SO COOL! I love this song. I love Mario. If you put them together, well, that's even better.

This Dutch reality show about farmers looking for love: caveat: I haven't watched the show. But I find the entire idea absolutely charming! Especially after watching an episode of the Bachelorette. How refreshing to hear about a reality show that is actually.....real! That last bit about the teachers, though, that's low, Jezebel.

Janelle Monae's New Album The Electric Lady: This thing is awesomely all over the place. For someone like me, who likes pretty much everything from classic jazz to electronica to rock, this album is a roller coaster of fun different styles. It doesn't really have a cohesive sound, but there's a futuristic sci-fi feel to everything. Dance Apocalypse sounds like something from the 80s, Look Into My Eyes reminds me of anime flicks like Neon Genesis Evangelion or even Blade Runner. At any rate, its amazing and if you've got an hour, you should listen to it. And then buy it.

This adorable video of Maru playing with a kitten: If you don't know who Maru is, well, you should. He's probably the most famous cat on the internet...or at least in Japan. If you're unfamiliar, I suggest you start here or here....or even here. Once you're familiar with Maru and his shennanigans, well, watch those other videos anyway. Then watch this one. The only thing cuter than Maru? Maru and a kitten.

These adorable cats in hats: They're cats. In hats. Tiny adorable construction paper hats. SO CUTE.

This heart-rending obituary Sarah Silverman wrote for her dog, Duck: Sarah, I'm so sorry for your loss. I'm crying for you and with you and I know Duck lived a long happy life full of love. But it doesn't make it easier to say good-bye.

This video of Max and Thomas recreating their most famous lindy routine: Remember this? If not, well, that's ok. You had to be a lindy hopper around 2003 to have seen it. It was a strange time too. Follows wore jeans and dresses, leads wore huge cargo pants, you either danced "savoy" or "California" style, and dressing vintage? What losers did that? But the lindy scene has gotten back to its roots in music and style through the miracle of the internet. Thomas and Max have become (were already, I guess) two of the most recognizable dancers in the lindy hop world. For two other great dancers' wedding (Congrats, Dax and Sarah!), they recreated that routine. I like this one even better!

This recreation of the Vesuvius eruption that destroyed Pompeii: cooooooooooooooool.

These gorgeous whimsical lovely paintings: These remind me of some of my favorite things from my childhood.  The Last Unicorn, Maxfield Parrish prints, the Wind in the Willows, foxes, cats, dragons, Russian laquer boxes and everything else I think is beautiful.

This Sunday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic: Teaching high school really makes you appreciate this one. Like, whoa.

This article on why deli meat has rainbows: I've always wondered about this!!!

Two-stepping at the Maverick: Some Observations

1. I had fun. I'll be honest, I don't know if I expected to have fun. I hoped I would, but here it is: Country music is not my favorite thing and I was taking along Tim, who feels the same way about country music as he does about car repairs. So my expectations weren't high. But when I walked into the Maverick and saw all those cowboy hats floating around on the dance floor, with bedazzled jeans flashing around them, I knew that even though this wasn't my scene, it certainly was someone's and those someones were having a great time. It was infectious. Watching people dance and enjoy it is almost as fun as doing it (almost). Add good friends and some Jameson and I can pretty much guarantee I'll have a good time. And I did!

2. Bands don't know how to play for dancers. At least this one didn't. It was a great band in most other respects. They were tight, they had lots of energy and I loved their set list. But a 3-minute guitar solo in the middle of "Mustang Sally" just isn't that great to dance to. And Mustang Sally? Great song, but not a good tempo for two-step (or any other dance, except for West Coast Swing, and can you imagine that? I can't). The DJed music that was playing when we got there was better suited for dancing and I wasn't surprised that when the band got back on the packed dance floor suddenly became a little more spacious. Just a little though. Its clear that the folks at the Maverick will dance to just about anything and have a good time doing it. Which is awesome.

3. Country dancing is a real live dance scene. As in, you just show up and you dance. I found this really refreshing in certain ways and sort of off-putting in others. There's no class to take* and that's kind of cool. Maybe a friend of yours teaches you a basic two-step (forward, forward, back). That's really all you need to get onto the floor. And that might not be all you see on the floor. There are a lot of people out there just moving with their partner and feeling good about it. There's a basic, but you don't need to know it. You just lead or follow and have a good time. Which is awesome. On the other hand, it seems a little harder scene to crack. Because there's not necessarily a common dance (although two-step is definitely king), that means that what you know becomes less important than who you know...and if you don't know many people, well, maybe you won't dance as much. I'm so used to the lindy scene, where if you're new, people will almost always ask you to dance. Also, since the Maverick is primarily a bar, there was a whole bar aspect to the dancing; people were there not just to dance, but also to drink, to socialize, to pick up dates. And that meant if you came attached to someone, you probably weren't going to get asked as often either. Of course, its hard to make generalizations based on one time dancing, so I'm more than happy to be proven wrong!

4. When I go out dancing, its usually to a swing dance. But if I go to a westie dance, I'm not going to drop some lindy and charleston on the floor. If I go to a ballroom, I will restrain my urge to swing at and demurely foxtrot (or sppppppiiiiiiinnnnn in a Viennese waltz! So fun!). But if I go to a country western bar, maybe, just maybe I should try to, you know, country dance. Or whatever else is going on. I certainly don't bring a partner, with whom I will dance exclusively, and then dance a fucking cha-cha-cha. But there was one such a couple last night. Now, I don't begrudge them their fun; after all, how often to you get to ballroom dance outside of a ballroom? But is the Maverick really the place? Also, there was a whole show-offy aspect to their dance that was really out of place. Everyone else was dancing just for the fun....it seemed like these two were dancing to show off. How do I presume to know that? Well, dancing cha-cha-cha to a blues dance doesn't make much sense, does it? I get the showing off thing, and if you hear music and you just want to dance and the only dance you can dance is cha-cha-cha, well, ok, but how about asking someone to teach you a two-step, if you're such hot shit? Ugh. Sorry. I know and love some ballroom dancers, but in this case, ew.

5. If I'm going to go dancing at the Maverick again, I seriously need to invest in some cowboy boots and some daisy dukes. A sparkly belt probably wouldn't hurt either.

6. Next time I go dancing at the Maverick, you should come too!

*well, the Maverick offers dance classes, but they're a series that you really invest in, rather than just showing up to a dance and learning from a lesson before it.

A Simple Recipe for Happiness

Ingredients:
Milk chocolate chips (or semi-sweet for those of you who like a darker flavor)
Butterscotch chips
A small bowl (or a big bowl. I'm not judging)
Pretzel sticks

1. Mix roughly half and half mix of butterscotch and chocolate chips in the small bowl.
2. Put in the microwave 15 seconds at a time, stirring with a pretzel stick between each microwaving, until chips are melted together.
3. Dip pretzel sticks into delicious chocolately butterscotchy goodness until you are sick.
4. Bask in resulting happiness.

Race and Lindy Hop? Some Incipient Thoughts

One of my favorite swing bloggers, Wandering&Pondering posted this video a couple of weeks ago, along with this status (it was on Facebook):

Andy Reid reminded me of this clip as an example of something that could only happen in New York City. Mama Lu Parks worked in the Savoy Ballroom before they tore it down in the 50's. She made it her mission in life to carry the torch of Lindy Hop during that "wandering the desert" era through the 60's, 70's and early 80's. Her protégés showed up at Yehoodi's 6th Anniversary in 2004 which was also the 100th Birthday of Count Basie, and threw down a performance for the ages. We were trying so hard hard to get that "old school" feel for so many years, and they just threw that out there like it was nothing.

Chances are if Wandering&Pondering posts it, its worth watching. I didn’t know who Mama Lu Parks was, but what the hey, JSalmonte posted it, so I watched it.

I immediately knew what he meant when he described the dancing with “that old school feel.” If you watch enough lindy hop, especially old clips of dancers from the 30s and 40s, you get a sense for how things have changed. Nobody dances quite like those old timers did. Even with all the old original music, all the vintage original clothing, in original ballrooms, something is still different about they way they dance. Of course it is. I liken it to watching Mad Men (which, I’ll admit, I don’t much), which has been praised to the skies for the accuracy of its sets, its costumes, its language, its culture. But nobody watching Mad Men would ever for a moment think it was actual footage from the 60s. There’s still a pretend quality to it, an awareness that no matter how technically perfect the performance, its still just that. Its not history, but the performance of history. I wonder about that sometimes; how we can’t really escape the time and place we’re formed in, no matter how we change the details. We are fundamentally creatures of our own time.

Which made me think about the epoch in which swing was “original.” It was the 30s and 40s, before the Civil Rights movement and integration and all that jazz, and while I’m no expert on race relations, its clear from the footage that survives that there were two very distinct cultures of lindy hop in the 30s and 40s: one white and one black.

(skip to about 1:45 to see the lindy hopping and try to ignore the awful sambo stuff)

They almost don’t look like the same dance, right?

But lindy hop started in Harlem in the 30s, when Harlem was a black community (I think it still is, right?). Then it swept through the nation as a national dance craze. So those white dancers dancing, while they’re original dancers in the grand scope of history, wouldn’t be considered originators of the dance. Like blues and jazz, what was originally a black form of expression was absorbed into the greater (mostly white?) culture of the U.S. And I think its probably fair to say that while lindy hop got absorbed into greater U.S. culture, its black dancers and its white dancers were probably not very integrated. (There were a few exceptions; the Cotton Club The Savoy Ballroom, where Fankie Manning threw the first aerial, was definitely integrated[The Cotton Club, I have been informed, was definitely not.]). So two groups of dancers, one black, one white.

I don’t really know what I can say about that, except as I was watching, I couldn’t help but notice that most of the performers were black, while most of the audience was white.

Its fair to say that today, lindy hop is a predominantly white dance. While there are a few notable exceptions (Steven Mitchell, Ryan Francois, you are amazing), mostly they’re white, affluent kids. If they’re not white, they’re Asian. And they probably learned how to dance at college. For some reason, lots of the guys are engineers of some sort (I’ve never been able to figure that out). So what was once a dance of Harlem is being kept alive by a bunch of nerdy rich kids who like to dress up in vintage clothing. What was once a national phenomenon, danced all over the U.S. (granted, not together, but still pretty ubiquitous), is now a sub-culture of partner dancing danced by a privileged few, who are mostly white, middle to upper class, college educated and (usually) pretty nerdy.

That’s maybe putting it a little harshly. I’m not personally rich and I don’t particularly like to dress up in vintage, but the rest is pretty true. I learned to dance in college. I don’t know what drew me to lindy in the first place; there was the famous Gap commercial, of course, but I don’t remember that playing a huge role in my attraction to swing dancing. I do remember watching old movies with my mom and loving the world I saw there. Men in suits and ties, wearing fedoras; women in jaunty hats and wearing gloves and well-tailored dresses. I loved it. And I loved the music that went along with it. Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong. I know when I heard them sing and play, I wanted, maybe even needed to move. So I found a lesson and started. But there’s no doubt that in terms of race and socio-economics, I was the norm.

I’ve been trying to think about why that might be and what it might mean, especially in the aftermath of Miley Cyrus’s racially and sexually charged VMA performance. I wonder about nostalgia and what it is that actually makes me want to lindy hop. And I wonder if I, as a white woman dancing what was in its inception at least a black dance, share anything with Miley. My intent is obviously different; I lindy because it feels good to do it, because I love camaraderie and the openness of the people who do it, because the music is so joyful that I have to do it. But I wonder, especially now, if I should be a little uncomfortable with what I’m a part of, if I can even have anything meaningful to say about it.

I’ve found writing this to be incredibly difficult because of my unease with the whole subject and because I love dancing so much. I’m still not sure if anything I’ve said makes sense or if its even worth saying, since most of my experience with these issues is incidental and not well researched at all. Maybe once I've put in more time and effort, they'll be more articulate. In the meantime, wanna dance?

Ode to Osprey Coozie

O Osprey coozie,

 how cozy, how woozy

I feel as I drink my beer you keep cool.

You're purple and foamy,

and my beer, not so loamy,

is perfectly tempertured in your embrace.

In the palm of my hand,

it is dry as warm sand,

how refreshingly arid you keep me!

And no coaster is needed,

for your protection is ceded,

and my wooden end tables are clean.

For, Osprey coozie,

how picky, how choosey

was I as I set down my drink!

But you and your hugs

make me melt onto rugs,

but perhaps that's only the beer.

Adventures in Fever Dreams

Its 12:20pm on Labor Day. I should be enjoying my day off, but instead I'm miserable on the couch. Tim has just left for a half day of work, so I'm on my own. A movie, I think.  But getting up to decide what to watch is too much trouble, so I reach for my kindle instead.

Soon the words on the page become blurry and the next think I know I'm on a dancefloor. I've never been to this particular one before, but I know it must be in LA. There's a huge lindy hop thing there this weekend. Surely I'm at Camp Hollywood. Before I can get my bearings, I see a familiar face: Ian from work. Ian doesn't dance, I think, Ian has a phd in philosophy. But then he sees me, grabs my hand and we are grooving. He's like the goddamn Skye Humphries of dreamland, creative and smooth and really really good. I'm about to comment on just how good he is when he drops my hand and walks away. Just walks away without a word. The song hasn't ended, no other shadowy couple has left the floor. Just him.

And I wake up. My body aches. My mouth is dry (no doubt I have been mouth breathing) and I'm hungry. I manage to rustle up some leftovers while I check facebook. Howard and Gayl are at Camp Hollywood. They've made it into the Amateur Balboa finals and I couldn't be more proud, or rather I could be, if my head would stop hurting. I turn off the computer and lay down again.

And find myself in a huge conference room. A dance floor is set up, but nobody is dancing. I know that I'm back in LA, back at Camp Hollywood, but where is everybody? I leave the conference room to find the dancers I know must be here somewhere, but I only find more empty conference rooms. Finally, I hear music coming from somewhere. I follow it into yet another conference room, this one not empty, but instead of lots of dancing couples I see only one solitary person on stage. The rest of the room is full of empty tables and chairs. The person on stage looks like Jeanelle Monae, but she's white, so I know it can't be her. Its Debra. And she's killing it. I watch her finish her solo charleston act and shoot her a thumbs up. She sees me and smiles. I leave.

And now I'm on the beach. I see lights ahead and hear music, but Morgan appears along with Cat. "The dancing is over there, Lauren. Over that dune." he says, pointing in opposite direction. "Yeah, everybody is over there." Cat chimes in. I eye them suspiciously and follow my gut. I go toward the music, rather than the dunes. They follow.

I finally find everyone sitting on bleachers set up in the sand around a huge campfire. On one side is another dance floor, but again, nobody is dancing. I see Howard, who is always game to dance, and even he shakes his head no. I put my hands out to warm them on the fire, feeling disappointed.

And wake up. I'm sweating. My fever has finally broken. I guess its time to go dancing.