After the dance on Friday, some of us went to the diner (as usual).
I was being a good girl and got only hot tea and matzoh ball soup. But then Liana went and got this gigantic waffle covered with I think 8 billion scoops of ice cream. Then she forced us to help her finish it. Oh well so much for being good! ;)
Last night a guy named Tim hosted a dance at the Elks Club in Summit, New Jersey. He's hosted such dances on several occasions but I don't think they've been well-attended - I had not been to one myself - at least until last night. This time Tim had a hit with a cool band called The Blue Vipers of Brooklyn.
Yep, I took this picture with my phone. It doesn't have a flash on it, and the dance hall was dimly lit. So this is about as good a photo as you're gonna get form me.
Anyway I almost didn't go to this dance, but I'm glad I changed my mind. I quite like the Blue Vipers. Their music is filled with lots of little fun sounds a dancer can play with. And I liked that, with the exception of the bass player, all the band members played relaxed and sitting down. When I was not busy dancing, I really enjoyed watching the percussionist, David Langlois, tickle his washboard, which he tricked out with an assortment of old tin items from the kitchen, with his metal-thimbled fingertips.
While I guess they are a swing band, I don't lump the Blue Vipers into the category of neo-swing bands; I feel like their sound is more authentic. I bought one of their CDs - Forty Days and Forty Nights - though I had to borrow $5 from Gretchen to do so. Apparently they recorded this CD as a result of winning Fox TV's Morning Show with Mike & Juliette Subway Idol contest last summer. Anyway hopefully the Blue Vipers will get more gigs in New Jersey.
Oh here's a nice podcast from WNYC talking with the Blue Vipers.
Tonight (well I guess yesterday night now) Tiffknee and I went to Lyndhurst or Rutherford or wherever it is to dance at the Whiskey Cafe. Every month Jim Dean and his band play swing music and there is a buffet, all for the same price as we normally pay to get into one of the DJ'ed dances around here. If you look really hard, you can see Tiff dancing with a guy named Kenny - she's in the t-shirt. Kenny is a great dancer but somehow this is only the first time I've ever met him. Apparently he stopped going out to other swing dance venues in Jersey because there weren't enough decent follows to dance with.
Anyway it was a fun time. I should go to this venue more often. Our friend Mickey is going to DJ during the band breaks for this dance next month so maybe we'll make it out for that one too.
Today the Gas House Gorillas sent a message to their mailing list, of which I am a subscriber. In the message, they had a link to a video that was recorded of them playing Run Run Rudolph at Stanhope House last December. If you look reeeeealllly hard, you can see Kenji and me dancing in the crowd between the Gorillas and the camera (though you can't really see us till like 20 seconds into the video). :)
Last night I wen to the twice monthly dance in Whippany. See that's me in the red shirt... that's right, I'm all the way to the left there. :)
Oh wait, there I am where you can actually see me. Hehe.
Last night I went with some shoe-changer friends to a street fair in Milburn. It had a 50s theme because Milburn's Paper Mill Playhouse will open their new season with Happy Days, the musical, and the street fair was basically a big ole promotion for it.
No 50s theme party would be complete without an Elvis impersonator. All the women that this one gave his scarves to appeared to want to run away.
During the band break, Joe, Gretchen and I walked around the corner, where we saw this classic car that had a little mini version of it driving back and forth on the sidewalk! The owner of the cars said the mini version is more fun to drive around than the big one. It has tiny hydraulic lifts on it, and it probably doesn't break as much.
Yesterday was a very Friday the 13th-ish day. Conveniently, it actually was Friday the 13th.
As you know from my previous posts, Friday began with a man-hunt in our back yard. Then in the evening, a NJ Transit train got stuck in the tunnel so Tiffany had a hard time getting home from work in NYC. To make things easier, Kenji and I went to pick her up at Newark Penn Station, and then Kenji dropped us off at Tiff's house so that he could go to the book store while Tiff and I went to the dance.
At least that's what the plan was supposed to be. When it came to leaving for the dance, Tiffany's car, the one she's only owned for two weeks, was dead!
But the night was not lost - the thrid member of the shoe-changer triangle, Joe, was having none of this Tiffany-and-Marsha-aren't-going-to-the-dance business. He drove all the way back home from the dance to pick us up and take us there. That's me in the back of Joe's convertible, wearing his hat so that my hair would only be a near-complete disaster instead of a complete disaster.
When we got there, we paid our $15 at the door, and I took a Life Saver from the candy dish and began to suck on it while I changed my shoes. I started off with a nice dance with Tiff. Then I danced with my favorite lead in NJ, Tall Mike (we have qualifier nick names for all the Mikes to make it easier to tell which Mike we are referring to). As usual, dancing with Tall Mike was super-fun. About 3/4 of the way through the song, he did an aerial (I think it's called a Side Car), which was so much fun that I couldn't help but laugh. But flying around laughing with a Life Saver in my mouth was not really a good idea, as the Life Saver then got stuck in my throat!
Good thing it was a Life Saver though, because I think the little hole is what made it so that I could still breathe. Well, actually I think the Life Saver got stuck in the right pipe... so maybe I would have been able to breathe anyway even if it didn't have a hole in it. Nonetheless, having the little bugger stuck in my throat was very uncomfortable. Gretchen insisted I drink some hot water to help melt the Life Saver and also to help my throat expand. It was a good idea because after only a few sips I could feel the Life Saver flip around and then continue on its way down into my tummy. :)
Last night was the first Simone dance I've been to in over a year. I haven't been going to her dances for several reasons. Those of her dances that are DJ'd, I haven't really cared much for the music selection. The dances she hires bands for generally cost too much. But this week Simone hired the Gas House Gorillas, so this time it was worth it. :)
Simone has changed venues since the last time I went to one of her dances. She now holds them at the Women's Club in Montclair. It's a nice space for a dance, but the floor is extra fast. I didn't even need to change into my dance shoes, which is just as well, because they would have looked extra silly with the dress I was wearing.
According to the Gas House Gorillas, "shoe changer" is another name for the swing dancers that always show up at their gigs. Joe, Tiffany and I are a triangle of shoe changers because on the day this photo was taken, Tiffany moved into her new apartment. Her apartment happens to be about a half mile away from Joe, who who lives about a half mile away from Kenji and me, and we live about a half mile away from Tiffany. And that there makes a triangle. Of shoe changers.
On a completely different topic (but still related to this photo)... This evening Kenji and I went shopping for some new clothes now that spring has finally sprung. I just realized that the shirt Tiffany is wearing in this picture is a shirt I thought about trying on at Ann Taylor, but then decided it would probably look dumb on me. Doesn't look dumb on Tiff. Maybe it wouldn't look dumb on me, either. But the point is moot because now I definitely won't get that shirt since I already know someone else who has one. :P
In the wee hours of this morning I returned home after a week in Anaheim, California. Although I was there for business, it was also a lot of fun. And the most welcome part of the excursion of course was escaping the freezing cold weather for sunny souther California. When I left New Jersey on Tuesday morning, it was bone-chilling 13° outside; when I stepped off the plane in Anaheim, it was a wonderful dry 78°! Yay! And there was a nice pool and hot tub right outside my hotel room! Woo-hoo!
The reason I went to California was to work at the Natural Products Expo West, once again serving up all kinds of delicious pies, cookies, tea breads, crumble cakes in the exhibit booth of the company for which I work. Standing in the booth all day for three days in a row is tough on the feet, but it's nothing a little soak in the hot tub can't cure. ;)
The day before I left for Anaheim, I did a little research to see where I might be able to go swing dancing, since I knew there is a very active Lindy community in southern California. To my extreme delight I learned that Orange County was hosting a Lindy exchange the very same weekend that I would be in town. I didn't have a whole lot of free time in the evenings, but I did manage to sneak out on Friday night for some dancing at the Atomic Ballroom. I don't know whether the size of the crowd at the Atomic Ballroom was larger than usual (it's a regular weekly event) due to the exchange. Either way, it was quite a large crowd, and it seemed to me that there were a good number of quality dancers there. Folks seemed quite friendly too, so I can safely say that I enjoyed dancing with southern California quite a lot.
Kenji was out of town this past week and through the weekend, and with the exception of my ten-minute date with Petco to fetch more food for the kitties, I've spent pretty much all of my evenings in. New Jersey finally got a smattering of snow this week - just enough for me to take a broom to dust off the sidewalk and driveway, but not enough for me to take a picture.
I also fell ill in the middle of the week with a sore throat. I thought for sure I had strep, so before the symptoms got out of hand, I visited a doctor. She did a test and said it was not strep, though it might be too early to tell, prescribed an antibiotic for me just in case my symptoms got worse, and sent me on my merry way. I guess I'm turning into a hypochondriac, since my sore throat was already gone by Friday night and now I'm just battling a bit of congestion.
Saturday night I had planned to go with my friend, Tiffany, to see our favorite fun local band, the Gas House Gorillas play way the heck down in Long Branch, NJ. The Gorillas are a favorite among the NJ swing dance community, so this is probably the seventh or eighth time I've seen them play. This time the venue was the lounge at the Ocean Place Resort and Spa, which was nice because it has a plethora of comfy chairs, and the band got to play with a boat as a backdrop. This lounge has no dance floor to speak of, but at least it has a dance carpet, which gives your legs an extra-good workout. In the picture to the left, Hiro Suzuki is on the guitar, Joe Geary on drums, Rick Fink performing vocals, "Handsome" Dan Alvaro on the saxophone, and somewhere in the background behind Dan is Crusher Carmean on the upright bass.
The Gas House Gorillas have a blog of their own, but it seems there's been some kind of controversy over it and therefore will be going away. I teased them last night that I brought my camera so that I could continue the blog on my own blog, but I know I'm just to lazy to make this a regular thing. Plus I don't have the same penchant for witty prose that "Handsome" Dan has (he was the keeper of their blog), so I'll just share a few shots from last night, maybe say a few words about them and then call it a day.
During the break between the first and second set, Tiff got to hear some of the funny music Crusher listens to. In this one photo of Tiff and my forehead (proof that I really was there), I got to listen to some Crusher's music too. 
I forget what the song was, but it was about worms and dirt, and it was delightfully ridiculous in a manner similar to one of my favorite bands, They Might Be Giants. Haha, a quick Google search for "worms make dirt" reveals that the band is The Aquabats!, and the name of the song is Worms Make Dirt. How wonderfully silly.
Moving right along - here are the Gorillas performing my favorite of their songs, One of These Days. I hesitate to add that link because it's one of those annoying links that forces your browser to resize itself... so I apologize if you already clicked it and were annoyed.
Note the pretty boat in the background. :)
Hiro rockin' the house!
During the third set, the Gorillas were joined by two local blues artists, Jen and Gary. I forget their last name, but Tiffany has their business card, so maybe if she reads this she can leave a comment saying who they are. They were great, and it was a real treat to watch them jam with the Gorillas.
And of course there is a little story that goes with this photo of Tiffany wearing "Handsome" Dan's hat. Following the jam session with Jen and Gary, Dan managed to knock his mic out of its stand with his saxophone (he was obviously rockin' the house). Not only did the mic fall out of its stand, but it also became disconnected, and when Dan reconnected it, it didn't seem to work quite right anymore. Or at least that's how it seemed to me. So he took off his hat and threw it on the floor in front of the band. Rick (the vocalist) then picked it up and handed it to Tiff. Then she put it on. Then I took a picture of her. The End.
Well, the show didn't actually end after that song, but after the show did end, Tiff and I stopped at the diner on the way home. I saw the word diner on the sign, but I say that was a misnomer. In my book, it's not a real diner unless it is open 24 hours, and this one was not - but we made it there just in time for milkshakes, bread pudding, and Tiffany's ambivalent bacon pancake:
Because the show was way down south on the Jersey Shore (well certainly not as far south on the Jersey Shore as it could have been), we knew this was going to be a late night. Before I left my house earlier in the evening, Tiffany suggested I stay over at her house afterwards so I wouldn't have to drive home by myself at 2-3:00 a.m. She sealed the deal when she said she had a bunk bed, and I could have the top bunk. Woo-hoo!
Every other Friday or so I go to the swing dance that happens in Whippany. It's a lot of fun because it attracts probably around 80 - 100 people each time, and the space is nice and large. Plus there are always goodies to munch on, like cheese and crackers, cookies, celery sticks, snap peas, carrots and little grape tomatoes. This time there was even a nice big pumpkin pie! The music is DJ'd and the dancers come in all varieties - all ages from teens to retired folks, and ability levels from beginners to advanced.
The dance lasts for about three and a half hours, ending at midnight. Afterwards, a bunch of us go to a nearby diner for more eats and just to hang out and get to know each other off the dance floor a little. Usually there are around ten or so of us, but this week we had an especially large group of nineteen. Our table nearly stretched from one side of the diner all the way to the other. :)
