Lately I’ve been spending many hours watching dance videos on Youtube. I’d like share some of my favorite West Coast Swing routines.  Enjoy!

I’ll start with a relaxing routine danced by Jason Miklic and Sophie Kdep. It contains a lot of leadable moves and its speed is comfortable for social dancing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEZl8-UX9KA

The next routine is danced by Jordan Frisbee and Tatiana Mollman, one of the best WCS pairs in the world. This is my favorite choreographed routine. My heart beat a little faster every time I watch it. They are not just dancing to the music; they actually make you SEE the music they are dancing to.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=340799kbLNA

And then there’s Jason Barnes and Erica Berg, whose elegant and smooth style is very different from J & T. They are the tallest pair among WCS masters and have background in ballroom dancing and ballet. I’ve had the pleasure of dancing with both them during the Atlanta Swing Dancers Club’s workshop weekend last year.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJS4QdvoDcM

The WCS community places a lot of emphasis on spontaneous music interpretation and improvisation, which makes it a very entertaining spectator sport. Here are two improvisations of the same song, danced by Robert Royston & Sarah Vann Drake (is she pregnant again?) and Ben Morris & Tessa Cunningham. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI7mM3G7Bdg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3i6kyLLB2g

Which one do you like better?  I prefer the Ben and Tessa routine mainly because I like Ben’s style. I like guys who dance with bigger and freer movements and get equal share of spotlight as their female partners do, instead of just providing a supporting role. I also like the way Ben focuses all his attention on his partner instead of posing for the audience. So here’s another improvised routine by Ben and Torri Smith:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkRb5_r6Vk8

WCS is a flirty dance by nature, and the dancers in general are a liberal bunch. There’s really no “standard” WCS music, it all depends on how many different types of music can you adapt to. And there’s no typical WCS attire. People just wear clothes that they look good in. Dancing with many different partners is the norm. It’s not unusual to see same gender pairs, although very few people take the effort to learn both lead and follow, probably because it’s hard enough to be just good at one role. Here’s an improvised routine by John Lindo and Ramero Gonzalez. I’ve taken group lessons once from them and also danced with them both.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgmsOEbfq7E

A lot of good WCS dancers can also lead two followers at the same time, or follow two leaders. I haven’t found a WCS threesome, but I did find a Hustle routine. Most WCS dancers can hustle. This improvised routine also features Ramero Gonzalez. He is following two leaders.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESI6ecRlC3g&feature=related

I will not give a head count of out-of-town attendees this year, because our webmaster Bill C. has been doing an excellent job taking photos at dance events and uploading them onto our website.

We had about a dozen dancers from Times Squares, plus two New York emigrants: Dave T. who now lives in AZ and Greg C. who has joined Hotlanta. I believe this is the largest visiting group we’ve ever had at our fly-in. A group photo should be posted on our website shortly. 

Peel the Pumpkin had been my favorite fly-in until it was moved out of The City. During our chat on Sunday morning Daryl M. gave me some good reasons on why the move was a good idea. This is also the first time that we held our own fly-in outside of the city and far away from a MARTA station. I’m glad to hear that most visitors enjoyed staying at the Stone Mountain State Park resort and didn’t mind renting a car at the airport.

During the Plus Workshop session, I asked Gary Monday to teach us how to make lines or waves effectively when a square breaks down, as a lot of our dancers had never been taught.  I got a little disoriented doing Bend the Line in a progressive tip. The TNP A2 and the DBD C1 (redundant?) sessions both turned into workshops for rudimentary calls. 

Gary also called an extra Hot Hash Plus tip on Sunday morning by popular request.  Another popular request was JR's "Sex Bomb" singing call.  He experimented it on one class night merely as a joke, but it instantly became our favorite.  He keeps saying that it is his worst singing call.  Well, that's why we love it so much.

I had an interesting discussion with Tim Marriner about the Crossfire controversy (from lines facing out), the Grand Remake controversy, and how far can one push “the facing couple rule” (Can you call Alter the Wave from facing lines?)

We had a nice country/western dance on Saturday night from 11 to 1 a.m. I noticed that people who stayed late dancing on Saturday night were also the first ones to get to the dance hall on Sunday morning. Watching Ed and Brad enjoying their first fly-in reminded the excitement I felt at my first one.

Dan Mutschler flew in from CA again. He is the person I most look forward to see at our fly-in. 

Mike Shagina called a good Plus session yesterday afternoon. He gave a quick review of all the Plus calls for the new student. There were 19 dancers. 

It brought back my memory from seven years ago. When I was busy catching up with the MS/Plus class during my first Fall semester, I learned majority of Plus calls from an animation website and then created cheats to help me memorize them. I posted them here for entertainment. The sentences written in normal fonts are my original cheats. The ones in italic are opinions formed in later years.

12/31: Cleaned and organized my cubicle. Paid off my credit card balance accumulated after the last statement date. Good riddance! Went to club member Cameron’s home for New Years Eve party.

1/1: Slept in. Two loads of laundry. Cleaned and organized my living space.

1/2: It’s 30 degrees but sunny, so it’s still pleasant to walk outside. Meet club member Ed and Brad for lunch at 1p.m., and then carpool to our Pre-flyin Plus Cram Workshop from 2:30 to 5.

1/3: Rest before the Annual Report Hell starts on Monday.

Quotes from Hercule Poirot:

“It is, then, your opinion, that Christmas time is an unlikely season for crime?”

“But let us for a moment examine facts. You have said that Christmas is a season of good cheer. That means, does it not, a lot of eating and drinking? It means, in fact, the overeating! And with the overeating there comes the indigestion! And with the indigestion there comes the irritability!”

“Take another point. There is, at Christmas, a spirit of good will. It is, as you say, ‘the thing to do.’ Old quarrels are patched up, those who have disagreed, consent to agree once more, even if it is only temporarily.”… “Now under these conditions, my friend, you must admit that there will occur a great amount of strain. People who do not feel amiable are putting great pressure on themselves to appear amiable! There is at Christmas time a great deal of hypocrisy, honorable hypocrisy, but nevertheless hypocrisy!”

“I am pointing out to you that under these conditions – mental strain, physical malaise – it is highly probable that dislikes that were before merely mild, and disagreements that were trivial, might suddenly assume a more serious character. The result of pretending to be a more amiable, a more forgiving, a more high-minded person than one really is, has sooner or later the effect of causing one to behave as a more disagreeable, a more ruthless and an altogether more unpleasant person than is actually the case! If you dam the stream of natural behavior, sooner or later the dam bursts and cataclysm occurs!”

*****
I changed my original plan and finished reading the whole book on the night of Christmas. This is often the case with reading Agatha Christie: In the first half of a book, I’m in control of my speed of reading; but in the second half of the book, she controls the speed and I just have to read as fast as she wants me to.

Among all the Agatha Christie books that I've read, this is also one of the two occasions that I actually guessed correctly on the identity of the murderer. Although I wasn’t sure about the murderer’s motive, I stuck with the fact that this person had the easiest way to do the work, and my guess on the technical aspect of the murder also came pretty close. 

The A.B.C. Murder is another case that I guessed correctly. I picked out the murderer based on this person’s motive and figured out the strategy of the murder, but I couldn’t figure out all the technical details.

This week I’m reading Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Christie. It’s a murder mystery, of course. 

The rich, tyrannical and wicked old man Simon Lee has demanded that all four of his sons and their wives visit the family home for Christmas even though he has anything but a heartwarming family holiday in mind. After bedeviling each son with barbed insults, he announces that he is cutting off their allowances and changing his will to boot. None of these people loves him either, but they all come home with various motives disguised by “peace and good will”. So when the old man is found lying in a pool of blood after the murderer escapes a “locked room”, there is no lack of suspects.

This novel has seven chapters that are named by dates from Dec. 22^nd to Dec 28^th, so that’s way I’m going to read them. Tonight I will read the Dec.24^th chapter. This is the day when the murder occurs, and probably most of the clues and red herrings are presented. Its 100 pages account for about one-third of the book.               

I’m not the only one who enjoys observing Christmas in such a morbid way. I had planned to read this book last year, but every copy in the county library was checked out right before Christmas. This year I made sure that I grabbed the book three weeks earlier, and then renewed it online last week.

I downloaded another of my favorite WCS song: You Know I'm No Good by Amy Winehouse.

Tomorrow I’m going to my friend Alan’s home for dinner. 

Happy holiday, everyone!

Today I did my first music download. 

I bought four songs from Amazon for a total of $4.56:

1.       Whatever Happens by Michael Jackson, currently my favorite song for west coast swing (if danced with a partner who feels the same way)

2.       You Never Take Me Dancing by Travis Tritt, another good WCS song.

3.       Little Bit of Life by Craig Morgan, one of my favorite two-step songs

4.       I Need to Know by Marc Anthony. This song is good for both Argentine tango and cha-cha, because it has a tango rhythm but a cha-cha beat, which is not unusual in Latin music.

Of course, I’ve realized that from now on, in addition to a dance budget, I also need to set up a (much smaller) budget for music downloading.

I won $10 on a Mega Million ticket that I bought last Friday. Since I only play occasionally, this amount is more than enough to recoup all my lottery expense this year. My co-workers joked that this could be the prelude of a bigger winning, and encouraged me to “reinvest” the prize money; but I didn’t.

I actually knew someone who had won a jackpot. I’ll call him E. E was one of the waiters in a Chinese restaurant that I worked for in 1993 and 1994. I think 1993 was the year that lottery games started in Georgia, and the biggest prize was the $1 million jackpot of the in-state game Lotto Georgia. Back then $1 million was a big deal, and the final drawing was done on TV. When E won it in the fall of 1993, the news was reported in World Journal, the largest Chinese newspaper in North America. A lot of people came to eat at our restaurant just so they can take a look at the winner.

So E would receive a monthly after-tax payment of $3,250 for 30 years. His life didn’t change drastically though. Once or twice a month his wife would treat their extended family for a dim sum at our restaurant, and he bought a cell phone for his seven-year old daughter, which was quite a luxury back then. But he still worked the same shifts as before; and they soon had a second child. The last time I saw E was in the fall of 1996, and he was still working in the same restaurant.

Although I have never won a big prize, I’ve received huge benefits from the Georgia HOPE Scholarship that is funded entirely by the lottery. During my junior and senior years in GSU, all my expenses for courses, student activity fees and books were fully reimbursed by the scholarship, as long as I maintained a B average. I didn’t qualify for the scholarship in my first two years of college, because I didn’t graduate from a GA high school. But fortunately there was a cheap two-year community college not far from my home.

I still have a few vacation days left, so I took today off. Besides installing the MS 2007 on my Netbook, I also did a lot of C4 studying. This morning I spent 4 hours in a local coffee house and completed 16 sequences from Ben Rubright’s 1999 Berkshires weekend. Only 1 out of the 16 did not resolve. I don’t remember the last time I did 16 sequences in one sitting. Although 15 minutes per printed sequence (as oppose to spending extra time transcribing on my own) is about my normal speed, in the last couple years I seldom had the stamina to work at that speed for 4 hours straight.

12/5: Logged on to my work email from my Netbook for the first time.

12/8: Purchased the Microsoft Office 2007 package for $9.95 through its special deal with my company.

12/8: Successfully downloaded and installed the MS 2007 on my Netbook. I’ve only been using MS 2003 at work so far. I will have a lot of learning to do. I might need to buy a mouse if I’m going to use the program extensively at home.

It’s nice to be able to copy & paste from Word to LJ again.