My birdie can talk, and flap his wings, and shake his butt

I'm back! I think we should all get used to the fact that blogging every day is just not going to happen for me. This time, I actually have a good reason besides just being lazy. I was out of town, attending a wedding (the first of three this summer, so if you notice a couple more weekends with a conspicuous lack of posting...don't be alarmed).

It was a very enjoyable wedding, filled with love and laughter and plenty of feel-good wedding traditions like the throwing of the bouquet, the bride and groom shoving cake in each others' faces, the adorable flower girl dancing on big people's shoes, and of course, the Hokey Pokey and the Chicken Dance.

Except...did you ever wonder where those two dances came from and why they are an intregal component of a wedding reception? I'm not as worried about the Hokey Pokey's origins; it seems to fall into the "learn the parts of the body" genre of songs for preschoolers, much like Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. (Which I might request at Wedding #2 next month - why does the Hokey Pokey get all the wedding love?)

But the Chicken Dance is just plain weird, so I decided to perform some of my famous internet sleuthing to see what I could discover. I first turned to Wikipedia (because duh, where else can you find such a vast resource of reliable information?) So here we go:

The Chicken Dance song was composed in the 1950s by a Swiss accordian player named Werner Thomas. The original song title was actually Der Voglertanz, which means "The Bird Dance." Thomas played it at hotels and restaurants starting in 1963, but the song didn't find international success until a local Dutch band "De Electronica" released it in 1977. Since then, over 140 different versions have been recorded worldwide, for a total of 40 million records. The most popular version, the one we usually hear at weddings, was recorded by the Emeralds and released in 1981.

This is all well and good, but I'm more interested in the dance rather than the song behind it - HOW did this dance get created, and WHY is it so popular at weddings? Wikipedia offers no information about the dance other than a description of the steps. (Side note: I've been doing the third step wrong for 25 years. I always hold my arms bent next to me when I wiggle down to the ground, a la The Twist, but evidently you're supposed to "make a chicken's tail feathers with your arms and hands" instead.)

So I consulted some other website that does not look entirely credible, but at least it features a dancing chicken and some audio of Der Voglertanz for your enjoyment. (Except they claim that Thomas actually called it The Duck Dance, or Der Ententanz. This is turning into a bigger mystery than I anticipated*.) This site offers the vaguest of explanations for the dance's origins: "People spontaneously 'began to move with the melody.' A leg here, an arm up there and suddenly Thomas thought of his animals. The dance evolved to include a beak, wing and tail motions."

This reeks of conspiracy. As Paris Hilton and Vanessa Hudgens will attest to, you can't hide anything - the Internet will find you. But all I get is, the dance just "evolved"?? I want names! Dates! Marketing plans that describe how some sinister individual has not only convinced millions to flap their arms like a chicken at large social gatherings worldwide, but also that doing so is not idiotic/ugly/asylum-worthy. Seriously, how did he/she accomplish this?

Sometimes I think I'm too curious for my own good. This started out as a harmless research project, but now I'm seriously bitter towards this dance and I may never be able to perform it again. So if we're friends in real life, and if we find ourselves attending a wedding together sometime, please just quietly tell the other guests to ignore that buttmuch in the corner who is fuming to herself rather than doing the Chicken Dance. I'll join you for the Electric Slide.



*After additional research (here and here), the general consensus is that Thomas did name his original song The Duck Dance. Remind me to get on Wikipedia and correct that. But there's still no information about who actually invented the dance steps.

Triumph of the Word Nerd

So, I heard that some show called American Idol crowned its seventh winner last night, a 25-year-old former bartender from Blue Springs, Missouri. Everyone in this picture looks pretty happy about it, but I am MAD.

Why does David Cook winning it all affect me in such a negative way? Am I desperately (and illegally) in love with runner-up David Archuleta? No, although I do think he is extremely talented, and I'm sure Idol execs are gleefully rubbing their hands together as cartoon cash registers wildly go off in their heads at the prospect of finally finding two finalists whose careers will bring in the big bucks.

Did I want one of the other ousted contestants to take the title instead? No, actually, David Cook has been my pick to win for quite some time now. How long, you ask? I called it after his very first audition. Normally I love saying "I told you so," so why doesn't this victory bring me any joy?

I DIDN'T BET ON IT!

Can you imagine the odds I would have gotten to correctly pick the winner after only one round of auditions? The most memorable contestants at this stage are usually just the awful/funny ones, and even of the good ones, it's impossible to tell who is truly talented and who is just a one-trick-pony auditioning with the one and only song that he or she can sing well. I mean, hell, even Randy and Simon weren't that wild about David's first performance.

I should be a millionaire right now.

David Cook, since I'm sure you're reading this...I think you should reward me for believing in you from the very beginning. I take cash or checks. Or, you know, marry me. I'm cool either way.

Let me see that Chong...that Chong, Chong Chong Chong Chong

Wow, less than a week into the blogging world and I'm already slacking - what a shock! I'm going to blame it on nothing interesting happening in my life over the past week. (That's not true. Friday afternoon I came home to a flooded laundry room because the water heater in the apartment above ours busted and leaked its contents through our ceiling. Somewhat ironically, on Saturday we found our new apartment. We'd decided to move long before Friday's flood, so that was really just the icing on the cake of all the things that are wrong with our current crappy apartment.) But without visual aids, that flooding story wouldn't have been super interesting, so I was too lazy elected not to blog about it.

Since it looks like I'm striving for interesting, I am instead going to post a short tribute to...my hairdresser. Hold on to your hats!

Moving to a new city is hard. You have to find all new people to perform your personal services, after using the same ones for 22 years, based on the stellar recommendation that they're who your parents use so you don't question their judgment because it's too much work to find someone else anyway. I actually had really good luck on the first try finding a doctor, a dentist, and an optometrist who I love, and they all are less than 10 minutes away.

But as for the most important job - who will handle my hair? That question took longer to answer. I tried a few different locations, and although no one did a bad job, something always felt "off" (yes, even taking irrational pet peeves into account).

Then I met Chong. I love everything about her, from the 17 one-armed half-hugs she gives me every time I see her to her standard "How you been?" greeting. Even though I've been getting the same exact haircut for about 5 years, that doesn't stop her from always trying to convince me to get highlights. Once she told me that if I decided to go for it, I should let the receptionist know that I wanted "a haircut and a pasha." I spent about a week wondering what color "pasha" was until I finally realized she had said "partial." Accents are funny.

Most importantly, Chong can wash, cut, blow dry, and style my hair in 20 minutes flat. One of these days I'm going to ask her to come live with me since it takes me an hour and a half to get ready for work, and most days I'm still late. I bet she even knows how to repair leaky ceilings.

Seriously...how many internets are there?

I read a lot of blogs in my limited spare time. Mostly because I don't currently have any new books at home, and I'm too lazy to drive to the library. But also because I like learning new information and discovering new writers, and there are a lot of talented writers out there, blogging about all sorts of topics.

The only thing they all seem to have in common is continually referring to the Internet in the plural sense. This really irritated me at first. I'm talking fingernails down a chalkboard. Then I started wondering if maybe blogging gave one access to an online community spanning multiple galaxies, each with their own version of the Internet.

Well. I've been blogging for four days and I have not been contacted by any alien species. So I turned to the trusty Internet (just the one, thanks) to see what this plurality business is all about.

Wikipedia says that "internets," thanks to G-Dub's superior debating talents, is a term "used humorously to portray the speaker as ignorant about the Internet or about technology in general."

So what's the deal here, Internet community? Are you making subtle political commentary with each of your blog posts? Belittling your knowledge of the Internet or technology in general? Or does this serve some greater purpose that has not yet been revealed to the likes of Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia?

Seriously, help a sister out. I'm new here and I want to fit in.

Here's the last box of your clothes. I'm just going to label it "What were you thinking?!"

Last weekend, Houston teenager Marche Taylor was denied entrance to her prom after a chaperone determined that her dress was inappropriate.

You decide:











There's now an intense debate about whether the school made the right decision. The sides? Marche Taylor vs. ....um, everyone else who hears about this story.

Marche's got plenty of reasons she should have been allowed into the prom:

1. It's her prom.
2. She spent money and went to all the trouble of getting a custom-designed dress for the occasion.
3. She "actually likes" the dress, and "everybody else actually likes [the] dress" too.
4. Despite the chaperone's protests, she was, in fact, wearing "underwears" underneath.
5. I mean, come on. It's her prom, so someone better give her a damn good reason she shouldn't be allowed in.
6. Her friends can wrap the gold train around her stomach and pin it so her belly button isn't showing, but that's still not "appropriate." What do these people want?
7. It's her prom. She wants to be there so bad, that given the choice between going home and changing, or going to jail for (somewhat violently) defending her basic right to hootchiness, she'll choose...jail.

The school maintains that she was in violation of pretty much every rule in their detailed prom dress code, which all prom-goers were required to sign. The general public seems to be leaning heavily towards the viewpoint, "Where the f*** were her parents when she bought that thing??"

Me? I think everyone is focusing on the wrong questions. I really, really want to ask Ms. Marche Taylor why on earth she wanted to spend money to attend the prom when she could have been out earning money as a lady of the night. That dress ain't gonna pay for itself.

Just call me the dead skin lady

What's worse than sunburn? Peeling! My nice farmer's sunburn is starting to peel everywhere, most especially the back of my neck, my earlobes (why?) and my forehead, leaving really sexy flakes of skin in my hair. Black is currently off-limits for my wardrobe, and I'm considering asking Head & Shoulders if they need a new spokeswoman during the next few days.

Plus, I am ITCHY!

I suppose God is punishing me for spending all day Friday building a playground for underprivileged elementary school children.

Or, you know, for not being smart enough to put on sunblock while participating in said charity event. Whatever.

If I had a blog yesterday...

This blog was born five minutes ago. But if I'd had a blog yesterday, this cake is what yesterday's entry would have been about.

How good was this red velvet layer cake with cream cheese frosting? Not creative answer: good enough that I'm still thinking about it more than 24 hours later.

Slightly creative answer: I didn't even berate myself after scraping the plate clean, as I usually do after eating something unhealthy. This cake was worth EVERY FREAKIN CALORIE.

Most creative answer: I could eat a piece of this cake as every meal for the next 10 years. Boyfriend would leave me because I'd get super fat, but I honestly don't think I'd care because I could have a long and happy relationship with this cake.

So, thank you for the Piece of Cake, coworker-with-a-birthday! It's OK that we're not close enough friends for you to invite me to your actual birthday celebration, as long as you leave leftovers in the kitchen for me to enjoy.