Gross

So I haven’t been to class on a regular basis in the last several months, thanks to holidays and injuries, yadda yadda yadda. I always have a water bottle in my dance bag, ya gotta stay hydrated. I pulled it out before class began and felt it still had some water in it and it was cold too, thanks winter. I took a couple of swigs and noticed it wasn’t fresh tasting, but not horrible.

Then the third drink was worse than before luckily we reached the point where we get set free right after barre and I thought I’d go dump it out and fill it with fresh suburban strip mall water fountain water, mmm delicious. I dump out the old and I notice even in the dimly lit hallway behind the studio that the inside of my water bottle is yellowish orange, almost like the color of orange juice pulp coating the entire inside of said bottle.

This got me thinking of two things, one how long has this bottle been in my bag and two, how sick am I going to get from drinking from this third-grade science experience? Well I’m sure it’s been in there since mid-December, I forgot to get it out of my bag last week. I’m not good at math but that’s well over a month, plenty of time to grow god knows what that shit is. And for number two, it’s a waiting game. I feel good right now…

Oops I Did It Again

As one of Americas most wisest and profound artists once said, “Oops, I did it again.”
I truly did it again, I crashed in another cyclocross race, just like I did the first race of the season, except I landed on my left knee, not the right like I did in September.

The original crash sidelined me from both ‘cross and ballet. I was about over the ankle issue I suffered in Cali and was chomping at the bit to get back into the studio. Then blammy, not so fast there bike boy, doctors orders.

Flash forward, I was feeling good, and had classes circled on the calendar once again, counting the days until my grand return. Then, like I said above I went and did it again, same type of crash with nearly the same results.

So, I thought about going to class a few days ago. I was feeling good and getting little signs all day long that ballet was in my future. Ran across the schools dance team doing pirouettes to warm out before their practice. So I did one of my own to try to show them I wasn’t just some stranger oggling them. It was pretty good actually. There was a link to some great video on YouTube and then a clip from The Nutcracker on the ARTS network when I flipped on the tv when I got home.

Dear readers, I was feeling good, finally, I got my shit together, and thought hey let’s warm up here before I head out. It was at that point when I discovered that things were not as ready as I had earlier thought. The knee wasn’t having any of it, even the simple stuff, a simple plié for one. It felt good walking, running and even cycling, but not this, no sir.

Ggggrrrrreeeeaaatt (complete with eye-roll), now how long will it be? Well, I have four or so more local races, then nationals in Madison, WI and then UCI world championships in Louisville, KY of all places in February. Hopefully I’ll survive until then. I’ve already promised several that I’ll stop crashing, I guess it’s as ugly to witness as it is to be in them (I actually have little to no memory of either of them, which I almost prefer). Can’t wait to get back, hopefully soon, see you then.

Turnout

You never know what you find when you get lost. Well, we weren’t really lost, we were just really late, which almost feels worse than being lost. Frantically wanting to get to the beach before the fog comes in or gets dark, or both. A quick stop to pick out some finishes for my friends new house turned into a multi-hour suck fest. Every loose end raised its ugly head all wanting to be taken care of right then and there.

Finally finished with that were hurriedly headed to the beach through some heavy ass traffic in some mountainish roads in the hybrid Wagon Queen Family Truckster, all twisty and turny as roads sometimes are, I begin to notice signs reading, turnout.

I’m like, whoa what, stop the bus?! Is this some kind of not-so-subliminal message to remind me to work on my turnout? I know it sucks, but OK, I’ll pay more attention to it, I promise! So, am I the only one who sees these signs, are they there just as a reminder for me? Or, are they there for public safety, letting drivers know that there is space to pull your slow ass over and let those who are late and want to get on their soon-to-be sunburned way (I had to actually google that, I wasn’t 100% just what was getting turned out and why. Then again some questions are better left unanswered. Thanks CalTrans.) It’s most likely the later, but dear readers, I’d like to believe it’s the first two.

BTW, we did make it to the beach but the fog decided to roll in early making things a bit brisk. Not much beach time but we stayed and played on the boardwalk, riding the roller coaster that was in Sudden Impact and The Lost Boys, probably one of the better Cory Feldman/ Haim movies.

Ballerina Swan Lake

Looking for a place to stay? I think I have the perfect place for you, they have it all!

What more could you want?

 

You never know what you find along the interstate once you get out of the cities. This was a total WTF, I have to get a shot of that, but damn it I can’t afford to stop right now, but I’ll be passing it going back the same way later on. Got the exit number and hit it up later. Bam, Ballerina Swan Lake Mobile Home Country Club.

Can you imagine if it was full of tutu’ed pointe shoed dancers hanging out by their double wide chatting about how much better it was back when they were still dancing.  These kids today with there internets and high tech pointe shoes.

Seven Years Bad Luck?

Question, when is Big City Fancy Pants Company School not such a fancy pants school? Answer, when they spend millions of dollars rehabilitating a former power plant into the most amazing studio space that you will ever seen but are soon forced to close for three weeks so they can replace each and every mirror in each and every studio because they are all warped, fun house warped.

It was like a carnival fun house at times, you would be gracefully dancing across the floor (I know that ain’t happening, but if I tell myself that enough I might begin to believe it) you glance into the mirror and you’re three feet tall and your feet are five feet wide, or you’re eight feet tall and your arms stretch half way across the studio.

Sorry my dear non-American readers, I don’t normally use the the far superior metric system, I forget just what that would work out to be in meters. The half-assed American public school system gave us a sometimes half-hearted attempt to teach us the metric system, but the teachers (in my school anyway) thought it was pointless/stupid and they went right along using the English system even though the books were designed for metric. It became incredibly hard to figure because the ciriculum was in metric and you would get a mega-crazy answers if you used the English system.

I was like, “You know Mr Six,” yes my math teacher in 7th grade was named Six. “If you flip your ruler over it comes out to something sensible like 12 centimeters, they all come out to reasonable numbers, non of this crazy ass 1 55/230th of an inch or something ridiculous like that.”

“Naww, we’ll stick with inches and pounds here.”

“But the book is all metric, why are you messing with our heads?” I got no answer and was rarely ever called on again. I’ll pause here my dear readers as you wrap your mind around that one. To be the defiant one that I can often be I went ahead and did everything the easy way, metric, and got them counted wrong, not because my answers were wrong, but “I didn’t follow the instructions.”

Ok, got it all figured out? Good, now I’ll continue, I’ve gotten way off topic. So yeah, out they go, a shit ton of mirrors (I’m guessing the metric equivalent would be a metric shit ton?) Now, I know it’s, break a mirror and get what seven years bad luck? What if you are a professional mirror replacer where I’m sure you breaking mirrors all the time. Is there some special clause for them, or are they just totally hosed, and soon will fall victim to all of those years of bad luck they are accumulating?

Anyway, hopefully everything will be up to speed at Big City Fancy Pants Ballet Company School some time next week, and not too many years of bad luck will befall everyone (fingers crossed). ‘Cuz I’ve had my fair share of bad luck of late and I don’t need to add on any more.

FYI, According to the CIA Factbook there are only three, count them three holdouts sticking with the English system; Burma, Liberia and the United States. That’s some pretty impressive company!!

Kneel Before Zod

Zod at Prix du Lausanne (photo from Prix du Lausanne)

Kneel before Zod!

Stolen: The Conclusion

Well the saga of All Around Dance, online purveyor of all things tight and stretchy and user of unlicensed photography, who was discovered red-handed using a photograph of mine taken from this very blog has come to a peaceful end.

A quick recap for those not keeping track of this saga.

Gaynor Miden pointe shoes purchased, navy blue ribbons were soon there after sewn upon them, looking pretty boss BTW. Photographs were soon taken of such super boss looking pointe shoes, and posted to this very blog six months previous. Time passes, and then someone associated with All Around Dance snags the photo and uses it unbeknownst to me. A keen eyed Nerea (@EowinKenobi), a fellow ballet dancer, blogger and Tweep spots the offending photograph and informs me of the infringement of my intellectual property. A strongly worded e-mail is sent to whom it may concern at All About Dance (Stop what you are doing or I’ll tell your mom!). A reply is then received a few days later. And before you can say All About Dance wears poopy pants, said image is gone. And I didn’t have to call their mom.

Their reply, “I am sorry about that. I will forward this information on to the website manager.”

From this:

Nice photograph, too bad it's not theirs to use.

To this:

This page would look so much better if they used a photo of some pointe shoes.

I was hoping to score some free stuff to ease my pain and suffering from this traumatic situation, but I didn’t, oh well.

Stolen: The Story Continues

Dear readers, as you may have read the online dancewar store/ photography hi-jackers All Around Dance is using a photograph of mine on their web site without my permission. Basically they snatched the photo of my then brand new Gaynor Minden’s with the navy blue ribbons it right off my blog.

I’ve since sent them a strongly worded e-mail bringing this to their attention. It’s flattering yet way wrong and completely unprofessional. Duhh!

We will see what happens.

In the mean time, you can watch this. And yes I know, the irony that neither I nor YouTube have the rights to this clip is not lost on me, seeing how this post is all about intellectual property rights.

Enjoy!

And here it is in Spanish.

Stolen

Thanks to Nerea (@EowinKenobi), who excels at translation, ballet and now detective work. She discovered that the dancewear site All Around Dance has been using my photo of my Gaynor Mindens with the blue ribbons off my award winning blog on their web site.

Look familiar? Well it should.

I dabbled in the internet publishing business while I was in graduate school. I designing bull shit e-commerce sites and e-mail news letters, you know the ones, sites you’ll never look at and e-mails that clog your spam folder. Hey, a job is a job, and I got to photograph models occasionally. You learn a few things off the bat on day one, you don’t use work that you didn’t either create yourself or have paid for. Basically you don’t troll Google Image search to find illustrations for your site, not a hard concept to grasp, or so I thought.

I know they look nice, but don

So dear reader, it looks like I’ll be contacting the good people at All Around Dance, to let them know while I find it flattering that they enjoy my photography skillz, I don’t appreciate them lifting the photo off of my blog and using it on their site.

I guess the other photo with the PBR can just didn’t fit their design esthetic.

Hey All Around Dance, they are not saying Boo-urns, they are saying boo!

Word.

19

Check out that bling at the top of the right column, pretty boss, eh?

Nothing like finishing dead last in the annual Dance Advantage 2011 Dance Blog competition. There was a tie for eighteenth, bumping me up from 20th to 19th. Anyway, I skated by with a whooping .6% percent of the total vote, six votes, two of those were mine, oops (shhh, don’t tell anyone, wink).
It’s not the first time I’ve finished last, you should see my racing results. Anyway, it’s better to finish last than not to finish at all (stepping off my soap box).

Anyway, I’d like to thank you my dear readers for the additional votes and support to make it to the second round. I’m constantly thrilled to find that people actually read this blog.

Thank you all, you rock!

Other 19′s

• Wore #19: Joe Montana (KC Chiefs), Johnny Unitas, Tony Gwynn, Willis Reed, Lenny Wilkens, Robin Yount, Bob Feller, and Steve Yzerman.
• 19 is the 8th smallest prime number.
• When a 3x3x3 cube is made of twenty-seven unit cubes, maximum 19 of them are visible.
• 19 is the atomic number of potassium.
• 19 is the number of angels guarding hell according to the Qur’an.
• In the Bábí and Bahá’í faiths, a group of 19 is called a Váhid.
• 19 song by Paul Hardcastle in 1985.
• 19 has been used as an alternative to twelve for a division of the octave into equal parts.
• This is the minimum age that is legal to buy tobacco products in Alabama, Alaska, New Jersey, and Utah.
• 19 is the minimum age at which one can drink and buy alcohol in Canada except for the provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, and Quebec where the drinking and purchase age of alcohol is 18. Go Canada!!
• 19 is the minimum age to marry in the state of Nebraska.
• The 19th President of the United States was Rutherford B. Hayes.
• The 19th state to enter the Union of the United States was Indiana.
• 19 a.d. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Saturninus and Vespillo.
• The Babylonians considered the 19th day of the month to be unlucky.