Camp Hollywood 2013 is coming.....!

Thanks, Sean Bean's character from "Game of Thrones".  I'm so excited for it this year!  

So excited, I'm posting swing dance videos on youtube!  

What’s really important right now

So…..one of the more buzzworthy events that have been getting a lot of attention right now is Miley’s Cyrus’ latest performance at the Video Music Awards (“VMA’s”) last weekend. 

I didn’t see it myself – I hate award shows in general – but I’ve read a lot of interesting criticism about it - such as this article highlighting the racist (as well as sexist) implications that the performance had….which makes it sound like missing it was a good thing to do.  The essential argument is that the performance reinforces a lot of negative stereotypes that nobody at the VMA’s (or society at large) seemed have a problem with while they were coming up with it….which they really should have. 

But then I read the following Facebook post from a friend of mine who argued a different point of view: 

“Dear Everyone,
Please stop talking about Miley Cyrus. MTV has been getting attention (money) by doing outrageous, vulgar things for a couple decades now, and they're getting a lot of attention (money) from everyone telling everyone how bad it was. If you really want performances like that to stop, shut up about it. You are not perceptive or clever for pointing out how bad it is, and it says nothing about our society because it's been universally condemned. 

More than anything though, I'm sick of hearing about it. You want something to be upset about? Gay teens are being publicly urinated on, set fire to, having body parts cut off, and murdered (with full support of the public and government) all over Russia. Syria just used chemical weapons to kill civilians in its own population (including children), and there are discussions about it becoming the next Iraq if the US gets involved. And we're all scrambling to point out how sad this girl's performance was. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what THAT says about us.”

And that raises an interesting question: Should the issues addressed in the above article be dismissed in favor of other (arguably more horrific) issues going on in the world right now? 

Feminism seems to have a history of being ignored for this very reason (“yes, this is bad but there are other ‘more-bad’ things going on right now so shut up about this until later”) so ‘stop talking about it’ doesn’t seem like the appropriate reaction.  But I guess the reason behind my friend’s Facebook response is how an Awards Show performance seems to be more important than anything else going on – which definitely should not be the case, but is since more people watched the VMAs and have a connection to it than something horrible that’s happening that we have no real frame of reference for.

I guess I answered my own question here (I do that sometimes, writing these ‘train of thought’ posts down helps me organize my thoughts) about where I stand on this so maybe this was a waste of a blogpost, but AT THE TIME I was still forming my own opinions about all this.  

(Hot) Leading Asian Men.

I just....uh, came across this Buzzfeed article via Angry Asian Man (a great blog site in general about all things Asian-american related) & figured I would share it with ya'all......! 

Y'know, for.....reasons.  

Enjoy!  

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mattortile/asian-leading-men-who-deserve-more-airtime

http://blog.angryasianman.com/2013/08/14-more-asian-leading-men-who-deserve.html

The Russo Test

Look out film makers!  There's a new "film test" for critics to evaluate films with!  It's called "The Russo Test" and is based off of (almost identical to, in fact) "the Bechdel test" - named after cartoonist, Alison Bechdel.  

The Bechdel Test, for those you who aren't familiar with it, asks three simple questions as a kind of test to see how well female characters are portrayed in movies & literature these days:  

1.  Are there at least two women in this movie?  

2.  Do these two women ever talk to each other?  

3.  About anything other than a man? 

The Russo Test, similarly, asks if a movie meet the following criteria:  

1.  The film should have at least one LGBT character.  

2.  That character must not be defined as "the gay one."  (IE they are made up of the same sort of unique character traits commonly used to differentiate straight characters from each other).  

3.  He/she must be tied significantly into the plot.  (They're not there just to provide 'colorful commentary', or set-up a punchline; this character should matter).  

It was established by GLAAD earlier this year as part of a project to see how well-represented the LGBT community has been portrayed in the mainstream media (big blockbuster type movies, etc.) last year.  

Anyway, just thought I would post about it here since I happen to watch (& review) a lot of gay movies.  I found out about it through an article that was linked on IMDB (Here's the article).  

Of course, other than "God loves Uganda", I haven't really wanted to post any of the movies I've recently watched.  Some of them have been bad (see below), and the rest have just been "okay".  

(too lazy to link these; you can find them all on imdb or netflix instant) 

• The Men next door
• Morgan
• Bad Boy Street
• Ethan Mao (pretty bad)
• Clapham Junction
• Yossi & Jagger
• 29^th & Gay (pretty bad)
• Gayby 

None of these are 'big studio' movies, though.  

Think of a couple of big-studio movies you've seen in the last year that had a gay character.  Did they pass the Russo test?  

Best $5 I spent all week

If buying "The Brady Bunch Movie" on DVD is wrong, then I don't want to be right.  

Jan - you got *problems*

Date Night

Wonder if I really need to write a post about this, but I guess I should mention that all that "putting myself out there" is finally paying off - I finally got a date out of it this past weekend.  

Wasn't much of a 'love connection', though. Ended up not feeling 'the spark' or any kind of real connection with the guy.  

Shame, too - he's a country two-step dancer I met at Oil Can Harry's....and he's pretty good at it.      

But that's the way it goes, I guess.....right?  

My trip to Des Moines, IA

This post is being written a bit out of order since my trip to Des Moines happened about a month earlier than the Seattle Lindy Exchange, but I completely forgot to blog about it until now (sorry, Maren!) so here it is:  

Maren (a friend off mine from College) had been begging me to come visit her ever since she bought a house out in Des Moines & I finally said "yes" this year - mostly out of guilt because she's always making the trip out to Los Angeles.  This year, I figured I would pay her back.  

Plus - she's actually the first one of my college friends to own property, so I wanted to check it out.  

She & her boyfriend, Joe, showed me a lot of the great sights of Des Moines - particularly the 80/35 Music Festival; we save David Byrne & St. Vincent play!  

Here are some pics I took on my vacation.  

 David Byrne (of the Talking Heads) & St Vincent!  

I posted the rest of them here (and Facebook, of course).  

All in all, I had a pretty good time in Des Moines - mostly due to the heavy forethought & planning of Joe and Maren.  Thanks to the happy couple for putting me up on the 4th of July Weekend!  

Seattle Lindy Exchange 2013!

So I haven't posted in a while due to work (ugh, work), but I wanted to mention the trip I took to the Seattle Lindy Exchange last weekend.  

This one was a long time coming - a couple of months *before* I decided to take my trip to Des Moines, - I booked a flight and registered for the Exchange.  For those of you who don't know, an exchange is a kind of "meet-n-greet" of dancers visiting the local neighborhood: the local dance community hosts dancers from all over & shows them 'the scene' that the city has to offer.  I'd heard Seattle had a pretty nice scene (they do Camp Jitterbug every year) & I'd been there before several years ago to visit some friends who live in the area.  

And I have to say that the Lindy scene in Seattle is pretty great.  I managed to attend the Friday, Saturday, & Sunday Night dances as well as the Saturday afternoon dance by Capitol Hill.  Many thanks to my host (and ole' college friend), Amanda, who came out to dance with me all weekend.  I feel like I had a great experience with all that the Seattle Dance scene has to offer!  The community is a little smaller than the one in Los Angeles, but it felt to me like they were all closer to each other & more tightly-knit as a community.   

Unfortunately - I didn't take *any* pictures....and neither did Amanda - we were too busy dancing!  

I managed to take this one from the Exchange's Facebook page:  

You can even see Amanda in this picture!  (She's the one in the bottom center with the curly blonde hair)  

All in all, I had a great time & am looking forward to attending more Exchanges next year (in other cities).  I know San Luis Obispo, San Francisco, & Portland OR, still do exchanges and I'm looking into other cities on the East Coast I could travel to as well.  

**UPDATE**

Amanda reminded me that I *did* take a few pictures from my trip on my camera; just not of the exchange.  Here they are: