Musings on Dance, Food, Geek Stuff
My favorite books I read in 2023: Light from Uncommon Stars, Ryka Aoki: This book broke me completely. I can’t imagine a more perfect scifi novel for me, combining music, aliens, demons, food, and Amer-Asian cultures so perfectly. The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman: Just a perfect fable for our times. Indescribably beautiful and sweet and…
I finished Naomi Novik’s wonderful fantasy novel A Deadly Education this week and have been thinking a lot about it. The central premise is what if there were a Hogwarts-type wizard school that had no faculty and lots more monsters roaming about? Much darker and more diverse than Harry Potter, with a mixed race central…
I just finishing Psalm for the Wild-Built. Such a beautiful, sweet, hopeful, and funny bit of sci-fi from the amazing Becky Chambers. Another one of her books where basically nothing happens. And yet I couldn’t stop reading it, except when I had to put it own to laugh or think about stuff brought up by…
My friend Albert Boulanger brought this awesome factoid to my attention: to compete with the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem in the 1939, the Golden Gate Ballroom also featured roller-skating. Can you imagine getting to lindy hop AND rollerskate in the same lavish ballroom? Sigh. SOURCE: The Birth of Bebop, By Scott DeVeaux · 1997
As a lindy hopper and a jazz enthusiast living in San Francisco, I am embarrassed about how little I know about the historic Fillmore District. In the 1940s and 1950s this area was known as the “Harlem of the West” because of the large number of Black-owned businesses, particularly supper clubs, dance halls, and after-hours…
I just finished reading Jookin’ : The Rise of Social Dance Formations in African American Culture by Katrina Hazzard-Gordon. It describes in compelling detail on the ways that African slaves and African Americans found to create their own social spaces in a society that actively prohibited their association. The focus of Jookin’ is on social dance…
"Tin Men" by Christopher Golden (2015, Ballantine) shouldn't work as a novel. Golden combines the current geopolitical landscape with a somewhat plausible extrapolation of the US as the "world's policeman" and near-future drone technology. I read the book synopsis in the library and thought it just sounded overstuffed and dry. "Tin Men" is anything but…
How much do I love the "Pulp-o-Matic" pulp magazine cover creator? So so much! Thank you, "Professor Cornelius Zappencackler in the Experimental Research District of Retropolis" — aka Bradley W. Schenck, artist and web developer! You are part of what makes the internet so damn awesome. Make your own here!
"Y: The Last Man" is one of the most acclaimed comics of the decade, a dystopic scifi series that builds an elaborate universe around the premise of what would happen if every man on earth was wiped out by a plague. The characters are indelible and unique and the adventure is heart-pounding. Created by Brian…
Swing aficionados generally use words like "happy" and "fun," when describing their dance, and Lindy Hop the original style of swing, is often referred to as "an outward expression of an inner joy." Sometimes silly, sometimes cool, it's a dance that lifts the spirits. And to those that catch the bug ( the "Jitter"-bug, that…