Rhythm Method

I thought I'd keep with the drumming theme from last week and spotlight my favorite swing drummers of today.

Random DCenes: Just Beat It

You won’t find Malcolm X Park on any map of DC. Only long time locals call Meridian Hill Park that. And it’s on Sundays where you’ll find the legendary drum circle.

Pondering

There’s a meme going around citing that a good reason to dump Facebook is because you spend more time reading about the inanities of your friends' lives as opposed to classic literature like War and Peace. I have no intention of reading War and Peace any time soon. Never thought about it before I got a Facebook account, and my current disposition doesn’t bode well for it happening in the near future. To be honest, my ability to get through a book has diminished greatly with age. There used to be a time where I could polish off a 500 page novel in a week or two. Not so much anymore. I can’t get past a paragraph before I stare off into space considering it, dozing off for a few minutes, and then re-reading the same passage trying to figure out where I left off. In light of that, 420 character updates suit me just fine.

Return of the Old School

I was perusing the Herrang teacher line up just to check it out even though I don't have any plans on going. Being the center of the Lindy-verse, it's a just interesting to see who they're bringing in each year. I have no plans to do another analysis like I did last year, but I noticed a few new names including Laura Glaess & Mike Roberts, Alice Mei & Thomas Blacharz, and Sarah Breck & Dax Hock. One name that jumped out at me was Marty Lau, which is funny because I was talking about him with a few friends just this weekend. He's teaching Balboa during week three with Sylvia Sykes.

Then & Now: Jo & Nick

Hopefully I’ll talk a bit about the Lone Star Championships by next week. Until then I thought I’d point out Jo Hoffberg’s dance with Nick Williams in the Invitational Jack & Jill of that event.

How Ya Like Me Now?

Announcing the next stage on my road to internet domination: the Wondering & Pondering official Facebook presence. Like it here.

It occurred to me that I keep amassing links and videos that I hope to post on this blog, but since I always want to do it up all fancy like, they just kinda languish in the ether.

So I'll use the Facebook page to pass along the articles and random videos of interest that I don't have time to discuss in depth here. And I'll also post links to new posts from here as well. It'll be like a secret club except everyone will know about it. Everyone.

It'll also be a good way for people to connect with me on FB. Honestly, I still feel a little weird accepting friend requests from people I've never met before. I know plenty of you read the blog, but I'd like to reserve my personal FB page for people I know directly. So if we're FB friends now, but we've never met, there's a good chance I may be cutting you loose soon. It's nothing personal, but . . . you know . . . there's just nothing personal between us. But then, you'll have this new Facebook page to Like and we can keep up that way.

I also realized that I spent an entire post describing my YouTube favoriting rationale, but forgot to link to my YouTube page.

That's this thing here: http://www.youtube.com/user/jalmon007

Feel free to subscribe. Or just hit refresh a lot, waiting for the next embarrassing old video to pop up.

Tell your friends.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tFFYnKxFss

Ernest Goes to School

I still don’t have a lot of time to do a longer blog, but I thought I’d share a few videos in addition to the pictures I took in Atlantic City this past weekend. I don’t make it a secret that I’m a big fan of The Boilermaker Jazz Band, and one of the many reasons is bassist Ernest McCarty. I’ve talked about him before, (there’s a lot to talk about this super interesting guy) but he’s also the main reason for these videos. He was On from the very beginning. Within a minute of their first song, he caused me to go grab my camera to capture the funk he was laying down.

Photo Essay: Dig In, Swing Out

Here are some pictures I took this weekend at the Bally’s Swing Dance Off co-sponsored by Yehoodi.com. Another one of those times where I wish I was a better photographer. Or at least a decent one. But there are a few things I captured that I want to talk about more generally in future posts, so I thought I'd put them up especially since this particular series tells a nice story.

More Lindy Focus Highlights & Bonus Footage

It occurred to me that I said that I was going to post my other Lindy Focus video highlights and I never did. Well the long wait is over. And because this slipped my mind I included some super special sauce footage at the end of this post.

Snowballin'

There's been a lot of interesting chatter about the Lone Star Championships and Dax & Sarah's television appearance. I've been trying to put some thoughts together since Lindy Focus about some of the issues that these two recent events bring up, but I don't have anything coherent yet. That's mostly acombination of me being too busy and people saying thoughtful stuff. Until I can get something together, check out a few video highlights from The Snowball over in Stockholm Sweden which took place over the New Year holiday at the same time as Lindy Focus. My favorite has to be this bluesy hip hop improvisation done by Joyss with the Gordon Webster Septet.