A Year of Wandering and Pondering

. . . more or less. I started this blog because I wanted something interesting to read. Seriously, there’s probably no one else out there that reads my blog more than I do. Trust me, I see the statistics. That's right, I'm one of those self centered jerks that writes just so I can see what I wrote. Besides, being a terrible editor, this is the only way I catch my mistakes, of which there can be many in any given post.

Until a year ago I was one of those people who always talked about having a blog, but never got around to starting one until Frankie95. I posted a 30+ page overview/rant of the whole experience on Facebook and before I was done, I decided that writing on a semi-regular basis wasn’t as impossible as I thought it would be.

Weekend Video Highlights: Sylvia Sykes Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

As you can see, Sylvia has been all kinds of awesome for a long time. She still has it too, which is how she still gets to teach and perform with the best out there. Life is rough sometimes.

ILHC 2010 Update

I met with ILHC co-director Tena Morales a couple of weeks ago who was in town too nail down some details for this rapidly approaching event. Just being in the hotel with the rest of the DC based ILHC staff was enough to get me psyched for August. I visited the hotel for the first time a couple of months ago and this place is so nice that I had to call Tena to make sure I was in the right place. This place is swanky. From the artsy clock in the foyer to the pimp board room where we met. Honestly, it almost feels a little too nice for a Lindy Hop event, but never let it be said that we don’t at least try to class up the proceedings.

Weekly Video Highlights: The Eye of the Beholder

It's been awhile. It's not for lack of videos. In fact I feel a little bad because a lot of good stuff has come out in the past couple of months. I've just been a little busy between my real job work and my pretend job helping with The Big Big Benefit in July and ILHC in August. In fact, expect an ILHC update this week right here on this very blog. Really. I haven't done a Random Links post in awhile too, but I did want to highlight this post by Madeline of the blog "Behind The Madness." I hope to talk about it in depth in a future post, but I just want to say that I agree wholeheartedly.

Body Roles: Lindy Hop Gender Statistics Magnified

Looking at all the numbers I compiled for my statistical pornography post , I noticed something rather peculiar about the numbers when broken down by gender.

Event Data

This is a simple list of all the events I surveyed to come up with the numbers I used in my statistical pornography post.* I noticed a couple of interesting things in terms of scheduling. July is a pretty dead month in terms of big. There are a few small ones, but Herrang is the 5000 pound gorilla that draws everyone that’s anyone in the community. Even people who don’t teach there or are too advanced to take classes plan time to be there if only to have the opportunity to hang out. December is also another slow month until the year end events like Lindy Focus and The Snowball.

Lindy Hop Instructor Statistical Pornography

Stalking a lot of people at the same time is hard. Although stalking for academic purposes can be called research. Try that one on the judge next time someone files a restraining order on you. Let me know how it goes.

Not too long ago I was in the mood to make one of those lists of top dancers. No particular reason. Just one of those lists I was just curious to see written out in front of me.

What? Don’t you ever research something just to see the information in front of you? No? Well, I do. Don’t judge.

I jotted down what I could off the top of my head, looked at a relatively short list and thought to myself that this couldn’t be it. There had to be more people I wasn’t thinking of; probably around Europe, since I don’t feel I’m as familiar with what’s going on over there. That’s what led me to checking out the Herrang teachers awhile ago since I consider Herrang the center of the European Lindy-verse.

I still wasn’t satisfied after I was done with that, so I decided to check a few more event web sites around Europe to see if I could find any more unfamiliar names. Along the way I just started recording who was teaching where. I kept clicking and clicking until I had the instructor line ups for 120 events in front of me.

Swingtime Abridged

Woefully behind on the blog between the upcoming Big Big Benefit for Laurie Gilkenson and ILHC. Which is a good hing I have a bunch of old writings stockpiled for this sort of occasion. I'll have some stuff up about Camp Jitterbug, updates on ILHC, and try to dig into my backlog of cool videos as soon as I can. The Atomic Ballroom blog put up a nice top 10 list of ballroom dance sequences in vintage films. It lists quite a few Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire sequences including two from the film Swingtime. Although I am disappointed that they didn’t include the finale to that film, “Never Gonna Dance,” which I consider their best performance, period. Anyway, it reminded me of this post I originally put up as a note on my Facebook profile a couple of years ago.

The Big Big Benefit for Laurie Gilkenson

Following up on my post about Laurie Gilkenson a couple of weeks ago. I visited her in the hospital last weekend and she's doing much better and may be moved out and into rehab soon. On behalf of Nina and her father, I'd like to thank everyone for their kind words and donations. If you haven't seen it already, we'll be having a benefit for Laurie. It's a little overwhelming to see so many people generously donating their time for this.

Happy Birthday, Frankie!

What else is there to say? This is from Frankie's 88th Birthday Celebration in 2002.

My favorite DC memory of him where he took us to school. In the midst of an improvised Big Apple during a jam, he jumps up out of his chair from the sidelines, stops the presses and shows the kids how its done.

And my favorite "new" video of him with his son Chazz Young. I don't get tired of watching this.

Learn more about him at his official website: www.FrankieManning.com