Monthly Archive

I have just emerged from the bathroom of this Continental flight down to Houston for America’s Classic. For a half hour I’ve been in there trying to balance on the closed toilet seat while being thrown back and forth between the walls (pilot says “we’re having a little weather.”)

Why have I been in the bathroom balancing on the toilet seat? Because I bought a bag of dark-chocolate-covered almonds which were sealed in impenetrable shrink-wrap which I had to rip at with my teeth and the tray-table wasn’t working so I was balancing the cup of coffee, the two magazines with Britney on the cover, a pillow, a blanket, iPod earphones which wouldn’t work because to hear the movie you need two prongs not one for the holes in the arm, while trying to type with my thumbs on this stupid device because the touch-screen isn’t working again, and between being squished in there with all these worries I didn’t notice that the chocolate-covered almonds had poured out of their mangled shrink-wrap, fallen onto the seat under my butt and melted. So by the time I finally managed to extricate a hand to reach under the pillow to get a chocolate-covered almond all I felt was a warm pile of goo between my legs and as I groped around realized to my horror it was smeared all over my butt and the whole seat, gooey sticky dark brown chocolate with lumps of almonds, like some mammal had been foraging under the pillow and had left droppings. Uh oh. If I hadn’t already attracted enough attention just by being buried beneath the mountain of stuff while balancing coffee and writing with my thumbs, I DEFINITELY made a scene when I jumped up yelling “Oh NO!! HELP! SOMEONE! Stewardess! Disaster Over Here!” and since my hands were now covered in globs of chocolate I couldn’t touch anything to get the pile off my lap. What a mess.

So that was how I ended up shivering in the bathroom with my pants off. Of course this was the first comp, in two years, when I finally decided to travel light and bring one single pair of jeans for the weekend. Usually I bring the pair with one rip, and the pair with tons of rips, and the pair that Melissa told me makes my legs look five miles long. But this time I took a walk on the wild side and brought one single lonely pair of jeans, which I was now frantically scrubbing in the sink that gives one drop of water per push.

The stewardess was VERY not happy. She didn’t like me anyway, from the first minute she saw me. I don’t know why. She was mean to me when I didn’t want peanuts. But now she was acting like I messed my pants. I kept saying “I am so sorry. I know this looks like something awful but you have to believe me it’s just chocolate and those chunks are almonds.” She had to go find a whole ‘nother seat cushion to replace mine.

Anyway, that’s how the trip began.

The hotel is 10 minutes from the airport so there’s a free shuttle which runs every fifteen minutes. We waited for 45 minutes then called the hotel. They said oops the shuttle driver decided to skip our terminal since most flights don’t come in to that terminal. So an hour later the shuttle came.

The hotel is huge, but the rooms aren’t, shall we say, extremely wonderful. I hung my towel on the towel rack and the whole rack came crashing down in pieces, some of which fell into the toilet. There’s a ledge in the shower for your shampoo and razors and stuff so I put all my toiletries on the ledge then turned the shower on to get hot. I heard a series of crashes, bangs and thuds and glass breaking and ran into the bathroom to find that everything on the ledge had slid down into the bathtub because the ledge is SLANTED and when it gets wet nothing will stay there, not even a washcloth.

I will write more later – it’s hard using this stupid slide-out keyboard thing and as I said the dang screen is going blotto. I’m definitely getting an iPhone when I get home.

Lots and LOTS of majorly excellent dancers here. Four concurrent tours – WSDC, NASDE, AANCE, and the Masters tour.  Tomorrow we’ll be dancing competing from 2pm on through late at night.

We are the only DC dancers here! Quite a few from Florida, some from NY and Boston (including Kathy and Joe Mahoney, looking completely refreshed after New Year’s), and of course people from this part of the country. And they’re all good – veddy veddy good. It’s intimidating.

More later. Miss you guys. How was Cherry Hill?

Xoxoxo

Love Liza and Genieboy

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Liza, via MDA

This MDA is making me neurotic.  More neurotic than normal.  In other words I am in a TOTAL LATHER cause I’m dying to write home to tell you guys about everything but this STUPID STUPID device won’t write ARGHGHGH. Now the stylus is stuck in the hole.  STUPID blockhead device. Dag-NAB-it!

So we were waiting in the long line to register for the comps (they do things in the old-fashioned 20th century way down here – paper and live actual humans – (as opposed to Brian Faust’s cool new Event-Express program complete with etch-a-sketch-judging and online registration for weekend pass and competitions). And the line was long ’cause they had way more people this year than they’ve ever had since starting the event two years ago. But, so, we are like waiting in this line forever; and two girls who shall not be named (you know them trust me you so know them) are having serious drama right behind us in the line, and Mark Levetin and Stephanie are way too happy and smiley right behind them, and it’s sick early in the morning (like, noon or 1pm or some frightening no-make-up hour of the day),  and so we had just exactly dragged ourselves out of bed and I had on this hat (pulled down waaay low so maybe they won’t know who I am or at least not see my eyes and maybe they’ll take a hint and just go away and not talk to me fer gadsakes) and that purple blanket-turns-into-a-coat thing which I bought from Sophy (which she bought a bunch of, from Banana Republic, and sold to dancers cause they’re perfect for planes and not freezing in the ballroom) and I had just grabbed the thing as we ran out of the room (the schedule said one hour to register get down there and sign up or forget it loser you can’t dance) so I’m standing there in a dazed coffee-less stupor and I’m freezing (do they NEED air-conditioning at this hour?!? Why?) so I take my purple blanket thing and put it on and Mark yells something all cheery and friendly like “Hey Liza!! You need to be more dramatic! Throw that thing on with finesse!” and I’m like brain-dead and so is Genieboy so he doesn’t catch it in time and so I smile a dazed smile and fake laugh hahahahaha and trying to be cooperative take the purple thing off and throw it, whoosh! very dramatically like he said and BOOM!! the blanket locker-room whips (that girl – the one I can’t name – yeah, you guessed right, that one) right in the middle of a sentence and it whips her hard right in her face, right smack in her left eye which she does not like at all. She says “Ow! Why did you do that?” and I thought oh no why didn’t I write a will like they told me to?

Geezum crow. I am such an idiot. What an idiot. I am a hopelessly stupid idiot.

I survived, and this is turning out to be a good event. It’s an important event because of Mario; and because it’s many tours together so there’s more at stake), and because the AANCE tour seems to really be taking off and getting respect, and because Texas is this weirdly cool place for dancing! They are just damn good here, really daggone good!! I have not danced one SINGLE dance – throughout this entire event so far – with a bad dancer. Doesn’t matter what they look like – the most nerdy, dorky, icky, grosso lamest guy you can think of – is great. The guyshere are ALL great. I asked around – I wanted to check and make sure it wasn’t just me so I asked other non-Texas women and they confirmed it – these Texas men are excellent dancers, that’s all there is to it. The women?  That’s another story. Okay, some of the women are good. Many are good. But not all. Not like the men. There are some bad women here, hair-raisingly bad. And women who are beloved who you watch do well in competitions because they are beloved, but who are not good dancers. You look out on the floor and you see a lot of female dancers who make you make an icky face.

But bad-dancing men? Nope, don’t seem to be any in all of Texas. This is not an exaggeration. It must be something in their food or their cowboy boots.

And wow do they CHEER out here! They SCREAM for people – totally supportive, especially about their beginners. What a great crowd!

So – it’s a fun event. We’re coming back next year, and hope to bring a whole crowd of DC folks.

More (hopefully! maybe!) later ….

Love Liza

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Liza, via squishy squinchy 2″ non-working frozen-up screen MDA