Dear husband and I started taking East Coast Swing Dance lessons in September. He'd never taken any dance before, and I'd never taken any partner dance. I still have to occasionally work at not leading. :)
With all of the new, unexpected, and challenging things at his new job, dear husband said that dancing isn't that daunting. He's more focused on practicing during the week than I am. For some reason, I keep forgetting.
The major problem is that the class is from 8:30 to 9:30. It's usually difficult to quiet down and get sleepy when you have a dance class that late.
Tonight I'm not having that problem. Here's a swing video that daughter posted to my Facebook wall:
I don't usually post the same song twice in one year, but both videos are well animated and very different. Last February 15, I posted Thought of You, a beautiful, animated, dance video set to the Weepies song, World Spins Madly On.
Recently, daughter posted the official video for the song on my Facebook wall. It's sweet:
Since I've already posted the Muppet and Celtic versions of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, I was pleased to find this video of a Finnish group, the Porkka Playboys, singing the song (in English) in a VW Polo (circa 1980)(the VW, not the video):
I used Google Translate to try to read their website in English, but it was only of limited use. It couldn't translate many of the words, and what did get translated doesn't always sound normal. On the other hand, it might not just be fault of the translation! Here's a taste from the translation of the Musicians page:
Grace in 2008, proper young gentleman and a musician first Kukkola Jonah went to the flea market driven by a higher power round. Kotvan pytinki touring and scrap boxes pengottuaan his eyes finally osuikin one of the most remote on the shelf nököttävä, poison green, musical little devils that contains an accordion, with whom she wobble like a trance. Jonah, was completely impossible to resist these little creatures call viekkaiden screams, so immediately accordion oravannahkoihin exchanged Jonah astelikin the street and rang the hypnotized enchanted accordion solo, taking alms from the thrilled audience. Tästäpä four FIM richer Jonah got a thought: "Hmm ... If you already have one accordion and one caller to the public so hullaantumaan what would happen if the Musicians should be more?" It took Jonah and wondering earned money wisely invested in soft drinks...*
It starts to seem rather existential... or maybe transcendental... after you read it for a while. Here's the end of that page:
...Well, nothing! When all the four people still sing and the angels' languages, the band was noted to be finished.
Already the first session it was clear that such a common sound is heard in the streets kuunaan Finland - So olkaatten careful: if the ringer when ostosreissullanne Or, you can hear a beautiful song, close your ears, because if you do not do so, Porkka Playboys steal your heart.
Suzanne Cleary and Peter Harding of Up And Over It do a hand dance to We No Speak Americano by Yolanda Be Cool and DCUP (Warning: This song will get stuck in your head (but the hand dance is fun!)):
[We had a good time in Raleigh today - had lunch at Lily's Pizza, ice cream at Turkish Delights, and (between the four of us) got 63 books out of the Cameron Village Library. We found out today that both college students have summer jobs so we're happy!!!]
The Selfish Giant, by Oscar Wilde, is one of my favorite short stories. It's a beautiful story, which always makes me teary at the end. We watched the lovely animated version* this evening (this video is a bit blurrier than the version we have):
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Older son is still singing the songs from it.
* The movie was made in 1971, and it was nominated for an Academy Award for an animated short subject.
Since I'm a Kevin Kline fan, I'm surprised that In and Out has been out since 1997, and I've never seen it before last weekend. I think that I thought it was a more serious film than it actually is. I rethought that when we started watching and found out that it was directed by Frank Oz (so it's probably wouldn't be too much of a serious drama).
For those who haven't seen it, it's a good comedy with a great cast. Kevin Kline is wonderful, as usual. The rest of the cast are wonderful too (including Joan Cusak, Debbie Reynolds, Tom Selleck, and Matt Dillon).
The one thing I didn't care for about the film was the negativity in the first half, but that has to happen in order for the second half to mean something. Still, I found it difficult to watch after a while.
Here's one of my favorite scenes. If you read even a one sentence synopsis of the plot then this scene won't really give anything away:
Daughter's going back to UNC-A this weekend, and older son starts back at NCSU on Monday - another reason for the light blogging the last few weeks.* Here are two fun videos I found recently:
