http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JLnQpZ8HfM
Above is a link to a 7 min. 35 sec. YouTube video of the disco at the Mezzo on Friday night a week ago. It was the one-year anniversary of DJ Chris G doing the Friday night disco duties at the Mezzo. Chris G had his hommie Nicky C on the drum kit and he hired a videographer to preserve the action on video.
Later, for those of you who want to see where the CAL tee-shirt worn by yours truly at the Mezzo appears in this video, I'll go through all 7.5 minutes of the footage and identify in an edited version of this blog post the exact seconds where my Dancin' Old Grandude's gray-bearded face can be seen on the disco dance floor.
EDITED POST WITH MINUTES AND SECONDS ON YOU-TUBE VIDEO WHERE dancin' old grandude CAN BE SEEN HAVING A CHILD-LIKE BLAST OF ENERGY AND HAPPINESS:
:23 to :39 Rear shot of grandude, blue tee & cheap black wrist watch on left wrist, long unruly head o' hair
:55 to 1:13 Yellow "CAL" logo visible on front of tee-shirt, tan shorts
1:23 to 1:28 Just grandude's butt in tan shorts
1:36 to 1:41 Back of tee-shirt then side shot of grandude bogey-ing
2:04 to 2:11 Grandude dancin' with brunette girlfriend of hunky guy in white shirt who just before this wanted
photo taken with grandude by hunk's GF, then hunk wanted grandude to dance with hunk's GF
and grandude graciously and sacrificially complied
2:30 to 2:44 Grandude's left hand and butt are barely visible in this shot
5:00 to 5:05 Face shot of grandude dancin'
5:49 to 5:52 Full frontal shot of grandude dancin'
5:55 to 5:57 same as preceding entry
I went again last night and Friday to the disco after the patio performance (also hit the patio floor for the Thursday performance but the disco's not open on Thursdays), where I danced and exercised the night away. For those of you who still don't get it why I love this dancin' thing with, mostly, a bunch of young, energetic, mostly physically beautiful human beings, of both sexes, you should consider showing up some Friday or Saturday night and drinking in the atmosphere.
The young men who really know how to do the cool moves, both black and white, or, as I prefer, tan and pink, love to show me their moves and have me follow them, gesture by gesture, foot move by foot move. Then we high five, come together in a "man hug" with upraised arms between us, of course, to keep it manly, and then we move on to other disco business.
The young women [and even the "older" women who occasionally grace the disco floor with their presence] dress up and get themselves "made up" for goin' out and partying. So they have on the hot dresses, the nice jeans, the hair, everything, to show off on the floor for their girlfriends and maybe even for the benefit of us guys, mostly young and some older or old like me.
As I've said in earlier Bob's blog posts on my dancin' fun at the Mezzo (and The Titanium Club and The Shadow Room), these young women would certainly have nothing to do with The Old Dancin' Grandude if they saw me on the street or in the CVS or Stop & Shop, as opposed to The Kingdom of Heaven out there on the disco floor. There, there is no East or West, no family nor no-family, no ugly or beautiful [well, I won't stretch the concept that far. There are some pretty good-looking women and men who like to dance.], no old nor young, out on the dance floor. Just dancers, some respectful of the women's space [like the Old Dancin' Grandude], and some not [these are the young guys who seem to think they have the right to just go up to a young woman and start dirty dancing with her. 'Course they got it wrong. Show 'em what you've go, give it your best shot, and if she wants to dance with you, she'll let you know. Been there and still doin' it, even at, no 'specially at, 61.)
So last night, for example, there was this really pretty, taller-then-me, blonde dancin' up front near the north speaker, with a girlfriend of hers who was shorter and brunette and, frankly, not as pretty (at least to this old Grandude/human animal now-with-a-conscience-and-self-restraint). The blonde woman was very happy. I could tell from the smile on her face and the cool, relaxed way she danced. She was wearing this very tight, above-knee-length robin's egg blue dress with a white lacy-girlie pattern from about just above her navel to just below her hips, on the front of the dress. Her hair was just below shoulder length. In the semi-darkness and flashing colored lights I couldn't tell her eye color or whether her hair was naturally blonde, but this young woman surely could dance. She had very nice, smooth, hairless legs and sandals with low high heels on her feet. I stayed at a very respectful distance from her and her GF, but tried to follow the motions of her hands, arms, and feet for a half-hour or so. It was pretty easy for her to see that I was, essentially, dancing with her, but by keeping my distance, she never betrayed a feeling that I was too close for her comfort. I am very conscious of not wanting to make women like this feel like it's so obvious I'm dancin' with her that the other young people in the disco will get the wrong impression that she WANTS to dance with an old Grandude. Yet, dance with her I did. I cared not a whit that our spatial separation concealed what was, in fact, the case: that she and I were dancing with each other, at least that was what was going on in this old Grandude's fevered imagination.
At several points, young, eligible men overcame their inhibitions and made their moves on this delightful young woman. And I, as a writer, thoroughly enjoyed those little shows. First was the very strong, physically fit Puerto Rican-seeming young man. He was somewhat androgynous, what with those dark plucked eyebrows and the heavily-gelled curly hair. At the top of his head he had pushed his hair towards the center to form a low Mohawk effect. He was wearing a white, long-sleeved tee shirt with Aeropostale or similar national chain logo.
So this guy rudely jumps between the Very Hot Blonde in the Robin's Egg Blue Tight Dress and her GF, and he begins to show the blonde dancing goddess his best, most energetic moves. And a look of smiling amusement, even a chuckle or two, at first appears on her pretty (but not model-quality, or My-Wife-Susie-Quality) face, as she absorbs this guy's attempts to Show Off his way into her mind and heart. But she has none of it and eventually he gets the message and moves on to (for him) greener pastures in the Back Forty part of the disco floor.
Next up is a drunk-looking young man, surly even in his grungy look. He just goes right up to the Blonde Dancing Goddess, as if to say, "Hey, girl, my momma thinks I'm the Cat's Meow. You do to, right?" And she promptly shoots a bazooka sized cold and unfriendly stare right at this jerk's hat-covered head and face, as she's sayin' to him, "Look, Dude, if you and the Old Dancin' Grandude over there were the last men on Earth and two of us had to get it on to keep the Human Race going, I'm not sure I could stomach goin' through THAT ancient dance with Grandude, but I can tell you something straight up---YOU AIN'T GOT NO CHANCE, DUDE, AND IF YOU AND I WERE THE LAST TWO MALE AND FEMALES ON THE ISLAND, THERE'S NO WAY THE RATS AREN'T TAKIN' OVER FOR THE HUMANS. AND DUDE, WHAT IS ABOUT "GET LOST' THAT YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND? So clearly I have no idea what she was actually thinking, maybe she was sexting him secretly to schedule a Hook-Up after the Mezzo, but, I DON'T THINK SO.
So after Dumb-ass Dude put his tail between his legs and took off, never to be seen again that night, one last guy tried to show Blonde Goddess his best moves. Now this was a very good-looking guy who was not dancing at all, just surveying the crowd, maybe the way an eagle--no, like a Vulture flies high over Route 9, looking for carrion for an after-midnight snack. Anyway, this guy must have had some really good-looking parents 'cuz he was blue-eyed, sandy blonde short cut hair, baby-blue tee shirt showing off his steroid-looking biceps and huge shoulders. But his attempt to take the Blonde Goddess up to Mt. Olympus for a night of pleasure even a Goddess has no right to expect is possible, was a TOTAL FAILURE. He tried to make his best move. Nice smile. Leaning his head in close to the Goddess's pretty face. Makin' some kind of witty small talk. Everything, that is, 'cept what the Goddess so obviously loves to do. Dance. This guy was so into himself, so used to having the girls swoon over his god-like classic American blonde blue-eyed steroid-like pumped up muscular good looks, that he figured she'd fall for him too, even though he obviously spent at least 27 of his daily allotted 24 per day pumping iron in front of the mirrors at the gym that he never spent any time learning some simple dance moves which probably would have gotten him a lot farther with the Goddess at the Mezzo. I wonder if this Adonis spent so much time gazing lovingly at his pretty face and bulging body in the gym mirror that he only saw himself as he flirted with the Blonde Goddess last night? Whatever the reason, he eventually gave up and went back to his equally-bulked-up hommies over near the bar.
Blonde Goddess and her GF eventually moved off center stage and away from me. Again, being respectful of her, I just let them go and moved onto the next group of young women who were there for an engagement party. I knew this because on of the 10 girls dancing near the DJ in a circle was wearing one of those silly plastic silver-colored tiaras on her forehead, in the curved shape of the crown on the top of the head of The Statue of Liberty in New York harbor.
So the young woman who was clearly the best dancer in that group, a light-brunette woman wearing a wedding ring, moved out of the circle, towards me, in a crystal clear signal that she was ready to put on a show for her girlfriends with the Dancin' Old Grandude. Now I had seen this group earlier in the evening, on the Mezzo patio, when I was puttin' on The CAL show (remember my signature tee-shirt is the dark blue, CAL-logo, shirt I bought at the Berkeley college store when I was visiting Robin and Jamie in June in San Francisco and Oakland, with a stop in Berkeley to see where my good friends, Karl Scheibe and William Johnson, who's also my bro'-in-law, hung out in the early 60's in graduate school). And none of them were comfortable to dance in public, under fairly bright lights so they saved it all for the disco, from 11:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m.
So the married young woman starts showin' me her really cool, energetic moves, and I just follow along for the ride. And then a couple of the other women in her group do their moves and signal that they want the Dancin' Old Grandude to follow them, if he's still game, which of course I was. Two of them were fairly heavy, but who cares about weight in the disco. It's all good and if the hot young women, or some of them feel comfortable taking this Old Grandude out for a test-dance, why should I refuse to reciprocate with friends of theirs who may not fit the current, 21st century idealization and fetish-ization of the Anorexic Ideal Female Form. Interestingly, one of the women, who was about 30 also, and had a bit of larger-than-she-probably-wished-she-had, could really shake those hips and butt. I did my best to follow, but I'm not belly-dancer so she was so much more THERE than me, at least on those moves.
I've got to get ready for Disco with Jesu at my new church, Zion First Black Baptist Church, so I can't tell all the other details of last night's magical night at the Mezzo. But I will leave you with this. Just as much fun for me as dancing with, or at least, in the same room as young women who wouldn't show me the time of day if my life depended on it outside the disco, is do the dance and DJ moves with my hommies last night, one a very dark Tan Man of about 28 who had very white teeth which shown in the dark disco when he smiled his approval of the old Dancin' Grandude. And the other guy was a 26year old very light Pink Man with a white tee-shirt, blue hommie'-type had with the bill cocked down over the right side of his head, cool smooth-soled low-rise non-basketball-type sneakers which enabled him to turn his
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