– Next weekend is your chance to become an expert at dancing to the blues in only two short days. Local dance group NewVoBlues is holding EvoBluesion, a two-day dance workshop, July 14 and 15. In those two days you’ll get to attend 7 classes held by Candace and Reuel, two award-winning dance instructors. You’ll also get to go out dancing with the group at clubs on Beale Street, at the Blue Worm, and wherever else they find. It’s a real bargain at only $60 for the whole weekend, $55 for NewVoBlues members.
– If you live Downtown and own a pet, be sure to check out this article in today’s CA about the new branch office of the Berclair Animal Hospital to open at 668 S. Main. Says they’ll have a play area, as well as an area in the back for exotic animals like birds and reptiles.
– Tube Top Month officially ended several days ago, but the wearing of tube tops through the rest of the season is still encouraged (in a warm climate like Memphis, it’s tube top season ’til mid-October). Here’s an article from the Toronto Star that shows you how to convert a pillowcase into a tube top. Now you have no excuse not to have a tube top – everyone has a spare pillowcase lying around.
– I don’t talk to her much anymore, but I still have former Flying Saucer/Blues City waitress The Romanian Sensation on my Yahoo Messenger contact list. Noticed this morning she had changed her profile pic to one of her in a cap and gown. So it looks like she graduated and got her M.D. I guess I’ll have to refer to her as Dr. Romanian Sensation in the future. And fellow blogger Ptolemy Kat will have to start referring to her as “Dr. Shorty.” Sincere congratulations to the Sensation, if she still reads this blog – becoming a doctor at age 24 is quite an accomplishment.
– Speaking of Ptolemy Kat, she posted a really cool photo album last Monday. The photo descriptions are set up to look like title cards from old silent movies. She used Slide.com to create it.
– Speaking of silent movies… a few months ago I posted that I found some old Our Gang/Little Rascals episodes online. They were so good that I ordered an 11-DVD set of 55 of the best Rascals episodes, and the set contains some silents, made in the 1922-1929 period before the studio was converted for talkies. I’ve only watched a couple of the silents but they seem to be as good as the ones with sound.
The DVDs are also an interesting sociology lesson. I had heard that some of the episodes had been heavily censored when they appeared on TV, and in a few cases outright banned, due to racial dialogue which was acceptable in the ’20s and ’30s but was not by the time of TV syndication in the ’70s and ’80s. The DVDs contain the full, uncensored episodes, and really, the dialogue isn’t that bad. The worst I’ve seen so far is Stymie referring to his dad as “a crap-shootin’ fool,” Farina licking his lips at the thought of eating watermelon, and Buckwheat walking into a dark room where you could only see the whites of his eyes. True, I wouldn’t want to see that kind of stuff in a TV show made in 2007, but can’t the episodes be viewed in the light of “this is how things were 75 years ago and thank goodness they’re not that way now”? It makes me mad that TV censors cut out a lot of the best work of the African-American kids, who were three of the most talented actors in the entire series. Then again, I’ve only viewed about a third of the DVDs, maybe there’s worse stuff I haven’t seen yet.
Trouble is, I don’t own a DVD player, which means I have to watch DVDs on my laptop. Which means I can’t watch the DVDs while I work. I need to get with my friend Dr.TV and get his advice on buying a DVD player. You’ll be hearing more about Dr.TV in the weeks to come… look for a new website with his name on it to roll out by month’s end.
– Otto had a great post on Thursday which is worth a bookmark: All the current Amazon.com deals, by product category and % off. So, for example, you can get a list of all books which are 90% or more off. It’s a virtual bargain bin!
– Hungry. Think I’ll mosey over to Blue Plate Cafe and get some meat loaf. Not sure what the rest of the day holds… meeting some friends on my rooftop, but that’s not until 3 AM. I’ll probably spend some time at either Earnestine & Hazel’s or EP’s at some point tonight.