The Week In Review

This week has been notable for two general trends:

1) My continual disorientation with respect to time. I’ve been a day ahead all week; today feels like Friday, hence the title of this post. Real-World-Friday is going to be a mean, nasty punch in the face.

2) (Mostly video) links. I’ve been spamming my friends with them all week.

Little Big League (heartwarming)

A revelation (not video)

Catwalk catastrophe (Brent: still forcing the alliteration after all these years)

The video that will end my friendship with Andy, once he watches it. (It’s… different.)

Lucky Leek (ha)

Running Man (I’m with Kottke)

Boys dancing with… boys

I’ve been dancing a long time. So long, in fact, that I no longer think “haha!” whenever two guys dance together—I try to figure out if they’re dancing well.* My experience has taught me that there are generally two types of guys who dance with other guys: goofballs, and pretty good dancers.

[*It takes the better part of a decade to reach this point.]

Daniel and I danced a foxtrot this evening.** This probably wasn’t the wisest decision we could have made, as there were some three-odd cameras in use throughout the practice. I led, as I cannot follow to save my life; following takes a sort of perception (intuition?) that I wholly lack.

[**We, obviously, fit in the “pretty good dancers” category. *cough*]

One time, as we passed a photographer, he yelled out which one of you is leading? It was an honest question from a guy who didn’t know anything about ballroom dance. I chose not to take it that way.

ICE BURN. Holy crap. My lead got totally dissed by a n00b with a camera.

Later in the evening, Jon was telling Daniel and me about his visit to the newly-formed Argentine Tango Club. According to him, argentine tango has no real steps, and is led with an absolutely limp frame. [The frame in waltz, say, is the loop formed by the lead’s and follow’s arms. Arms are kept fairly firm, so when the lead turns, his arms turn—and so does the follow.] Jon’s follow told him that follows do their thing by trying to maintain a constant distance from their lead.

Daniel then told Jon that the actual, honest-to-goodness lead in argentine tango is (essentially) a full-upper-body lead. Daniel demonstrated this by positioning himself as a lead to Jon’s follow: quite far away (unfocused-eyes distance), far away (half of unfocused-eyes distance), still a bit too far away (I can barely see light between you two), and standard position (woah there). Janis and I found this demonstration quite entertaining; I asserted (and maintain) that the only way Daniel and Jon could have gotten closer would have been to use respect knuckles.

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