I remember back in ye olden days of the early aughts and surfing Lindy Hop message boards, trying to figure out who knew what they were talking about was such a pain in the ass. Often times people who were actually knowledgeable would be the least serious commenters. Rayned Wiles would answer half the time in verse while Reuben Brown delighted in threading the line between snark and trolldom. I remember thinking that Peter Loggins and Jenn Salvadori needed editors or be a bit less quick on the draw with their posts and how polite Mike Faltesek was when he was slamming you and everything you stood for. Out of frustration with less knowledgeable posters, David Rehm half jokingly devised a whole merit system where people would only be allowed to post on a topic based on their dance experience.
Personally, I always thought it would have been helpful just to have a link to a video of the poster's dancing. I think about this every time I hit submit on a blog post. If you're new to this blog-and I know there are quite a few of you based on the numbers in the past few weeks-I'm sure you're wondering who this joker is.
A quick Youtube search of my name search won't turn up much of anything. Even though though I'm camera shy, truth be told I don't really need to hide since my dancing isn't interesting enough for anyone to record it for digital posterity. Not even me. It's good enough to get the ladies to come back for seconds, but that's about it. And really, that's all I'm interested in.
Still, it's about time that I should put something up if only a) in the interest of full disclosure and b) to show that I don't take myself all that seriously.
This video isn't much, but it's really all I have. Despite the song, this is not from Swing & Soul which I did go to this past weekend. This is just what happened when I left my camera on the DJ table to record me dancing with Nina night after Thanksgiving a couple of weeks ago. Hence the reason why we're not in focus half of the time and why our heads are missing in the other half. The song is "The Oogum Boogum" song by Brenton Wood which is my favoritest song ever.
The only other video of me dancing that I know of is actually the two of us dancing to this same song at a wedding a few months ago. However, due to the shenanigans that night, I had to promise to never to show those videos in public. At least until I need some money.
Speaking of Swing and Soul, in addition to having a great time I'm thinking of writing up bunch of thoughts inspired by many conversations with old and new friends there. Look out for that in addition to my year end video highlights which should go up before the New Year.