Dancing, naturally

Where is the point where youth expires?

I am known to eat what I want, when I want, and in large quantities. I have always felt that the 3rd level of super-size was an appropriate development of the fast-food franchise. I do not approve of McDonald's bending to criticism from liberal yahoos who videotape themselves having a panic attack and gaining weight. The food is still bad for you! It's not like the regular size will make you thin. Super-sizing is a qualified judgement call for people already able to eat the food.

The persistent question remains: is anyone who cares about their cardiac health allowed to eat that stuff in any quantity?

According to a new article in the NY Times hammering home the Mediterranean diet, "no." The US and Finland, two countries with excellence written all over them, kill themselves with saturated fat and not enough vegetable fat.



Over the years, as people gladly filled my plate for the third time, I had a very, very small voice wondering if I was doing something bad for myself. But people like my parents would reassure me, that at this point, in my youth, it was OK to eat in large quantities.

Unlike when I was twenty, nowadays I think that part of my youth is coming to nigh. Oh, the Mediterranean regime will be difficult for me, but I think this is the next step in the Wellmus "Life Playbook."



As long as the Feta comes in large quantities, I may survive.

Disco Dream Album? Almost, still worth having

I needed an incentive to wake up this morning. I stayed up reading last night and it was cold out, so I made sure that, apart from my alarm, I had something I had to wake up for besides work. Last night, after I had found an album on Amazon mp3, I made myself wait until the morning to put it on my iPod.

This little trick worked! I was out the door and listening to my new tunes. New OLD tunes, that is. Click here for the Amazon mp3 album.
Donna McGhee was a singer who got the Patrick Adams/Greg Carmichael treatment. These two produced disco that truly has no peer. There are many lights in Disco's heyday, but these two made music that, I believe, doesn't even sound like disco.

Oh, it's disco. A big kick drum, walking bass line, and occasional string section can be found on their tracks, for sure.

Donna McGhee had two big songs with them: "It Ain't No Big Thing" and "Love Bug." The first is something transcendent, wrapping the entire space in a huge, warm blanket of sound. It's so amazing that it doesn't really inspire dance, instead it invites contemplation. There's a guitar part on this song that sets it apart from all other disco. Listening to it today, it struck me as something that a 70's jazz guitarist might play, definitely not a rocker. It hangs back in the song, slowing it down a little more.

I feel "No Big Thing" and "Love Bug" are most likely to be danced to with the hustle, slowly. Perhaps when no one's around. Perhaps when someone's practicing for the next night after everone's left. Perhaps, even if no one will ever come back, because the night is over, maybe the last night disco will ever have.

The album has a third single, "Make It Last Forever." No hyperbole, this song joins the others in high Disco style.

One thing on this album, moreso than other Patrick Adams/Greg Carmichael stuff, is that the sound is really mixed together. It's so mixed that it comes near to the random anonymous Eurpoean disco tracks that sound like a waiting room in West Germany. Those records sound like background music and usually have a skinny, soft backbeat. BUT, but, it's not that mixed. It's just about as good as it gets. Again, you won't hear music like this anywhere else, ever.

The one thing that drags on the album, sadly, is a song that needed a bit of restraint. Clocking in at 10:10, Do As I Do starts with such a wicked bass line and chanting chorus. For most of the song, though, Donna McGhee is making orgasmic sounds. There's nothing wrong with a little enticing whisper, moan, or chuckle that's made to sound like the real thing, especially in Disco. Many of the best disco songs have it (Salsoul records seemed to be very OK with putting this in the mix). But 10 minutes of it? It starts to worry me. This would be a good song to mix in/mix out of though.

I haven't met someone who doesn't love the Patrick Adams stuff. (That is, once they hear it!) If you're interested, you should check out the compilation "The Master of the Master." The CD version has two CDs while the mp3 version compiles it to one CD. Trust me, get the 2 CDs. It has the classic Black Ivory track, "Surrender," and more of the early Patrick Adams stuff. Oh, and ignore the comment that it doesn't sound good b/c it's vinyl rips. I'm not sure that they are vinyl rips, and anyways, it does sound good!

Yes, this is music that people nerd out on, but at least there's a really good reason why. Like King Tubby on Dub, like Brian Eno on New Wave, records that were worked on by Patrick Adams and Greg Carmichael are frequently sensational and unique, raising the standard for others to achieve.

Pre-Law is "Pre"tty expensive

Law School Admissions Council is a nonprofit association of over 200 law schools. For Law Students to be, you have to use their website and their services. These services include: applying to law school, taking the LSAT, and buying necessary books for the LSAT or the admissions process.

They have a page that totals all the money you've run through their site while applying to law schools. I've applied to 10 so far, and taken the LSAT twice. The total I've spent since last May? Over $1,100.

Then there was the LSAT prep course, which wasn't worth it, though the info I learned (in the classes I went to) helped me improve my score immensely.

Moral of the story: think about Law School first, then take the LSAT and apply, because you'll be out so much otherwise.

2 columns and one gigantic criticism

I know deference, I know when I read something that has a superior depth of thought and experience, combined with style, that my position shifts like mirrors on the sun, and my purpose is like them, to shine the light on others.

David Denby, the movie critic of the New Yorker and author of other books, has written a short book called "Snark." Why, you may ask, would you want to read a book on something that has become the tedious style of internet sites and even mainstream media? Something, I would argue, that leaks its way into people's own mannerisms. It doesn't sound like a nice book, except if you've found that the tendency is ruining the things you love.

The book is fantastic. The book is concise and fun to read. It is thoughtful and yet not difficult. It struggles to completely define Snark, but it succeeds to give a general idea of its habits. And, what's more, Denby holds up Maureen Dowd (in her own chapter no less) as the reigning queen of Snark. His criticism of her is balanced and devastating.

It helps to read this chapter because, though so many of us dislike Maureen Dowd, it's hard to think of all the reasons why. Well, he is very clear in them. I don't want to spoil it. The book is on my coffee table, feel free to read it!

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To sum up my problems with Maureen Dowd's past two columns, she shows that while she's angry about the last eight years and specifically at members of the Bush Admin, she works to avoid talking to them. She's right next to them, and yet, instead of giving them the benefit of the doubt to answer a question, she judges them by their looks and by the last eight years. Fair enough, but, there's no point in it. Not so much an opinion as an exclamation.

Her latest column, again with the Clintons. She mixes praise with wary criticism. For an opinion columnist, she's very hard to pin down.

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David Denby has sacked me for words. I feel good reading his book, it gives me new direction. For those who enjoy expressing themselves through writing and now, I'm sad to say, talking and Facebooking, this book acts as a friendly self-check. How much snark do I post? When I made a comment about Jacques Brel the other day, I snarked him and his fans (which there are so many). True, I don't really like French or Belgian pop music standards. But I do like Musette. Why did I shut the door on myself?

So, this book comes highly recommended from me.

And, for that matter, so do his movie criticisms in the New Yorker.

Make It Last Forever

My parents were baby boomers, both born in 1948. They spent their 20's doing as best they could, but by the late 70's it was clear to each of them that they were ready to settle down. Sure enough, when my dad moved to Louisville and was chosen as a part of a double-date, they met, ditched their partners, and married six weeks later.

The drama of the meeting and quick marriage that has lasted 28 years has a way of blotting out the other details, and I can't say that the details are so important: where they were working, where my Dad had lived before, each of their previous relationships. One detail, though, is the keepsake that I adore from the shoebox of memories surrounding their relationship: they met at a disco.

Louisville, KY, was not a big disco city. But, in 1978, disco was everywhere and bar owners saw a way to liven up the crowds by putting in a DJ, a disco ball, and maybe a lighted floor. Disco music kept charting on the airwaves, disco was pop, and many respectable musicians recorded disco songs so as not to be left out of any charts. Disco, unlike rock music at the time, brought people to dance together and it didn't hide the implications between couples sharing a song. If my parents had met at a Led Zepplin show, I don't know if they would have spoken again, but with disco, the possibilities of love were expounded in every song.

My parents were the fruits of the Greatest Generation, when Americans came together to fight a common cause. I was born of the hippie/disco generation, and my birth in 1981 puts me in a small category I will call the Disco Boom. Babes whose parents most likely listened to disco and danced to it at least once.

This is, of course, wishful thinking. Disco was so big that the choice for a date spot in Louisville was fairly made for them. Later, they could enjoy time at the racetrack, Lousiville's main attraction.

Before Disco fell off, there were thousands of tracks that would never see the light of day again, except for collectors and fans. I would even argue that outside of a handful of singles and two movie soundtracks (Car Wash and Saturday Night Fever), Disco isn't well known. When I deejayed on New Year's Eve, I was hounded by coworkers who listed songs from this handful or Saturday Night Fever and were dismayed when I didn't have them. Never mind that I did have several songs that are still played on the radio at times, never mind that some songs are so catchy that I can see the bar patrons shuffling about, trying to find their way into a dance step. These coworkers said to me that if I did not have these songs, I couldn't call it a Disco night. I shouldn't have to list their requests, but for completeness' sake: Sat Night Fever all, Gloria Gaynor (only one, though! I Will Survive), Donna Summer (probably Bad Girls, On the Radio, or Last Dance), and Diana Ross.

I like all those songs, but for a second it would be nice if they could have stopped to enjoy songs like Andrea True Connection's "More, More, More," and Earth, Wind, and Fire's, "Let's Groove." These are songs that have been around for a long time and are also great tunes, just like the ones they listed. The difference, sadly, is that they didn't add those songs to their disco playlist. It wasn't something that they thought of first.

Their requests became complaints, and all I could do was appeal to their logic. I showed them my stack of 60 disco records and explained that, in this limited way, I couldn't fulfill their requests.

What is disco, then, to those who don't abandon themselves to a deejay's music; for those who need to know ahead of time what they will listen to in order to enjoy themselves; for those who, essentially, need that control over their night? It comes down to a handful of singles and two movie soundtracks. And, when Car Wash was played, the coworkers looked at each other knowingly: that was a disco song, played at a disco night.

Take all the talent of American Soul, Funk, and many from Jazz, plus new guys from Europe, plus established Rock Groups. Add in a new breed of deejays whose job it is to play songs all night to crowds ranging from 100 to 3000, demanding crowds looking for the night of their life and sensitive to the changes the DJ makes to the songs. All of this exploded in 1976 and continued through 1979. Isn't it likely that there are more good songs than a handful of singles and two movie soundtracks?

In fact, there are hundreds of great dance songs from that time period. Of course, there's a lot of garbage too. Disco does not have a complex song structure: it's super-repetitive. If the main harmony or rhythm is mediocre, and the hook isn't juicy, it's not a very special record. In my opinion, the singer has to be very special, whether it's Andrea True and her off-hand, almost passive lyrics and vocals or a big voice like Loleatta Halloway, who probably could have cut some huge tracks back in Aretha's heyday. Some people don't even like vocals on the record, putting even more emphasis on the rhythm, harmony, and hook.

This is the plaintive cry of someone who loves a genre and sees all the possibilities, but can't get in the door of a culture dominated by individual choice. The same lament could come from aficionados of all kinds of recorded music, and even dance music. Instead of having one person select songs for a night, maybe people would like it if we could take all the personal music collections of all attendees, add them up, and then make a playlist from the most popular of those songs. It doesn't matter what the night is called, it fairly represents everyone's taste and is approved by the authority that is the club's sound system.

Without something like this happening, which is actually very possible and achievable, I think to myself that I have no problem turning my night over to a dance DJ. Whatever the music: 50's Rockabilly, 60's Psyche and Go-Go, 70's Funk or Disco, 80's Hip-hop and Electro, 90's trance, I'm willing to step on the floor and give it a few turns. All the music listed finds itself on the 4/4 beat and the beat is familiar and consistent. If I don't know the songs, then I at least recognize what they sound like. I came into adulthood thinking that was the point of dancing. The music plays and you have an excuse to move your feet.

America, of 300 million strong, is not a dance culture. We like music choice, but we don't like to abandon ourselves to dance. Ironically, Europe is a dance culture, but (in my observation) it's highly segregated and people know what they're getting before they arrive at the club. There are those who would dance to "Las Ketchup" every night for two years, those who like established dance genres, and those who like retro genres.

Americans as a whole aren't willing to turn their music choice over to someone else and dance at the same time. It doesn't matter that one song has many of the same aspects of a song they know, it has to be the song they know. For people who profess to love music, which is a great number, it surprises me that they're not ready to add one more song to their favorites or that they have to know what's played first. This is a new phenomenon; when radio was more dominant, frequently you would hear a track without hearing the announcement. If it was good, you kept it in your head until you could hum it to someone or catch it again. If you were dancing to the radio, you didn't stop dancing because you didn't know the track. Now, though, it's as if the club or bar deejay has to affirm the music choices of the audience.

Some of my greatest memories are of hearing a really great song for the first time. I didn't know what it was, I heard it, and I changed a little, forever.

Since when was knowing anything the key to fun anyways?

New Year's Help: Cowboys, Cowgirls

If your New Year's Resoltion is to look more like a cowboy or cowgirl, then you should seriously consider some serious boots:

Lucchese boots are handmade in Texas and are as comfortable as cowboy boots can be. When you put them on, it's like putting on goatskin gloves for the first time. You never knew something so sturdy could be so comfortable!

Lucchese - oh, by the way? Some of these boots are plain ridiculous in price/appearance. They're for Texan tombs so that Oil Emporers and Empresses can have footwear in the Astral Plain. Enjoy!

Gainsbourg's masterpiece, in need of some help

With a small mp3 player I find I always go to one album, not choosing between several. That's because, without planning, each album seems to represent a distinct style of music.

This morning's reading accompaniment was Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson, a psychedelically orchestrated concept album about a man's infatuation for a fourteen year-old. Ah, France, it was only recently that you raised the marriage age to something approaching the rest of the modern world (from 15 to 18)!

Most people, in an effort to spread the good news that this album was even created, present a hagiographic paean extolling its unparalleled excellence. Whew. I like it too, and as an album, it's probably his best (certainly his most enjoyable--I would suggest going the compilation route with Gainsbourg just like every single French/Belgian musician, pre-French Electric bands). There are two things, though, that relentlessly bother me about this album.

First of all, the mix is weird. At best, I have to think that it was mixed in some nonconformist vein. The kick drum and the bass are both heavy and low, but the rest of the album is painfully soft. It's like the engineer turned down the treble while recording. This means you're required to turn the volume way, way up to hear what's going on. Perhaps this came about because Gainsbourg is talking throughout the album in a very low tenor, which shares the low-end spectrum with the drum and bass. I just can't help thinking, though, that they could have used stereo effects better to position his voice opposite the drums and bass, and then turn the bass and drum down a bit and push the rest up.

The other problem with this album is on the track En Melody. Chicken scratch guitar and snappy snares combine to make this the wildest French psyche track ever, but it's fairly marred by one thing: Jane Birkin's teeth-on-edge laugh! And, again with the mixing issues: it's mixed way up (prominently), so you can't think of anything else but her cackling, which sounds like Fran Drescher. Oh, it's so bad. Jane Birkin is cool and all that, but that laugh is way out of place. Even a good laugh is hard on dance music. Probably the best is on Grandmaster Flash's The Message (A-ha-ha-ha-ha it's like a jungle sometimes it makes me wonder how I keep from going under). That's not even a laugh, it's a guy saying, "Ha Ha Ha."

So, I really think this album needs remastering, or maybe the SACD treatment, though that seems to have fallen out of favor.

But, by all means, you need this album if you like any of the following: French pop culture, psyche music, Beck's album Sea Change, or sexy music. You don't have to pretend to like Jacques Brel anymore!

Also, the cover is super hot, yes, but what I've always found most alluring about Jane Birkin here is her right foot, how it's cocked up like that.

Stylewatch 2009 - 'Run with my DOGS

Does anyone else remember these shirts and hats from the midwest? Perhaps a trucker was lost in your Northeast state or he was a (much more common than admitted to) NE rube. I feel like a big dog and I want to remind people of my stature.

Where can I get my big dogs clothing?

The first day back is the hardest

Maureen Dowd had some sea legs when she stepped into work, I guess. It's hard to make much of her latest opinion, that Caroline Kennedy is a good fit for the office of Senator because, essentially, Maureen Dowd knows her.

This is hallmark Maureen Dowd. Maureen Dowd, as a writer, has gotten to know people over the years, and her knowing someone matters more to her than news information that anyone could access and comment on. She has conscientiously staked this out as her position (and if you see the Charlie Rose interview, she elaborates on it), that while other writers talk about facts and stated opinions, she wants to get to know the people behind the news and report on the people as she clearly sees them. Because, isn't that important too? Couldn't it even be a little objective?

Here is the Caroline Kennedy that Maureen Dowd supports:

soft-spoken, having spent a lifetime away from the public spotlight

someone who hasn't played politics to make political gains

a fresh face and new perspective, an infusion of class, intelligence, and guts

smart, cultivated, serious and unpretentious

But, of course, all of these things point to the very reasons that Caroline Kennedy is doubtful as a good pick:

can she handle the public spotlight, which is a politician's responsibility?

can she get things for NY citizens, seeing as how she's never had to try before, as a politician?

how many times has a new person really enacted change? It's just a total gamble whether or not the leftfield pick will be a dud or a miracle worker, or plain mediocre.

aren't there scores of other people: men, women, and minorities, who have devoted their lives to public service, in the public sector, that would also have these traits? (but their last name is not Kennedy?)

Judging Caroline's actions, it seems clear that she wants the easy route to a prized position. No campaigning, no hard work, no gobs of money tied up in a campaign. No risk. Taking risks and respect go hand in hand. We can appreciate what Caroline Kennedy has done, for instance, with public schools, but in New York State, that's not much of a position. And, as a downstater, she's done a terrible job carrying the downstater's burden: charming the upstaters.

And, just to be clear, this has NOTHING to do with her gender. Overall, state and national, there are scads of women who spent their lives, while Caroline stayed safe on the Upper East Side, campaigning, networking, bootstrapping, and politicking. She's got no dirt because she never did anything. If anything, she misrepresents the female politician.

At least Maureen Dowd gets to stand opposite reason, which clears her competition in the op-ed stage. Most people would fear the reputation of their judgement, and we appreciate Maureen for going boldly in the face of it.

I would love an interview with Caroline Kennedy where she would explain her plans to run for the 2012 Senate seat if she does not get picked. If she's so great, maybe she'd like to share herself with the public.

What the game's been missing

Cotton Candy Maker from Amazon

I'm gonna take a page from Socrates and flip one to the posts I'm about to make on food and improving health through eating. This says more than words ever could.

What to do about agressive male co-workers

That's me, by the way. I'm the agressive male co-worker. Angry at work because of lack of sleep plus dealing with small business owners. Small businesses, that noble breed, you say? How on earth could they be frustrating? Well, even though it happens week after week, it always astonishes me when these people (who often have 20+ years of experience) call me with a problem and just say that they're 'confused.' They're not confused, there's nothing confusing about the business I'm in. It's so clear cut that with 25 pages I can have a temp worker do my job (4 hour workweek anyone?). What's clear cut for me is even easier for them. Yet, they get confused, meaning that I have to step in and offer them concessions because they're unhappy about something.

This business that I'm in offers:

100% return policy on product, meaning all products that don't sell in the store can be returned for the money owed on them.

100% replacement policy on damaged goods

All sorts of retail incentives in the form of coop, or money back for promoting our items. Oh, by the way, isn't promoting items to sell something that businesses should do so that they can, I don't know, sell items?

Fair business policy. Meaning, we cannot offer a great rate on our product to the biggest vendor, and a lesser rate to the smaller vendor. It is against the law. The only time we can offer a better rate to a vendor is if they, essentially, do some of our distribution job for us. If they distribute to other vendors (or to their own locations, essentially other vendors), we can offer them a better discount. This is about as level a playing field as it gets (how would you like to be told that a bulk discount is illegal???)

And boy do they complain. Everything is a complaint, and they are flabbergasted when we do not single them out for the best promotions.

I do sympathize with them. All of these small business owners got into the business when it was not that great of a business to begin with. Then, national players opened successful, attractive chain shops, plus online retailers flipped the playing field even more. These small businesses are dropping like flies. One minute I'm trying to help figure out their promotions, the next minute I hear that they're closing. The amount of closings is at least one store a month, and a few major stores each year.

The survivors of this bunch are a mean, Dickensian lot who do whatever it takes to stay open. I need to compile the dirty playbook at some point because these businesses truly have the Darwinian gifts to survive against all odds. They will do anything to stay open, anything to extend their credit, and then when folding, 'settle' with the suppliers only to somehow reopen again. Can they be ignored? Hardly.

But back to me. My boss used to say that she thought it was good that I didn't just roll over and take what these small business owners were dishing, that it was good to stand up to them. Yet, is it really? I know I get some bad vibes coming off me, and I don't like to give out the bad vibes. Is the agressive male co-worker toxic or just a part of the cog in the wheel? Is being nice all the time to people who're taking advantage of your corporation just as bad?

That is more than enough questions for one day!