Entries Tagged 'dance' ↓

I get off work in about an hour, and then I’m going to swing up to Tacoma to pick up my friend Amy, and then we’re gonna head down to Portland to go dancing at the Crystal Ballroom. The Crystal is huge (they cater events for up to 1000 people), and as the Portland Lindy Exchange is happening there this weekend, there will be good dancers from all over the world. The Solomon Douglas Swingtet is playing, dancing goes until midnight, and then a long drive back north. It should be a super-awesome time, and I’d be more excited about it if I weren’t sore and tired. I’ve been dancing a ton, and not sleeping enough, lately.

The funny thing is, I don’t think I’m sore from the actual dancing. I think I’m sore from all the driving involved to get to the dances. I think it’s time to invent dancing as a form of transportation. You know, like the elevator in Thoroughly Modern Millie, except maybe a little bit faster, and it would be nice if we could get our own lane on the freeway.
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I can be compulsive, but usually not in a manic fashion. Obsessive? Absolutely. The subjects vary, but the ones that come to mind immediately are:

• Webcomics.
• Ideas for websites.
• Ideas for La Casa.
• Swing Dancing.
• Librarianism.
• Webcomics.

You’ll notice that, sadly, blogging is not on that list. I’d love to be obsessed with blogging, but I’m not sure if it will happen in this current format. My idea, currently (and this does fall into the “Ideas for websites” obsession), is to create a seperate space for purely personal, day-to-day things (probably on livejournal, which seems to cater to the format), and another space for something more of a professional (meaning, subject-oriented) blog. I have some fun ideas for what I’d like to write about, mostly technology, information science, design, librarianism, and webcomics. It would be a fun cross-spectrum for fun people, I think.

I have two other ideas for what I think would be good websites. The nice part is that once set-up they would, for the most part, run themselves. The not-so-nice part is that I really have no clue how to set them up. The ideas and the execution, I think, would be fairly simple. Unfortunately, fairly simple is generally beyond me at the moment when it comes to web design. I’m decent with CSS and for the most part I “understand” things. Understanding does not a good web designer make. Not by itself, in any case. The point? The point is, if you’re good with web design, and might be interested in collaborating with me to get this stuff going, I’m happy to pitch my ideas to you. Understand, they’re not “exciting”. I don’t have the next MySpace lurking in my brain. They’re simple, but I think they’ll work.

Tonight I’m going dancing in Portland. Tomorrow night, to a party in Seattle. Sunday night I may go dancing in Seattle. Monday night, more dancing. Tuesday and Wednesday: dancing. Thursday? Thursdays I crawl into a hole and sleep, or sometimes I go play poker and drink beer. And I wonder why time seems to slip by so quickly … oh wait, no I don’t. The answer is dancing.

Dancing and webcomics. The two best answers out there.

Life like a dirty martini
dance the fork out and swing it
wore holes through my socks on a sticky floor
trying to find the right way to
woo

She’s mentioned that breakfast numerous times
I’m always flattered
French poetry in the underground
smiles and coffee and oh what times
and thank you for the years

Now a reciprocity, previously unsuggested
French and dancing?
at the same time no less
like Dionysus waiting in the wings
with wine and fervor and he’s winking
but I’m not going to chase because
I’ve tried that and …

The right way to woo is like dancing
like jazz in the underground club
with smoke against the ceiling
and wine for 10f
and every night we’d stumble home
across the Rhine

just find the syncopation
and Apollo be damned

Aperitif: a light follow-up on the palindrome post.

Entree: Desperate times call for desperate measures. Like, when you’re short on materials and you need to make a scarf, you use your “desperate measuring tape” to make you feel like it will be long enough, when actually it’s neither thick, long, nor wide enough (remember, we’re talking about a scarf here). So I posted a personal ad on craigslist - which you can read here for another couples weeks if you like - which I’d like to think is less desperate than it is modern. I am a man of the times. Here is my internet personal ad, hear me roar. It’s a good ad. I put a lot of thought into it. I’m a decent writer. It contains a lot of who I am, and if you get my sense of humor, it’s even pretty funny. I sat back and waited for the replies to roll in. Soon, I knew, I’d be fighting girls off with a stick, and Keira would be calling me to have coffee with her while she was in town for some red-carpet event or another.

Well, so far it hasn’t gone quite as planned. I have gotten multiple responses. By multiple, I mean two. I understand that the tone of my ad is fairly intellectual, so I immediately scared away all the vacuous rain-bunnies that the soggy northwest has to offer. Still, are there only two girls out there who read Craigslist, have an odd sense of humor, and are looking for a nice guy? The funny thing is, both responses I received were in response to my speaking French. I’d pretty much ruled out my French skills as a way to meet girls since, oh, High School when I met Helena Teddergreen in French class my freshman year but was entirely too flustered (and too much of a dork) to talk to her. Besides which, she was like two grades ahead of me and in High School that’s a super-big deal. That and the fact that during my stay in France there were no French girls who fell immediately for my moody and sophisticated American demeanor pretty much ruled out French as a valid method of seduction. Maybe I shouldn’t have crossed it off my list so soon.

One of the respondent lives in Tacoma, and did nothing more than invite me to the TacomaCityFrenchUp! picnic on July 20th. Not with her, just in general. I emailed her back, but she hasn’t yet responded. The other respondent lives in Seattle, and so far has been mostly restrained and reticent in our correspondence. It’s hard to get excited about meeting someone when getting them to tell you about themselves is like pulling teeth. Granted, we are strangers, but there’s a certain social contract involved with placing personal ads, and with answering them, that implies a level of voluntary information sharing. Perhaps La Francaise from Tacoma will email me again, and I’ll go to that picnic. Perhaps I’ll drive to Seattle and meet Ms. Taciturn. In either case, my expectation for true love via internet personal ad is greatly diminished.

Though I’m still waiting for Keira to call.

Digestif: In the meantime, I went to the swing dance last night after playing swing hookie for a couple weeks. My friend Lee was in town DJing, and I had a blast dancing and chatting with people. I did meet someone new, who seems very nice. We even exchanged phone numbers. It just goes to show that the best way to meet people is, and probably always will be, to go out and do things you enjoy. The rest will follow.

Saturday we had the Jackson Street Lindy Hopper’s come down to teach workshops all day, and then we had a dance that night. Being the ridiculously dedicated swing dancer that I am, I took all the workshops (which were great) and went to the dance. I was too tired for the after hours party though.