For Christmas, my sister got our mom this "Cardio Dance" DVD featuring "Dancing with the Stars" professional dancers Ashly Costa, Kym Johnson, and Maksim Chmerkovsy. My mom is a huge "Dancing with the Stars" fan, so we knew this would be a hit with her. The Jive routine in particular is cheesy swing goodness from…
Snow Leopard on my Dell Mini 10v!
After a few months of trying to live with the Windows XP on my Dell Mini 10v netbook, I finally got sick of it and hackintoshed my machine. Now I'm the owner of a very tiny, fast and sexy netbook running Snow Leopard (Mac OSX 10.6). It's heavenly. It was no big thing to install,…
Yehoodi 3.0 Going Live on December 28!
After lots of planning, coding, head-scratching and bickering, I am extremely excited to announce that the new Yehoodi 3.0 site is about to launch! For the past 11 years, Yehoodi.com has been the virtual hangout for thousands of swing dance and swing jazz enthusiasts from around the world. While our web platform has served us…
Building an inclusive swing dance community
Picture of “SwingingOUT” Group in Toronto, Canada. I’ve heard that there are a couple of lindy hoppers who are working on creating a LGBTQ-friendly swing and blues dance in New York City, which I say is long past due. Other places like San Francisco and Toronto have had long-standing queer-friendly swing dances for years and…
What shirt goes best with my awesome Christmas sweater? (animated gif, sorry!)
My friend Voon helped me pick out a couple of shirts to go with my incredibly sexy Christmas sweater vest. They are appropriately red and green. Shooting pics of myself in the vest, I realized it would work perfectly as a holiday-themed animated gif. Enjoy!
Watch this 70-minute Review of “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace” (seriously)
This guy at RedLetterMedia has created the “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (Episode One)” review to end all reviews. Clocking in at 70-minutes in seven installments on YouTube, I kid you not when I say it is worth watching from beginning to end. It kind of reminds of listening to my friend Frankyboy tell a…
The joys and challenges of teaching 13-year olds how to break
Yesterday I had the pleasure of teaching a hip-hop workshop to a group of Global Kids teens in the Bronx, which was a unique challenge for me for a number of reasons. Here's how it went. Global Kids has been running programs at the middle school IS229 for the past couple of years, exposing these…
“Gold” : an animated winter poem (video)
For my holiday greeting this year, I decided to go all social media-y and create an animated reading of my winter poem "Gold." I've embedded the video above, but I recommend looking at it full screen in HD from the original YouTube version. I hope you like it! Created using the awesome Prezi presentation web…
Holiday Craft Fair & Todd Yannacone this Thursday at the Frim Fram Jam!
This Thursday, December 17, I'm excited to announce a very special holiday Frim Fram Jam, Yehoodi's regular Thursday night swing dance. First up, badass lindy hopper Todd Yannacone will be teaching an advanced dance lesson from 8-9pm and then DJing with Ryan Swift until 1am! As always, the lesson is from 8-9 pm, and still…
More fun footage of Vince Giordano and the Nighthawk’s: “Ain’t Misbehavin'” (video)
"Swingyoucats" has more fun footage from the Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks concert on Saturday in midtown Manhattan, including this vid of dancers enjoying the Nighthawks performance of "Ain't Misbehavin'". Such a fun song, and so deftly performed. Here's another one of WestieGrrl and I charlestoning to "When the Folks Up High Do that Mean…