No more apologies, please

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann rips into Sen. Clinton after her latest offensive/dumbass comment on the campaign trail.
It's a 10-minute rip, but be patient. The list of "we've forgiven you for..." is a great recap of all the stupid/morally repugnant things she's done during the campaign. But, of course, the real reason she didn't win is because we in the Obama Majority are sexist pigs who'd rather see a black man in the White House.

This is kind of fun

...but you've got problems if you recognize everybody in this new Weezer video.

What I learned from Indiana

Thursday marks the probable end of a very important chapter in my development as a human being. It’s a journey that began 27 years ago, when I was a snot-nosed boy growing up in the jungles of Iowa, searching for a purpose in life, and maybe a little action/adventure along the way.
Now 32 with a snot-nosed kid of my own, what is likely to be the final installment of the Indiana Jones series – Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – debuts tomorrow in theaters, on bootleg DVDs and via file sharing sites worldwide, and I can’t help but be a little nostalgic and reflect on how my life has been influenced by Dr. Jones.
I was just 5 years old when Raiders of the Lost Ark was released in the summer of 1981. I don’t remember seeing it in theaters, and I probably didn’t, but it was the first videotape my family ever bought. Amazed how the VHS technology could bring such a huge movie into our living room, my brother and I watched the tape over and over – pausing, rewinding and fast-forwarding until we had every line memorized, including the Spanish dialogue and blow-dart sound effects featured in the first scene in the Peruvian jungle. We even noticed the plexi-glass barrier between Harrison Ford and those snakes.
We probably should have been reading books, but in retrospect, we could have done worse. Raiders of the Lost Ark was a critically acclaimed, big budget, mass market work of art by the two most influential and groundbreaking Hollywood filmmakers of our generation, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. It was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won four.
It would have been hard to top the achievements of Raiders, and its first two sequels – Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade – did not. That is not to say they are bad films. They are both fun movies with more than their share of memorable moments.
I remember sitting in the theater in the summer of 1984, watching Temple of Doom with my Grandma Van De Voorde, when one of the bad guys extracted a beating heart from a man’s chest with his own hands. As the man held the throbbing heart high above his head to delight of his crazed worshippers, I looked over to see Grandma’s reaction. She was asleep, head tilted back on her chair and snoring, just like when we saw Return of the Jedi the year before. It’s a cherished memory.
The sequels (technically Temple of Doom is a prequel because it takes place a year before the events in Raiders) cemented Indiana Jones’ worldwide cultural impact, with combined box office receipts of more than $750 million. The bull whip and fedora have become instantly recognizable icons of adventure.
The impact on my life has also been far reaching:
· Without Indiana Jones, it would have taken me a lot longer to develop my healthy suspicion of Germans.
· If I hadn’t been so enamored with the Indiana Jones films, maybe I wouldn’t have been so bored in archaeology class in college. And maybe I wouldn’t have been inspired to get that film studies minor, which has earned me nothing but a bunch of crusty books by French theorists, and – so far – no Oscar.
· Without Spielberg and Lucas’ creation, perhaps I would have never even attended Indiana University, which I was shocked to discover did not have Dr. Henry Walton “Indiana” Jones, Jr. as a tenured professor. There isn’t even a statue. (Duh, he taught at Marshall College.) Although, the General Robert Montgomery Knight did pull out a bull whip once.
· Without Dr. Jones and his romantic exploration of world culture and past civilizations, would I have married my wife, whose native Peru is an archaeological gold mine of artifacts and ruins, and who shares my affection for the films?
That’s probably a stretch. I liked the way she looked in jeans too much to not marry her. But it’s really fun to say “Throw me the idol, I throw you the whip” as we exchange the baby and the diaper bag, and have her get the reference.
We will get a babysitter and go see Crystal Skull this weekend. It’ll be hard not to have grand expectations, but I’ve told myself that as long as it isn’t completely ridiculous, or melts my face off Nazi-style, it will be just great.

Got to give it up

La Bruja and a black man (Photo swiped from the AP)

How much longer do we have to deal with this?

As quoted in a story in USA Today today, today, today, Hillary Clinton makes her case to superdelegates with this argument:

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

It doesn't take an English degree to deconstruct what she's saying here: White people vote for me. Uneducated, white people not quite ready to vote for a black man for President vote for me. That's who matters. Because black people are just black. They're certainly not hardworking and their votes shouldn't count as much as an uneducated white person's.

This Clinton argument hinges on the assumption that if the superdelegates snatch the nomination away from Barack and make her the nominee, black voters will happily return to the polls in November to vote for her.

I don't think that will be the case. In fact, it would spark the long-awaited second American Revolution.

Guess what side all the other educated white folks and I will be on?

Truce

My yearlong battle with Prince may be over (see our End of Summer Music Review), thanks to his cover of Radiohead's "Creep" at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival Saturday.
It feels really good. Like makeup sex.
Thanks to my pal, Jenny, for hipping me to the video.



Watch it soon, because his henchmen are bound to have it removed from every portal, including our memories. He has that power.

I gotta dance

Gregory Hines, 1946-2003

It was while bringing up the rear of an eight-person conga line in a strip mall on a Tuesday night that I realized my career as a professional dancer would once again be derailed.
When I was a kid, I had the difficult and fleeting dream of being a tap dancer. The late Gregory Hines was a big star at the time and I thought because we shared the same name we might share some talent connection as well. But growing up in rural Iowa, there were not a lot of opportunities or encouragement for male tap dancers.
I have a very clear memory of going to the mall one weekend and seeing kids from a local dance school performing. I was wowed by how many cute girls took dancing lessons, but then the school's one boy student came prancing on stage in a shimmery, male figure skater-like outfit, and although he was great, I knew I would forever choose hoops and hightops over sequins and spangles.
About 12 years later and much more comfortable in my hetero-ness, my dancing dream was reignited when I saw how many cute girls were taking tap classes in college. So, in the spring semester of my senior year, I registered for Beginning Tap. Fortunately for all those cute girls, I had to drop the class when I realized I needed to take Spanish, not the Tango, to graduate on time.
Even without professional training, I’ve always considered myself something of a maestro on the dance floor. At clubs, weddings and parties, I earned a reputation for having moves uncommonly smooth and funky for an American caucasian male. My style was freestyle. A cross between James Brown and Bobby Brown, with a little bit of the robot thrown in for good measure.
I had style.
I had grace.
I was the funkiest dude in the place.
Then, I got married. There was no more reason to strut around the dancefloor like a peacock. I had secured my bird by doing “The Bird” like Morris Day. The only grinding left for me to do was on my morning coffee beans.
The problem is my wife likes to dance, just not with me. She says I don't really know any of the steps. I just try to show off how slick I am. And she's right.
So, for her 30th birthday, I thought it would be a sweet surprise to buy her a package of dance lessons at the esteemed Arthur Murray School Dance. We could learn the steps together and I could finally see if I had what it takes to be as cool as Gregory Hines.
Dancing is much harder than it looks. It's all 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, rock-step, spin, twist, turn. I had a hard time being confined by that rigid structure. I needed to break free into the snake, the cabbage patch, the Roger Rabbit, etc. My wife told me to stop, but our instructor, a skinny little guy with a heavy accent, understood my need for variety.
"Eats alike, you alike dee hambooger," he said, "buh you kahn't half dee hambooger everyday."
Exactly.
By the end of our lessons, we had received a pretty good introduction to the waltz, rhumba, swing, merengue and the hustle. Our package concluded with a brief "party" where we got to dance with a few older couples and some other lonelyhearts in beginning classes. We all did our still unsteady steps in the strip mall studio, with disco ball spinning above. The instructors led us through something like a Soul Train line, which I loved, and into a conga line, which I hated.
My hands kept slipping off the meaty shoulders of the woman in front of me. I fell off rhythm. I put my left foot in, when they put their right foot out.
With disco lights shining all around, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and saw Gregory Van De Voorde, not Gregory Hines, and I wanted a hambooger.

The Nicholas Brothers, the greatest of all time

Layoffs, rappers, dancers, singers and kid

Can You Dig It? hasn't been in the blogging mood lately.
It's not that he's lost his cunning, third-rate linguistical skills or his desire to bore you in third person. He's just been busy.
In the three weeks since his last dispatch, he's been trying to figure out how to not get released early from his company (and when he says "his" he means the one he works for, not a company of his very own), which is closing in June. He will not be able to provide further comment on the subject due to some legal and contractual issues. No, seriously.
He also took his old butt out on a Tuesday night to see his boys Tanya Morgan perform right here in Greenville. He's proud to report the night was a much bigger success than the Asheville show last November. There was time for beer and a couple of photos.











Top, Von Pea and Illyas; below, Donwill in my grille

There were also two nights of intensive study with his wife at the Arthur Murrary School of Dance. More on that to come next week.
Now, he's just home listening to his new girlfriend's CD, She & Him Vol. 1. You might like it. Terry Gross does.
Then, there's this kid. She freaked out on her first trip to Chuck E. Cheese's when the 6-foot rat came out for his meet and greet with the public. Now, she's putting buckets and panties on her head.