"The bear... used its paw to pry open the sliding glass door of the Grand Hotel Balvanyos, before squeezing its shoulders into the lobby."

"As a terrified employee sprinted away, it headed to the breakfast buffet and ate all the packets of honey. Another bear entered the resort’s spa and downed a three-liter jug of massage oil, while a third opened a door into a hotel hallway and chased away a housekeeper. Romania’s relationship with its bears has come undone. The brown bear — the ursus arctos — is one of the country’s national treasures, interwoven into its mythology. Villagers still host annual bear dances, a ritual that goes back to pre-Christian times, when people believed the animals staved off misfortune. Romania’s brutal Communist dictator, Nicolae Ceaușescu, would flaunt his power by ordering aides to lure bears from the forest with food, then shooting them in a macabre display of machismo...."

From "The Law Protects Them. The Villagers Fear Them. Romania’s growing bear population has turned conservation into confrontation for people living in the shadows of the Carpathian Mountains" (NYT).

"An Italian-Egyptian belly dancer with more than two million Instagram followers has been arrested in Egypt on charges of offending public morality...."

"Linda Martino faces a year of hard labour after she was arrested at Cairo airport and accused of 'using seduction techniques and provocative dancing to incite vice.'... The indictment accuses Martino of appearing 'in indecent clothing, deliberately exposing sensitive areas of her body, in clear violation of public morals and social values.'... During an initial hearing, she defended her profession, claiming 'belly dancing is an art, it cannot be a crime. I am a dancer and the videos on which the accusations are based are normal — they show a dance performance that do not go against or violate public morality.'"

From "Egyptian belly dancer faces hard labour for ‘violating morals’/President Sisi’s hard-line government has clamped down on the art form in recent years despite its enduring popularity and cultural status" (London Times).

"Meghan Markle Wears Ginormous, Cozy Button-Down While Flower Arranging With Dog Guy."

That's the headline of the morning for me — over at InStyle.

Don't get me started on the present-day inanity of calling a shirt a "button-down" — in my day, a "button-down" was a shirt with a button-down collar, not a shirt that you button up (up, not down) — because I've already spent an hour down a rathole with Grok, exploring the origins of that usage — is it a retronym necessitated by the prevalence of T-shirts? — and wondering the how kids these days could understand the meaning of the album title "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart." And that veered off into a discussion of the comic genius of Lucille Ball in this 1965 episode of "Password," and how, in Episode 4 of Season 1 of "Joe Pera Talks With You," Joe, dancing, says "Do you think AI will dance like this?," and Sarah says "No, because they don’t have genitals." How does that make Grok feel? 

But back to Meghan Markle. I'm not going to ask why it's a story that she wore a shirt while doing something and why the headline doesn't prioritize what she did, which was to arrange flowers, which would only make us wonder why it's a story that she arranged flowers. What I want is to clarify is what was meant by "Flower Arranging With Dog Guy." I assumed, the entire time I was down the rathole with Grok, that Markle had a guy who helped her with her dogs, that a "Dog Guy" was like a "Pool Guy," and for some reason, the Dog Guy got involved in the effort to arrange flowers. But no. Here's the Instagram InStyle wrote the headline about:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (@meghan)

So Guy was the name of her dog. And the dog was not participating in the flower arranging. He was just running around the general area. I don't know much about flower arranging, but I do have some confidence in my word arranging, and that headline needs work. But I'm not doing the work. I'm writing this post to say that I find my misreading delightful and enjoy thinking about this phantom character, the dog guy. I kind of am married to a dog guy. If we ever get a dog, I want to name him Whisperer so I can go around referring to my "Dog Whisperer." Or do you prefer Whiskerer? I can tell you Grok thought both names were brilliant. 

I don't understand but I have crossed the line where I'm even supposed to understand new pop things.

She needs to cancel this tour before it cancels her career I’m so serious pic.twitter.com/BhIOF0sOte

— Mo (@rwylmo) April 24, 2025

I will continue to follow the waning high jinks of the pop culture figures that emerged in the 1960s. For example, The Who fired their drummer, then rehired him. If Bob Dylan says anything, I care. Meanwhile, that Katy Perry video, put up less than a day ago, has 9 million views.

"As a boy, he was intelligent, deeply religious and loved to dance the tango."

"When he was 16, Jorge was rushing to meet friends but paused at the Basilica of St. Joseph in Buenos Aires, feeling an urge to go inside. In the sanctuary, it felt as though 'someone grabbed me from inside,' he said, adding, 'Right there I knew I had to be a priest.'... Francis died on Monday at 7:35 a.m., less than a day after blessing the faithful who had gathered for an Easter Mass in St. Peter’s Square. He appeared on a balcony on Sunday, looking frail, and after blessing the crowd, he deferred to a Vatican aide to address the crowd on his behalf...."

From the NYT obituary for Pope Francis.

There's also this: "Francis repeatedly sought to stand up to nationalism. During the U.S. presidential election, he suggested that Donald J. Trump, the Republican candidate, was 'not Christian' because of his preference for building walls rather than bridges. Mr. Trump responded: 'For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful. I am proud to be a Christian.'"

ADDED: Francis had seemed to be doing better but perhaps he was only determined — massively determined — to make a strong showing for Easter (and to target the United States for criticism over its treatment of migrants):

"A description of the book in a news release announcing the publication on Wednesday sounded suspiciously like it might have been written by Pynchon himself..."

"... and Penguin confirmed it was his handiwork," it says in "A New Thomas Pynchon Novel Is Coming This Fall/Featuring a Depression-era private eye, 'Shadow Ticket' will be the 87-year-old writer’s first book since 2013" (NYT).

Here's that description:

“Surrounded by history he has no grasp on and can’t see his way around in or out of, the only bright side for Hicks is it’s the dawn of the Big Band Era and as it happens he’s a pretty good dancer. Whether this will be enough to allow him somehow to lindy-hop his way back again to Milwaukee and the normal world, which may no longer exist, is another question.”

He withholds commas until he doesn't and I presume he's got his reasons.

I like "lindy-hop his way back again to Milwaukee" and "Milwaukee and the normal world."

"C.E.O. Choked Man Who Danced Barefoot on Cruise Ship...."

A NYT headline speaks of the recent trend of throwing your life away for nothing.

The altercation began shortly after Mr. DeGiorgio’s wife had confronted the man about barefoot dancing, telling him, “Look, we are all grown-ups here — can you put your shoes on?” Mr. DeGiorgio’s wife told investigators that the man had made a crude remark to her, and the security video showed him giving her the middle finger, according to the F.B.I...

I looked it up. The "crude remark" was "Shut up, you fucking bitch." 

We're told DeGiorgio's pay package (at First American Financial) is $7.8 million.

What's so bad about taking your shoes off to dance? It can be a way to be quieter, more graceful, or to protect the dance floor — think sock hop. And I've heard the wistful longing: There will come a time when you can even take your clothes off when you dance.

I couldn’t understand Kendrick Lamar’s words but it seemed like a statement of anger against America — not really the "meaning" of the Super Bowl, whatever that's supposed to be.

Kendrick literally protested, and taunted America in front of the president during America’s biggest sports event. Chefs kiss. pic.twitter.com/5xmcQsIuuu

— Joy De’Angela (@joydeangela) February 10, 2025

Was this a metaphor? Divide the nation with rap music or something? I don’t get it. What was the assignment?

— 😵‍💫 (@Joshdr) February 10, 2025

"In October 1956, Mr. Feiffer strolled into the office of The Village Voice, which had been founded the previous year, and offered to draw a regular strip for nothing."

"First titled 'Sick, Sick, Sick,' it eventually became 'Feiffer.' (He was not paid, he later wrote, until 1964.) With his signature sketchy, scribbly lines, Mr. Feiffer sought to bring to a six- or nine-panel format a level of visual simplicity and intellectual sophistication akin to what William Steig and Saul Steinberg had done with their cartoons in The New Yorker. Often devoid of backgrounds and panel borders, Mr. Feiffer’s strip focused almost exclusively on dialogue, gestures and facial expressions.... He would present a couple bickering with each other in profile, or someone in therapy, often with the speaker facing the reader.... Complacent, self-satisfied white liberals were a frequent target, and he upbraided them mercilessly.... The leotard-clad Dancer, who first appeared in 1957, was inspired by a girlfriend. She was... Mr. Feiffer wrote, 'abused and exploited by men.... but where [her male counterpart, based on himself] grew defensive and angry over the years, the Dancer retained her faith. She danced, fell, got to her feet, tripped, sailed aloft, came crashing to earth, rose stubbornly and kept dancing.'"

From "Jules Feiffer, Acerbic Cartoonist, Writer and Much Else, Dies at 95/In his long-running Village Voice comic strip and in his many plays and screenplays, he took delight in skewering politics, relationships and human nature" (NYT).

Feiffer also wrote the screenplay for "Carnal Knowledge" and the Robert Altman version of "Popeye," and his play "Little Murders" became one of my favorite movies from 1971:

It's fun to stay at the Y-M-C-A.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul's State of the State Address: pic.twitter.com/nFsb7Fowu0

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) January 17, 2025

"For the unacquainted, Mr. Trump’s gyrations are a far cry from the complexities of the moonwalk, the Macarena or the Electric Slide."

"Both simple and strangely hypnotic, Mr. Trump’s wiggle incorporates the kind of stiff swivel often employed by arrhythmic wedding guests or awkward, one-too-many conventioneers."

Writes Jesse McKinley, in "Trump’s Signature Dance Move Finds Its Way to the Sports World/Jon Jones punctuated his U.F.C. win with the president-elect’s shimmy, and numerous N.F.L. players followed suit on Sunday" (NYT).

It says there that McKinley is "a Styles reporter who covered the criminal trial of Donald J. Trump earlier this year, from opening statements to guilty verdicts."

McKinley has written a lot of other things too. Why focus on Trump's criminal trial? Maybe subtle humor: Not long ago it seemed that New York authorities had found a way to put Trump in prison, and now we're just wondering if it's okay for football players to dance the Trump dance.

McKinley also wrote, recently:

Somehow the first 2 articles I click to read in the NYT this morning both bring up Theodore Roosevelt.

1. "The Election Is Happening Too Soon" by David Brooks: "By the time Theodore Roosevelt came to the presidency in 1901, society was heaving with change. The legislative program that we call progressivism — cleaning up local government, breaking up the monopolies, regulating clean food, water and air — grew out of the cultural and civic change that was already underway. The pattern was cultural change first, then civic revival, then political reform. Today we face another great civilizational question: How can we create a morally cohesive and politically functional democracy amid radical pluralism and diversity?"

2. "It Sounded Like Dancing, Drinking and Sex. It Blew People’s Minds" by John McWhorter: "We moderns can’t feel ragtime as the hip, naughty thing it was to people when Theodore Roosevelt was president. Jazz, rock, hip-hop and so much else came in ragtime’s wake, all of them syncopated (and hip-wiggly) to degrees beyond anything [Scott] Joplin, who died in 1917, ever knew." (Interesting use of language: "hip, naughty... hip-hop... hip-wiggly....")

***

I sense a reaction to the immersion in 2024 electoral politics. Those who'd been hoping to leap forward are drawn instead into the past, and when they look back, the human marker of time who stands out is Theodore Roosevelt.

"There’s a raw, instinctive quality to Goebel’s routines: The dancers look as if they aren’t just dancing but are following an elemental urge."

"Over the last decade, pop stars have sought out this off-kilter vision of how female bodies can move. As a result, Goebel is reshaping what pop choreography looks like — and exploding our ideas of what makes a femme body desirable.... It’s not as if this overt display of sexuality has vanished from contemporary pop choreography.... But Goebel’s routines push past titillation into startling, even disturbing territory.... In a routine she choreographed for Nike during Paris couture week, the dancers rolled and thrust their chests forward in a unsettling, Frankenstein-ish lurch, before leaping from the stage and strutting forward, arms crossed, like something Gene Kelly might do in 'Singin’ in the Rain.'"

Writes Coralie Kraft, in "Parris Goebel Is Changing the Way Women Move" (NYT)(free-access link, so you can see the many video clips of what that prose describes). Goebel was the choreographer for Rihanna at the 2023 Super Bowl — "sexy — hands stroking, chests heaving — but strange."

If that made you think of "Puttin' on the Ritz," here's the relevant "Young Frankenstein" clip. If it made you think of "Thriller," go here. If you got hung up on "femme," in the phrase "femme body" — why not "woman's body"? — so did I. But — short of a "femme bodysuit," on sale at Amazon — I didn't find anything I wanted to link, but I did encounter some godawful academic writing that made me feel sorry for the kids going to college these days.

"So you start to see the the trappings of this thing that was created in New York City, in the Bronx in the 1970s start to leave its beginnings a little bit..."

"...and become more of a competition and more of a sport through Red Bull and these other entities that are sponsoring it.... It's actually a bit of a wild story [how breaking went from a Red Bull event to the Olympics]. So nearly three decades ago, this global governing body of dance, international dance sport is recognized by the International Olympic Committee and they wanna bring dance to the Olympics. So they want to have ballroom dancing and they suggest that and they get rebuffed. So they eventually rebrand themselves as World Dance Sport Federation, and they find out that it's not foxtrot or salsa or ballroom that the Olympic thinks could have a shot. It's breaking. Breaking is highly watchable, easily viewable on social media. And it comes along as the Olympics is reevaluating what they're going to use as a sport to try and gain that younger audience. There was a testing period in 2018.... They debuted breaking at the Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires.... There was over 2.5 million social media impressions according to the International Olympic Committee. I mean, it seems like it aligns itself perfectly with the Olympics mission of trying to skewer to a younger audience. And once you see those numbers that pretty much locked up breaking for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris..."

From the new episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "Breaking’s Olympic Debut." 

"Skewer" — sometimes the wrong word is the right word.

I could not tell what portion of this is humor. I had to do research.

Australia has lost the plot. For the breakdancing competition at the Olympics they put this woman with a PhD in breakdancing up as a competitor. She admits that she barely ever trains and complains that she doesn’t fit into the hierarchy of merit, which she considers to be a form… pic.twitter.com/zrmIhPZLjt

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) August 10, 2024

 

I'd seen the video yesterday and believed — though it's hard to believe — that this is a real Olympic performance in what is the sport/"sport" of breakdancing. But what about the rest of that — the PhD in breakdancing and the critique of hierarchy? It's too good as satire. True?!

I found this: "Raygun, mocked on internet for her routine, is Sydney professor with PhD in cultural studies/In what is a young person’s sport, the 36-year-old Raygun was mocked on social media on Friday for her attire and routine. In her day job, Rachael Gunn is a lecturer at Sydney’s Macquarie University with a PhD with her thesis focusing on the intersection of gender and Sydney’s breaking culture" (Indian Express).

"Back when Lyndon B. Johnson was president and the latest dance craze was the Frug, Washington high society was transfixed by..."

"... Barbara Howar, a sparkling socialite from North Carolina who helped the first lady do her hair, mingled with a visiting Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon and turned her Georgetown home into a center of Swinging Sixties entertainment.... Defiantly unorthodox, she wore pajamas to an embassy gala, drove an orange motorcycle through a Georgetown park and had a barbed wit that brought her a reputation as the enfant terrible of the capital’s social scene. Reflecting on the private life of Henry Kissinger, one of many diplomats and politicians who frequented her parties over the years, she quipped, 'Henry’s idea of sex is to slow the car down to 30 miles an hour when he drops you off at the door.'..."

From "Barbara Howar, whose hit memoir dished on D.C. society, dies at 89/Initially known as a Georgetown hostess, she became a best-selling author with her candid 1973 memoir, 'Laughing All the Way.' She later interviewed celebrities for 'Entertainment Tonight'" (WaPo)(free access link).

Howar launched her writing career with a 1968 Ladies’ Home Journal story called "Why LBJ Dropped Me." Looking (unsuccessfully) for a copy of "Why LBJ Dropped Me," I stumbled into this cool photograph, "Singer Bobby Darin sits with his girlfriend, Barbara Howar." I love her shoe. Grommets — so 60s! Ah, well, the 60s are long gone, and here I am, a creature of the 60s, entertained by obituaries, saying goodbye to everyone who was tormented by LBJ and danced the frug.

You don't see the phrase "enfant terrible" so much anymore. The OED says it's "A child who embarrasses his or her elders by untimely remarks; transferred a person who compromises his or her associates or his or her party by unorthodox or ill-considered speech or behaviour; loosely, one who acts unconventionally." We used to celebrate the enfants terribles. Didn't we? Do we still? Answer without saying "Trump" or you are too boring to wear pajamas to an embassy gala and drive an orange motorcycle through a Georgetown park.

"Kamala is throwing a party. She doesn't believe in anything. Well, she's flip-flopped. It's not flip-flop."

"She doesn't believe... She wasn't for it before she was against.... It's nothing. It has no foundation in reality. None of it matters. The Democrats are living in a post-reality world of parties. People are twerking. People are singing. There's Yas queening. It it has nothing to do with anything.... You can't touch it it's The Sphere...."

Says Tim Dillon, a third of the way into his podcast that began with a description of his visit to The Sphere in Las Vegas. 

 

"Do you see? The people come in. They herd them in. Come in, fatty, sit in your seat and look: It's pretty colors. It's things that are flying by a mile a minute.... Yes,  play this, play this.... [Plays clip of women twerking at a Harris rally]... That's right, this is the campaign. These are the policies.... This is what you're going to get. These are the policies. This is what you're voting for... and by the way this is brilliant.... If Kamala Harris did not exist, billionaires would have to invent her.... She is hollow in in the best way...."

Dillon takes the position that the candidate that throws the best party will win, and he weaves that into a critique of the inane Sphere and the awful Darren Aronofsky movie — "Postcard from Earth" — he paid $300 to see there.

Dillon's comic rant merged with my own thinking on the subject — about why Kamala Harris avoids any substantive interactions with anyone. The lack of substance is her substance, and it is exactly what will work. America wants a show about nothing — to use the old "Seinfeld" phrase. Or... as I've said a few times around here: Better than nothing is a high standard. 

Nothing is a good bet. Stick to nothing. Trump has a lot of baggage. Kamala is unburdened by what has been.

People think they're attacking her when they put up a montage like that, but it is a testament to genius.

"You might recall the epic 2008 Beijing opening ceremony, which showcased the four great Chinese inventions: the compass, gunpowder, paper, and typesetting."

"This one in Paris, put up last Friday, celebrated analogous French contributions like threesomes, the Minions franchise, and dressing like a clown...."

Begins Suzy Weiss, in "Was the Opening Ceremony Demonic, or Just Cringe? Don’t feel bad for Christians—feel bad for the French" (Free Press).

Ha ha. Very well put.

"I told my mom, 'This isn’t serious.... I’m just going to wait till I’m 6.'"

Said Mira Nadon, when she was 5, quoted in "At City Ballet, a Once-in-a-Generation Dancer Arrives/Mira Nadon, the rising New York City Ballet principal, is coming off her best season yet. And it’s only the beginning."

The ballet class for 5-year olds was "pre-ballet, which meant running around the studio, maybe getting a shot at fluttering like a butterfly" and Nadon "found out that students began proper training at 6."

Is it okay to love seriousness in 5-year-olds? Mostly, we want the very young to laugh and play — experience delight. What's up with early-arising seriousness? When is it too young to manifest staunchly that you know you've been presented with the bullshit kid's version of something and you want the real

Have you ever known such a kid? Were you one?

I'm picturing the child drawn by Edward Gorey....

"[T]he one class I hated was hula. It was mostly because the instructor was a flamboyant gay man and it scared me. That was my own internalized homophobia."

Said Patrick Makuakān, describing the "cultural exploration camp" he attended when he was 10.

He's quoted in "'Hula is my church': how Patrick Makuakāne is reinvigorating Hawaii’s traditional dance/Winner of the MacArthur ‘genius’ grant in 2023 has forged his own style in San Francisco while often subverting stereotypes of hula itself" (The Guardian).