A couple weeks ago I referenced the guest DJ show The Jam Cellar did for Yehoodi Radio a couple of years ago. In addition to 10 of our only best DJ's contributing their favorite songs to play at the Jam Cellar, the executive producer, Jesse Miner encouraged us to be as creative as possible with the program. We didn't need that much prodding. Since a number of the Jam Cellar crew at the time were pretty musical, we decided to write and record our own theme song for the show. Here it is in two parts.
The Shape of Things to Come
Yep. I'm not going to be one of those people who is going to apologize for not updating his blog in awhile because really, I never promised you a regular posting schedule. However, I do realize that a ton of people hit this site every day for some reason, so in order to satiate your thirst for knowledge and entertainment, stepping into the role of designated blogger for the next few posts is the lovely and gracious Karen Turman.
Karen made the mistake of sending me a little treatise about her now legendary "Evolution of Lindy Hop" showcase routine at ILHC. After some badgering, begging, and pleading, I convinced her to let me post it on this very blog just because I think it's super interesting. Plus she doesn't know it yet, but I want it someplace convenient so I can cite it for the stunning conclusion to my own "Artistry In Rhythm" paper.
I think Karen's paper fits nicely with the themes we've been exploring here and I'm pretty sure you'll enjoy reading it as much as I did. I'm going to post it in several parts over the next few weeks so as not to hit you over the head with too much awesome all at once. Plus I need time to format it and shove in some helpful videos.
Speaking of which, I'll post some of my own videos of bands and dancers that I've recorded over the past few weeks to break up Karen's dance geekery. Somewhere in there I'll try to comment on ULHS and find some other old posts to toss onto the site until stuff settles down in my own life for me to post regularly again.
I also want to give you a sneak peak into the ILHC LED Talks that happened this year. The plan is to get them online to share with the community as soon as I can get them edited nicely and posted onto the ILHC website. If you have any expeience with such things, please drop me a line.
Overall, the talks were super informative and thought provoking. I thought I'd share a snippet of an important discussion with event co-directors Nina Gilkenson, Tena Morales, and Sylvia Sykes where they discuss their vision for ILHC.
Video credit: David Soltysik
The Revolution is Being Televised.
I've actually been writing quite a bit. Just not anything I care to post for public consumption. While I'm still thinking of stuff to post, I'll share some videos I took while at the Lindustrial Revolution in Charlottesville, VA a few weeks ago. It was a fun event put on by the awesome folks at SwingCville.
Here's Karen Turman and Andrew Thigpen milking every last bit of work they put into their awesome ILHC Showcase routine for their instructor demo.
And then swinging out just to swing out.
The Jack & Jill Finals
DCLX Interview: UNCENSORED!
I did an interview with Bobby White (of Swungover fame) for the DCLX website last March, but some of my original answers were deemed not wholesome enough for that family friendly site. Damn The Man!
Zen and the Art of Event Planning
This may come as a shock to some of you, but I’m an arrogant jerk. Anytime I go to an event, not just a Lindy Hop event, I tend to look around, check things out, and think to myself: I can do this better. This includes my own events. However, that’s not to say that I’ve actually done better.
The interesting thing in event planning and management is that the better you do your job the less people will notice. Human nature being what it is, when people talk about how an event was run they will almost always focus on what went wrong or what was out of place. So your goal as an event planner is to avoid that.
Big Big Benefit Thanks
On behalf of Laurie and Nina I’d like to thank everyone who came out for the Big Big Benefit this weekend. It was great to so many people out along with so many different groups working together to help one of their own. In particular I’d like to thank the following people: At the top of the list is the Glen Echo Park Partnership for Arts and Culture for all their support. People who work for the park were some of the first to come to Laurie’s side when she was first admitted into the hospital, and they were super helpful all weekend. Donna Barker especially worked very hard to facilitate everything and even poured in a lot of time to put together the the puppetry performance CD’s.
A Year's Worth of Wandering & Pondering in One Post
When I started my blog I read all kinds of nifty tips to make it awesome and get lots of people to read it. Oddly enough, all of them fail to advise you to post something actually interesting. This may sound a bit conceited, but I think most of the stuff I post here is pretty interesting to read. Maybe not all of it. Just 98%, give or take a couple percentage points. I should know—I read it all the time, and I never get tired of me.
One fun tip talked about summarizing your blog’s content every once in awhile, so for all of you new readers here who keep searching for Skye’s non existent website or information on a certain convicted lindy hopper’s sentence*, here’s a handy dandy guide to all the other stuff you're missing. Or if you’ve already read them, here’s your opportunity to go back and relive the pain and/or the glory.
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.
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.
DCLX Interview & Boston Tea Party Results
My interview with DCLX is up. Check it out here. I'm not so sure about this whole "Wise Learned Person" deal, but I think I can be pretty amusing when the mood strikes me. The event itself is in less than two weeks. Go ahead and register. I'll DJ and you'll have fun. Trust me.
I had a great time up at Boston Tea Party. I'm working on my Boston Tea Party post, which I'll put up within the next day or so. In the meantime, you can check out their website for results from all of the competitions. Congratulations to everyone!