gastropodry

I’m really trying to think of the last thing I cooked…
oh yeah, right. Corned beef. I’d only had this a few times, in central Queensland, where a sandwhich with ‘corned beef’ in it at a country pub or cafe has nothing to do with cans, but more to do with hours in a pot of simmering water. It’s a country thing, I guess. Anyhoo, I came to corned beef as an adult, and decided I liked it. Not every week or even every month, but every now. And as Sylvie said, it’s a good way to feed hungry farm hands when you live in a beef-farming area.
I’ve made it a few times, because The Squeeze likes it, and I try to source one made by a local butcher (because they’re better, and our local butchers rock), and I use the Stephanie Alexander eggy saucey thing (look, I can’t remember what it’s called, ok? I just know it involves boiled egg yolks, capers, taragon, parsley, chives, virgin olive oil, is wonderful with cold meats and basically rocks). This time I used a supermarket one, neither The Squeeze or nor I was impressed (which is difficult to achieve, seeing as how I love to eat and The Squeeze loves corned beef more than anything) and we didn’t even bother with sandwiches the next day (which is, of course, the point of it all).
Other than that, I had dinner at Singapore Chom Chom last night with The Squeeze and Woobs, which was good (cheap, tasty ‘Sinagaporean’ food – which is like saying ‘Australian’ food – kind of general. In this case, it’s a combination of Indonesian, Singaporean, ‘Chinese’ and Indian dishes. About perfect for my tastes. And with many noodles). I had prawn noodle soup, Woobs had BBQ pork noodles, Squeeze had that silken tofu/pork mince dish with rice and beans and an extra fried egg. At $7 a dish you can’t really go wrong, can you? We try not to spend more than $10 each on dinner on these pre-dancing meals, so we seem to spend a lot of time in Asian greasy spoons (or should that be greasy chopsticks?). Which pleases me. Though I have to say I’ve had enough of dodgy Japanese. Woob’s obsession with Japanese food and The Squeeze’s endorsement of said obsession has left me in Minority Seat, but still…
We tend to compromise on Malaysian as The Squeeze loves laksa, I like Nasi Lemak (even if it is breakfast food) and Woobs eats whatever. Though eating Malaysian or Singaporean is like meat and three veg for a skip, as Woobs’ family is from Singapore.
We need a compromise cuisine. Or a sponsor, so we can go to decent Japanese.
Food this week, otherwise: take away Wednesday. Something stir-fried Tuesday. Beef Monday. A chicken salad at Nandos on Sunday, nothing, but a hamburger at 1am on Saturday for me, and …something on Friday that I’ve forgotten.
Oh, the shame. It’s been a bad week, really – business plus for us here in the ‘wick. I promise to do better next week.

bubs blues dj. down around the river

I’m doing my first ‘public’ blues set* at the blues pit this Sunday, and’ve been going through my music to sort out stuff I might play. I  got to thinking about how I may handle it, as a DJ. My feeling is that the deal will work much as with lindy hoppers – combine tempos, careful transitions, manipulate energy levels.
But I’ve noticed a few things that make it a bit different to DJing for lindy hoppers:
– the tempo range is far smaller. While I’ve been reading that varying tempos is actually more important in blues dancing in the States than one might expect, the range is actually fairly limited. With lindy, I tend to think that I’m working between 115 and 250bpm (pretty much – give or take). With blues, I’m looking at a range between about 45 and 115bpm.
I know that there are other DJs who may vary the tempo range a little more for blues (but I can’t really talk more about that), but from my experiences at the Blues Pit, I reckon this is the safe range.
SO
– the energy levels are more important as a result. Working with such a small tempo range, I think you have to be a bit more aware of how the music makes you feel.
I’ve seen blues DJs get up and play a series of songs seemingly at random – it feels like they’re just playing ‘their favourite songs’, one after another. Just being ‘slow’ isn’t really enough to make songs work together. The problem with blues is that the tempos are so low, the vibe in the room can be so mellow, that it’s all too easy for the crowd to sit down, start chatting, and not get up again. So I really do think you need to work the energy levels and mood of the room. Just as with lindy, I guess.
– there’s a greater tolerance for a wider range of musical styles in blues dancers than lindy hoppers (in Melbourne atm, anyway). I know there are purists who won’t tolerate ‘non-swing’ or ‘non-jazz’ or even ‘non-blues’ in blues dancing, but I’m tending to lean towards the camp who feel that ‘blues dancing’ is such a wide and flexible notion, that we can really borrow ‘blues music’ from a wide range of blues styles: 20s blues, slow drags, 12bar blues structures and the ‘blues key’, rhythm n blues from the 50s (60s, 70s, etc), etc, but even move into stuff like funk and soul. Not to mention the more ‘arty’ piano- and small combo- driven instrumental stuff (like Junior Mance, Oscar Peterson, Jay McShann, etc).
My personal feeling as a dancer is that ‘music for blues dancing’ feels best if it has a solid beat. By solid beat I don’t mean insistent beat, but that kind of deep, solid and low-down bass that makes you move your hips. So I’m happy with a kind of hip hop beat as well.
Having said that, it makes complete sense to me to play mostly from the jazz and blues genres, not just because it suits blues’ positioning within a swing dance community which favours lindy and other jazz dances, but because that stuff is simply often so much more musically interesting and challenging than some of the newer or non-jazz stuff.
I also feel that you can’t really do, say 20s charleston without doing slow blues or drags – it just feels like you’re leaving out half of the musical and emotional story.
– the lyrics seem more important with 12 bar blues (in that traditional form) than they do to lindy. So I think that playing more songs with vocals is perhaps more workable than lindy. I really like this style of blues music, mostly because I like the combination of humour, sadness, longing, desire and irony. In his book ‘stomping the blues’, Arthur Murray talks about how ‘singing the blues’ isn’t just about singing sad songs. it’s also about singing (and dancing) to drive out the blues. So you get these interesting contrasts between sad, sad lyrics and upbeat, energetic melodies and rhythms. Or you get seriously slow, saucy rhythms and melodies with funny, sarcastic or ironic or just plain funny lyrics. All this hung on a relatively simple musical structure (A, A, B or whatever it is).
So it feels like the lyrics are especially important, and encourage us as dancers to move in these layers of meanings – not just sexy all the time. Not just super-slow.
Having said that, I think it’d be a bit dull if we left out other musical styles, such as slow drags, which have all those other wonderful musical and social meanings.
-> I think that all of these points are a result of the fact that (or contribute to) blues dancing is less ‘structured’ than lindy (well, not when you do lindy the way I do: “structure? What, you can do lessons in this shit?”), so people feel free to experiment and innovate.
In addition, blues is so slow, you really have time to work on expressing all these feelings and contrasting emotions. So you can do technically difficult steps which aren’t possible at higher tempos, and you can really milk every musical iota out of the songs. Because you’ve got the time. So it really helps if the music is more interesting.
Other things I’m thinking about as a DJ:
– the set is an after-class set, and most of the dancers will be new to blues dancing (as regular blues dancing nights are relatively new to melbourne), but most of them will be familiar with swinging jazz or blues music (from their lindy).
– I’ve only got 45 minutes, which is tricky, as blues dancing takes a while to warm up to, good blues nights last late into the night, it feels right to take longer with each partner (more than the 2 song rule for lindy, definitely right for loooong songs), and it takes longer to work through moods – the curve or wave is kind of longer.
– the room is seriously crowded – it’s small, there’s far, far, FAR less room for each couple than in lindy rooms. And I’m standing at floor level to DJ, so my view of the dance floor will be limited.
As per usual, I’m set on avoiding the ‘teach dancers about music’ thing or ‘expand their minds’ thing, or ‘be historically accurate’ thing, even though it’d be nice to really get into some old scratchy blues, eg. As with lindy, if I go in there with a mission, I will almost certainly stuff up. It’s always best to work with the vibe the room is giving off.
It’s going to be really interesting: I’m wondering if these ideas I have about the similarities between DJing for lindy hoppers and blues dancers will hold up in practice.
I’d be interested in any feedback from people who’ve DJed for bot …
*ie not a private party
…yes, you have read this post before. but not here. here

enough

look at this:

pretty, huh?
and i lifted this: . god i suck. it’s not like i think angel’s hot or anything – in fact, he infuriates me. i find buffy herself utterly irritating – all that ‘meee, i hate being the slayer. it’s so haaard being a slayer. meeee’ whinging. but i’m obsessed by angel’s terrible, terrible posture. so when i see him with his shirt off (flaunting this tat), i can’t help but be fascinated. how could his trainer possibly let him get so hunched? didn’t anyone ever say “dood – you need yoga”?
look:


it’s even messing with the line of his jacket in that last one.
dang.
you know why he looks out from under those low brows? because he’s so hunched, his face looks doooown, naturally, so he has to look up from under those brows.
there’s no way he’d be able to kick arse in fights with that sort of terrible posture.
that’s some serious upper body tension.
hah
looks like half the leads in melbourne.
look, i have to stop. i don’t want this to end up being one of those weirdo-fan unicorn sites.

simple pleasures

The best part of looking at site stats today was finding my site was a hit for a search for “how nanna would make pumpkin soup”.
That pleases me.
I wish I had more to offer in the gastropod way of things. But I don’t. Buggered if I can remember what I’ve eaten this week. I’ve been so busy with the thesis, and I DJed three nights straight over the weekend (Thu, Fri, Sat), including my first after party. Which I was happy with, though I guess it’s hard to stuff up a 45 minute set, isn’t it?
My DJing issues are continuing with a search for a media player to which I can drag songs from itunes (using itunes as my library), but which also produces useful play lists. I mostly want to be able to preview songs on headphones before I play them, and for this you need two media players as macs can’t understand why you’d want to have two versions of one application open at any one time. Sometimes this rocks, but sometimes it sucks. This is one of those times. I think I’ll settle for a combination of DJ1800 (about $AU70) for previewing (no sensible playlist option), the usb headphones (plugged into the imic I need to buy from Brian, or into the usb directly) for listening to the DJ1800 songs, and itunes for actually playing to the sound system, searching, creating playlists, etc.
But if you’re looking for gastropod action, I have a little tub of nice bocconcini in our fridge atm, and some nice hydro tomatos on the window sill (I was in bed when the potato man came this week – 8am is TOO early!) and some sweet rocket in the garden. Make of that what you will. I choose to make nice salad.
I am also going nuts with mandarins and apples at the moment. It’s that time of year. We have a bowl full on the coffee table, and I push segments down The Squeeze’s neck every evening while we watch Buffy and Angel. Soon he will have strange Buffy-citrus dreams.
Meanwhile, I had a dream where I was stabbed by a platypus with its poison spur. It was also a dream about the house I lived in in Brisbane, and also about houses generally. I know that if I’m having house dreams, it’s anxiety season. And of course, the source of this anxiety would be the thesis. And the fact that my supervisor goes away 2 weeks from now, for 3 weeks. Arriving back one week before I’d planned to submit. Yes. Isn’t that nice?

what a tool

I should open my eyes and understand that the iPod is a chain-smoking long-hair that craves exactly three (3) things: chicks, cigarettes and METAL, in reverse order. The iPod hangs out in the smoking section and takes your girlfriend to the Maiden concert. You big fucking pussy.

(the patriarch)