Paging essear! My experience is that rhythm develops pretty quickly, so put on Unfunkked and tear up the living room!
More research from the same author:
Men's physical strength is associated with women's perceptions of their dancing ability.
Testosterone and male behaviours.
The effects of facial hair manipulation on female perceptions of attractiveness, masculinity, and dominance in male faces.
Feel the power and strength of the patriarchy!!!!
[http://www.northumbria.ac.uk/sd/academic/psychsport/div_psych/psychstaff/n_neave/]
Important info for the single Unfogged man from above:
Male faces displaying a full beard were considered the most masculine, aggressive, socially mature, and older. Males with a light beard were considered the most dominant. Males with light stubble were considered to be the most attractive, light stubble was also preferred for both short- and long-term relationships.
Males with a light beard were considered the most dominant.
It's not my fault! I can't even grow a full beard!
Strong, aggressive, immaculately bearded university professor looking for submissive SWF for dancing, rough sex and listening to me pontificate. No Irish need apply.
Grrrr! Behold the power of the Sifu!
The effects of facial hair manipulation
Manipulation? Like, twirling one's mustache?
Males with light stubble were considered to be the most attractive, light stubble was also preferred for both short- and long-term relationships.
Presumably the women were looking at photographs and not actually chafing the hell out of their faces by making out with these most attractive dudes.
7: they put the women in a MRI and had them play with a Hairy Gary.
And then, once they'd destroyed the MRI by putting magnetic things in it, they used fun-fur and glue on cotton-top tamarin monkeys.
Why do the ladies always go for the mustache twirlers, ignoring us thoughtful chin strokers.
"We thought that people's arms and legs would be really important. The kind of expressive gestures the hands [make], for example. But in fact this was not the case," he said.
Spoken like a truly bad dancer.
11: The video is interesting. I'm not sure that the 'good dancer' looks all that impressive, but the 'bad dancer' was instantly recognizable as not just a lousy dancer, but a very familiar type of lousy dancer. The head ducked forward and held motionless is a distinct look.
I thought the 'good dancer' had quite a feminine style.
I thought the good dancer coulda done to loosen his hips up a bit.
Actually, at first I couldn't figure out if the "good" dancer was supposed to be the good one, but then the bad one was obviously bad.
But then there's the fact that the study is stupid.
I intended 18 to be a response to 13, but instead I simply managed to rephrase it. Yes, LB, I agree with you!
But then there's the fact that the study is stupid.
Isn't that annoying? I find this kind of social science research totally entertaining, but of course it's basically all stupid (or, I suppose not necessarily stupid, but mostly meaningless). But it would be totally neat if it did mean something?
The robot is simply the illusion of being a robot. Movements of the robot are normally started and finished with a dimestop (a very abrupt stop), to give the impression of motors starting and stopping, but poppers have also been known to do the robot with a pop to the beat. As long as the illusion of being a robot is maintained, it is considered the robot.
20: I don't think it's necessarily meaningless. Scientifically confirming something that is generally believed true still has value. As to whether that study did this (small sample size etc.) -- that is debatable.
I find this kind of social science research totally entertaining, but of course it's basically all stupid (or, I suppose not necessarily stupid, but mostly meaningless).
Well, I don't know if that's necessarily true. It's possible (if difficult) to create a well-designed experiment that actually tells you something. On the other hand, it's possible to create an experiment with a good 'hook' that gets you in the papers. So the ones we hear about (in, you know, the papers) is the mostly meaningless.
I have no idea what the question mark is doing at the end of 20.
Girls often overinflect, LB. You should watch that.
I started enjoying dancing when I stopped worrying about being a bad dancer.
27:
That statement should be studied. Do boys prefer girls who overinflect?
I do not like it when people blur the line between the categories of partners-dancing vs single dancing. If we're not explicitly dancing as partners, with rules, then all you're doing is preventing me from changing up what I'm doing as often as I want to. Also you're too close.
I do not mind if I'm single-dancing, facing one other person who is not trying to coordinate with me in anyway. I just get annoyed if there's some sort of pretense of coordination going on.
30:
I never fully appreciated that concept until BR and I went out with some of her attractive young friends. I was surprised how quickly the boys swarmed and how close they got. Kids these days!
And, heebie, sorry about that spanking move I did when we danced.
With rules? Man.
One of my favorite things to do when dancing is to feed off what somebody else is doing in what is hopefully sort of an intuitive way. You don't have to get particularly close to do this, and the coordination doesn't have to be particularly exact, but rule-less working off of each other's movements is fun! It's not limiting!
On the other hand, after unfoggidycon, where instead of dancing I bitched about the music, I'm not sure I get to weigh in on this topic here anymore.
But yeah, I ain't talkin' about freaking people, or touching them, or getting close enough to restrict their freedom of movement. It's definitely annoying when teh dudes do that.
34.2: Me too, but I always worry how this will be interpreted. Will they think I'm mocking them, or trying some kind of oneupmanship? So I try to switch targets enough that no-one will notice.
24: I don't think it's necessarily meaningless. Scientifically confirming something that is generally believed true still has value.
I suppose I'm probably being overly earnest here, but I don't think studies like this are meaningless either. I think they're really pernicious.
Some dancers are better than others. This isn't news. Dressing it up as some insight into evolutionary psychology is bullshit, and it's the kind of bullshit that plays into a lot of harmful narratives about human nature.
26: I have no idea what the question mark is doing at the end of 20.
The robot?
I go out of my way to dance as badly and as enthusiastically as I possibly can, and then I tell my kids that this is how normal people dance. They seem to have caught on to my ruse, though.
as badly and as enthusiastically
Relying on this study (not, of course, that anyone should), it's hard to combine the two. Energetic flailing seems to fit much better in the 'good dancing' category than in the 'bad dancing' category.
I think the only dancing I have seen CA do is the "I am putting my weight on my front foot; now I am putting my weight on my back foot" Fugazi-show dance.
A haiku:*
The Birth of the Pogo
A short punk rocker
In the way back of the club
Couldn't see the band
*I didn't write it. I think I saw it in the back of a magazine in the early 80s. When Ben wakes up, he can tell us that it's not really a haiku.
it's hard to combine the two.
I stick my hands behind my head like moose antlers, spread my legs wide, and hop from side to side.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py5qAH7wELY
44: Genius. My only regret is that I didn't think of it.
well-done, rob; that does sound awful. --wait, maybe I better see what sifu thinks. maybe it's cool.
43.1: That's the only dance I ever do in public. In private, though, I have moves that would embarrass Jim Carrey.
Just a second. My fingers get bigger, but my nostrils stay the same. I'll have the boogie when I can.
The first time I genuinely felt comfortable dancing in public was also my first rave, but it wasn't automatic. I did the boring-dude dance for a while, then I tried to mimic people for a while, and neither of those seemed to work, so I started doing kung fu moves (real ones, goofy ones imitating movies I'd seen, and totally invented ones), and people seemed to really like that. That's when I learned you can do any crazy-ass thing you want when dancing and it'll be fine.
Turns out this insight applies only partially to the non-rave world, but by then I was pretty fearless.
Except, you know, when Billy Jean comes on a couple-three too many times.
so I started doing kung fu moves (real ones, goofy ones imitating movies I'd seen, and totally invented ones), and people seemed to really like that.
Does anyone remember 80s teen flick License to Drive?
52: Not me. Maybe ask Heebie's students?
That's when I learned you can do any crazy-ass thing you want when dancing and it'll be fine.
Shit yes. I used to go out dancing a lot with two of my female flatmates, years back. One night we were in one our usual places, but they were playing salsa and other Latin music. About which none of us had a clue [or liked much, tbh]. So, we went up and totally bullshitted it [in what, I'd have thought, was an obviously-don't-have-a-clue way].
Within about 2 minutes people were copying our steps.
Does anyone remember 80s teen flick License to Drive?
Only every single time I take a driver's test and the tester puts his coffee cup on the dashboard and tells me not to spill a drop, and I'm successful until I'm rear-ended after the conclusion of my test, and so I fail through no fault of my own!
As well as the Glasgwegian Flamenco movement.
"George Jean Nathan said that the lovely rhythms of the waltz should be listened to in stillness and not be accompanied by strange gyrations of the human body. I think that's what he said. I think it was George Jean Nathan."
-D. Parker, "The Waltz."
Dancing=sorrow.
-Smearcase, who dances like Elaine on Seinfeld.
The interesting thing about the kind of dancing one does to pop music (as opposed to waltzing or jitterbugging or whatever) which I am told is called "dancing apart to the beat" is that, unlike those more structured dances, I'm pretty sure you can't learn it. You either have the knack, or you don't.
For most people dancing is just like in-line skating - but without in-line skates, so it's a double positive.
Within about 2 minutes people were copying our steps.
Heh. At the rave in question I spent a while trying to show a girl who was out of her fucking mind on acid how to do the Shaolin Cross Stance. She did not pick it up very easily, it must be said.
Argh! I meant Can't Buy Me Love!
Only every time I save my lawn-mowing money all summer to buy an even better lawn mower that will help me make even more money next summer, only to squander it embarking on a suprisingly successful pygmalion venture with the most popular girl in school.
Some fucker just passed his viva with no modifcations. Way to let the side down.
The other important thing to remember about dancing is that it keeps you from having to talk to people.
Also.
My greasemonkey script from five years ago lives again!
The interesting thing about the kind of dancing one does to pop music (as opposed to waltzing or jitterbugging or whatever) which I am told is called "dancing apart to the beat" is that, unlike those more structured dances, I'm pretty sure you can't learn it. You either have the knack, or you don't.
Which is what makes it all so terribly oppressive. Learning how to do something correctly by following a series of steps? I might not be the quickest study out there, but I can do it. Freely and creatively expressing my intimate relationship to the music? You might as well put a gun to my head and shoot me now.
Freely and creatively expressing my intimate relationship to the music? You might as well put a gun to my head and shoot me now.
What about just sort of bopping around in your seat, when no one's around? As in, is your intuition just inhibited by the presence of other people?
Nah, that's not it. I just haven't got any.
Sometimes, you have intuition and you just need to drink enough for it to appear.
You should probably take a video of yourself trying to bop along to some music, at your desk, and let us be the judge.
Sure, that sounds like a good idea.... Wait a minute, you're trying to pull one over on me!
The reality is that (the basics of) dancing is very easy -- even when you're not a kung-fu master! You really should make that video so we can offer some constructive criticism.
75: Conversations about dancing always start with people talking about how easy and natural it is if you just aren't self-conscious. IME, they quickly and smoothly progress to good dancers swapping stories about entertainingly and embarrassingly terrible dancers they've seen.
Entertainingly terrible is still entertaining. I imagine that's about where I fall on the spectrum.
74: If you want, you can wear a skin-tight neoprene unitard that extends over your face and hands and feet, so that you'll feel less embarrassed. Like the dancer in the link. Or like the mascot from Community.
I'm not sure how you could be embarrassingly terrible unless you were, like, trying to pole dance or do backflips or something. And that would still be entertaining.
a skin-tight neoprene unitard
I had one of those from back when Buck and I were dating, but I don't think it fits any more.
trying to pole dance or do backflips or something.
This is wrong?
78: I have friends that all don those (in a gold lamé color scheme), show up at clubs/shows, bum-rush the stage and then do entertainingly terrible coordinated dance routines. It sounds like a good time to me.
re: 73
We probably need multiple samples, just to be clear.
Say, one with:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHc11Gs9T40
[philly/disco]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z7gAgtMKjw
[for the slow jam]
one with:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ix6D-L6Z3I
[g-funk]
and:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA9YrUktxDU
[for the 80s shape throwing]
Srsly, if you just learn the step and tap like in the Hitch link above (which I thoughfully reproduce here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py5qAH7wELY) you've won the battle. You can go a long way with that (see here for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LcBgkzNWBY).
Send all bodysuit dance videos to neb?
Wait a minute, you're trying to pull one over on me!
You're honing in on the right idiom, but they're trying either to put one over on you or to pull the wool over your eyes.
No, no, it's a dance move. You shimmy around your partner like you're pulling a giant condom down over them.
Drat you.
Let me revise by saying that I believe Heebie was attempting to slip me the old rubber peach.
attempting to slip me the old rubber peach
Another classic dance move! First you make like you're bouncing a tiny basketball, then you add in the "I'm trying to shove something up your ass" motion on the off-beat.
89: The coherence of your writing is teetering by a thread.
just passed his viva
What does that mean? Some kind of medical condition?
89.last: Yeah yeah, SB's other blog and all that; is that phrase a Bob & Ray exclusive?
Could be, that's certainly where I picked it up. But I've been saying it for long enough that possibly people who've heard me using it think it's a legitimate idiom.
92: Threatening to cut people has apparently lost its terrors. I must work on being scarier.
92 -- Hanging by its thumbs, more likely.
Rounding third and being thrown out at the plate?
Oh, I thought this was a mixed metaphor competition. "Teetering by a thread" is the best one I've heard except maybe "at the blink of a hat".
Both "at the blink of a hat" and its obvious counterpart, "at the drop of an eye," are awesome and will immediately enter my vocabularly.
78: Have we discussed here the general excellent-ness of Community? Because it is in fact excellent. Why, I re-watched the paintball episode just last night.
Dammit, 100 should say "at the drop of a Kobe." Apologies all around.
I am not-so-patiently waiting for someone to make a completely ludicrous over the top personal attack in the service of a losing argument. Then, in the blink of a hat, I am going to say that a friend should check her for bruises!
I have my list of suspect who are most likely to fall into my trap. Yea, I'm looking at you, Carp.
Entertainingly terrible is still entertaining
Entertainingly terrible is terribly entertaining.
104: Semi OT:
"You kids get off my lawn" Camille Paglia is even worse than Paglia Classic.
However, the main point is that the young Madonna was on fire. She was indeed the imperious Marlene Dietrich's true heir. For Gaga, sex is mainly decor and surface; she's like a laminated piece of ersatz rococo furniture. Alarmingly, Generation Gaga can't tell the difference. Is it the death of sex?...
Generation Gaga doesn't identify with powerful vocal styles because their own voices have atrophied: they communicate mutely via a constant stream of atomised, telegraphic text messages. Gaga's flat affect doesn't bother them because they're not attuned to facial expressions.
Gaga's fans are marooned in a global technocracy of fancy gadgets but emotional poverty. Borderlines have been blurred between public and private: reality TV shows multiply, cell phone conversations blare everywhere; secrets are heedlessly blabbed on Facebook and Twitter. Hence, Gaga gratuitously natters on about her vagina...
Depressingly, nothing on the first page of Google hits for "teetering by a thread" appears to be kidding. And the first hit is Harry Potter fanfic.
Gaga is in way over her head with her avant-garde pretensions
Paglia is certainly an expert on that condition.
106: This collection is more fun than shooting monkeys in a barrel.
You may check anyone I dance with for bruises. Especially after Sifu teaches me his martial arts/dance hybrid. Although, in my defense, I did several weeks ago successfully and without injury to anyone fulfill the rôle of "guy who runs around holding up one leg of a chair whereupon sits one of two brides in a lesbian wedding hora" which I assume is a single word in Hebrew except maybe for the lesbian part.
Also, 76. Truer words were never writ.
You know, I know that critiquing Tweety for excessive aggression is kind of a sensitive zone these days, but I wouldn't call going out on the floor and doing fake kung-fu moves good advice, exactly.
Also, I'm hoping this video restores the Running Man to prominence.
110: Right -- if you're going to be doing kung fu moves on the dancefloor, you want to be sure you're going to do some damage.
Conversations about dancing always start with people talking about how easy and natural it is if you just aren't self-conscious. IME, they quickly and smoothly progress to good dancers swapping stories about entertainingly and embarrassingly terrible dancers they've seen.
"Just don't be self-conscious" isn't particularly good advice, but lack of self-consciousness is the point of dancing. Repetitive vigorous dancing causes escastic states of mind. This has little to do with self expression. Just copy what everyone else is doing.
http://www.barbaraehrenreich.com/dancing_intro.htm
which I assume is a single word in Hebrew except maybe for the lesbian part.
After learning that there was no specific prohibition against lady-lady lovin' in Jewish law, I asked my chasidic best friend about it, and she said, "Well . . . that's true. But there are injunctions against behaving as the Egyptians do, and the Egyptians are well known for it."
3: I had a mustache that reached down to the bottom of my chin for a while. No hair growing from anywhere but the upper lip, mind you, so I could do the Snidely Whiplash twirl as needed. The unanimous advice from the post-divorce "get your life back together" advisory panel was that it had to go right. this. minute. I wanted to get an extension on the tips, complete with little beads on the end dangling down a couple of inches below my chin, and shave the center of the 'stache so that it was just missing the Hitler part. The GYLBT advisory panel shot this one down, too, so I just shaved it.
I still occasionally absentmindedly reach to twirl it, but it was a bit of a pain in the ass to maintain.
115.last: An entry in the mixed metaphor contest?
GYLBT
Gay, Yooper, Lesbian, Bi, Transsexual?
Get Your Lone Blog, Twit?
105: You missed my favorite part! "Drag queens, whom Gaga professes to admire, are usually far sexier in many of her over-the-top outfits than she is." Because drag queens sneak into Casa Gaga at night and take pictures of themselves trying on the clothes there or something.
Unrelated to that, I'm checking myself for a bruise after completely wiping out on my friend's kitchen floor the other night. (I helpfully didn't post about that part, but that's what the muscle stim was dealing with.) She'd spilled some wine on the marble(?) floor, I guess, and I walked in on my way to the bathroom and both feet went out from under me and BOOM. I'm disappointed that since my whole side aches so much it hurts to walk I've only so far gotten a few turquoise bruise spots. This is so unlike me!
GYLBT
I read this and didn't make the proper acronym connection at first. I thought "GLBT/LGBT, yeah I know those. And I know what QII would signify had those been appended. But Y? What the hell is Y?"
And so I sat, perplexed, for quite some time.
117: I admit that Yooper did not occur to me as one of the possible answers.
115: It took a whole panel to make that suggestion? I'm afraid to ask what the second recommendation was.
Yodelers face oppression too, you know.
Who reads Paglia these days, and why?
Does anyone read this crap and say "Oh, yeah, you nailed it sister. You totally captured everything that is wrong with popular culture today."
Can a writer survive simply on using escalating levels of stupidity to drive people to link to her saying "wow, this is the stupidest thing yet."
That Paglia piece makes me love Lady Gaga even more. I might even listen to some of her music.
||
Two kinds of sofa king awesome in this story via TPM. Not only is the headline "Quran not burned in Amarillo city park" one for the ages, but the skateboarder hero enters history with the sure-to-be-immortal words, "Dude you have no Quran."
|>
Oh man that is awesome. I want "Dude you have no Quran" to become the "Don't tase me bro" of late 2010.
125: Most awesome skateboarder ever. See also his masterful use of the obscure past tense form 'snook'.
I'm still working through various practical issues that stand between me and post-divorce status, but I'm counting on Unfogged to serve as my own GYLBT advisory panel when the time comes. What could go wrong?
What could go wrong?
If we have a couple of months to plan our advice, I'm sure we can think of something.
121: It was fucking magnificent, Moby. Magnificent.
The following is not a critical prescriptivist statement. When I see a comment with multiple questions that don't end with question marks, I know it's by either RH-C or Bostoniangirl.
129: What could go wrong?
How easily do you bruise?
Unrelated to that, I'm checking myself for a bruise after completely wiping out on my friend's kitchen floor the other night.
My bad.
Does anyone read this crap and say "Oh, yeah, you nailed it sister. You totally captured everything that is wrong with popular culture today."
Yes, frighteningly.
125.2: Another favorite: "dowsed with kerosene"
138: As soon as I get wireless, so I can stand in my yard with a rake while reading, I'm so there.
Can a writer survive simply on using escalating levels of stupidity to drive people to link to her saying "wow, this is the stupidest thing yet."
You haven't been paying any attention to McMegan's trajectory, have you, rob?
Have we had a DQ update? If not, she is seriously slacking on the drama. I thought you had to vamp it up a bit during your probationary period.
Who reads Paglia
Salon readers who like her political analysis, apparently.
http://www.delicious.com/search?p=paglia&chk=&context=main|&fr=del_icio_us&lc=
Mr. Blandings, good luck with completing things as well as you can. Sadly, I'm with togolosh's friends on the advisability of such mustaches.
125:
Members of the Amarillo Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Church enacted a phone tree this morning and they used Facebook to spread their message: Stop the Quran from burning in an Amarillo city park.
So, really, it's UUs who brought you "Dude, you have no Quaran." You're welcome.
I really want to erect a plaque in honor of the Dude you have no Quran guy at the Stoner Recreation Center skate park. I wonder how much it would cost?
115: The unanimous advice from the post-divorce "get your life back together" advisory panel was that it had to go right. this. minute.
Magnificent it may have been, but in combination with the ubiquitous hat you've mentioned -- which I imagine probably wrongly as a sort of squashed, shapeless cotton thing -- I have a mental image now that either (a) makes me grin helplessly, or (b) makes me just, you know, go "huh."
I'ma go with the grin.
148: Next time I find five dollars, I'll donate it to the cause.
148: There could be an eternal flame in the shape of a barbeque grill, with the preserved Quran being held away from the flame.
Yes! We have no Quranas. We have no Quranas today!
145: Dude, you have no Quaran
I spelled it "Quaran" to heal the divide between team Quran and team Koran.
(BTW, was there an answer to LB's question the other day about whether there was any political significance to the spellings?)
You haven't been paying any attention to McMegan's trajectory
Paglia is still the champion, clearly, but in the race for the "how stupid can you be and still walk" award, McMegan has been gaining on her for some time. Maybe they should Jello wrestle for the title.
133: Its nice to know that I've made an impression on people.
Right spelling and right governance are one, Sir Kraab. Rectification of names. Zhengming.
||
I'm completely baffled by the two Democratic primary candidates for County Executive here. I know I should have looked into this sooner; now that I have, I find (so far) virtually nothing that tells me what they actually stand for. Negative campaigning, allegations of distorted fact-mongering. One is an ex-farmer, the other bills himself as a progressive. Their actual policy statements are fairly indistinguishable, which fact has been noted by many. Their debates are full of discussion of what to do about traffic congestion in a certain locale, or what to do about area schools.
I'm chastened. I kind of want to know which has the greater chance of defeating the Republican candidate in November; or whether there's no danger of the Republican winning in the first place. Nobody seems to be talking about this. Stoopid County politics. Or stoopid me.
|>
Who is the Carcetti machine endorsing?
Paglia is still the champion
The Quaran spelling makes it, to my ear, work better in the question "Dude, where's my Quaran?".
How long before youtube is rife with "Dude, you have no Quran" and "Ow! Charlie bit me" mashups? (Believe me, if I knew how to do that shit, there'd already be one.)
153: Paglia is still the champion, clearly, but in the race for the "how stupid can you be and still walk" award, McMegan has been gaining on her for some time.
You sexists ignore Newt Gingrich who can do that, *and* still be the most frequent guest on Meet the Press so far this year.
157: The only endorsements I can find are from, e.g. the teacher's union, a local environmental organization, the police and firefighters. These are pretty much evenly divided between the two candidates. It doesn't seem that the higher-ups (mayor, governor) have actually endorsed primary candidates in the counties.
Maybe they can't figure it out either. Note that Baltimore County does not include Baltimore City -- it's the area surrounding the city.
#161. Ok, we'll enter Gingrich and Goldberg in the Jello wrestling men's finals and the winner of that match will go on to wrestle Paglia or McMegan for the championship.
161: You know, I completely fell into that trap. The other day, I was saying to M/tch, "Motch, wasn't there a period when Gingrich was a little less crazy? Somewhere between the Contract on America and 'this is the final struggle'?" But Match was in China for, like, 30 goddamn years, so he didn't know anything about it.
Aha. Thanks, Halford. I've actually found something substantive that gives me some guidance.
Carry on! More Jonah Goldberg and Newt Gingrich bashing.
I found myself agreeing with Paglia, hopefully just because I'm predisposed to hate Lady Gaga for other reasons. Specifically, she and Kesha are at the forefront of a trend toward defining coolness by how many people you reject, the way AWB always used to complain about dudes doing. e.g:
-"boys blowing up our phones... but we kick 'em to the curb unless they look like Mick Jagger"
-that song about how Lady Gaga and Beyonce are too busy in the club to answer your calls.
Alejandro is catchy as hell though. As is the telephone song. As, sadly, is "Tik Tok". Otherwise they wouldn't be so evil.
e actually found something substantive that gives me some guidance.
I must say that's not the result I was expecting from my lame The Wire reference.
we kick 'em to the curb unless they look like Mick Jagger
Now this, this is crazy talk.
Alejandro is catchy as hell though. As is the telephone song.
Really? I find both of those totally lame, especially in comparison to other Gaga songs.
169 gets it exactly right. Those two songs pain me. And I love La Ga Ga.
we'll enter Gingrich and Goldberg in the Jello wrestling men's finals and the winner of that match will go on to wrestle Paglia or McMegan for the championship.
I'm beginning to wonder whether McMegan belongs here. What ever happened to what's-her-name, um, Ann Coulter? Things didn't work out for her?
The current MD governor is who Carcetti was based on. Don't know who the hottie girlfriend was supposed to be.
League of Conservation Voters tracks bay runoff issues pretty well. One other local issue is how harshly civic authorities should treat undocumented immigrants.
Alejandro reminds me too much of Fernando - Abba did it better.
(And to be clear, I like Gaga's other singles.)
(Also, I am aware that the two songs have very little in common besides prominently featuring a Spanish name and a dance beat.)
unless they look like Mick Jagger"
This cracks me up. Mick Jagger is 195 years old. Isn't she the one who sings the song about a dinosaur trying to hit on her?
Unless she is trying to be like Jon Lovitz, who dated the young Elizabeth Taylor.
And Mick's strong point wasn't his looks exactly when he was a spring chicken. Being Mick Jagger was attractive back in the day, but I don't think looking like him ever was.
172: The current MD governor is who Carcetti was based on.
So the rumor goes, and they actually look and behave somewhat alike (my ex-landlord was in the now-governor's band - good people), but as I said, the current MD governor hasn't endorsed anyone for this particular County Executive race, as far as I can tell.
One other local issue is how harshly civic authorities should treat undocumented immigrants.
Right, but it appears that that will be an issue come the midterm election in November between Dem and Republican candidates; not so much now in the Democratic primary.
176: The dude in The Rachel Papers got Ione Skye despite looking like Mick Jagger and acting like Hugh Grant.
164: The other day, I was saying to M/tch, "Motch, wasn't there a period when Gingrich was a little less crazy?
Actually, he did pull his horns in a bit from the time he left the Speakership in disgrace to about the 2008 campaign. If you look at the MediaMatters links they are almost all 1990s or pretty recent. In the middle he was (rather laughably) a policy wonk--see this NYTimes piece.
The dude in The Rachel Papers got Ione Skye despite looking like Mick Jagger and acting like Hugh Grant.
If you need proof that the nerds write the scripts, there ya go.
I like Tik-Tok. Ke$ha likes the classic rock. Her favorite album is Bob Dylan's 'Nashville Skyline'.
Mike Jagger wasn't unattractive:
I took the telephone to be a "petty annoyances of modern life" song, from the perspective of someone who spends a lot of time in clubs, sorta like the Dead Milkmen's "50 Things To Do" or that one Social Distortion song.
I don't know how I became a resident Gaga defender, but here I am. Life takes you odd places.
181: Kesha has a publicist to tell her stuff like that.
Is there a story about how Lady Gaga came up with her name? I ... guess I could google or Wikipedia it.
The name is from Radio GaGa, by Queen. This copy of the video is pretty poor quality, but you really need to watch Freddy Mercury re-enact the scene from Metropolis where the worker has to match the lights with the clock hands.
Is Barbara Ehrenreich right about absolutely everything?
