Let the Man Dance

I recently watched the season finale of 'So You Think You Can Dance'.
For the uninitiated 'So You Think You Can Dance' is 'American Idol' that replaces tarty songstresses with limber effeminate hoofers. And if you're unfamiliar with American Idol, might I suggest you crawl out from under your damn rock.
I will not spend this blog knocking 'So You Think You Can Dance' because frankly (and guiltily) I really enjoyed watching it. I don't particular care for 'American Idol' because I don't particularly care for trilling pretty-boys karaokeing LeAnn Rimes songs for an hour.
'So You Think You Can Dance' on the other hand, I can stand.
Unless it's interpretive dance week, then I go running from the television screaming...
I am a bird. No, I am a babbling brook. My sashaying represents Turkish strife and now I'm a tree. I am a tree. And now I will end posed like a flamingo.
I am glorious.
I am important.
I am ethereal.

You are retarded.

But most other dances are cool. They're usually fast and energized, which is more than I can say for those American Idol sissies. But this isn't about 'American Idol'. It's not even really about 'So You Think You Can Dance'. I only bring up the show because it got me waxing nostalgically on my own personal history with the art of dance. I would like to go on record as saying that I don't sashay, I don't mintz and I rarely prance.
But I do shimmy. I always shake. And it's hard for me not to bounce.

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Summer, 1986. I loved tennis. But not really. I didn't really love tennis. I loved tennis rackets, and I didn't love tennis rackets for any sports related purpose, I loved tennis rackets because they resembled guitars. For so long I had to settle for clipping my Speak'N'Say onto my cowboy belt while singing into it's oversized microphone. And although it gave me a certain feeling of rock stardom... it wasn't the same as having a guitar, or I guess, of having a tennis racket.
My Dad made me several mix tapes as a kid and they were all like striking oil. Almost every one of those songs can be found somewhere on my Top 100 Songs of All-Time List (revealed to the public several blogs ago). The summer of 1986 is the first of such tapes. When I was six years old, I never understood why anyone did anything. I would watch videos of Bruce Springsteen and I knew that for his song 'Born In the USA' he was real angry, he kept putting his fist in the air and he enjoyed the occasional bandana. I didn't really question any of it, I just knew that I liked it... a lot.
I also didn't question how a guitar actually worked. You moved your hand around the fat end, gripped tightly to the skinny end and you strapped the guitar around your shoulder like a continental soldier.
So there I was: I took off my cowboy belt, which was oversized on me and tied one end to the skinny end of the tennis racket, and clipped the other end onto the strings of the racket.
There. Now I could wear the racket without holding it. I could pump my fist in the air, just like The Boss, because he, like me, was born in the United States.
I also had a very high dresser-drawer. It was about five-feet high and I was a bit shorter. I wrapped my Green Blanket around my head like a bandana* and set the Speak 'N' Say on top of the dresser.
Voila! A mic stand.
So I've got the bandana, a mic, a guitar strapped around my shoulder, and Dad's mix tape.
Let's rock.
I'd kill to have video of the six-year-old me lip-syncing to Springsteen telling us:

"Had a woman at Kae-San/ Fightin' North in the Vietcong/ It's still there/ She's all gone!"

What the Hell did any of that mean to a child? Who cares, man? I felt cool.

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* It should be noted that my Green Blanket was actually a green dishtowel that was ripped in half and given to me by my grandmother. It wasn't very large at all, but I loved both pieces more than my own feet or hands and pretty much traveled everywhere with it. This lasted until I was thirteen.

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Autumn, 1989. Little kids are fairly ridiculous. The human brain doesn't fully form until a person is nearly an adult, so it's fair to claim that most nine-year-olds are essentially retarded adults. And that's cool, but it nevertheless makes kids fairly ridiculous. When I was nine-years-old, my best friend's name was Tom. No one called him Tom, though, everyone called him "Spike". Even our teachers called him "Spike".
What a cool sounding nickname for a nine-year-old. I was jealous. I wanted my own cool nickname, something tough like Spike. Something that could cut glass, or better yet, would shatter right through it.
I decided that Chainsaw was what I wanted my teachers and my grandmothers and everyone else to start calling me.
What was tougher than a spike? A chainsaw.
To the world, I wanted to say, I am a chainsaw and I will rip right through your body cavity...
...okay, I probably didn't know what a body cavity was as a nine-year-old, but that was the gist of my feelings.
Not only did I want the world to refer to me as Chainsaw, I wanted it shaved into the back of my head. You have to remember, Vanilla Ice was coming on the scene and MC Hammer was the biggest star in music. He was to popularity during the autumn of 1989 what Kelly Clarkson and Shakira would be to today's popularity is they decided to date and kiss in public.
Wicked popular.
This story doesn't end with my mother allowing me to shave the word "chainsaw" into the back of my head, nor does this story end with anyone referring to me as Chainsaw at any point, even just to humor me once. Hard as I tried, no one ever called me Chainsaw.
What the story does do is lend credence to my nine-year-olds-are-the-same-as-retarded-adults theory. Because as convinced as I was that Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer were cool for having their nicknames shaved into the backs of their heads, I was also convinced that parachute pants were the fuel that allowed both those artists to dance so well.
But if my mom wasn't willing to call me Chainsaw, she damn sure wasn't prepared to buy me parachute pants.
Thinking back on it all, my parents were very stifling when it came to allowing my inner-dancer to bloom.
I had to go about my passion sneaky-style.
I snuck into my mother's room and nabbed the sweatpants she had in her drawer. They were black and didn't glimmer or have any rhinestones on it, like Hammer's pants had, but they were big on me.
I put the pants on and tightened the drawstring as tight as I could around my belly (Hammer wore his pants high) and tucked the bottoms of the sweats into my socks, so that all ends of the pants were tucked and enclosed.
What happened next was a lot of sideways sliding across the floor shouting "Ohh! Ohh! Ohh! Stop!..."
"...Hammer time!"
I remember my mom looking for her sweatpants like, a week after I had taken them. I threw them in her hamper and never took them again. But for several solid days, even if I couldn't be Chainsaw, I could, at least, resemble Hammer.

* * * * *

Summer, 1992. Several summers of my youth were spent in a rented cottage in Door County, Wisconsin. Door County is a wonderful place of peace and tranquility. I won't go into too much detail; lakes, boat docks, white pants, hunting dogs, maple syrup, hummingbirds, hammocks... you get the picture.
The problem with this was, peace and tranquility could get a little lonely without friends to drown out the silence with some sort of noise. There was no one to pretend to be in the Vietnam jungles with (a skill I had no doubt perfected after listening to all that 'Born In the USA' stuff), no one to pretend I was lost in the Carolina wilderness with like in 'Deliverance', and no one to go dinosaur hunting with me.
Essentially, I went stir crazy. And from the depths of my madness came a spastic dance of heartbreaking genius. In 1957 a little-known band by the name of The Chips created a song called 'Rubber Biscuit'. The song is essentially a novelty of which lists several types of sandwiches that someone in a maximum security mental hospital might enjoy. A rubber biscuit is one such snack.
Anyway, by 1979 The Blues Brothers opted to do a cover version of this song maintaining it's madcap energy. The words are either really simple or really difficult to memorize, depending on how you look at it because it's mostly gibberish.
Howbubbahumbubbadigga-wahwah. That type of gibberish.
Anyway, my boredom in Door County and this song's insanity collided into a crescendo of jolts and turns and knee-drops and back bends and flailing and floor slides and kicks and jerks.
If James Brown were thought up by Dr. Seuss and made to slightly resemble Bob Sagat... my Rubber Biscuit dance is surely what would have manifested.
I'm older now, but I think I can still do this dance without hurting myself and the only way we'll ever know is if my friend Sam ever shows me his infamous Beetlejuice dance.

* * * * *

Autumn, 1994. This entry, centering around my Dances of the Decades class during freshman phys-ed, should be the largest and most expansive entry found in the entire blog.
It should be. But it won't be.
I had a crush on any number of girls in that dance class and therefore frankly, I can't remember much of it. There was a foxtrot and a cha-cha, somewhere in there.
My hands were real sweaty from 12:15 -1:00 every Monday through Friday. I think I moonwalked at some point. I know how to moonwalk now, so I must have learned it then.
Anyway, dance is fun and good for the respiratory system and blah, blah, blah, but at some point growing up, dancing makes the inevitable shift from "wiggling opportunity" to "ritual steps takes to better woo romantic interests". Boy or girl, gay or straight, dancing becomes sexual, something you engage in to get attention from those you fancy. But the girls were already there in my gym class. There were as wooed as they were gonna get.
There were also like, four or five girls I was absolutely in love with... remembering the steps to the Hand-Jive was certainly not at the top of my to-do list.

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Fall, 1996. There is something called "schwerve" in the world of dance. You cannot be taught "schwerve". Schwerve is inside you and if you're not sure whether or not you have it, it means you don't have it.
Those with schwerve are fully aware of it, sometimes it scares it's owners. Schwerve is dangerous. It creates verbal stustification in babies and can cause hair loss in dogs. Schwerve creates no sound, but if bottled, it would appear to be fire-apple red. You cannot steal schwerve of battle it. Schwerve does not speak any single language and yet if you are in schwerve's presence, you understand everything it is trying to communicate to you.
I am proud to say that I have schwerve.
It's pretty cool.

I first realized I had schwerve my junior year of high school. There is a Paul Simon song from his Rhythm of the Saints album entitled 'Diamonds On the Souls of Her Shoes'. I was way into Paul Simon during my junior year and I absolutely loved this song. I loved it so much that I made a tape of this four-and-a-half minute song looped over and over and listened to it on the way to school.
Originally, I was just happy while walking to school allowing this song to permeate my ears. But after a week or so, something happened...
My feet walked differently, my arms swung wider. I would occasionally spin in rhythm. I was smiling.
I looked crazy. But I wasn't crazy.
I was infused with schwerve.
I found myself walking down the street with so much enthusiastic schwerve that people - completely in awe - would see me coming and - get this - cross the street so as to get a better look at schwerve in full swing. I'd schwerve down a crosswalk to an orchestra of car honks and bike horns.
Even morning commuters were impressed by the presence of schwerve.
It wasn't all nectar and ambrosia though. There were some naysayers. Every once in a while a fellow commuter would shout angrily at me, claiming I looked like an idiot. Small children, in their ignorance, tended to point and laugh.
Old women would shake their heads.
Dogs barked.
But I understood why this was. I knew that people feared what they could not understand. Schwerve is a scary thing and so was the power harnessed in my morning dance to school listening to my 'Diamonds On the Soles of Her Shoes' tape. I was bad. I was dangerous. I was intimidating. I was a dancer with schwerve.
Think James Dean.
Think Elvis Presley.
Think crack-cocaine.
Think pitbulls.
Think bazookas.
Think of these things when you think upon my schwerve.

* * * * *

Winter, 1999. I did a few musical theater productions in college. Not a lot to add here. My schwerve didn't leave me, so the ladies dug it. One of the plays was 'The Pajama Game', which was also a fine film with Doris Day.
I was not cast in the Doris Day role.
But they did give me a lot of opportunities to snap my fingers and fiddles with my suspenders, which only served to enhance my schwerviness.
The second play was a little known Berthold Brecht play that found me playing a singing and dancing thug, which is about as close to 'A Clockwork Orange' as I imagine ever being. I punched some dudes and then danced with my own nightstick.
It was a departure for me.

* * * * *

Spring, 2004. Everyone should attend Mardi Gras at least once. This is not a recommendation, not necessarily. It is just something I feel everyone should have in their emotional background, much in the same way I feel each of us should have at least six months of retail sales experience somewhere in our background.
In both cases, I feel it makes us better people.
My Mardi Gras experience was fairly normal. Lots of boobs, flashing lights, booze, fat guy man-boobs, beads, jester masks, purple, green and yellow, gumbo, crawfish, jazz, Cajuns, hot sauce, boobs, beads, a few more boobs, and a little more booze. Oh, and dancing. My rat pack of ten danced so much in the week we were in Louisiana that strangers tried to infiltrate our clique and become eleventh members.
The spring of 2004 was the height of Outkast's hit 'Hey Ya!'. And although I am fully aware that this song was popular throughout the world, very few earthlings are aware that 'Hey Ya!' is my song. Others are perfectly welcome to listen to it, but it is not theirs.
It's mine.
So there we were, a big circle in some bar somewhere in New Orleans dancing feverishly to Outkast when a man taller than myself and bigger than two of me stuck together weaseled his way into our circle. Odd as it was, he wasn't bumping his crotch against any of my girlfriends like most meatheads are known to do, he was dancing next to me.
He wasn't wearing pink. His hair wasn't masterfully coiffed. He wasn't drinking a mojito. From what I could tell about this guy - he wasn't gay.
But he sure wasn't leaving my side either.
I became uncomfortable. I wanted this guy gone. I angled my back away from him and shimmied our little circle away from his gyrations.
The meathead didn't like this.
Without missing a step, he rhythmically knocked my hat off my head...and continued wiggling.
His eyes were glued to mine. He was still dancing.
I picked my hat off the ground; the meathead was still staring at me, still swaying.
I was creeped out. I could taste a little of my own vomit.
Was I about to get punched or spun and then dipped?
He set his drink down and motioned for me to come toward him...
...Wait. Not come toward him, I was being told to "bring it".
Wait, "bring it"? But that would mean...
Ohmigod! I was in a dance-off!
Damn my generally awesome schwerve. Look what it got me into this time!
I was in a dance-off with Andre the Giant.
Andre the Giant knocked the hat off my head and wanted to trade move for move.
I don't really remember what happened next, but I very well may have "cabbage-patched" and then fell unconscious. I can't be sure. My friends pulled me away.
I don't dance-off with guys. Guys can't dance-off with anyone but girls. There's just too much that can go wrong. To this day, I'm still squeamish about the party dance circle. It always flashes me back to New Orleans meatheads and how threatened they become with my "schwerve" during 'Hey Ya!
My schwerve is dangerous, it's been known to break hearts and mold minds.

* * * * *

New Years Morning, 1998-present. This final example of my love affair with dance isn't so much an example of dance as it is an example of energy. For the last eight years, my friends and I have established 'Glory Days' by Bruce Springsteen to be played each year at exactly midnight. Auld Lang Sine is fine for your mama, but that song is an old acquaintance that needs to be forgot.
So we forgot it and brought in the Boss.
Rare is the January 1st where you will not find me on the couch screaming my head off that this-right now- is are our glory days.
Afterwards, we play The Who.
I don't care who you are (who-who, who-who... ahem, sorry) or how great of an air guitarist you think you are; my air bandmates and I will crush you. Six minutes of 'Baba O'Riley' and eight minutes of 'Won't Get Fooled Again' all complete with guitar, drums, bass, my schwerve, violin, and occasional keyboard (I mean honestly, when's the last time you saw an air-keyboard?) equates to our air band punk-rocking the plaster out of your air band.
I've watched many old Who concerts and have since noticed that Keith Moon, rarely drums straight through two complete songs. There's a lot of water breaks in there and they never play 'Fooled' and 'Baba' back-to-back.
I'm not claiming I'm a better drummer than Keith Moon, I am just claiming to be a better air drummer than you.
Eat it reader.

I'm out...

[ ...a loud screech pulsates through the arena as the microphone is dropped immediately to the floor and your noble narrator walks off the stage. ]

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