(no subject)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWgIlD287hs&feature=player_profilepage
This person usually puts out really funny stuff. I mean, "I want to kick up my legs in my sexy stockings and dance with an epicurean specimen of an Argentinean." That's funny. Especially when stated in monotone. Unfortunately, where in comedy I usually find about one glaring irresolvable error per minute this one just didn't stop. The basic assertion is that trashy young women dance salsa whereas older more sophisticated women dance tango. While I am certain I'm terribly sophisticated, I'm also young and I ... just like every female tango dancer I know have had wardrobe failures on the dance floor. In fact I've had several (evidently wearing silky tank tops to tango is just asking to pop out) and just last night two of my friends stated that they had accidentally flashed an entire room full of people when the shawl they were wearing as a skirt ... well you get the picture. I also know a few older salsa dancers ... and by old I mean I'm surprised their bones don't actually break before my eyes, and a number of salsa dancers who never wear anything that plunges below their collar bone or is shorter than knee length. Honestly while some people will dance salsa in a micro mini and bandeau ... they'd do that in tango if they danced it as well. And the traditional wear for tango is a helluva lot more revealing than even some of the modern salsa dresses.
Furthermore, as I'm sure you remember, there are sleazy guys in tango too. Many in fact. People are constantly telling me how beautiful I am and how much their private lessons will help my technique or some combination of the previous. These guys are everywhere.
Then he comes after the lyrics. Frankly, when listening to salsa songs I find them just as sad if not moreso than tango songs. Which is weird because they're set to this crazy quick beat and everyone's spinning about and waving limbs, but ... the last one I listened to the guy was saying something like "I loved you more than anything in the world and now that my heart is broken I can't go on." Dang man! Get a therapist! But ... the saddest thing I can think of off the top of my head in tango is paraphrased "the day that you love me the flowers will glow a brighter hue ... the night that you love me the stars will sparkle like your dark hair ... I wait for the time I can call you my wife." And that's not even strictly sad. It's actually kinda hot. The other runner up, again paraphrased is "you should think twice before leaving me, because no one will love you the way I do." And again, not really sad ... just a little cheesy. And then there's one about a guy losing at the track. But ... yeah ... it's not really sad. And a lot of tango is written in a minor key, but ... it doesn't really impart a feeling of sadness so much as, "let's get it on."
And then at the very end the salsera says the corncob in El Choclo is a phallic symbol. As much as I love to parade le phallus before men to watch them squirm, El Choclo is named in honor of a club owner who was nicknamed "corncob." It's also a hilarious musical piece. But it's no more about penises than anything else is. Which is to say if you are obsessed with your naughty bits then everything is about penises. But otherwise no.
But ... see this sort of stuff is problematic. I started dancing tango when it was unusual for people under 40 in this country to dance it. Which is weird because it experienced a revitalization in the 80s. You would think I wouldn't be one of the first of my generation. But I am. But culturally tango was danced by people in their late teens and early twenties. In Argentina today there does not appear to be an age thing. There was for a while because it was banned at one point, but it recovered. In the US though there's ... a huge age thing. It's not as if I'm the only young thing on the dance floor, but of the young things I'm definitely the most experienced. If you go to the most progressive milonga and convince everyone to separate according to age you will get probably about 20 people under 30 and if you were to further delineate based on experience along a continuum you'd get a big pool of people around the one or two year mark, a few between three and five and me all the way in the corner with my ten. There may or may not be a few people populating the intermediate space, but it wouldn't be many. This should be weird. Tango is often danced sedately, but ... it really doesn't have to be. There's plenty of opportunity for a high degree of skill or athleticism. And it's not being exploited. This irritates me. This is why I've been trying to get young people to dance. I don't want to be the youngest person out there and ... I want hot young partners who I'm not afraid of breaking. Problem is young people are too embarrassed about being interested in a cultural/"old person" dance to show off. They'll go to milongas but they won't perform. Or they get it in their heads that this is a romantic thing and great for impressing a potential date. Unfortunately, I can maybe do that but I've been doing this for a while and if potential date isn't also a great dancer he's going to spend most of his time watching me dance rather than dancing with me which ... kinda defeats the point of the exercise.
Tangentially related this is why I typically keep my mad skillz under my hat. Guys make dumbass assumptions about me enough without being overloaded with information. First they usually assume that because I'm cute and quiet that I must be stupid. That usually gets quashed the minute I open my mouth, but to tell them what I study would ... especially at that point ... just be cruel. That said, such an assumption does sort of merit it. But then they assume that I'm just a nerdy nerd nerd who spends all her time in the library and all her extra time in the lab only to apply lipstick and a cute dress for a date. So then if they find out I do martial arts or dance they assume that that's my sole form of excersise. They also assume that as a tango dancer I must constantly trot about in cocktail hats and elegantly arch my eyebrow or that as a martial artist I am also a dominatrix. Now, I do rather like cocktail hats and I am not averse to a little role play, but ... have you seen the guys I wrestle/spar with? I'm not going to sleep with them. Ever. And if I were to think about sex while fighting I would never fight or have sex ever ever again. Ew. Just ew. Likewise the ability to tango doesn't make me sexed up and constantly unapproachably elegant. I'm that way because I'm Hungarian. I kid. But I also recognize the fact that the guys I want to sleep with and the guys I want to dance with are not necessarily present concurrently. Hence, although I think it would be awesome to have a good dance from the same guy I'm going to bed with, it's not really a requirement. In fact ... unless he already can dance, I really don't want to dance with my sexual partners. It just gets awkward. So, by the time all this is revealed the guy's mind is already pretty blown. Then I have to disclose the fact that one of my publications is in an entirely different scientific subject or that I can pwn anyone on horseback or that I sing opera or that I regularly translate 600 year old texts or something like that and typically ... the guy starts backing away slowly. I can't really blame him. I happen to occupy a super extreme of the human population making me effectively unknown to the average person. The unknown is scary. I also often use my vast arsenal of mad skillz to scare the dumb ones off. Most guys don't like to be physically or intellectually pwned by a girl. The fact that I can do both without changing my expression is usually enough to send them on their way. But the point is even when I'm in a good mood, I don't like being stereotyped. If I'm feeling congenial I won't actively pick a fight, but the only way to do that is to keep my crazy mad skillz hidden. People think they know a great deal more than they do. And ... frankly my skills suggest to those who don't know better that I am sexually aggressive and ... somewhat masculine. I'm aggressive, but I'm not actually sexually aggressive and frankly, if I wanted you to know how I like my sex ... I'd tell you. I am smart enough that I may occupy many identities concurrently, and I do not enjoy sweeping assumptions being made about my person based on misconstrued and incomplete data.
This person usually puts out really funny stuff. I mean, "I want to kick up my legs in my sexy stockings and dance with an epicurean specimen of an Argentinean." That's funny. Especially when stated in monotone. Unfortunately, where in comedy I usually find about one glaring irresolvable error per minute this one just didn't stop. The basic assertion is that trashy young women dance salsa whereas older more sophisticated women dance tango. While I am certain I'm terribly sophisticated, I'm also young and I ... just like every female tango dancer I know have had wardrobe failures on the dance floor. In fact I've had several (evidently wearing silky tank tops to tango is just asking to pop out) and just last night two of my friends stated that they had accidentally flashed an entire room full of people when the shawl they were wearing as a skirt ... well you get the picture. I also know a few older salsa dancers ... and by old I mean I'm surprised their bones don't actually break before my eyes, and a number of salsa dancers who never wear anything that plunges below their collar bone or is shorter than knee length. Honestly while some people will dance salsa in a micro mini and bandeau ... they'd do that in tango if they danced it as well. And the traditional wear for tango is a helluva lot more revealing than even some of the modern salsa dresses.
Furthermore, as I'm sure you remember, there are sleazy guys in tango too. Many in fact. People are constantly telling me how beautiful I am and how much their private lessons will help my technique or some combination of the previous. These guys are everywhere.
Then he comes after the lyrics. Frankly, when listening to salsa songs I find them just as sad if not moreso than tango songs. Which is weird because they're set to this crazy quick beat and everyone's spinning about and waving limbs, but ... the last one I listened to the guy was saying something like "I loved you more than anything in the world and now that my heart is broken I can't go on." Dang man! Get a therapist! But ... the saddest thing I can think of off the top of my head in tango is paraphrased "the day that you love me the flowers will glow a brighter hue ... the night that you love me the stars will sparkle like your dark hair ... I wait for the time I can call you my wife." And that's not even strictly sad. It's actually kinda hot. The other runner up, again paraphrased is "you should think twice before leaving me, because no one will love you the way I do." And again, not really sad ... just a little cheesy. And then there's one about a guy losing at the track. But ... yeah ... it's not really sad. And a lot of tango is written in a minor key, but ... it doesn't really impart a feeling of sadness so much as, "let's get it on."
And then at the very end the salsera says the corncob in El Choclo is a phallic symbol. As much as I love to parade le phallus before men to watch them squirm, El Choclo is named in honor of a club owner who was nicknamed "corncob." It's also a hilarious musical piece. But it's no more about penises than anything else is. Which is to say if you are obsessed with your naughty bits then everything is about penises. But otherwise no.
But ... see this sort of stuff is problematic. I started dancing tango when it was unusual for people under 40 in this country to dance it. Which is weird because it experienced a revitalization in the 80s. You would think I wouldn't be one of the first of my generation. But I am. But culturally tango was danced by people in their late teens and early twenties. In Argentina today there does not appear to be an age thing. There was for a while because it was banned at one point, but it recovered. In the US though there's ... a huge age thing. It's not as if I'm the only young thing on the dance floor, but of the young things I'm definitely the most experienced. If you go to the most progressive milonga and convince everyone to separate according to age you will get probably about 20 people under 30 and if you were to further delineate based on experience along a continuum you'd get a big pool of people around the one or two year mark, a few between three and five and me all the way in the corner with my ten. There may or may not be a few people populating the intermediate space, but it wouldn't be many. This should be weird. Tango is often danced sedately, but ... it really doesn't have to be. There's plenty of opportunity for a high degree of skill or athleticism. And it's not being exploited. This irritates me. This is why I've been trying to get young people to dance. I don't want to be the youngest person out there and ... I want hot young partners who I'm not afraid of breaking. Problem is young people are too embarrassed about being interested in a cultural/"old person" dance to show off. They'll go to milongas but they won't perform. Or they get it in their heads that this is a romantic thing and great for impressing a potential date. Unfortunately, I can maybe do that but I've been doing this for a while and if potential date isn't also a great dancer he's going to spend most of his time watching me dance rather than dancing with me which ... kinda defeats the point of the exercise.
Tangentially related this is why I typically keep my mad skillz under my hat. Guys make dumbass assumptions about me enough without being overloaded with information. First they usually assume that because I'm cute and quiet that I must be stupid. That usually gets quashed the minute I open my mouth, but to tell them what I study would ... especially at that point ... just be cruel. That said, such an assumption does sort of merit it. But then they assume that I'm just a nerdy nerd nerd who spends all her time in the library and all her extra time in the lab only to apply lipstick and a cute dress for a date. So then if they find out I do martial arts or dance they assume that that's my sole form of excersise. They also assume that as a tango dancer I must constantly trot about in cocktail hats and elegantly arch my eyebrow or that as a martial artist I am also a dominatrix. Now, I do rather like cocktail hats and I am not averse to a little role play, but ... have you seen the guys I wrestle/spar with? I'm not going to sleep with them. Ever. And if I were to think about sex while fighting I would never fight or have sex ever ever again. Ew. Just ew. Likewise the ability to tango doesn't make me sexed up and constantly unapproachably elegant. I'm that way because I'm Hungarian. I kid. But I also recognize the fact that the guys I want to sleep with and the guys I want to dance with are not necessarily present concurrently. Hence, although I think it would be awesome to have a good dance from the same guy I'm going to bed with, it's not really a requirement. In fact ... unless he already can dance, I really don't want to dance with my sexual partners. It just gets awkward. So, by the time all this is revealed the guy's mind is already pretty blown. Then I have to disclose the fact that one of my publications is in an entirely different scientific subject or that I can pwn anyone on horseback or that I sing opera or that I regularly translate 600 year old texts or something like that and typically ... the guy starts backing away slowly. I can't really blame him. I happen to occupy a super extreme of the human population making me effectively unknown to the average person. The unknown is scary. I also often use my vast arsenal of mad skillz to scare the dumb ones off. Most guys don't like to be physically or intellectually pwned by a girl. The fact that I can do both without changing my expression is usually enough to send them on their way. But the point is even when I'm in a good mood, I don't like being stereotyped. If I'm feeling congenial I won't actively pick a fight, but the only way to do that is to keep my crazy mad skillz hidden. People think they know a great deal more than they do. And ... frankly my skills suggest to those who don't know better that I am sexually aggressive and ... somewhat masculine. I'm aggressive, but I'm not actually sexually aggressive and frankly, if I wanted you to know how I like my sex ... I'd tell you. I am smart enough that I may occupy many identities concurrently, and I do not enjoy sweeping assumptions being made about my person based on misconstrued and incomplete data.