Choreographing Success

There is a nice profile by Jocelyn Munroe of Pepper Von in this month's "Inside The City", featuring several familiar people:

It’s late on a hot summer night at Garbeau’s Dinner Theatre, and the performance has just ended. The stage lights come down as the audience erupts in applause. The performers, glistening with sweat, move among the tables and mingle with the audience, graciously accepting the riotous acclaim. Finally, the noise dies down, but at the back one man in a stylish fedora set over long, rippling black dreadlocks is still whistling, clapping and carrying on like there’s no tomorrow.

This is Pepper Von: dancer and choreographer, successful Midtown businessman and hero to more kids and adults than could fill this room. And this is his show. It’s his concept, his choreography and most especially his cast. He’s wrung from them
their very best work, and now he’s applauding them for meeting his lofty
standards.

...Von has lived in Sacramento for 30 of his 54 years, gaining national credibility for his dancing, kickboxing, aerobics, mentoring and speaking. He was a star of ESPN’s “Fitness Pros” show, has appeared in dozens of theater and music productions and has won a slew of national and local awards.

But first and foremost he considers himself a teacher. He and partner Mary Wright
opened Midtown’s Step 1 Dance & Fitness more than 20 years ago.

Wright was a hospital administrator, Von the creative type. It was a perfect match. “Our passions are so well defined,” he says.

At Step 1, he’s in his element. Direct, thoughtful and passionate, he’s also good to look at. A bright red bandana is pulled tight against his head, holding back what look to be hundreds of skinny dreadlocks streaming down to his waist. Black glasses frame intelligent and calm almond-shaped eyes. A white wristband that says “Pay it forward” circles his wrist. From each earlobe flashes a big diamond stud. A sleeveless white T-shirt shows off buff shoulders and biceps, emblazoned with handsome West African spiritual tattoos. A neck chain holding a cross and various tokens hangs around his neck.

“I make no bones about being spiritual,” he says.

The studio around him brims with life; it’s a happy, busy and purposeful place. In the front room, a group of energetic preteens is stomping out a hip-hop rhythm; in another room, elegant teenage ballerinas twirl gracefully. Adults just out of a cardio aerobic dance class mingle with parents watching their moppets’ classes.

...“Everybody here gets along, everybody here loves each other,” concurs cheerful receptionist Alli Phelps.

Serious dancers flock to Step 1. The Jabbawockeez dance team, winner of MTV’s America’s Best Dance Crew 2008, started dancing together here.

...Hannah Collins is a dancer in "Let’s Go" and a longtime Step 1 student. She finds Von’s energy infectious. “You can be having the worst possible day ever and he can make you forget it. He’s one of those people that you know is in your corner,” she says. “There’s something about him that makes you want to give as much as possible.”

...At age 7, he began taking tap classes with his sister and began a lifelong love affair with dance. Eventually he earned a spot performing with the military troop Tops in Blue and claimed his ticket out of the South.

He teaches 10-plus classes weekly, travels widely for fi tness events and volunteers helping at-risk kids. But it’s his artistic side that defines him. “If it’s creative and artistic and there’s movement to music and creating a picture, I’m all over it.”

Now Von is taking on Broadway, or at least something like it. “I’m trying to grow [Let’s Go] to a national tour,” he says. “It’s a marketable business product.”

Step 1 instructor Michelle Coons has worked with Von for about 20 years. “He’s well-known in the rap and hip-hop world,” says Coons. “I’m very impressed that they’re calling in and want him to take it on the road.”

Upcoming CORE Workshops

Saturday October 11 1-4pm $35 pre-register, $40 at event, $15 single class
El Dorado Hills Dance Academy, 3921 Sandstone Dr, Suite 4, El Dorado Hills, 95762
1-2pm Contemporary
2-3pm CORE Repertory
3-4pm Hip-hop

Sunday October 26 1-3pm $25 pre-register, $30 at event
Master Class with CORE Dance Collective taught by Artistic Director Kelli Leighton
Improvisational Technique and Contemporary
Ages 10 and up (instructor permission needed for <10 years)

Joe Biden Calls John McCain A Coward

OK, let's discuss William Ayers and call the bluff of the Republican cockroaches:

“All of the things they said about Barack Obama in the TV, on the TV, at their rallies, and now on YouTube … John McCain could not bring himself to look Barack Obama in the eye and say the same things to him,” Biden said this morning. “In my neighborhood, when you’ve got something to say to a guy, you look him in the eye and you say it to him.”

Nouriel Roubini, Wizard

In this financial crisis, only the most extreme doom-mongers have been consistently right, and only Nouriel Roubini has been consistently the most pessimistic, and thus the most accurate:

But let’s give economist Nouriel Roubini, whose track record predicting the crisis looks better every single day, the last word, for now. Roubini spent last week savaging the Paulson plan as insufficient to the task, and called for a much more radical approach to addressing the credit freeze. Turns out, getting the Fed involved in the short-term lending market was one of his key proposals.

This action follows closely one of the radical policy options that I recommended last week: “Direct lending to the business sector from the Fed … to the non financial corporate sector. This could include Fed purchases of commercial paper from corporations and other forms of financing of the short term liabilities of the Administration to small businesses secured in appropriate ways. Given the collapse of the corporate [commercial paper] market and the banking system reluctance to provide loans to the corporate sector (credits lines are being shut down) the only alternative to the Fed becoming directly the biggest emergency bank for the corporate sector would be to force the banking system to maintain its exposure to the corporate sector, possibly in exchange for further Fed provision of liquidity to the banking system. The former option may be better than the latter to deal with the looming illiquidity of the corporate sector.”

Piece Of Me - Britney Spears - Bimbo Jones Remix



This Bimbo Jones remix is excellent!

I remember how visceral people's reactions were to Britney when she first appeared on the scene in the 90's. Nothing has really changed that much - either you really like her, or you really can't stand her - a Marilyn Monroe of the new millenium.

Knee injuries, lack of vocal range, and personal problems aside, she's a great dancer and performer! I like her! I really, really, do!

I’m Miss American Dream since I was 17
Don’t matter if I step on the scene
Or sneak away to the Philippines
They still gon' put pictures of my derrière in the magazine
You want a piece of me?
You want a piece of me...

I’m Miss bad media karma
Another day another drama
Guess I can’t see the harm
In working and being a mama
And with a kid on my arm
I’m still an exceptional earner
And you want a piece of me

I’m Mrs. Lifestyles of the rich and famous
(You want a piece of me)
I’m Mrs. Oh my God that Britney’s Shameless
(You want a piece of me)
I’m Mrs. Extra! Extra! this just in
(You want a piece of me)
I’m Mrs. she’s too big now she’s too thin
(You want a piece of me)

I’m Mrs. ‘You want a piece of me?’
Tryin’ and pissin’ me off
Well get in line with the paparazzi
Who’s flippin’ me off
Hopin’ I’ll resort to some havoc
End up settlin’ in court
Now are you sure you want a piece of me?
(You want a piece of me)

I’m Mrs. ‘Most likely to get on the TV for slippin' on the streets’
When getting the groceries, now for real..
Are you kidding me?
No wonder there's panic in the industry
I mean please, do you want a piece of me?

"Sail On, Sail On, Great Ship, Titanic!"

Bargain hunters:

"No, we're not getting out of the market. We're absolutely in it for the long term," said Eileen Shephard, a director of the Sacramento chapter of BetterInvesting, a national nonprofit that promotes education for individual investors.

..."Our little group is staying put, but it's not easy to watch the market fall so quickly in just a few days," said Marcia Wilson-Farmer of Folsom, a member of a five-person group that meets weekly.

It was a year ago today that the Dow Jones industrial average reached its peak of 14,164. Since then, the Dow has fallen nearly 5,000 points. It closed Wednesday at 9,258 – another down day in what seems like an endless stream of down days.

..."Our last meeting wasn't pretty. … It was quite uproarious," she said. "Still, we haven't dropped nearly as much as the stock market as a whole and other sectors. We're holding our own. But we want to be more than holding our own."

..."If you're a long-term investor, you really shouldn't panic now. If you take your money out now, you have no chance to regain it," she said. "The stock market has had all kinds of bumps along the way in the past and come back, so you have to hold steady now."

Crosta said it's also a good idea "to be patient and give the (federal) stimulus package a little time to get working."

..."Our club is looking at fundamentally sound stocks, companies that have been around a long time and are going to be around for many years, no matter what the market is doing right now," said Richard Long of Carmichael. "I guarantee you that people who get out now will regret it in a couple (of) years when the market is back up."

Oldies

E.: MMMAAARRRCCC! have you ever heard of that song, "Under The Boardwalk"?
M.: Yes, it's a favorite old-time song.
E.: It's a cha-cha beat, right? Under the Boardwalk, cha-cha-cha!
M.: NO! ... I mean, no, that's not how they usually orchestrate it.
E.: It's a cha-cha: I know it. Under the Boardwalk, cha-cha-cha!

Platforms



It's hard to get a platform on any national cable show. Sean Hannity used his platform for the rantings of a confirmed anti-Semite.

And what's this about Jerome Corsi trying to spout off in Kenya? Hey Jerome, the Bill of Rights doesn't apply there!

Ignorant Tom Brokaw

Republican tool at the debate:

If a news reporter deliberately makes a false statement claiming that a private company like Boeing or Microsoft is going broke, the company has the right to sue the reporter and the news agency. That is why reporters rarely make statements like Microsoft or Boeing (or Lehman Brothers, AIG, or Goldman Sachs) are going broke.

However, reporters can freely impugn the financial health of a government program like Social Security because a government program cannot sue for libel. That is why Brokaw knew that he could imply that Social Security is going broke, even though it is not true. Social Security cannot sue Brokaw even if he deliberately tells explicit lies about its financial health.

Dealing With The Pain

But it will be hard to deter the Asian folks from one of their few social outlets:

Grief-stricken Southeast Asian refugees asked hard questions Tuesday night about the casino bus accident that claimed eight lives and injured all 35 others aboard.

Five California Highway Patrol officials – including two assistant chiefs – answered questions for more than an hour at a community meeting at the Hmong Women's Heritage Association on Florin Road.

The gambler's special that left Sacramento at 5 p.m. Sunday flipped over about 6:12 p.m. on Lone Star Road about four miles from the Colusa Casino Resort, said Sgt. Patrick W. Landreth of the Williams CHP office.

Xou Vang, 23, of Sacramento wanted to know why his grandmother Lou Her remained trapped under the bus until about 6:30, when her family lost phone contact with her. Her, 68, was one of eight people who died in the accident.

"When she called, she said she was stuck and there was no one to pull her out," Vang said. "My dad received two calls on his cell phone, he called her twice, and she was still alive until 6:30."

Vang wanted to know what the response time was. After an off-duty Colusa County deputy sheriff called in the accident at 6:12, "the first units arrived approximately four minutes later" and immediately called for ambulances and helicopters to take people out of the remote area, Landreth said.

"Eight people were flown in helicopters to trauma centers," added Assistant Chief Steven Bell.

CHP officials couldn't explain why Her was still trapped under the bus until 6:30 but promised to issue a full report on the accident in several months.

...But activist Theresa Saechao, representing the Iu Mien, and Hmong radio personality Rose Xiong wanted to know whether the casinos or the bus company would take any responsibility – and what government officials knew about the safety of the bus.

"Did the bus have any liability insurance?" Xiong asked.

"Does the casino have any liability?" asked Saechao. "They target Southeast Asians who are struggling with income."

Bell couldn't speak for the casino and said the question of bus safety or liability is part of the criminal investigation.

...Saechao said her agency, Sacramento Lao Family Community, will be collecting donations to help with funeral expenses. Norm DeYoung of the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Association said his organization was contributing $3,500 to the funeral fund.

Koua Franz, executive director of the Hmong Women's Heritage Association, which is coordinating the relief efforts, remarked, "A lot of people are angry, a lot of people are in shock, and a lot of families are concerned. They're getting very little information about the victims, the investigation, and if all the victims' families have been properly contacted."

Funerals need to be planned, spirit healings need to be conducted, prayers need to be said.

One survivor, Pia Xiong, 51, was receiving both spirit healing and Western medical treatments. As she prepared for a 10-hour surgery Tuesday at UC Davis Medical Center, her family performed a traditional Hmong ritual at her south Sacramento home to pray for her health. A relative, who is the clan's shaman, lit incense to invoke the spirits of the Earth and sky to bless Xiong.

Xiong, a widow with 12 children to care for, is the glue that holds the family together, said her nephew Chor Thor, 35.

"Maybe there should be stricter regulations on bus drivers, maybe there should be seat belts on the bus," said Thor. He hopes the incident is a wake-up call – and maybe a sign from the spirits – that will discourage other elderly refugees from going to casinos.

Happy Birthday, Michelle!

A shout-out to my sister in New Mexico.

"Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning?"

On Sunday morning at 4 a.m., I was walking Sparky through Sacramento's darkened streets, past the exact same house where I met the Kiwi percussionist last year (this year, the house's yard is inexplicably strewn with toys) when a startled young woman jumped up from a chair on the porch. She was holding a laptop computer, and in the ghostly half-light she said, "Oh, I was doing homework!" I awkwardly bade her a pleasant good evening, and walked off, thinking to myself, "WTF?"

Status Of The Race

October 8, 2004

October 8, 2008

Lucky

Some people have the touch:

A Kansas man whose girlfriend was physically stuck to the toilet in their home wins $20,000 in the state Lottery, for the second time this year.

Kory McFarren cashed in his winning $2 Bonus Crossword ticket in Great Bend Monday. On July 29, the 37-year-old received six months of probation after pleading no contest to misdemeanor mistreatment of a dependent adult.

Down That Slippery Slope

Goes the McCain campaign:

The Secret Service is following up on media reports today that someone in the crowd at a McCain/Palin event suggested killing Barack Obama, according to Secret Service spokesman Malcolm Wiley. The shout of "kill him" followed a Sarah Palin rant on Obama's relationship with radical Chicagoan Bill Ayers.

Unworkable

McCain's big housing buyout:

McCain's plan to buy up mortgages and refinance them at the current value of homes represents a dramatic shift from his position in March, when he said in a speech that "it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers," and that "any assistance must be temporary and must not reward people who were irresponsible at the expense of those who weren't." Democrats were also quick to note that the proposal is not new: In fact, there is a provision in the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 that expressly allows the government to restructure the mortgages that it purchases.

...In recent weeks I've mentioned the work of Georgetown law professor Adam Levitin, a specialist in bankruptcy and commercial law who has been examining exactly this issue. Levitin's position is that the repackaging of mortgages into residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS), and their further slicing and dicing into collateralized debt obligations (CDOS), have fractured the ownership of the original mortgages and redistributed them so widely that the government's hands are tied. To be able to modify the underlying mortgages, the government would need to own a substantial, possibly two-thirds majority, of the securitization pools into which the mortgages have been transformed. That will be difficult to achieve and exorbitantly expensive.

I e-mailed Levitin this morning for his opinion. His answer was blunt.

The McCain plan cannot work. The vast majority (80 percent+) of residential mortgages are securitized. The government cannot purchase mortgages directly out of securitization pools. There are a limited number of ways to actually get around the securitization problem:

1. Refi the mortgages directly, which would involve paying 100 percent of face value.

2. Buy up ALL the RMBS and CDOs and CDO2s, which will be prohibitively expensive and will result in paying close to face value.

3. Take the mortgages from the securitization trusts via eminent domain -- and pay fair value.

4. Permit modification of the mortgages in bankruptcy, or

5. Pass Gold Clause type legislation that changes MBS holders' rights in a way that will allow modification of the mortgages. There are several ways to do this. It might not ultimately be Constitutional, but I doubt any judge would issue an injunction, so by the time there was a final ruling, the matter would be over and done and the worst case is that the government would have to pay out some (maybe a lot) of money.

Because the McCain plan doesn't recognize the (admittedly complex) problems created by securitization it is simply unworkable. At best it will help a few homeowners, but Treasury is already authorized to do that.

...But the easiest and quickest way to get real help to homeowners is Point 4 -- permitting bankruptcy judges to make modifications of mortgages. But that proposal is being resisted so fiercely by the banking and securities industry that it was the first thing that Democrats dropped from their version of the bailout, in the face of strong Republican resistance.

"That One"



"That One"


"That Girl"









"Obama Girl" playing "That (Alaskan) Girl"

Revealing Slip

Perry Farrell, Moby, Paul Van Dyk - "Walk On The Wild Side"



Boy, they sure do things different in South Beach!

Is There A Mexican Corpulence Crisis?

Or is the problem just better-reported than heretofore? If I'm not mistaken, Australia had a recent event like this, however, so its probably just a world corpulence crisis:

JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) - A 990-pound bedridden man who had appealed on Mexican television for help tackling his weight problem died Tuesday of heart failure, his family said.

Emergency officials had to knock down Jose Luis Garza's bedroom wall and load him onto the back of a friend's pickup truck as he fought for his life. The 47-year-old was pronounced dead on arrival at a hospital in northern Mexico.

Garza followed in the footsteps of the world's fattest man, fellow Mexican Manuel Uribe of Monterrey, by taking his weight problem public. Garza lived about an hour away from Uribe in the town of Juarez.

Garza said he always struggled with his weight, but that he fell into a desperate cycle of depression and overeating nine months ago after his parents died of natural causes within two weeks of each other. He had been bedridden for four months.

...Uribe, whose record weight of 1,230 pounds earned him a place in the 2008 Guinness Book of Records, has claimed to have lost around 550 pounds by following the Zone Diet invented by Dr. Barry Sears.

Uribe tried to help Garza by sending him kiwis, grapefruit, pears and a protein supplement. Uribe's fiancee, Claudia Solis, delivered the food on Friday evening.