There’s a cool story in the trade publication Publisher’s Weekly about the viral marketing campaign that I coordinated for the launch of the book Frankie Manning: Ambassador of Lindy Hop. I got some nice quotes in this piece by Gayle Feldman, talking about how we managed to get Frankie’s book from #22,000 to #7 on…
Category: Dancing / Music
“For Dancers Only”: Why Jelly Roll pwns my lindy hop @$$
Image by Swifty Every once in awhile I get a bit discouraged about the lindy hop scene in New York. As the fertile ground where swing jazz and swing dance was innovated and developed during the 1930s and 40s, today the modern swing musician and dancer has few places where they can get their groove…
Coney Island Mermaid Parade 2007 Winners: The Brooklyn Bombshells!
=Well, the powers that be at Coney Island’s official website seem to be taking their sweet time posting the official results on the main Mermaid Parade page. But one of the moderators managed to get this onto their discussion boards, so I’m assuming these results are official. I’m going to repost them here, in case…
Google ranks my Mermaid Parade post as #2?
For some reason my previous post “Mermaid Parade 2007: So Long and Thanks for the Fish” is #2 on Google search right now. And the Mermaid Parade flickr group started by my friend RubyMae is #6. Given the thousands of people who were there and taking pictures and blogging, it’s weird that we would be…
Mermaid Parade 2007: So long, and thanks for all the fish!
My friends Tomo, Sammy and Beckto So yet another, and possibly the last, Coney Island Mermaid Parade is history, and I have to say this was perhaps my favorite of all the ones I’ve ever been to. The weather was just perfect: breezy, cool, and sunny. The crowds were immense and incredibly positive and festive….
Cindy in a music video!
A couple of months ago, my girlfriend Cindy was asked to be a dancer in a music video for an indie band unpronouncably named "!!!" or "ChkChkChk." Finally, months later, the video has come out. Cindy, being the down-to-earth girl that she is, had pretty realistic expectations of her appearance, or lack thereof, in the…
The 25th Annual Mermaid Parade is this Saturday!
This Saturday is the 25th annual Mermaid Parade at Coney Island, my all-time favorite New York event of the year. The Mermaid Parade is a celebration of all things bizarre, silly and fringey about New York, ostensibly to fete the opening of Coney Island for the summer season, but really just an excuse to dress…
Yehoodi Talk Show #417: Evita talks about being on “So You Think You Can Dance”
Evita Arce fromSo You Think You Can Dance The latest episode of my lindy hop podcast the "Yehoodi Talk Show" has been posted by my partner Spuds today. We chatted with our pal Evita Arce about her experiences competing on the Fox TV show "So You Think You Can Dance." We are so proud of…
Jamie Sue on why she loves blues dancing
My friend Jamie Sue, on the swing dance website that I administer, made an eloquent statement about why she loves dancing to the blues. I have to quote it in its entirety: I love blues. Blues music reflects a lot of my life view. It lives big and loud. It’s passionate and large. It’s about…
Initial thoughts on Season 3 of “So You Think You Can Dance”
I can see that this is going to be a really interesting third season of the Fox show "So You Think You Can Dance." Through the wonders of TIVO, I got caught up on the last 12-hours of show last night in about three hours. I cried 2-3 times already, and applauded at the TV…