Krumping at Conrads

Jan 26

Ian, Will, Bill, Lynne, Jim, Edgar, Steve L, Bobb, Barbara, Ray, Andy, Joan

There is, I hope no one will deny, a distinctly self-improvement side to Monday nights at Conrads. It's by no means the main aim, it happens almost by accident, but barely a week goes by without some of us learning at least something - it's how Lynne and I have become almost fluent in Californian (I did say almost).
This Monday was no exception, for some of us learned about Krumping. That it was a real word, as opposed to something Jim had made up, another term for farting, perhaps.
No, Krumping was written, in black and white, in print, in a newspaper, so it had to be real.
It was just a throwaway line in a Culver City freesheet review of Cantalini's and Ian's show there. A friend of the writer might as well have been somewhere else krumping, we were told.
As is becoming a regular ritual, I promptly whipped out my iPhone to google the word. Glenn holds the Conrads record for fastest googling on a handheld device while eating, but he alas was not with us for health reasons, to which I return below.*
It was left to me to define krumping, and it turns out to be a new urban street dance-form that began in South Central Los Angeles and "is characterized by free, expressive, and highly energetic moves involving the arms and chest," says Wikipedia. It has become a major part of hip hop dance culture, I understand.
As it was such a stuffy, sychophantic restaurant review I can only surmise that the reference to krumping was a rare burst of irony. The review itself was so fawning that it even embarrassed Ian, which takes some doing, I think we would all agree.
The entrance of Wikipedia onto the stage led to renewed discussion of Ian's, Will's and my Wiki entries and how or whether they should be edited, and by whom. This was prompted by a recent scandal in which someone altered Senators Edward Kennedy and Robert Byrd's entries to say they were dead, so there is a move afoot to have every alteration reviewed by a team of super editors, who will presumably be overwhelmed by the backlog. Alterations take weeks to appear in German Wiki, where this regime is already in force.
So I urged Will to update his entry quickly, as he has complained for some time that it says he was born in 1939, making him out to be much younger than he really is (OK, older, just kidding Will!).
This of course got Ian going on the perennial subject of his Wiki slights, not the least of which is to do with the now-deceased British TV rock music series, Old Grey Whistle Test. Ian has been completely overlooked as the first co-host of the series, for a month anyway, because he stuttered in rehearsal on the first night. This might not have mattered, except this was 1971 and it was going out live. The executive producer, Mike Appleton, was taking no chances and so earned Ian's undying hatred even though he was allowed to conduct interviews.
Stuttering is naturally a subject of some interest at Conrads, as Ian and Jim can sometimes take ten minutes to pass the pickled pepper to one another over d-d-d-dinner. But, as they soon point out, their stutters vanish when confronted with a microphone, at least one that is switched on.
They are in the company of many famous stutterers, from Marilyn Monroe to Winston Churchill, who were OK on camera and therefore not known to the general public for their affliction. Which raises the question why those who do suffer from this ailment don't simply pretend they are speaking into a microphone, or even carry a dummy one around with them, to put on the table at Conrads and elsewhere? But what do I know, not being a victim myself?
One of the best, if temporary, cures for stuttering is to read strong, rhythmic poetry, such as Ian was forced to learn as a lad at Dotheboys' Hall or wherever his doting parents dumped him in his formative years. Tennyson, Browning, Noyes, Sassoon and even Wilfred Owen have been pressed into service in this noble cause.
At the opposite end of the artistic spectrum, we wondered why there was such a vogue for novelty songs, and why they have largely disappeared - maybe too naive for these worldly times. The Witch Doctor song by RossBagdasarian, Purple People Eater by Sheb Wooley and the classic of the genre, "Gilly Gilly Ossenfeffer Katzenellen Bogen By The Sea", recorded in 1954 by the Four Lads over here and the oily Max Bygraves in Britain the same year. Thank goodness the public grew up enough to move on, if only to Cumberland Gap.

* Glenn had a triple heart by-pass op on January 19. All apparently went well, so we signed a get-well card for him with best wishes for a swift return to Conrads

CAUGHT ON THE BREEZE
When you think about it, a movie about Obama would have to be a film noir
As I get older I blurt things out more: there I go again!
Write that one down, Bill, that'll be a good Caught on the Breeze....
You must tell him one thing at a time - but tell him often
Soy is the devil's workshop

Inauguration Eve Dinner

Jan 19

Will, Bill, Lynne, Ian, Edgar, Bob, Bobb, Barbara, Jeanette, Steve L


This was one of those rare occasions when Monday night was sandwiched between two historic events: the inauguration of President Obama and the 32nd Doo Dah Parade.
Despite Obama's efforts to make as much a mess of the swearing-in as he could, there was little doubt that the Doo Dah was the bigger disappointment. There appeared to be fewer floats than usual, towards the end there were huge gaps between floats so the crowd got restless, and the protest floats lacked their usual zip. Hard to tell if this was because the recession is squeezing spending, or the lack of political targets now that Bush is history.
There was one half-hearted attempt to have a go at McCain and Palin, but it didn't amount to much. And as, according to a poll, most American voters are willing to give Obama two years to get things right, maybe we won't see floats protesting his record until 2012. Could be a bit dull for a while, then.
Poor Bobb and Barbara were caught under a balcony on Raymond where the occupants were spilling champagne and the glasses containing the bubbly, as well as necklaces, lumps of marshmallow and lots of the other stuff that was flying to and fro across the street. Understandably, they quit early and I don't reckon they missed too much. But the sun shone and it was an entertaining couple of hours before the traditional police car followed the last float to signal that it was time to go home.
This sparked the now-obligatory discussion at this time of year about our organizing a Monday Night float for the next Doo Dah. I wouldn't bet on it, though, unless Conrads can be persuaded to pay for it - and I wouldn't bet on that either.
At least the parade took Ian's mind off the problems he is having as musical director on The Jazz Age, which the Blank Theater Company is putting on in Hollywood next month.
According to the publicity, the play will feature "the pulsating beat of a live jazz trio" playing a original score which Ian is supposed to be writing. Trouble is, the live trio are his Bungalow Boys, who aren't best known for jazz riffs. Even worse, on Sunday night Ian invited the lady who owns the show to hear him and the Boys at Cantalini's. She was apparently unimpressed with Ian's preferred repertoire.
What's more the director is apparently taking the politically safe line of allying himself with the boss, leaving the spotlight firmly on Ian. Time for one of Rollo's rescue acts, methinks.
But at least Ian was sufficiently happy with the forthcoming 800-page collected volume of his Letters from Lotusland to buy Barbara's meal last night, in return for her sterling efforts as the book's editor. And he even split his bread pudding with her too.
The subject of editing led to the perennially fraught question of Will's Wikipedia entry, notorious for claiming that he was born in San Francisco in 1939. It was actually St John, Nova Scotia, in 1989 (OK, just kidding).
Will protests, as ever, that he cannot get it changed, and Wikipedia does now guard its entries far more jealously than in the early days, when anyone could and did put anything into the entries, often maliciously or hoaxily (I just made the word up, but then a neologism a day keeps the pedant at bay).
However, it can't be that difficult to update an entry, because I have just added the Cactus County Cowboys to Will's. Just give us the facts, Mr Ryan, just the facts, and we'll get it all put right.
The evening ended, sort of, on a hygiene note. As we are so used to seeing the A, B, C grading system to rate the cleanliness of LA restaurants, so of us trusting souls, me included, thought it applied to Pasadena. Not so, because the crown colony has its own health department and they don't run any system at all that the public can easily latch on to. Consequently you never know how clean they are. Or otherwise. I was glad we'd finished eating by the time this came up, if you'll pardon the expression.
Conrads is, of course, beyond reproach cleanliness-wise.

CAUGHT ON THE BREEZE
It's such a depressing play
How do you get a seat at the Doo Dah Parade?
I count my blessings - Rollo, Simon and Regina
You can see men kissing and holding their crotches - just like Cantalini's, then?
Ooh, she's come dressed as a nurse: but she is a nurse!
Electric cars suck.
I don't look at my portfolio, these days there's no point
It's like a long 8-year migraine coming to an end
Solar cars are great - as long as you don't leave them in the garage
Life isn't for the faint-hearted
Perfection and procrastination are my two guiding principles, or should that be principals? I'll tell you later

Caltech connection

Edgar, Ray, Glenn, Mary Katherine, Ian, Bobb, Barbara, Jim, Will, Bob, Regina, Steve L, Jeanette, Bill, Lynne

This was one of those weeks when the conversations I heard never really took off, maybe just my luck and if anyone got some exciting exchanges do pass them on.
While Javier arrived exactly on time at 6, Conrads Xmas decorations were still hanging around.

A backgrounder in the LA Times on UK knife crime set some of us off talking about the guns v knives debate. Brits - and middle-class liberal Americans, especially on the east coast - love to deride the US gun culture exemplified by the splendid gentleman who recently shot a family who persisted in talking in the row behind him at a screening of Benjamin Button. When they and everyone else fled, he sat down and watched the rest of the movie!
There is something dramatic about being able to pull a gun on someone, and it always stops the target in his or her tracks. Knives can have a similar effect, like any sudden change in the balance of power in a fight. While guns are reasonable effectively under control in Britain, knives as weapons have spread like a virus in the schools. I was shocked to learn that 250 people died from knife wounds in the UK last year, in a country where 50 murders a year was unusual.
Maybe the actual weapon doesn't matter so much as people's increasingly casual and callous attitude to human life and the rule of law. The police do what they can, but they can't be everywhere all the time and killers know this, however they are armed.
This gloomy mood was surprisingly lifted at the end of the evening by a group of about eight youngsters who had been occupying the big corner booth. It turned out they were all from Caltech, one through JPL, and they were every bit as geeky as you might expect. But they were also highly entertaining, full of stories about Star Trek and Dr Who as well as scorning Caltech's ugly new Astrophysics block - one of them was an astrophysicist. Ian and I bravely clung to our Caltech connection, the flimsy one of using the gym and pool (which they had of course never gone anywhere near).
So impressed were the remnants of our crowd that invitations were immediately issued for any of them to join us in future. Students being students, we will probably never see any of them again, but it was an oddly cheering episode.

CAUGHT ON THE BREEZE
It's the wine not the toothpaste
We get B movies on our kitchen TV
Women are deceitful, nasty, sly creatures
Everyone shOUld have the opportunity of working in a hospital
You're in your once-a-month weirdo mood
Are you wearing someone else's dinner on your pants?
I'm free - no you're not, you're very expensive