April 2002

Perils of choreography

So tonight, I got together with Andrew to work on choreography for a synchro routine that he and I will be doing in an upcoming show.

I had mapped out all the moves in meticulous detail, with cues showing which measure the moves came in at. Or so I thought. For one thing, I was counting half-time for about the first two minutes of the song, and then started counting on the beat. So my metrical counts are really screwed up, and we wound up spending about half an hour working out how I had intended it. Plus I had a few counting errors apart from that.

But even if all that stuff were perfect, there was still a layer of detail I hadn’t reached–figuring out which direction move A needs to start on in order to set up move B correctly, and that sort of thing. Being able to enter and exit a move in synch with the other guy. Doing the same move the same way, knowing exactly where each hand is going to be when exiting a move. This is a real learning experience.

Recursive auto-debunking

The news today had a story on how Americans are getting ruder. The report said that some people blame the influence of television shows like South Park. They then cut to a clip of South Park, with Eric Cartman complaining (with transparent insincerity) “I can’t help it, that movie warped my fragile little mind!”

This is too perfect. Using the clip from the show to undermine the case against the show.

The caption machine

Perhaps some of you have seen the “please think of the kittens” gag image circulating. I started wondering where that might have come from originally. One google search later, I found The Caption Machine, which has it and some other kneeslappers.