Dancing makes me more self-conscious than almost anything else. Fling-yourself-about dancing, I mean. Kinds with more specifics I'm just sort of inept at.
If she becomes a rapper, I hope your spaghetti is up to the challenge.
I'm pretty excited for this. I'm hoping she trains all the other Geeblets to do all her dance moves, too.
I used to really kind of enjoy flinging myself about wildly without any sense of rhythm, grace, or appropriateness, but haven't really done it at all since college. But I'd come home from parties with the soles of my feet bruised up black and blue from jumping around barefoot.
Adult contexts for dancing are much harder on people who are terrible at it, so I don't.
But I'd come home from parties with the soles of my feet bruised up black and blue from jumping around barefoot.
Wow.
(On at least one occasion, to be fair. I'm not sure that I remember actual bruises more than once.)
I used to really kind of enjoy flinging myself about wildly without any sense of rhythm, grace, or appropriateness
I don't enjoy this unless I'm drunk enough to have lost all self-consciousness, but by the point I'm that drunk I've also lost whatever semblance of appropriateness I initially had, so the end result really is quite an ugly scene. I used to think there was a very narrow sweet spot in which I could drink enough to lose inhibitions without losing all motor control, but there's definitely not anymore. I'm not sure if that's because it takes more alcohol to make me lose inhibitions (but not motor control?) than it used to, or if I was just deluded all along. Most likely the latter.
3: One of my favorite moments from this last Christmas was kid teaching Bollywood moves to stepdaughter, particularly one elaborate pelvic swiveling move, was hilarious and sweet.
actual bruises were a sign you'd been doing it right. Where "it" was a mosh pit, anyway.
I used to really kind of enjoy flinging myself about wildly without any sense of rhythm, grace, or appropriateness, but haven't really done it at all since college.
I have made it my life's work.
On the other hand, clicking "remember personal info" is not my life's work.
A high-school acquaintance's daughters are all up in competitive hip-hop dance troupe stuff. They win "bids to nationals" and things like that (often at Disney world; it's very Bring It On). (Also everyone seems to be white and they live in a very white place -- this has caused me to wonder about the league or whatever they compete in.)
17: some white youths listen to hip-hop these days.
I don't believe that the nation's best "hip-hop dance troupes" are all white and from lily-white suburbs. Because I am a racist.
I assume "hip hop moves" that win tournaments at Disney have been codified and cemented in a way that excludes the new weird hip hop moves from Chance the Rapper's most talented choreographer.
19: The best ones go on those TV dancing shows.
Hip hop dance moves can be challenging but doing them in Mickey Mouse and Goofy costumes adds a whole new level of difficulty.
I am reminded of the time a white sorority won a step competition, leading to "accusations that these young women had somehow hijacked a black tradition."
19: Right, obviously they'd be Asian-American.
24: That's right,! I was thinking about adding that. There are a wide variety of ethnicities represented, and even a few regular white people, but I don't recall ever seeing an all-white troupe.
Hip-hop dance is just one of the four kinds of dance they teach young girls at every dance studio. Hip-hop, jazz, tap and something else. I don't think it has any relation to music.
Hip-hop, jazz, tap and something else
Either ballet or modern. (I would actually have listed the "big 4" as hip-hop, jazz, ballet and modern, with tap as more of a secondary speciality class. But I'm sure practices vary across studios.)
I always dance without any relation to music, but I think that's not doing it right.
Anyway, some woman using the pseud "Arthur Murray" and I had an argument about that.
27 is exactly Hawaii's studio, with #4 being ballet.
Hip-hop dance is just one of the four kinds of dance they teach young girls at every dance studio>
Girls? Do they teach young boys other kinds of dance?
Not teaching young boys the basics of dance is really quite sad. I had some elementary square dancing and line dancing in grade school but other than that all the dance instruction I've had I arranged for myself. In my education Utopia formal dance instruction would be a mandatory part of the physical education curriculum. Ditch dodgeball, FFS, and replace it with dance.
My mom made me take dance lessons because she was afraid I'd be uncultured and dance lessons were the only available culture that didn't involve bowling. I was such a pain until I was allowed to quit.
36 before seeing 35, which is wrong.
My mom convinced my brother and I to do ballet for a while by telling us the 1985 Chicago Bears did ballet to stay agile. Eventually we quit, because we were the only boys in the class. Later, there was some gambit to get us to do Irish dancing (you know, like Riverdance), but again we quit because we were the only boys. Later, in high school when I was at Spanish camp, I learned to salsa and merengue. So now my list of available dance modes is: salsa, merengue, and generic flailing about albeit at least in rhythm.
Oops, obviously that should read "My mom convinced my brother and me."
It was Irish dancing I did. Nothing else in my town.
I managed to get out of the formal dance classes I was forced to take briefly in 7th grade (the fox trot and white gloves) through the convenient fact that the owners of the operation got embroiled in a racial scandal. So my decision to stop going was 100% principled. I still don't ballroom dance because it is super racist.
I still don't ballroom dance because it is super racist.
Please explain -- I could use another excuse.
We did do a goddamn TON of square dancing in elementary school. I don't know if that was everywhere or if it was some kind of lingering Southern California fake old westitude that had somehow lingered into the 80s. Anyhow, lots of dos-y-doing (not looking up spelling). I was banned from the fifth grade end of the year square dance performance because my square dancing was too metal.
We still have to explain why to avoid racist things? No wonder Trump is winning.
43: Ha. I grew up in Southern California, and I think I'm close to the same age as you. Square dancing was huge in elementary school for reasons I never understood. Interesting to know that it was a general SoCal thing from that time, and not just some weird obsession of one of the teachers at my particular school.
I wonder if they did square dancing at all in the 80s in Texas or more actually Western places like Utah or maybe Nebraska. Mobes?
35 - In highschool we cycled through various kinds of stuff through the year (each year roughly the same), and we had dancing as one of the units. But because the gym teachers were (at least for the boys) all sort of cheerful goons who had been hired as coaches for something or other and not people who actually knew much about any of the challenging kinds of dancing it was always square dancing and at a level of complexity that basically amount to synchronized walking around. It was one of the only sections where the boys and girls classes actually met for the same lessons, so I assume there must have been some intention of teaching more ballroomy dancing at some point or something, but that's not what happened.
(I mean, yes square dancing has some kind of gender divisions in it but at least at the level involved it wouldn't have been obvious which people were which if you didn't already know a lot about square dancing going in. And even then any complaints would have had to be about someone being in an odd numbered position in a line or something ridiculous because I don't remember any real difference between what people were doing.)
I visited a friend in the DC area last year, and her kids do Cotillion, which is some bizarre combo ballroom dance/manners class. Parents (mothers) make a table full of ballroom-type-food and punch; there's a dance class, then a pause where the boys are required to fetch cake and punch for the girls, and then more dance. Very peculiar. I got roped in to make up a round number of dancers -- there were extra boys in the class my friend's kid was in, so they needed more partners for them.
I'm not sure if those kids were expected to be waltzing recreationally in later life, or what.
47: they still happen! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vSuO1SckfA But they have the air of being self-consciously old-timey, whereas two-stepping or line-dancing is just a thing you do.
In grade school, we did maybe a week of square dancing. The teacher clearly didn't give a shit. I assume it filled some requirement or something.
There's a local hipsterish square dance group I'd like to attend but don't of course get to get out. I've done English Country Dance and a little Irish set dancing and I enjoy it that sort of thing. The girls have decided they need to learn partnered salsa so they can have a proper Day of the Dead theme for Mara's birthday next year, which makes me think that themed birthday parties need to be stopped immediately. (Selah wants hers to be Annie-themed so she and the dog can sing and dance.)
You could have a "Dawn of the Dead" party at the Monreoville Mall if the people who ran the Monroeville Mall had anything like a sense of entrepreneurship.
We did loads of ceilidh dancing in high school, which has dances which overlap with square dance type stuff. I remember the classes as excruciating as they are at that age when talking to girls is quite hard, and I was quite shy. If they'd happened a couple of years later, when I was 16, say, I'd have enjoyed them a lot more.
Still, when I do go to a ceilidh, or a social event with Scottish dancing, it comes back, like muscle memory.
The thing I got out of b/c racial scandal was a cotillion. Dancing plus etiquette, taught by racists.
The relevant experiences of actually-existing ajay and Wes-Anderson-rationally-maximising-expected-utility ajay have already come up in TFA.
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_14756.html#1821626
The dance steps come back or the excruciating social memories?
41, 42: Meet the least significant civil rights pioneer in history:
http://articles.philly.com/2007-01-31/news/25221538_1_polka-king-dancing-polka-jimmy-sturr
Yes, cotillion is hugely racist. I think we've discussed this before.
re: 57
Dance steps. Finding social interaction with 'gurrlls' excruciating has long since passed.
There was a cotillion thingy where I grew up, apparently complete with coming out parties for the girls. Since the participants were all Southern California nouveau riche, I guess it was some sort of aspirational cosplay.
My parents both did square dancing. I've never been interested, but I appreciate the idea of community -- that when they moved to a new part of the country (in the early 70s) they could look for a square dancing group and have a decent chance of finding other hippie weirdos.
For the same reason, I've always liked the song, The Dancing Boilerman and found it moving (incidentally, I once saw it on a list of songs appropriate to retirement parties, which seemed surprising, but also appropriate)
61: My first thought on reading "coming out parties" revealed how much some things have changed.
60: Sure, but memories of that time still come back and hit me at the strangest moments.
Our cotillion was run by an old lady, Mrs Unander, and her husband, who had been a commander in the air force, and whom you had to address as "Commander Unander."
Basically they sent invitations to join to every 7th grade kid in the range of a few square miles, except the black and Mexican and Korean kids. And somehow weren't called out on that until the 80s -- with fortuitous timing for me! -- even though the overall area probably hadn't been majority white since at least 1970.
48, 54: We had a segment of seventh grade gym [after flag football and before basketball] on dancing - our only gym class with the girls. We learned a few basic dance steps - two-step, box step, and a couple of partnered turns. The boys had to ask the girls to be their partners (sexist, I suppose, but also nerve-racking). I well remember dancing with my then-crush and being exhilarated. I still like to two-step.
That's not even an air force rank. He was either in the Navy or doing a "Stolen Valor" thing.
Lamest use of stolen valor ever.
Maybe he was in the Albanian air force or something.
If Texas can have its own navy, I don't see why Southern California can't have its own air force.
65, 67, 69: pwned by Mobes, but maybe Commander Unander was a "wing commander" from the UK or Australia or such. In WWII the US Army supposedly avoided adopting "Field Marshal" rank so that General Marshall (of Marshall Plan fame) wouldn't be known as Marshal Marshall.
Marshal Marshal Marshal sounds like a guy in Catch 22.
I probably should have googleproofed his name, since now this will be findable by the doubtless many people who google his name in a "what the hell was up with that?" moment. Mods?
My uncle was a commander in the U.S. Navy and an admiral in the Nebraska one.
He was kind of visibly near-senile at the time IIRC, and would show up in full dress uniform (but in retrospect which uniform?) to instruct you on how to ask the ladies to dance (you had to add "if you please"), pull out their chairs for them to sit, etc., and do exemplar dances with his wife. But he didn't quite seem to know where he was. Mrs U was definitely the brains of the operation.
so this Monday I went to contemporary class for the first time as a change of pace from weights! and it was surprisingly awesome! and only now has the delayed soreness kicked in!
What does "contemporary" mean in that context?
admiral in the Nebraska one.
Do go on.
It's an honorary thing, like the Kentucky Colonels, but with fewer chicken jokes.
I assume. I'm not in it or anything. Maybe I should nominate my dad. I don't know if he'd enjoy that or not.
75: Did he have mutton chop whiskers and carry a swagger stick? It sounds like that's all that's missing to really complete the picture.
73: Google autocompletes it, so it's very likely this won't be near the top of the list. And Moby's right, he was in the Navy.
... and probably will be for life.
Illinois had a naval militia, abolished in the '80s. So did Michigan, and I don't know what became of theirs.
During the World Wars, they force was seconded to the Navy, and both states' ancient vessels--Michigan's in WWI was a paddle-wheeler laid down in 1842--were used as patrol gunboats in the Caribbean.
To be perfectly clear, the Nebraska Navy has never had an actual boat.
86: In related news the Santa Maria was docked on the Scioto just a mile or so from where I work, but they got rid of it.
AIPMHAOPB, it was there years ago when I lived in Columbus. I went to visit it on Columbus Day as my sister was visiting and we wanted to do something touristy. We crossed a picket line to get there. They were upset about the celebration of Columbus because of his treatment of indigenous people, which makes sense but I don't see what one replica boat more matters when the whole city is named after him.
would show up in full dress uniform (but in retrospect which uniform?)
This is a lame excuse for me to tell the story of meeting a friend's dad when we'd gotten to Torrance and the end of the cross-country road trip. I don't know what I was expecting from the too-cool-for-school friend (everyone on this road trip was on administrative leave from college for wasting time online and never doing homework), but the buttoned-down suburban home was not it. We were walking out to the car to go get food or something and there was his dad, standing in the driveway, in some amazingly ornate military regalia that was clearly not the U.S. military or anything. I thought: fuck, my friend's dad is in a made-up army, what the hell do I say? It turned out to be a Boy Scout uniform.
If I had, it did not prepare me at all for that sight.
I mean, I don't think I'd ever seen a grown man in a boy scout uniform before. Kids, sure.
I'm okay with made-up armies if they're just silly uniforms and pageantry and don't involve taking over wildlife refuges.
I am fully committed to realizing my goal I getting the sport teachers at the kid's school to take just one ballet class before he graduates. Payback for years of middling grades and sanctimonious lectures in parent-teacher conferences about how he needs to apply himself more during rugby and badminton. I just want to be there to see them topple over at the barre, let alone relish their humiliation during floor exercises.
My Dad and his friends had big Girl Scout dresses, but he didn't wear his in the driveway.
Not a girl scout in the streets then?
That kind of dress shows a lot of leg for a man his age.
Tons of square dancing in New Mexico public elementary school and I think middle school. A little two-stepping, some sort of Mexican wedding dance.
We had elementary school square dancing in Missouri. Also, the electric slide. The old and the new.
We had a straight slide and a curved slide, but neither were electrified.
101: Moby's school was so small that electrification didn't reach it until later.
My girlfriend's daughter learned how to Whip and Nae Nae at kindergarten, but not as the result of any formalized instruction. Bizarrely, when I asked about it, she knew the origin of the Nae Nae ("someone named Sheneneh") but not the origin of the Whip, which I thought would have been much more obvious to a 6yo who's ridden in a car.
I square danced in elementary school in Texas. Including doing the Texas Star at a school assembly.
I learned to waltz with a wooden chair at prep school. So if I ever meet a chair that wants to dance I can hope the moves come back. Unless the chair wants to lead.
I learned to waltz with a wooden chair at prep school
SOUNDS ABOUT RIGHT TO ME.
Netflix made a live action version of Richie Rich. He's a trillionaire by his own hand, to paraphrase Conan. Has a hot robot maid. Can somebody nuke California or where ever this thing started?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHqS1bOOLVc
It's actually a lot of fun.
My sister and I went square dancing with her boys when they were little. Square dancing with little kids is pretty fun. They LOVE to sashay down the middle of two lines.
On the one hand, the cultural reappropriation is a thing.
Just tell her publicly thank "Her dad, Jamal" if she wins a prize or something.
Exploiting the assumptions of others is easier than lying.
Tons of square dancing in New Mexico public elementary school and I think middle school.
Huh, none at all in mine. I did go to cotillion, though. The people who ran it didn't seem noticeably racist but I'm sure all the kids were white.