The great American minstrel

The last few days AMC has been running the old movie White Christmas back to back to back.  I hadn't watched the entire thing before, but I was lying in bed with a case of too much time difference between East and West coasts, so I thought, why not?  It stars Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye.  On Danny Kaye alone I was sold.

Well, despite the fact that most of the second half of the movie hinges on the passive aggressive nature of Rosemary Clooney's character, it's not bad.  The songs are so catchy, they've been in my head for days.  Irving Berlin composed all the tunes.  I was once in a play in high school and this girl acting opposite me had the line, "Could Irving Berlin have done better?"  She was a bit over-the-top, so now whenever I hear his name I think of her saying "Irrrrrrving Berrrrrlin."  Anyway, Berlin was amazing.  I never realized how many hits he really wrote: "White Christmas," "Happy Holiday," "God Bless America," and you know how I feel about "There's No Business Like Show Business."  Come on.

According to Wikipedia, he wrote over 1,500 songs in his entire career. The man was such a genius of a songwriter, he's been compared more to the likes of poets Walt Whitman and Carl Sandburg.  I thought I would go ahead and post some of his lyrics from White Christmas here as poems.  They really just seem effortless.  Enjoy.

When I was mustered out
I thought without a doubt
That I was through with all my care and strife
I thought that I was then
The happiest of men
But after months of tough civilian life

Gee, I wish I was back in the Army
The Army wasn't really bad at all

Three meals a day
For which you didn't pay
Uniforms for winter, spring, and fall

There's a lot to be said for the Army
The life without responsibility

A soldier out of luck
Was really never stuck
There's always someone higher up where you can pass the buck
Oh, gee, I wish I was back in the Army

[2nd chorus for female:]
Gee, I wish I was back in the Army
The Army was the place to find romance

Soldiers and WACS
The WACS who dressed in slacks
Dancing cheek to cheek and pants to pants

There's a lot to be said for the Army
A gal was never lost for company

A million handsome guys
With longing in their eyes
And all you had to do was pick the age, the weight, the size
Oh, gee, I wish I was back in the Army

Gee, I wish I was back in the Army
The shows we got civilians couldn't see

How we would yell for Dietrich and Cornell
Jolson, Hope and Benny all for free

There's a lot to be said for the Army
The best of doctors watched you carefully

A dentist and a clerk
For weeks and weeks they'd work
They'd make a thousand dollar job and give it to a jerk
Oh, gee, I wish I was back in the Army

Three meals a day
For which you didn't pay
A million handsome guys
With longing in their eyes
I thought that I was through with all my care and strife
But after months and months of tough civilian life
Oh, gee
I wish I was back in the Army now



Sisters, sisters
There were never such devoted sisters,
Never had to have a chaperone, No sir.
I'm there to keep my eye on her
Caring, sharing
Every little thing that we are wearing
When a certain gentleman arrived from Rome
She wore the dress, and I stayed home
All kinds of weather, we stick together
The same in the rain and sun
Two different faces, but in tight places
We think and we act as one
Those who've seen us
Know that not a thing could come between us
Many men have tried to split us up, but no one can
Lord help the mister who comes between me and my sister
And Lord help the sister, who comes between me and my man



Funny side note: Can you totally tell how Danny Kaye and Vera-Ellen are the real dancers?  Look how angry Rosemary Clooney looks when she first comes out on stage in the Army song.  She seems to be concentrating on getting the dance moves down and forgetting to smile!  And poor Bing sure is trying, but he's got nothing on Danny's energy.

Beware: Miley Cyrus and Celine Dion all in one post

I have had a fascination with sign language for a long time- I think since I went to summer camp at age 9 and took a workshop to learn some of the basics.  Basically the only thing that stayed with me was the alphabet and the sign for snake, and now I regret not learning more.  In the same way that an unknown foreign language like Italian sounds like music to my ears, uninterpreted sign language seems like a dance.  It's beautiful.  Now I didn't realize until today that there is American Sign Language (ASL) and Pidgin Signed English (PSE).  PSE is not a true language like ASL and lacks the rules of grammar and structure, but it is fairly commonly used.  I learned all of this because of a video on Gawker.TV:



This woman is using PSE and apparently includes some outdated signs.  For some reason I was surprised to learn that signs could be deemed "old-fashioned" as one person in the comments pointed out.  Then someone else posted this video as a response to the one above.  This is modern sign language and it is a.ma.zing.  Seriously, this made my day:



This guy started signing to music as part of an assignment for a sign language class in college.  He posted the assignment on youtube and it went viral because, well, clearly.  I love this!  It makes me so happy.  Maybe I should send the video to my grumpy neighbor. 

The Language

-Robert Creeley

Locate I

love you some-

where in

teeth and   

eyes, bite   

it but

take care not   

to hurt, you   

want so

much so   

little. Words   

say everything.

I

love you

again,

then what   

is emptiness   

for. To

fill, fill.

I heard words   

and words full

of holes   

aching. Speech   

is a mouth.

Take two and call me in the morning.

Last night I tried something new.  I went to a dance class that was more than a dance class.  This one had a live DJ, the steps were really easy to follow, and you do not stop moving for an hour and a half.  For all you LA people, it's called Groov3.  Check it out.  The instructor, Benjamin Allen has a really great philosophy about dance improving your life, I have to say that I agree.  When you're stressed and overwhelmed with life, spending a chunk of time learning dance moves and trying to look cool busting them out in front of a large group of people can really take your mind off things.  Plus, I think by now we can all agree that music soothes the soul (and uplifts it).

When I was in college, a couple friends and I would meet in our dorm common room to take a dance break from studying.  For some reason I can only recall us dancing to Weird Al and Space Jams.  Surely there was more to the playlist?  Napster had just come on the scene and I think we were all learning to harness it.  Anyway, try it sometime.  Instead of a smoke break, take a dance break.  Do it in traffic.  It will probably bring joy to the people around you, as they will count themselves lucky to have witnessed such an exuberant display.

The Dance

In Breughel's great picture, The Kermess,
the dancers go round, they go round and
around, the squeal and the blare and the
tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles
tipping their bellies, (round as the thick-
sided glasses whose wash they impound)
their hips and their bellies off balance
to turn them. Kicking and rolling about
the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, those
shanks must be sound to bear up under such
rollicking measures, prance as they dance
in Breughel's great picture, The Kermess

This poem was written by William Carlos Williams about a scene in a painting called The Kermesse: