[MSN Spaces] "This love is taking its toll on me"

Yes, thank you Stephanie... and thank you Léo for reinforcing it. If you've forgotten (or blocked it from your memory) already, we "learned" that dance routine to Maroon 5's This Love at the workshop last weekend. Léo forgot his CD case here when he went home to Vancouver, so he was coerced into coming back to retrieve it. And since he was already here, he was coerced into DJing at Swing City on Friday. Before I get to Maroon 5, I should say that Chelsea requested Tainted Love by Softcell (she had requested this a couple weeks ago, too). Nobody had it, but I came through. I grabbed my Creative MP3 player (No, it's *NOT* an ipod. ipods and Apple are crap and evil.. and evil crap.) which contains almost my entire music collection ('almost' because I'm too lazy to convert the rest of my CDs...). I have Tainted Love. It was hooked up to the sound system and away we went.

Ok, back to Maroon 5. Last song of the night, Léo puts on This Love. At first, it was Léo, Matt, and Chris dancing, but Chris eventually fell away. It was all very entertaining. But I have to say one thing. Matt, we all know you've done a bunch of break dancing and hip-hop type stuff, but you need to stop doing it in situations like these. Dancing like you know how to dance only ruins the effect! Look at Léo. Unless he moved his entire body to another location, he didn't once move his feet. It's a lot funnier pulling off moves like that when it looks like you can't dance. Next time, Matt, next time. ... Next time?

Saturday night. Holly and I met up with Chris and Clint at what-used-to-be-called-the-Tally-Ho for their comedy night. Big Mae was up first, with some black dude headlining. Big Mae (5'2", 100lb woman) was all right. Nothing too funny. Worth the price of admission, though. Admission? Free. Next up was the headliner. My first thought when he got up on stage was that he's a little nuts. My second thought was that he's a wannabe Bill Cosby. About a third of the way through his act, he phased out his Bill Cosby-ishness and became funnier. Though, he DID do a Bill Cosby impression later. Anyway, there was one bit he did that stood out. He started it off by asking if anybody smoked. Only a couple people did. He then 'borrowed' this guy's pack of cigarettes and proceeded to show us a great way to help him stop smoking. He opened the pack of cigarettes, explaining what he was doing the whole time, and pulled out one cigarette. He then shoved it in his nose and proceeded to pull out another one. With both nostrils filled with a cigarette each, he then went on to take the cigarettes out of his nose and place them back in the pack.... and rearrange them. What's even funnier (and a little disgusting) is that the guy didn't throw his cigarettes away!

Sunday was the beginning of a new session of classes and it began with Balboa. I've taken it a couple times already and dance it socially every so often, but Holly's taking it and so am I. We show up and sav tells me to pay attention to the class from both sides because I'll be teaching it soon. So now I have to actually pay attention in class? After bal, I did some prep-work for Swing 1 with Sara. Yep, Sara and I are going to be teaching Swing 1 together on Mondays. Some of you have already heard this, but I can only see two outcomes from this. One, our students think we're nuts. Two, our students think we're nuts... but have fun. If they somehow learn something from this class, that's just a bonus. By 'something', I mean something swing dance related. And by 'something swing dance related', I don't mean that swing dancers are insane. I was telling Christabel that we (Sara and I) produce a positive feedback loop of crazy. It grows until eventually something blows up or otherwise dissipates the crazy energy. Positive feedback is what caused the Tacoma Narrows Bridge ("Galloping Gertie") to collapse. That's not a good sign. If I was a religious man, I'd say something like "May God have mercy on our souls", but I'm not, so I won't.

Aside from all this insanity, this'll be the first session of standard Red Hot Swing classes that will not have either sav or Christabel or both teaching. By 'standard', I mean the classes that occur in the studio. We also teach Swing 1 at Camosun and UVic and workshops/beginner lessons at Swing City. I (and Carolyn) am now the most senior teacher, and so I'm in charge of the class. Me? In charge? Somehow sav has this idea that I'm responsible. Speaking of which, sav and Christabel are heading to Kelowna for Steve and Susan's wedding and might not be back for Sunday's practice. So Carolyn and I are getting keys to the studio and will be running practice. Heh, go figure. Let's just hope I don't go drunk with power again... Umm, that never happened. Forget I said that. Actually, don't forget anything, because I never said anything. Look over there, Chris is trying to be a big teddy bear!

That is all. I'm not here.