i woke up an hour ago and now i’m just bored and annoyed with being awake. i’d give approximately one million dollars for a shoulder/neck massage right this minute. one million.
the other thing about this retirement party is how many things are alike. after the band played there was a karaoke guy there. not that many people did the karaoke, except this one woman and this one man and they’d obviously both done lots of karaoke in their lives because they both did about, oh, four or five numbers at least that clearly they’d done before. the woman did more patsy cline-type stuff, and i can’t remember exactly what the guy did only it was more pop rock kind of things. they were both pretty good.
and the karaoke guy played lots and lots of songs that you hear everywhere, this could have been a retirement or a whatever kind of party or a wedding reception anywhere. and that’s why sometimes i feel that everything is really alike. i’m sure that last night there were parties like this going on all over the world. probably in japan they were playing one or two different tunes, and i bet they weren’t serving (delicious) poor boy sandwiches, but pretty much all alike.
and then the dj-karaoke guy played this one song, and that made me realize that it’s not just parties like this that are all alike, but more like everything is all alike. it was some kind of song where people get up and do a line-dance kind of dance. he started the song, and en masse, about 20 or so people got up and moved onto the dance floor and started in on these steps. most of them had obviously done this many times before.
the thing about this song is that i was at a bar about a month or so ago and it wasn’t a place i’d been to much (at all?) and most of the people there were in their 20’s and it appeared to be a serious meat market-type place. lots of women (many of them very drunk) with plunging necklines and lots and lots of makeup and big hair. i didn’t exactly feel like a martian per se, but at least like a traveller from a less distant place, perhaps the moon.
but so sometime during the night that VERY SAME SONG started playing and up the people got and they all walked onto the dance floor and started in.
everywhere, people are doing this dance. it looks a little like the beginning of some kind of cult.
it’s like the pop version of country line dances that they do in country bars, and it’s like that horrible macharana (sp?) that was so popular years ago.
and really, when it comes right down to it, it all stems from the hokey pokey.
doesn’t it?
i wonder if there’s a group synchronized dance move song that precedes the hokey pokey. surely there must be. but in the 20’s and the 30’s did people dance in big groups ever, instead of just in couples? and what about at the turn of the century, what about the 1800’s? did abraham lincoln ever dance a hokey pokey-type dance?
somehow i doubt it.
and what about further back, what about people in the elizabethan era? (that’s the only era that comes to me at 2:45 a.m.) i can imagine them doing some big group dance. but the middle ages? or those earlier ages? i’m sure no group dances or no dances of any kind were done during the dark ages. because, of course, people would have crashed into each other constantly because of the lack of light.
this begs the question, was Jesus ever involved in any line dancing? did he start it all out?
just something to ponder in the middle of the night.
damn, i wish i was asleep.
too many things to think about doing tomorrow and sunday and all week long.
goodnight again.
ok then,
late-friday early-saturday grace.