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